Drawing on unpublished archival material, this book provides the first complete account of the Polish miners' union in the Ruhr and places it in the wider context of the German labor movement, from the pre-World War I mass strikes to the dramatic post-war events which eventually saw its dissolution. The author persuasively argues that the union's demise does not signal an inherent contradiction between national and social solidarity. Rather, the conflict between these two ideals lies chiefly in the pre-war and post-war history of the Polish Trade Union. With this book, the author...

When the Nazis annexed western Poland in 1939, they quickly set about identifying Polish citizens of German origin and granting them the privileged legal status of ethnic Germans of the Reich. Following Germany's defeat in World War II, Soviet-dominated Poland incorporated eastern Germany and proceeded to do just the opposite: searching out Germans of Polish origin and offering them Polish citizenship. Underscoring the processes of inclusion and exclusion that mold national communities, Belonging to the Nation examines the efforts of Nazi Germany and postwar Poland to nationalize...