The Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit award was presented to him at the Polish embassy in London during a ceremony attended by ambassador Arkady Rzegocki.
“Honoured to be awarding the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland on behalf of President Andrzej Duda to Roger Moorhouse,” Rzegocki said in a tweet on Friday.
“His tireless efforts to bring to [the UK] the true history of Poland during WW2 deserves utmost admiration. Thank you, friend of Poland,” the ambassador added.
Moorhouse’s critically acclaimed book that “sets the record straight” on the 1939 Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland, entitled Poland 1939. The Outbreak of World War II, was released in the United States last month.
The book, which was last year released in the United Kingdom under the title First to Fight: The Polish War 1939, as well as in Poland under the title Polska 1939. Pierwsi przeciwko Hitlerowi, is the first account in English of the Polish defensive war of 1939 in almost five decades.
In 2019, it was featured among BBC History Magazine’s Books of the Year.
It was also shortlisted for the 2020 Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History in Britain.
In a review, British weekly The Economist wrote that Moorhouse’s book “sets the wartime record straight about Poland’s forgotten heroism and suffering, which is strangely absent from standard histories.”
(jh/gs)
Source: Radio Poland
