The book is about how Colonel Zygmunt Berling, a disgruntled Colonel of the Polish inter-war army - once captured by the Red Army and imprisoned - betrayed his country whilst in captivity between 1939-1941, and after 1941 vied, in his mind with General Anders, for power in establishing a Polish Army out of the hundreds of thousands of Poles captive in the Soviet Union. After 1942 Anders took many of these Poles to the west and formed his own army, the so-called 'Anders Army' which fought alongside the Western Allies, notably in Italy but was doomed to remain in the West as exiles after 1946. Berling, in contrast, at the last moment deserted Anders and remained in the Soviet Union and helped to form a Polish army there. This army fought alongside the Red Army right into Berlin, but was never trusted by the Soviet government, nor was Berling. The army formed by Berling, gave a fig leaf of respectability for Soviet annexation of Poland and provided the base for the Polish Peoples' Army.
