The Kościuszko Squadron: Liberty and Modernity in the Aftermath of WWI

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What ties together a Revolutionary War hero, a Hollywood film director, and twentieth-century Poland’s quest for political independence? The Kościuszko Squadron (7. Eskadra Lotnicza) was an international flying squad, whose airmen included former prisoners of war, idealistic Americans, and international adventurers. The Polish-Soviet War is a conflict that, having taken place in the shadow of the First World War, is largely overlooked in the US today. But at the time, the conflict and the Kościuszko Squadron, named after Tadeusz Kościuszko, generated international enthusiasm and publications from Polish-American presses. This podcast explores this flamboyant, neglected history.

Host: Lucy

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Further Reading

Jerzy Borzecki, “The Outbreak of the Polish-Soviet War: A Polish Perspective,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 29:4 (2016), 658-680.  

Jerzy Borzecki, The Soviet-Polish Peace of 1921 and the Creation of Interwar Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)

Jan Bury, “Polish Codebreaking During the Russo-Polish War of 1919-1920,” Cryptologia 28:3 (2004), 193-203

Janusz Cisek, Kościuszko, We Are Here: American Pilots of the Kosciuszko Squadron in Defense of Poland, 1919-1921 (New York: McFarland, 2002)

Merian C. Cooper, Faunt-le-roy i jego eskadra w Polsce (Chicago, 1922)

Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End (London: Allen Lane, 2016)

Robert F. Karolevitz and Ross S. Fenn, Dług Honorowy: Amerykański piloci Eskadry Myśliwskiej im. Kościuszki w wojnie polsko-bolszewickiej 1919-1920. Zapomniani Bohaterowie (Warsaw: AMF, 2005)

Stephan Lehnstaedt, Der vergessene Sieg: Der Polnisch-Sowjetische Krieg 1919/1921 und die Entstehung des modernen Osteuropa (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2019)

Kenneth Malcolm Murray, Wings Over Poland: The Story of the 7th (Kosciusko) Squadron of the Polish Air Service, 1919, 1920, 1921 (New York: Appleton, 1932)

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum: Insignia, Kościuszko Squadron.

Woodrow Wilson, Fourteen Points Speech.

Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)