Zapomniana czy przejęta wojna? Uwagi wokół książki Davida Cheng Changa The Hijacked War. The Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean War

Abstrakt

The paper discusses the book entitled The Hijacked War. The Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean War by David Cheng Chang (Stanford University Press, Stanford 2020, pp. 476). The critical analysis of Cheng Chang’s work situates the book in a new trend seen among western historians interested in the Korean War, which is the tendency to focus on prisoners of war instead of focusing only on the political and military issues of the conflict. Cheng Chang claims that a few thousand Chinese non-communist POWs forced many fellow prisoners held in captivity by United Nations Command to oppose repatriation to the People’s Republic of China and, in the aftermath, those determined POWs “hijacked” the war. This was possible because their stance encouraged the Americans to propose voluntary repatriation. To the Americans’ surprise, the Communists refused to accept it, and the war waged on for more than one year longer. The paper underlines the main thesis by Cheng Chang and points out the most valuable information provided by the historian that contributes to a deepening of our knowledge and understanding of the Korean War. Moreover, the paper indicates that there are a few minor disadvantages in Cheng Chang’s study, such as the short description of the so-called explanations and interviews conducted under the supervision of the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission between October 1953 and January 1954. This is a gap that could be filled, for example, after studying Polish and Czech archival diplomatic and intelligence documents.