This is event is hosted by the National Army Museum on behalf of the Chelsea History Festival

At the end of the First World War, after the collapse of the German Eastern Front, Bolshevik Russia extended her power westwards. Her forces soon came up against those of a newly independent Poland.

Poland had only just recovered her independence after more than a century of foreign oppression. But it was economically and militarily weak, and its misguided offensive to liberate the Ukraine in the spring of 1920 left it open to attack.

Everything that Great Britain and France had fought for over four years now seemed at risk. By the middle of August, the Russians were only a few kilometres from Warsaw, and Berlin was less than a week's march away. Then occurred the 'Miracle of the Vistula': the Polish army led by Jozef Pilsudski regrouped and achieved one of the most decisive victories in military history.

In this online talk, Adam Zamoyski will explore how the Versailles peace settlement survived and how the battle for Warsaw bought Europe nearly two decades of peace.

Adam Zamoyski is a British historian of Polish origin. He is the author of the bestselling 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow and its sequel, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, as well as several other acclaimed works on key figures and aspects of European history. His comprehensive history of Poland, The Polish Way, not only featured in the bestseller lists for several weeks when it came out in 1987, but has never been out of print since.

Warsaw 1920: Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe