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The Diaries of the Third Reich's Minister for Public Enlightement and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, amount to around 35 000 pages altogether. After myriad obstacles had been overcome, they were published in print in Germany in 1993–2006, with a separate supplement, consisting of three volumes with indexes of places, persons and subjects, following in 2007–2008. More recently, a three-volume edition of excerpts, translated into Polish and furnished with added endnotes and an introduction, was published in 2013–2014. It focused on Polish issues, taking into account every reference to Poland, even the very smallest. The author of this article analyses Goebbels' entries in respect of Poland and Poles in detail, paying attention both to their quantitative aspect and to their subject matter. In quantitative terms, short entries, often telegraphic in style, are the most plentiful; those of a medium or more extensive length are very scarce. In view of the immense number of pages of the Diaries which have been preserved and published in print, this is a modest representation. It is, nevertheless, cognitively significant and refers to events important from the point of view of Polish-German relationships and international issues. There are several 'Polish' topics in the Diaries; they run, like the proverbial red thread, over several pages or even a dozen or so. They include such matters as Goebbels' visit in Poland in June 1934 and the Third Reich's persuading of Poland both to take part in a joint march East and to invade Czechoslovakia in October 1938. The issues relating to the preparations for the attack on Poland in September 1939 in German propaganda are referred to particularly extensively. The author's analysis is supplemented with numerous notes, both on the subject matter and bibliographical details.

In the early 1990s, it transpired that the reportedly lost or only partially preserved Diaries of Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, had been found in one of the central archives in Russia. On the basis of that discovery, an edition of this important resource for the history of National Socialism was published in thirty-three volumes by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute of Contemporary History). The article comprises a concise description of both the figure of the Diaries' author and his opus, which encompasses his journal entries from 1923 to 1945. The regularity and profusion of the material are astounding, as is the broad panorama of the issues broached. The focus of interest for the author of the article is the usefulness of the source from the viewpoint of not only modern German history, but also international topics. Of particular importance are those portions of the Diaries which, in the subjective opinion of the article's author, depict the road that led to the outbreak of World War II and its subsequent course, as well as the events which brought National Socialist Germany to defeat. A part of the Diaries also consists of entries relating to Poland and the Poles and is chiefly focused on the genesis of the war, the Katyn Massacre, the Warsaw Uprising and the process of the Soviet Union's enslavement of Central-Eastern Europe and Poland as hostilities were coming to an end. A forthcoming Polish publication containing a selection of Joseph Goebbels' journal entries deemed by author of the article and, at the same time, of the Polish edition of the Diaries, to be both representative and cognitive, is announced.

The author presents the determinants and basic problems of existence of Polish science and culture in the period preceding the turbulent year of 1968, as well as the events directly related to this key date in Poland's history. The departure, by Mr Gomułka's team, from the 'achievements' of the Polish October of '56, that is, from certain concessions of a democratic nature, evoked deep disappointment in both institutions and the scientific, cultural and artistic milieus, and this, in time, led to attempts at protest. The PRP authorities and, most of all, the sections therein which were responsible for science, education and culture, systematically intervened in activities of the respective professional groups. The tightening of censorship, restrictions in the allocation of printing paper for books and periodicals, the closing down of newspapers, weeklies and magazines 'inconvenient' from the point of view of the authorities, the lack of opportunities for dialogue and constructive criticism, repressions against those who openly expressed their independent opinions, and the systematic surveillance of the scientific and creative milieus, were only a part of operations undertaken by the PRP powers-that-be in the second half of the 1960s. It was in that climate that a conflict between the state and the Roman Catholic Church was played out in the process of the Polish State Millennium celebrations in 1966, which coincided with the escalation of the party's conflict with the intellectuals and men and women of letters, as well as with intra-party infighting between factions within the PUWP. It was the shortcomings of the centralised, command economy and the growing shortages in the shops which resulted in Poland's situation becoming unstable and threatening to explode. The role of the fuse was performed by the events of March 1968, which were enacted in the cultural and scientific milieus: the turbulent meetings of Warsaw's men and women of letters, the removal of Adam Mickiewicz's Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) from the National Theatre's repertoire, the manifestation in protest against the removal which followed the last performance, and finally, the students' rally in the courtyard of Warsaw University, as well as the strikes on the part of students and the personnel of higher education institutions in Warsaw and other Polish cities as the continuation of that rally. It was after these events, when the party had launched an anti-intelligentsia campaign, supplemented with an anti-Semite witch hunt and smear campaign, unleashed by the 'partisans' faction around Mieczysław Moczar and by Mr Władysław Gomułka himself. An 'ethnic criterion' was applied to the Polish scientific and cultural milieus, eliminating, in the climate of a media witch hunt, renowned academic teachers, scholars, film-makers, publishers, journalists, men and women of letters of Jewish extraction and, finally, driving them to emigrate from Poland. The Polish Armed Forces' participation in the aggression against Czechoslovakia in 1968 evoked another wave of protests in Poland. The world of culture and science and its representatives living in the West expressed solidarity with the Czech and Slovak nations. This resulted in new arrests and the further emigration of the intellectual elites. It was the most dogmatic and anti-liberal faction of the party apparatchiks, supported by secret and overtcollaborators with the security structures, who came from different professional groups that were also related to science, culture and education, which became highly vocal and obtained wide access to the mass media. It was in this period that Polish culture and science toughened up and delivered itself of illusions; however, it also suffered losses, the recouping of which would be a painful process and, subsequently, would subsequently take its full toll of years.