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This chapter begins with Joanna Konopinka's account of her arrival in Wroclaw. Her words illustrate vividly the enormous discrepancy between the actual experiences of Polish settlers and the patriotic appeals of the government, which spoke of the western territories as ancient Polish soil, a land of milk and honey that was to be resettled after centuries and that promised prosperity to all comers. Polish settlers arriving in the western territories were initially struck by a strong sense of foreignness. The land was foreign, and so were the people they met there, Germans and Poles alike. The settlers had left behind the familiarity of their homes and social surroundings only to find themselves in a kind of no man's land that no longer appeared to belong to Germany but was not yet a part of Poland.

This chapter discusses how historians like Karol Maleczynski probably has a greater impact on Wroclaw's postwar history than all of the city's mayors prior to 1989 taken together. It was their writings, both popular and scholarly, that shaped the perception of Wroclaw as the “age-old Polish” city. Not least due to Maleczynski's efforts, it was only a few years before studies of local Wroclaw history appeared in a scope that eclipsed everything that had been produced in the previous centuries. But the residents of Wroclaw were not interested in learning everything about their city's past. They wanted to know what was Polish about it, what justified their presence in Wroclaw, and what might kindle the hope within them that one day they would feel at home in this place.

This chapter discusses how the Polish state and the people who came to Wroclaw after the Second World War managed to rebuild and revive this city. Considering the situation at the end of the war—the devastation, the complete collapse of the previous order, the evacuation of its entire population—this achievement borders on a miracle. If that were not enough, after overcoming its tremendous postwar challenges Wroclaw has gone on to become more than simply a functioning Polish city. The secret capital of the western territories ranks next to Warsaw and Krakow as one of Poland's leading cultural metropolises. Furthermore, Wroclaw's cultural life extends beyond the reach of direct state sponsorship. The chapter also shows how, in the 1980s, Polish inhabitants of the western territories began to show a growing interest in the silenced history of their homeland.

This chapter discusses the Cold War communist peace campaign that officially began in August 1948 with the Wroclaw World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace. But the Parti Communiste Franȱais (PCF) had already mobilized a few months earlier under the drive of Resistance leader Charles Tillon, who, through contacts with prominent French intellectuals, helped found Combattants de la Liberte, later renamed Combattants de la Paix. These initiatives followed Soviet directives. At the Cominform's founding meeting, Moscow decided that disarmament propaganda would become its main anti-American offensive in the West. Orchestration from the Kremlin, however, did not exclude a symbiotic relationship that the Partito Comunista Italiano and especially the PCF sought to establish between their subordination to Moscow and their quest for international prominence. The Soviet Union found Paris, with the PCF's sponsorship, to be the best venue to regroup the pacifist offensive.