Civil war in Central Europe 1918-1921 the reconstruction of Poland

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T H E G R E AT E R WA R 1912 – 19 23 General Editor rob ert g erwa rt h

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Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921 The Reconstruction of Poland JOCHEN BÖHLER

1

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3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Jochen Böhler 2018 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950293 ISBN 978–0–19–879448–6 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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For Marta Natalia Antoni Kazimierz Feliks Aleksander and Gustaw Marian

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Skończył się rok osiemnasty The eighteenth year is over— prawie kwartał dziewiętnasty almost a quarter of the nineteenth— Polska o Lwów toczy boje Poland is fighting battles for Lviv— Mars znów rzuca wojny zwoje. Mars is hurling the scrolls of war. I z Czechami pod Skoczowem, And with the Czechs at Skoczów,1 choć mi przykro, lecz wam powiem: my heart bleeds, but I will tell you: poległo dużo kolegów Many comrades have fallen— Słowianie nie kładźcie progów, Slavs, do not place obstacles wzajemnie sobie pod stopy, in each other’s way, przecież z nas nie głupie chłopy in the end we’re not stupid peasants— jedną stanowim rodzinę we’re members of one family— więc wyznaczmy dzień, godzinę so let’s set a day, an hour, i załatwmy sporne sprawy, and let’s settle the dispute, a nie róbmy w świecie wrzawy. and make no fuss in the world.2 Platoon leader Ludwik Bałos, on convalescent leave (pneumonia) in Grzechynia, May 25, 1919 Poland can scarcely cope with its Poles, so why take in other nations as well?3 Conversation between two Polish soldiers during the Battle of Warsaw, late August 1920

1  January 28–30, 1919, a battle between Czechoslovak and Polish troops took place at Skoczów as part of the conflict over Cieszyn Silesia. 2 Ludwik Bałos, W poszukiwaniu prawdy. [Pamiętnik] z lat 1901–1951 (Wrocław; henceforth: OSS), Manuscript Department, 15421/II [BN mf. 86246] (no pagination). 3 Michał Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski maturzysta w r. 1920 Gimnazjum Państwowego w Ostrowcu: W obronie ojczyzny. Odtworzone z dawnego pamiętnika (1921–23), 104, entry between August 19 and 21, 1920, OSS, Manuscript Department, 15447/II [OSS mf. 9792].

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Contents List of Illustrations and Maps

Introduction The Flawed Popular Narrative A Story Untold Directions for the Reader

xi 1 3 8 12

1. Nations, States, and Conflict in Central Europe The Historical Setting Remaking the Polish Nation and State Who Is In and Who Is Out?

14 15 19 27

2. How to Mobilize the Polish Nation The Pros and Cons of Armed Struggle for Independence “Polish” Armed Formations Prior to Independence Poles Fighting under Imperial Flags Building the Polish Army

33 35 38 45 51

3. The Central European Civil War A Civil War A Point of Reference: Paramilitary Violence in Southeastern Europe, 1918–21 1: The Eastern Theatre 2: The Western Theatre 3: Trouble at the Gates and at Home

59 60 66 70 95 121

4. Violence and Crimes Beyond the Battlefields Lunar Landscapes The Great Insecurity Soldiers Running Wild Warlords in Polish Service Ambiguities

146 149 152 157 166 175

Conclusion

187

Epilogue

196

Archives Consulted Works Cited Travelogue Glossary Index

199 203 231 235 237

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List of Illustrations and Maps Figures 1. 1905–7: A brawl between what appear to be Polish strikers and their opponents in Congress Poland 2. August 12, 1914: Soldiers of the Polish First Cadre Company march into Kielce 3. November 1918: Soldiers and civilians in the streets of Lviv 4. Late April 1919: Polish troops in front of the cathedral in Vilnius 5. January 26, 1919: Swearing-in ceremony of General Jósef Dowbor-Muśnicki on the Freedom Square in Poznań 6. June 20, 1922: Polish troops enter Szopienice. General Stanisław Szeptycki in front of a chain, symbolically dividing Upper Silesia from the rest of Poland 7. January 1919: Polish–Czech War in Cieszyn Silesia, cemetery of Stonava. Bodies of twenty Polish soldiers allegedly killed by Czech legionnaires after their surrender on January 26, 1919 8. August 1920: Peasant volunteers armed with scythes—known since the Kościuszko uprising of 1794 as “Scythemen” (“Kosznierzy”)—mustered in Warsaw 9. April 1919: Polish officials at an exhumation site, probably taken near Zolochiv in eastern Galicia 10. November 1918: Roman Abraham with his unit “Execution Hill” in Lviv 11. August 25, 1919: Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz and the Estonian General Johan Laidoner in Pskov 12. 1920: Snapshot of an unknown Polish paramilitary unit in Upper Silesia

37 40 80 90 103 113

119

134 155 168 173 185

Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders. The publisher will be happy to make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.

Maps 1. Partitioned Poland, 1815–1914 2. Embattled Poland, 1918–21

xii xiii

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Map 1.  Partitioned Poland, 1815–1914

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Map 2.  Embattled Poland, 1918–21

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Introduction Nam quis nescit, primam esse prima est historiae legem, ne quid falsi dicere audeat? Deinde ne quid veri non audeat? Ne qua suspicio gratiae sit in scribendo? Ne quae simultatis? For who does not know history’s first law to be that an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth? And its second that he must make bold to tell the whole truth? That there must be no suggestion of partiality anywhere in his writings? Nor of malice?1 Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore [On the Orator], 55 bc Forgetting, I would even say historical error, is an essential factor in the creation of a nation and it is for this reason that the progress of historical studies often poses a threat to nationality. Historical inquiry, in effect, throws light on the violent acts that have taken place at the origin of every political formation, even those that have been the most benevolent in their consequences. Unity is always brutally established.2 Ernest Renan, French philosopher and historian, in a lecture delivered at Sorbonne University titled “What is a Nation?,” March 11, 1882 Słynny z mordów i grabieży Dziewiętnasty pułk młodzieży. Lance do boju, szable w dłoń, bolszewika goń, goń, goń! Dziewiętnasty tym się chwali: Na postojach wioski pali. Gwałci panny, gwałci wdowy Dziewiętnasty pułk morowy. Same łotry i wisielce To są Jaworskiego strzelce. Bić, mordować—nic nowego Dla ułanów Jaworskiego.

Known for murder and for looting The Nineteenth is now recruiting. Grab your lance and sabre quick, Chase, chase, chase the Bolshevik! The whole regiment feels pride When it’s torched the countryside. Raping to its heart’s content, Is the Nineteenth Regiment. Gallows-birds and villains, then, Join Jaworski’s riflemen. Maiming, killing—nothing new For Jaworski’s mounted crew.

1  Quote and translation from Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore: In Two Volumes, edited by Harris Rackham, with translations by Edward William Sutton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 242–5. 2 Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?: Conférence faite en Sorbonne, le 11 mars 1882 (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1882), 7–8. Translation from Ethan Rundell, https://www.academia.edu/33769892/ What_is_a_Nation, accessed May 1, 2018.

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Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921 Wroga gnębić, wódkę pić, Fighting foes and drinking sprees, Jaworczykiem trzeba być. That’s Jaworski’s cavalry.3 Popular contemporary song on the soldiers serving the Second Polish Republic under the command of Feliks Jaworski during the Polish– Ukrainian conflict 1918–19 and the Polish–Soviet War 1919–20

In 1919, the year following the Polish declaration of independence, the famous writer Maria Dąbrowska asked her audience an emotive question: “Where is Poland?” By that time, this was all but a rhetorical question, and it has continued to puzzle generations of students of Central and Eastern European history ever since. Recently Włodzimierz Borodziej has added a follow-up to this conundrum: “What is Poland?”4 Both questions, pointing at a period when the country’s geographical and political shape was in flux, seem highly appropriate. Poland, a state that had been erased from the European map more than one hundred years earlier, would only reappear at the very end of the First World War, and consolidate its geographical and political shape in its after-battles of 1918–21. Our study is concerned with this process of reconstructing and forging the Polish nation and state in the fires of war and civil war. And in this context, a third question imposes itself: “What is a Pole?” This question will occupy the reader throughout this volume. To build a state necessitates defining not only its shape and constitution, but also its population. Being a Pole meant something completely different at the turn of the nineteenth than in the twentieth century. As the censuses conducted around 1900 in Central Europe vividly demonstrate, people living in one of the three parts of former Poland then occupied by foreign powers had as much of a problem defining their “nationality” as had their respective governments. Was a Pole a person speaking Polish, in contrast to a person speaking Ukrainian, Latvian, German, Czech, or Yiddish, or was a Pole a Roman Catholic, in contrast to a Greek Catholic, a Protestant or Orthodox Christian, or a Jew? Was a Pole someone belonging to a certain class, such as a wealthy landlord in the eastern parts of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in contrast to the “Ukrainian” peasant working for him? Was being Polish a political statement, making it impossible to be a Bolshevik at the same time? Or was a Pole just someone born into a Polish cultural environment and identifying with the goal of re-erecting a Polish nation state, regardless of language, religion, profession, social status, or politics? Conscious of the shortcomings of this approach, but unable to find a more convincing one, in the following the term “ethnic” will illustrate rather than solve the problem. When applied (far from consistently, to preserve a certain level of readability) to “Poles,” “Jews,” “Ukrainians,” “Lithuanians,” etc., it means people who regarded themselves—or were regarded by contemporaries—as such, characterized by a specific compound of cultural, linguistic, and religious features 3  After numerous transformations, in late 1920 the unit secured the Polish–Soviet demarcation line as ‘Nineteenth Volhynian Cavalry Regiment’ (19 Pułk Ułanów Wołyńskich). Piotr Zychowicz, Sowieci (Poznań: Rebis, 2016), 253, published the song for the first time, apparently as an illustration of the unit’s unconditional devotion for the Polish state and without any sign of unease. The brilliant translation is authored by Artur Zapalowski and Mark Bence. 4  Włodzimierz Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 2010), 13–15.

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Introduction

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and traditions which eludes precise distinction. Although this definition regards ancestry as a constitutive element of ethnicity, it rejects the Darwinist notion of biological determination. T H E F L AW E D P O P U L A R N A R R AT I V E Such reflections are of crucial importance for this book, which deals with the erection of an independent Polish nation state after its absence from the European map that had lasted more than a century. It seems that the history of this important moment in European history has been told already countless times. But taking a closer look at the most relevant publications on this topic, one cannot help feeling a certain disappointment. Too many questions have been either left open so far, or, if answers on certain aspects have been given, they have often not been woven into the fabric of the overall story of the reconstruction of the Polish state which ­dominates the public discourse until today. A century after Józef Piłsudski, Poland’s legendary political leader and military commander, arrived at the Warsaw train station to take over state business in November 1918, this story still rather reads like a mythological than a historical narrative which withstands critical analysis: After the three European land empires Prussia, Russia, and Austria had dismantled the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the eighteenth century, the Polish nation, united in spirit and unbowed, had contested the brutal tsarist reign in the Russian partition zone in  several failed and brutally suppressed uprisings. In the second half of the nineteenth century, two historical figures rose who further propelled the project of a future Polish nation state: Roman Dmowski, who set his ideological foundations from the political right; and Józef Piłsudski, who propagated armed action against its opponents from the political left. When the First World War broke out, Piłsudski led his famous Polish Legions into battle, thus forming the nucleus of a Polish Army whose military audacity assured that Poland would have a say in the reorganization of the European map after the war. In the meantime, Dmowski had emigrated to France and secured a place for Poland at the international conference table through negotiations. But from the first days of independence, the Second Polish Republic had to fight against its hostile neighbors: the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, the Germans, the Czechs, and the Russians, the latter just having replaced their tsarist regime with a Soviet one, but nevertheless longing to reconquer Poland. The Polish nation, finally reunited, stood together as one, fighting all enemies on all borders, and at the end—although it sometimes seemed a virtual impossibility—emerged victorious from these battles. To be clear, there is more than a grain of truth in all of this, but it is only part of the story, and it is full of distortions and contradictions. Many of these have already been pointed out by prominent historians.5 The black and white image of imperial suppression and national heroic struggle in the three partition zones, for 5  The following overview is far from comprehensive. More literature is to be found in the respective chapters of this book.

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Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921

example, has lately been convincingly colorized. Although without a doubt the Polish-speaking parts of the respective population were largely treated as secondclass citizens and submitted to programs of denationalization, the contact between the ruling elites and the ruled masses can be described as a process of negotiation and the balancing of imperial versus national aspirations—with the notable exception of the short periods of armed uprising and brutal reaction by tsarist troops.6 By no longer limiting the role of the Polish population of partition times to that of a nation of tragic heroes and martyrs, such works attest to a certain agency and room to maneuver under imperial rule which for a long time had been widely neglected or ignored in historiography. When it comes to the Polish agents of national struggle, they were far from acting in concert. Sometimes they were more at odds with each other than with the respective imperial regime whose rule they challenged. In the wake of the 1905 Revolution in the Russian realm of power, armed bands of the Polish Socialist and the National Democratic parties killed each other in street fights in their hundreds. The major underlying disagreement was that the left aimed at an armed overthrow of the old order, while the right regarded this as a hazardous game, and instead favored the politics of, in the parlance of the time, “organic change.”7 Therefore, it was Piłsudski, not Dmowski, who had managed to organize a substantive shadow army of paramilitary fighters in eastern Galicia (within the Austrian partition zone) on the eve of the First World War. But these famous “Legions” failed to mobilize the Polish-speaking masses. Over the course of the war, they remained a numerically negligible force which, although earning fame in battle, had no substantial influence on its outcome. Furthermore, they were allied with the Central Powers (Germany and Austria), which, following their occupation of Russian Poland and the Baltic coast in 1915, were increasingly detested by the local population.8 Separate Polish legionnaire units, similar to Piłsudski’s Legions, although less popular, rarely described, and therefore almost forgotten 6  For the German Empire see Hans-Erich Volkmann, Die Polenpolitik des Kaiserreichs: Prolog zum Zeitalter der Weltkriege (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016); for the Habsburg Empire see Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); for the Russian Empire see Malte Rolf, Imperiale Herrschaft im Weichselland: Das Königreich Polen im russischen Imperium (1864–1915) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2015); Malte Rolf, “Between State Building and Local Cooperation: Russian Rule in the Kingdom of Poland, 1864–1915,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 19, no. 2 (2018): 385–416. 7  Ignacy Pawłowski, Geneza i działalność organizacji spiskowo–bojowej PPS, 1904–1905 (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1976); Waldemar Potkański, Odrodzenie czynu niepodległościowego przez PPS w okresie rewolucji 1905 roku (Warsaw: DiG, 2008); Stefan Garsztecki, “Dmowski und Piłsudski: Nationale Idee zwischen Föderationsgedanke und nationaler Verengung,” in Deutsche und Polen im und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, edited by Steffen Menzel and Martin Munke (Chemnitz: Universitätsverlag, 2013), 9–27. For the two options which split the Polish political activists of the time—resistance or acceptance—see Mieczysław B. Biskupski, Independence Day: Myth, Symbol, and the Creation of Modern Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1, referring to Tomasz Nałȩcz, Irredenta polska: Myśl powstańcza przed I wojna̜ światowa̜ (Warsaw: Uniwersytet Warszawski, 1987), 1–10. 8  Arkadiusz Stempin, Próba “moralnego podboju” Polski przez Cesarstwo Niemieckie w latach I wojny światowej (Warsaw: Neriton, 2013); Jesse Kauffman, Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

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Introduction

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today, were also built within the Russian Army from the outset of the war onwards.9 But in reality, the overwhelming majority of Polish-speaking soldiers who fought in the Great War were simply cannon fodder in the ranks of one of the three partitioning powers’ armies rather than a formation with a national agenda.10 When out of this whole motley crew a Polish Army had to be built in 1918, it not only lacked armament, munition, uniforms, and a common language of command, but also discipline and an overarching spirit of comradeship. In fact, many of these soldiers had stood on opposing sides of the trenches shooting at each other only a couple of months before. The political divide between their respective military idols—Józef Piłsudski on the side of the first left-wing government in Warsaw, Józef Haller and Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki on the side of the National Democratic opposition in Paris and the Polish–German borderlands—heightened these animosities. There is also, to a certain degree, reason to question Piłsudski’s role as a spotless hero of Polish independence which he doubtlessly still plays in our day. In his youth, he had been a terrorist and train robber. He used the socialist party as a vehicle to come to power and abandoned it as soon as his military success and his charisma made it superfluous. Whereas the resurrection of a Polish state was without a shadow of a doubt the driving force behind all his actions before and after 1918, it was not at all set in his mind that it had to be a democratic nation state. Although he endorsed a rather open concept of the Polish nation which encompassed its large minorities, the alleged unselfishness of his federal concept which foresaw a political union with Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians does not bear close examination. In reality, like many Polish politicians of his time, Piłsudski took a future Polish hegemony in Central Europe for granted, and any offers of cooperation with other nations were only valid as long as they did not antagonize the country’s rather imperialistic ambitions.11 “I want to be neither a federalist nor an imperialist,” he wrote to a friend in 1919, “until I can talk about these matters 9 Henryk Bagiński, Wojsko polskie na wschodzie 1914–1920 (Warsaw: Główna Księgarnia Wojskowa, 1921); Waldemar Bednarski, “Legion Puławski,” Wojskowy Przegląd Historyczny 33, no. 3 (1988): 100–24; Kazimierz Krajewski, “Nie tylko Dowborczycy,” in Niepodległość, edited by Marek Gałęzowski and Jan M. Ruman (Warsaw: Instytut Pamie̜ci Narodowej, 2010), 195–209. 10 Ryszard Kaczmarek, Polacy w armii kajzera na frontach pierwszej wojny światowej (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2014); Alexander Watson, “Fighting for Another Fatherland: The Polish Minority in the German Army, 1914–1918,” English Historical Review 126, no. 522 (2011): 1137–66. A study of the Poles who served in the ranks of the tsarist army—and not in special Polish units—is still a desideratum. For the postwar fate of Polish veterans from the imperial armies see Marcin Jarząbek, “The Victors of a War that Was Not Theirs: First-World-War-Veterans in the Second Republic of Poland and Their European Peers,” Acta Poloniae Historica 111 (2015): 83–105. 11  Benjamin Conrad, “Vom Ende der Föderation: Die Ostpolitik Piłsudskis und des BelwederLagers 1918–1920,” in Kommunikation über Grenzen. Polen als Schauplatz transnationaler Akteure von den Teilungen bis heute, edited by Lisa Bicknell, Benjamin Conrad, and Hans-Christian Petersen (Münster: Lit, 2013), 11–31. Since the Belarusian case did not include an armed engagement with Poland, it is not dealt with in this book. As a small compensation—rather hinting at the complex­ity of the problem than exploring it—the reader is referred to Andrej Czarniakiewicz and Aleksander  Paszkiewicz, “Kwestia białoruska w planach Oddziału II Sztabu Generalnego Wojska Polskiego w latach 1919–1923,” Przegląd Historyczno–Wojskowy 12, no. 3 (2011): 43–56; Janusz Odziemkowski, “Organizacja i ochrona zaplecza Wojsk Polskich na Litwie i Białorusi (luty 1919–lipiec 1920),” Przegląd Historyczno–Wojskowy 14, no. 4 (2013): 25–44; Joanna Gierowska-Kałłaur, “Straż

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somewhat seriously—with a gun in my pocket.”12 In 1926, when the quarrels of parliamentary democracy had tired him out, Piłśudski launched a coup d’état and until his death led the country for almost a decade with authoritarian style. Nevertheless, the Piłsudski myth, which was already emerging in 1918, is still so much at work today that Polish historians rarely have challenged it.13 Roman Dmowski for his part is with great justice commonly described as antiSemite—a verdict which he would most probably have readily assigned himself.14 However, this should not make us blind to the strong influence he had on the political fate of the young Polish republic, even beyond its difficult relations with the Jewish minority. Often concealed in the shadow of Piłsudski or reduced to his role as head of the Polish National Committee in Paris from 1917 onwards, his agency in Polish domestic affairs as the leader of the right-wing counterweight to the “Belweder-camp” (named after Piłsudski’s residence as Chief of State near Warsaw’s Łazienki Park) can hardly be overlooked.15 That his embittered feud and rivalry with Piłsudski almost led to a domestic civil war in late 1918 is a historical fact which, although sometimes cursorily mentioned, has been almost ignored so far in historiography.16 It was not only the political leadership of Poland that lacked unity when the Polish Republic was restored. Contradicting public perception, there is a consensus in the academic community that a Polish nation, clearly defined and encompassing, did not exist prior to independence. Even after 1918, the rural masses of the Second Polish Republic had not been won over by the prophets of national unity. An estimated 80 percent of the Polish-speaking population did not identify with the project of the Polish national state during the first years of its fragile existence.17 As a result, the Second Polish Republic lacked the backing Kresowa wobec kwestii białoruskiej: Deklaracje i praktyka,” Studia z Dziejów Rosji i Europy ŚrodkowoWschodniej 44 (2009): 21–63. 12 Paul Brykczynski, “A Poland for the Poles?: Józef Piłsudski and the Ambiguities of Polish Nationalism,” Pravo: The North American Journal for Central European Studies 1, no. 1 (2007): 2–21, quote: 15. 13 Heidi Hein, Der Piłsudski-Kult und seine Bedeutung für den polnischen Staat 1926–1935 (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2002); Biskupski, Independence Day. A recent example of unreflecting hero worship, though apart from that well informed, is Peter Hetherington, Unvanquished: Joseph Pilsudski, Resurrected Poland, and the Struggle for Eastern Europe (Houston, TX: Pingora Press, 2012). A notable exeption is Kazimierz Badziak, W oczekiwaniu na przełom: Na drodze od odrodzenia do załamania państwa polskiego, listopad 1918–czerwiec 1920 (Łódź: Ibidem, 2004). The polemic of Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz, Złowrogi cień marszałka (Lublin: Fabryka Słów, 2017), asks thought-provoking questions, but is an extended essay and not an academic treatise on the topic. 14 Grzegorz Krzywiec, Chauvinism, Polish Style: The Case of Roman Dmowski (Beginnings: 1886–1905) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2016); Andreas Kossert, “Founding Father of Modern Poland and Nationalistic Antisemite: Roman Dmowski,” in In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Rebecca Haynes and Martyn C. Rady (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 89–105. 15  Krzysztof Kawalec, Roman Dmowski (Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2016). 16  More on the skirmishes between the Polish left and right between the wars most recently in Wolfgang Templin, Der Kampf um Polen: Die abenteuerliche Geschichte der Zweiten Polnischen Republik 1918–1939 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2018). 17  Jan Molenda, Chłopi, naród, niepodległość: Kształtowanie się postaw narodowych i obywatelskich chłopów w Galicji i Królestwie Polskim w przededniu odrodzenia Polski (Warsaw: Neriton, 1999).

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Introduction

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of  large parts of its population and therefore faced a severe shortage of recruits when, in the summer of 1920, the Polish–Soviet War brought Poland to the brink of disaster.18 This lack of unity also applies to the relations with its neighbors in the first thousand days of regained independence, when, immediately after the armistices of the Great War, the Poles met the other heirs of the European land empires in armed battle. This clash of arms lasted almost as long as the conventional war itself. Why is it then that we know so little about it? It is stunning that almost a century after the events one looks in vain for a comprehensive history of the conflicting Central European nation states in the years between 1918 and 1921. True enough, a plethora of monographs and articles in Eastern European (and a handful in Western) languages has already dealt with the entangled history of the Second Republic of Poland and its neighbor states in that period, but most surprisingly, none of them tells the whole story. First of all, the examples where authors tackled the encompassing geographical and chronological setting of this struggle are few and far between.19 In the interwar period, case studies of Polish military formations, organizations, and deployments prevailed, mainly produced by the Office of Military History (Wojskowe Biuro Historyczne), often written by veterans themselves, enriched by memoirs, and therefore only presenting a limited view on the overall course of events. Although not totally undisputed, they laid the foundation for a narrative predominantly told from the perspective of Piłsudski’s former legionnaires. In the Polish People’s Republic after 1945, works on the war between Poland and Soviet Russia were, of course, highly ideologically biased, and the same goes for its battles with other neighbors.20 Soon after the system change in 1989, within the former conflicting states, books on the frontier battles of 1918–21 mushroomed in Poland. It is not surprising that roughly half a century after the country had lost its hard-won independence in the turmoil of the Second World War and the ensuing Soviet reign, some authors tended to glorify the wars of independence after the Great War. In hindsight, these battles were often, rather unreflectingly, seen exclusively as times of national bravado and the overcoming of imperial patronization.21 Apart from 18  Janusz Szczepański, Społeczeństwo Polski w walce z najazdem bolszewickim 1920 roku (Warsaw: Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwów Państwowych, 2000). 19  Adam Przybylski, La Pologne en lutte pour ses frontières 1918–1920 (Paris: Gebethner & Wolff, 1929); Mieczysław Wrzosek, Wojny o granice Polski Odrodzonej, 1918–1921 (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1992). 20  For a concise overview on literature on and sources of the Polish military engagements 1914–21 published up to 1989 see Przemysław Olstowski, “O potrzebach badań nad dziejami walk o niepodległość i granice Rzeczypospolitej (1914–1921),” in Z dziejów walk o niepodległość, edited by Marek Gałęzowski (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2015), 90–107, here: 93–7. 21  See, for example, Mieczysław Pruszyński, Wojna 1920: Dramat Piłsudskiego (Warsaw: BGW, 1994); Piotr Łossowski, Jak Feniks z popiołów: Oswobodzenie ziem polskich spod okupacji w listopadzie 1918 roku (Łowicz: Mazowiecka Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczno-Pedagogiczna, 1998); Adam Zamoyski, The Battle for the Marchlands: A History of the 1920 Polish–Soviet War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); Adam Zamoyski, Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe (London: HarperPress, 2008).

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Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921

that, a growing trend to produce high-quality overviews of the Polish–Soviet, Polish–Ukrainian, and Polish–Lithuanian conflict can be noticed lately.22 Other authors paid meticulous attention to specific military units’ missions, composition, armament, and uniforms.23 Given the abundance of secondary literature at our disposal, it is stunning that a broader analysis of the emergence of the Polish nation and state through the fires of all its border conflicts and inner struggles which complies with scientific standards is still a desideratum. A S TO RY U N TO L D Even if one takes all books that have been published so far on the reconstruction of Poland, there is still a huge gap which historians have hesitated to deal with so far. As a younger generation of academics has painstakingly shown and ­continues to do so, the whole continent did not come to a rest at the end of 1918 but was hit by a wave of paramilitary violence.24 The new obscurity of politics and power relations produced new agents and victims of violence and left ample space for the abuse of force. “Some veterans,” states Peter Gatrell, “believed they had a duty to ‘beat the world into new shapes,’ even if this meant trampling over noncombatants. For this reason, as well as the high stakes created by the virulent ideologies of revolutionary socialism and nationalism, conflict frequently assumed a particularly brutal form, with civilians often numbered among the casualties.”25 Contentiousness after the armistices meant that the strains of civil war were witnessed even in such a distant “western” country as Great Britain, or down to the southeast, in Greece and Turkey.26 22  For example Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish–Soviet War, 1919–20 (London: Orbis Books, 1983) (first pub. 1973); Michał Klimecki, Polsko–ukraińska wojna o Lwów i Galicję Wschodnią 1918–1919 (Warsaw: Volumen, 2000); Michał Klimecki, Lwów 1918–1919 (Warsaw: Bellona, 2000); Antoni Czubiński, Walka o granice wschodnie polski w latach 1918–1921 (Opole: Instytut Śląski, 1993); Maciej Kozłowski, Między Sanem a Zbruczem: Walki o Lwów i Galicję Wschodnią 1918–1919 (Cracow: Znak, 1990); Szczepański, Społeczeństwo Polski w walce z najazdem bolszewickim; Jerzy Borzęcki, The Soviet–Polish Peace of 1921 and the Creation of Interwar Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Stanisław Buchowski, Konflikt polsko–litewski o Ziemię Sejneńsko-Suwalską w latach 1918–1920 (Sejny: Sejneńskie Towarzystwo Opieki nad Zabytkami, 2009); Lech Wyszczelski, Wojna polsko–rosyjska, 1919–1920, 2 vols (Warsaw: Bellona, 2010); Janusz Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜ 1919–1920 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego, 2010); Janusz Odziemkowski, Polskie formacje etapowe na Litwie i Białorusi 1919–1920 (Cracow: Wydawnictwo i Poligrafia Kurii Prowincjonalnej Zakonu Pijarów, 2011). 23  Pars pro toto Bartosz Kruszyński, Poznańczycy w wojnie polsko–bolszewickiej 1919–1921 (Poznań: Rebis, 2010); Jerzy Kirszak, Armia Rezerwowa gen. Sosnkowskiego w roku 1920 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2013). 24  The various contributions in Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (eds), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela (eds), Empires at War, 1911–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) represent the state of the art and geographical coverage. 25  Peter Gatrell, “War after the War: Conflicts, 1919–1923,” in A Companion to World War I, edited by John Horne (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 558–75, here: 559. 26  Julia Eichenberg, “The Dark Side of Independence: Paramilitary Violence in Ireland and Poland after the First World War,” Contemporary European History 19, no. 3 (2010): 231–48; Uğur Ümit Üngör, “Paramilitary Violence in the Collapsing Ottoman Empire,” in Gerwarth and Horne (eds), War in Peace, 164–83.

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Poland, though, is still a blind spot in this regard. With the notable exception of the anti-Jewish excesses by Polish soldiers (we will return to this phenomenon in a while), the very experience of civil war and paramilitary violence during its formative years 1918–21 has not been made the subject of academic studies yet. This experience, though, is crucial if one tries to understand the dynamics of and connections between the inner and outer conflicts the Second Polish Republic had to deal with during the first years of its threatened existence. Poland’s border struggles have hitherto been described firstly as isolated from each other, and secondly rather as conventional wars, fought out respectively between the Polish and another nation state, that of the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, the Germans, the Czechs and the Slovaks, or with the new global player in the east, Soviet Russia. But, as will be elaborated in more detail in Chapter 3, they constituted a common realm of ­experience which is far better understood if seen as one encompassing “war of nations,” which we call the Central European Civil War. Of course, it cannot be denied that in all cases, the nascent Polish Republic had to deal with armed forces of another republic—or, in the case of Russia, with the Red Army. But all the military formations involved in these conflicts, without exception and including the Polish ones, were far from being full-grown and organized armies. Rather, they had to be put together from scratch and dealt with enormous problems of supply, discipline, and desertion. Furthermore, next to these armies-in-the-making, paramilitary, warlord, and criminal bands emerged, competing for the control of the areas in which they were active, and harassing the civil population. This is important to realize because, as a result, the wars fought along the borders of the Second Polish Republic featured forms of violence which are far more typical for intrastate than interstate wars. The very fact that the population of the embattled borderlands was ethnically mixed added to a confusing situation where it was sometimes hard to tell friend from enemy, and to draw a clear line between combatants and civilians. As said, the available literature only cursorily touches questions of the dynamics and experiences of military and paramilitary violence as a side-product of the nationalist struggles for independence, if at all. To what extent the depiction of a “pure” nationalist struggle for independence departs from the soldierly experience in the field is highlighted by published diaries such as Jerzy Konrad Maciejewski’s “Swashbuckler” (Zawadiaka), who bluntly reports on brutal crimes committed by Polish and other troops deployed in the eastern parts of the Second Republic. When his unit broke into Jewish houses after two shots had been fired at night in a Ukrainian village, he noted on December 28, 1918: “What kind of inspection was that? It was more of a formal pogrom and robbery. Is that how one should search a house to find the one who fired? Such a search should be carried out calmly, systematically, during the day, under the watchful supervision of the ­officers! I remember [the Polish soldiers] bursting into every room, eating all that was edible . . . In the apartment of some lawyer or doctor, they raped his daughter or sister, supposedly with her consent and to her great satisfaction; she allegedly said in ecstasy that it was ‘romantic’ to be violated in such circumstances.”27 27 Jerzy Konrad Maciejewski, Zawadiaka: Dzienniki frontowe 1914–1920 (Warsaw: Ośrodek Karta, 2015), 122.

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Only the pogroms in eastern and central Poland in 1918–19—the only form of collective violence of Polish soldiers beyond the battlefields which resulted in the killing of several hundred people—initiated an overproportioned output of articles dealing with this dark chapter in Polish history. But measured by the enormous relevance of the topic, most of them display a striking lack of analytical depth. They limit themselves to referring, often erroneously, to the seemingly well-known facts in order to either brand or whitewash the soldiers who perpetrated a given incident.28 But two more extensive treatises of this highly sensitive topic have just been completed, substantially deepening our understanding of the dynamics of such pogroms and their underlying social, cultural, and ethnic dynamics.29 What most of these publications on violence against the Jewish minority—as well as the above-mentioned relevant literature—ignore is that Polish soldiers often did not respect the physical integrity and property of other civilians either, and sometimes not even that of their comrades. Such cases were not exceptions, but contributed to a mass phenomenon which their superior military officers and local civil authorities never tired of deploring. But books that mention acts of criminality, desertion, insubordination, rape, or terrorism exerted by Polish soldiers or paramilitaries can still be counted on one hand.30 At least we have two extensive case studies on paramilitary and terrorist violence (perpetrated by both sides involved) in Upper and Cieszyn Silesia.31 Extremely insightful also is a detailed study on the Polish military jurisdiction in Lviv during the street fights between Ukrainian and Polish forces in November 1918.32 Those works amply prove that paramilitary violence was not negligible, but omnipresent between 1918 and 1921. It also indicates that the Polish military higher echelons not only knew about it, but in some cases encouraged and supported it, while in many other cases they condemned and prosecuted it. There is an abundance of archival material, allowing for deeper insights into the extent and reality of paramilitary violence and banditry 28  Notable exceptions are Jerzy Tomaszewski, “Pińsk, Saturday 5 April 1919,” in Poles and Jews: Renewing the Dialogue, edited by Antony Polonsky (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004), 227–51; Alexander Victor Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland: War, Ethnicity, and Anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005); Jerzy Borzęcki, “German Anti-Semitism à la Polonaise: A Report on Poznanian Troops’ Abuse of Belarusian Jews in 1919,” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 26, no. 4 (2012): 693–707; Eva Reder, “Praktiken der Gewalt: Die Rolle des polnischen Militärs bei Pogromen während des polnisch– sowjetischen Krieges 1919–1920,” Czasy Nowożytne 27 (2014): 157–84; William W. Hagen, “The Moral Economy of Popular Violence: The Pogrom in Lwów, November 1918,” in Antisemitism and its Opponents in Modern Poland, edited by Robert Blobaum (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 124–47. 29  Eva Reder, “Pogrome im Schatten polnischer Staatsbildung 1918–1920 und 1945/46: Auslöser, Motive, Praktiken der Gewalt” (PhD, Universität Wien, 2017); William W. Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 30  Much more detailed is Włodzimierz Borodziej and Maciej Górny, Nasza Wojna, vol. 2: Narody, 1917–1923 (Warsaw: Foksal, 2018). 31  Tim Wilson, Frontiers of Violence: Conflict and Identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia 1918–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Edward Długajczyk, Polska konspiracja wojskowa na Śla̜sku Cieszyńskim w latach 1919–1920 (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śla̜skiego, 2005). 32  Leszek Kania, W cieniu Orląt Lwowskich: Polskie sądy wojskowe, kontrwywiad i służby policyjne w bitwie o Lwów 1918–1919 (Zielona Góra: Uniwersytet Zielonogórski, 2008).

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within and along the frontlines of embattled Poland. Warsaw alone boasts three vast and relevant collections.33 Nevertheless, in the first three chapters of this work which give a fresh outline of the prehistory and course of the postwar conflicts, the reader will look in vain for archival sources which provide new and groundbreaking evidence. They are almost entirely based on secondary literature. This surely comes as a surprise, given the fact that this study radically challenges the conventional view of the reconstruction of Poland 1918–21. The explanation is stunningly simple: There is no need to present new evidence, the related facts are already described in the history books and publications of sources. The problem is that their bits and pieces are scattered all over tens of thousands of book pages, like the pieces of a giant puzzle a child has dropped on the floor, and nobody yet has taken the effort to put these pieces together. It seems as if historians who knew about the dark sides of the Polish struggle for independence and statehood hesitated to confront their audience with them and referred to them only in passing, if at all. Therefore, anyone who doubts the accurateness and diligence of this study can check most of the presented facts in a public library. However, Polish soldiers’ acts of desertion, insubordination, banditry, and violence against fellow soldiers and civilians are not totally unknown to the historical guild (the few books and articles that deal with them having just been mentioned). Some of these are exemplarily described and analyzed in Chapter 4, and backed mainly by archival material. Many of the hundreds of files of the Polish military commands, courts, and police which contain crucial evidence are stored in the Central Military Archive in Warsaw-Rembertów, and their user’s registers bear the signatures of known colleagues who have consulted them, but obviously decided not to publish about the criminal acts they record. Since the Polish case is at the center of this study, this volume will by definition focus on the experience of violence connected to the making of the Second Polish Republic during that period. This should not obscure the fact that military and paramilitary violence was an omnipresent phenomenon all over postwar Europe, and, therefore, the Polish example is by no means an exception, but a case in point.34 It should also not be overlooked that building up the Polish nation amid the rubble of a devastating world war and civil war was an enormous achievement against all odds. It required the efforts of many and claimed the lives of many more on the way to securing freedom, self-determination, and peace for millions. Most probably the Red Army would not have had the power to invade Western Europe in the summer of 1920, but was anyone living there really eager to find out? Nevertheless, it was Polish soldiers only, without assistance from the West, who stopped it at the outskirts of Warsaw. Whereas in Polish historiography and 33  The Central Military Archive, the Archive of the New Files, and the manuscript department of the Warsaw Public Library. For relevant record groups see “Archives Consulted” at the end of this volume. 34 See Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London: Allen Lane, 2016), Tomas Balkelis, War, Revolution, and Nation-Making in Lithuania, 1914–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), and the forthcoming book of Serhy Yekelchyk (on Ukraine) in this OUP series “The Greater War.”

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Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921

memory this constructive side of nation-state building played the central role before 1945 and after 1989, it has been almost totally ignored in Western textbooks. Both perspectives tended to turn a blind eye to its destructive downside. This book aims at setting these records straight. DIRECTIONS FOR THE READER Studies on multinational, multi-ethnic, and multilingual regions always face the problem of naming places and persons. In the midst of the cultural struggle in contested areas, language becomes a weapon, and often, choosing a distinct spelling instead of another looks like taking sides. There is no convincing and at the same time neutral and consistent way for the author to deal with this problem. I have opted for a pragmatic system which pays respect to the convenience of the reader rather than to historical considerations or strident logic: Countries, regions, and cities (Brest-Litovsk, Vilnius, Warsaw, Lviv) appear as they are commonly called in English. If there is no ordinary English usage, the Polish usage (Poznań, Bobrujsk) is applied wherever the arm (or armies) of the Polish state reached in our period of observation, simply because this book is written from that very perspective, and far from stating any “naturally given” Polish character of the specific town or area. All other places I call by the name which the (Ukrainian, Lithuanian, etc.) inhabitants used when the state borders in Central Europe were finally settled. The same rationale is applied when I address persons who in the course of the postwar turmoil of 1918–21 operated on the Polish side in the Polish notation, and in all other cases the one that was in use where they lived in the interwar period. In the index, variants of places and persons are given in brackets. Cyrillic notations are transliterated according to the system of the Library of Congress, and have been checked by Stephen Velychenko and Christian Werkmeister. I owe them thanks, as I do those who checked my translations from Polish (Mark Bence), from German (Jaime Hyatt), and from French (Margaret Buchanan). Vivian Reed went to enormous lengths to polish my English and edit the whole text, a task without which this book would not have seen the light of the day, given the fact that English is not my native language. This study owes much to works already published, especially the two volumes on the Polish war experience of Włodzimierz Borodziej and Maciej Górny and the recent works of Piotr Wróbel on violence after 1917, of Alexander Victor Prusin† on the borderlands, and of Robert Gerwarth on paramilitary violence in postwar Europe cited at the appropriate places. When composing this text, I further made use of selections from several articles that I had published previously myself. I thank the publishers listed below for permission to reuse them here: • Jochen Böhler, “Generals and Warlords, Revolutionaries and Nation State Builders: The First World War and its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe,” in Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe’s First World War, edited by Jochen Böhler, Włodzimierz Borodziej, and Joachim von Puttkamer (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2014), 51–66.

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• Jochen Böhler, “Europas ‘Wilder Osten’: Gewalterfahrungen in Ostmitteleuropa 1917–1923,” Osteuropa 64, nos. 2–4 (2014): 141–55. • Jochen Böhler, “Enduring Violence: The Post-War Struggles in East-Central Europe 1917–1921,” Journal of Contemporary History 50, no. 1 (2015): 58–77. • Jochen Böhler, “Post-war Military Action and Violence (East Central Europe),” in 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (2014–18), edited by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz et al., https:// encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/post-war_military_action_and_ violence_east_central_europe, accessed May 8, 2018. Since not every reader might be familiar with some specifics of Polish history before and after 1918, a Glossary has been added in order to explain the most important non-English terms which appear now and again on the pages of this book.

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1 Nations, States, and Conflict in Central Europe Collective logic conditions morality and social life, mystic logic begets gods and creeds, and intellectual logic gives rise to the discoveries which transform human existence.1 Gustave Le Bon, Psychology of the Great War, 1916 Other times had come. The village woke up because everything was shaking all around. They tell us that there’ll be a Poland and it’s already taking shape, though it’s still a bit weak, but slowly getting stronger. The peasants don’t want to believe it, because we’ve always been told that this here’s Russia and Russia it will be, and now, all of a sudden—hocus-pocus—it’s Poland.2 An anonymous peasant’s memoir on Polish independence in 1918

At the outset of the twentieth century, Central and Eastern Europe was a patchwork of national entities. The problems we face when we try to discern them in the wake of the First World War are untraceably linked with the enigma of identity which academics recently have painstakingly tried to decipher. If we look at the different nationalizing projects of the time from the viewpoint of their subjects, we might be surprised that they for their part did not automatically see themselves as fitting into the categories imposed upon them by the various prophets of nationality. To understand the competing forces and dynamics that were at work when the Central European nation states materialized, we should not take nationality for granted. All borders of the Second Polish Republic crossed regions of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity. National affiliation was not necessarily the first thing their inhabitants had in mind when the gunsmoke of the Great War slowly settled. At these predominantly rural peripheries, regional identities were much more developed than the identification with political constructs of the intellectual elite in the urban centers. Then again, the two phenomena were not mutually exclusive. Identities are never monolithic; in every individual they are a unique mixture of many different features, defined by upbringing, cultural heritage, language, 1 Gustave LeBon, Psychology of the Great War: The First World War and Its Origins (London: Transaction Publishers, 1999) (first pub. 1916), 27. 2 Memoir of a peasant from the Łask district, 1933, published as memoir no. 7 in Ludwik Krzywicki (ed.), Pamiętniki chłopów, 2 vols (Warsaw: Instytut Gospodarstwa Społecznego, 1935–6), vol. 2, 62–79, quote: 72.

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and beliefs, to name just a few of the most defining ones.3 After 1918, Central Europe’s peasants were expected to dispose of their imperial multicultural identity. They had to learn to relate—affirmatively, reluctantly, indifferently, or antagonistically—within the confines of the national constructs in which they found themselves more or less randomly located, as a result of the new borders. T H E H I S TO R I C A L S E T T I N G Such questions of national consciousness and belonging are of utmost importance in this study because they had a decisive impact on the birth of nations4 in the nineteenth century from the bodies of the aging empires, as well as the political convulsions and armed conflicts they entailed at the outset of the twentieth century. The “old” empires used to function according to two principles: The monarch represented the state: “L’état, c’est moi” (“The state, that’s me”) was the proud absolutist motto attached to the king in seventeenth-century France.5 The people were the king’s subjects, regardless of existing linguistic and cultural differences, which still often enough resulted in unequal treatment and inner tensions, especially if it came to the religious diversity characteristic for these times. Conversely, the two principles of the awakening nation state were formulated along opposite lines: The people were the state and possessed a right of freedom and self-determination. These ideas had entered European intellectual thought with the Enlightenment and the French and American Revolutions, and they opposed monarchial despotism, centralism, and closed-mindedness while praising the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In his flaming appeal to the Catholic King Philip II of Spain, who in the sixteenth century had ruled harshly over the Protestant population of the 3  Ralph Schattkowsky, “Eine Autonomie mit Nachwirkungen: Regionale Identitäten in Galizien 1867–1918,” in Regionale Bewegungen und Regionalismen in europäischen Zwischenräumen seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, edited by Philipp Ther and Holm Sundhaussen (Marburg: HerderInstitut, 2003), 43–61; Ralph Schattkowsky and Michael G. Müller (eds), Identitätenwandel und nationale Mobilisierung in Regionen ethnischer Diversität: Ein regionaler Vergleich zwischen Westpreußen und Galizien am Ende des 19. und Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2004); Sheila Fitzpatrick, Tear Off the Masks!: Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); James E. Bjork, Neither German nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Borderland (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008); Andrii Danylenko, “Iazychie and Surzhyk: Mixing Languages and Identities in the Ukrainian Borderlands,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders, edited by Tomasz Kamusella, Motoki Nomachi, and Catherine Gibson (Baskingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 81–100; Tomasz Kamusella, “The Changing Lattice of Languages, Borders, and Identities in Silesia,” in ibid., 185–205. 4  The term stems from the Latin word nation (birth), as the Polish word for nation, naród, stems from the verb narodzić (to give birth to). 5  Although the origin of the quote is unclear, it is often—probably erroneously—attributed to Louis XIV of France (1638–1715), who upon his death told his followers: “I am going away, but the State will always remain” (Je m’en vais, mais l’État demeurera toujours); see Philippe de Courcillon, Mémoire sur la mort de Louis XIV (Paris: Libraire Firmin Didot Frères, Fils & Cie, 1858), 24. He thus rather saw the state represented in the royal court and its institutions than in his body; see Klaus Malettke, Ludwig XIV. von Frankreich: Leben, Politik und Leistung (Göttingen: Muster-Schmidt, 1994), 69–70. Three-quarters of a century later, the French Revolution proved his last words wrong.

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Spanish Netherlands, Marquis De Posa in Friedrich Schiller’s Don Carlos (1787) pleaded: “I live, a citizen of ages yet to come . . . —but grant us liberty of thought.”6 The fundamental change in the notion of the state’s representation and the nascent nations’ claim for self-determination led to enormous political tension after the restructuring of post-Napoleonic Europe, precisely because those nations often transcended existing state borders. While at the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15 one talked about new state borders, in the course of the century one talked more and more about populations hither and thither of these borders and their rights.7 Furthermore, over the course of the nineteenth century civic loyalties transformed gradually into ethnic nationalism. In order to grant the nations their rights, the European map had to be rearranged according to ethnic rather than political ­criteria.8 After the First World War, Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe—which for centuries had been divided between multi-ethnic imperial monarchies and dominated by aristocratic nobilities which represented only a fraction of the population—was split up between about a dozen new nation states dominated by one ethnic group, presiding over numerous ethnic minorities. The Second Polish Republic was one of them. The emancipation of nations in Central Europe in the nineteenth century was surely not the idea of its emperors and their entourage, whose legitimacy it jeopardized. But ironically, any action they took to suppress the awakening nationalism in the post-enlightenment era was only bound to strengthen it: By persecuting national groups—real or imagined—within their empires, by denying them equal rights, questioning their loyalty, separating them from other subjects of the monarchy, and thus inevitably creating martyrs, symbols, and places of ­commemoration, they arguably helped the national causes in ways any demagogue could only dream of. Another monarchal ploy that ricocheted was the policy of divide et impera: Nurturing the rivalry between different national groups served to distract them from anti-state activities for the moment, but in the long run it encouraged them to move apart and develop ever more distinctive national features. National activists in Central Europe knew well about this undercurrent of governmental repression, and sometimes even used it to their advantage. Finally, by strengthening the national movement representing the ethnic majority of their respective populations— Russians and (to a lesser degree) Ukrainians in Russia, Germans in Prussia and (to a lesser degree) in Austria9—the three Central and Eastern European monarchies accelerated the rise of nationalism, and thus of their own disintegration.10 6  Frederick [Friedrich] Schiller, The Works: Historical Dramas etc. (London: George Bell & Sons, 1885), 109, 113. 7  Eric D. Weitz, “From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions,” American Historical Review 113, no. 5 (2008): 1313–43. 8  Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 9  Andrea Komlosy, “Imperial Cohesion, Nation-Building, and Regional Integration in the Habsburg Monarchy,” in Nationalizing Empires, edited by Stefan Berger and Alexei Miller (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2015), 369–427. 10  Aviel Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia (London: Routledge, 2000), 7–33.

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Two caveats are warranted at this juncture. The first one is that historians have named the large strip of land that stretches from the Baltic to the Balkans and which until the First World War was divided between the Central European empires—Russia, Austria (respectively, after 1867, the Dual Monarchy Austria– Hungary), and Germany (Prussia and, after 1871, the German Reich or Empire)— as “lands between,” “borderlands,” “frontier zones,” “shatter zones of empires,” “no place,” or “cauldron of conflict,” thus underlining the conflicting character of these contact zones prone to cultural, political, and ethnical dynamics.11 But although this geopolitical condition seemed to spell trouble, during the long nineteenth century Central and Eastern Europe was not characterized by a constant ­antagonism of imperial suppression and national insurrection, as the depiction of Habsburg Austria as a “prison of nations” might suggest. The recent concept of “nationalizing empires” and “imperial nationalism” accommodates this thought, stressing rather the interdependence and entanglement of imperial and national aspirations. In that light, one might legitimately ask if empire and nation state possibly “corresponded with each other and were far from mutually exclusive”.12 During the long nineteenth century, empires embarked on nationalizing projects, and national movements developed within imperial frameworks. The best example is the German Reich, which in 1871 was founded as a German nation state, but clearly showed imperial ambitions. It was, according to Jürgen Osterhammel, not yet the age of nation states, but of nations and empires.13 The interpretation that empires were not per se “bad” and nation states “good” is strongly supported by the fact that from the moment of their formation in the wake of the Great War, the Central European “self-styled nation states” acted “simply as little empires.”14 At a distance, it seems that the most striking difference between them and the empires they had emerged from was that they were

11  Alan Palmer, The Lands Between: A History of East-Central Europe Since the Congress of Vienna (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970); Alexander Victor Prusin, The Lands Between: Conflict in the East European Borderlands, 1870–1992 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland; Wilson, Frontiers of Violence; Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman, “Aftershocks: Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War,” Contemporary European History 19, no. 3 (2010): 183–94; Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz (eds), Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013); Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderlands to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Edward D. Wynot, Caldron of Conflict: Eastern Europe, 1918–1945 (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1999). 12  Joachim von Puttkamer, review of Berger and Miller (eds), Nationalizing Empires, in Hungarian Historical Review 5, no. 2 (2016): 438–41, here: 438. 13  Jörn Leonhard and Ulrike von Hirschhausen (eds), Comparing Empires: Encounters and Transfers in the Long Nineteenth Century (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012); Stefan Berger and Alexei Miller, “Building Nations In and Within Empires: A Reassessment,” in Berger and Miller (eds), Nationalizing Empires, 1–30; Philipp Ther, “‘Imperial Nationalism’ as Challenge for the Study of Nationalism,” in ibid., 573–91; Stefan Berger, “Building the Nation Among Visions of German Empire,” in ibid., 247–308; Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 392–468. 14 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, 451, referring to a line of argumentation that has been developed already by contemporaries; see Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966) (first pub. 1929), 453–4.

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democracies without emperors—although they all notably developed strong tendencies to authoritarian rule in the 1920s, following a continental trend. Be this as it may, it is important to keep in mind that between the Congress of Vienna and the outbreak of the First World War, Central and Eastern Europe witnessed longer periods of internal and external peace than during the preceding centuries. To imagine Central and Eastern Europe before 1914 as an area shaken by all kinds of armed conflicts simply would be misleading. Physical violence was not a formative experience constantly brutalizing the populace settled in the lands belted by the rivers Danube, Oder, and Dnieper. Although aware of the swift changes of the modern world, most people here lived their lives undisturbed by brutal state intervention or physical attacks by neighbors of different faith, language, political preference, or national affiliation. While the two empires whose territories covered most of the region lost wars outside the borderlands—Austria the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, Russia the Crimean War of 1853–6 and the RussoJapanese War of 1904–5—these military defeats made the borderlands themselves an even more important security belt. Particularly on the Austrian side, this led to inner reforms in order to appease the population—a development that even could be observed in the wake of harsh oppressions of inner resistance. Russian policies were certainly more repressive, yet also anxious not to threaten the fragile balance between outer rule and inner cooperation at their western frontier.15 The second caveat is that one must discern between two different interwoven macro-patterns of the gradual shift which marked the passing of the imperial age and the ascension of modernity in Central and Eastern Europe: the striving for national self-determination on the one hand, and for social equality on the other. Representatives of the state administration and owners of latifundia were faced with demands from larger societal groups for political participation and a fairer distribution of land and wealth. The multinational empires pointing to the monarch as the center of gravitation gave way to other causes worth identifying with and struggling for, such as creating an ethnically homogeneous nation state or the levelling of class distinction. In combination, these two new orientations created a coordinated system mapping out potential lines of confrontation which did not necessarily follow the classic separation of the ruling versus the ruled, but rather splintered the population into political and ethnic factions that either cooperated with or opposed, but rarely ignored each other. Because the historically founded ethnic, linguistic, social, and religious diversity of Central and Eastern Europe already existed before the outbreak of the First World War, the potential for ­instability and bitter conflicts was much higher here than in other parts of the continent. The drastic changes brought to predominantly premodern agrarian societies by education, urbanization, and industrialization caused further ruptures of the social texture.16 The picture was considerably complicated by the inextricably

15 Prusin, The Lands Between, 18–27. 16 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 13–23.

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interwoven ethnic and sociopolitical strife in Central and Eastern Europe at the turn of the century. In the long run, though, it was these rising tensions between the autocratic rule of the imperial centers and the awakening of cultural and ethno-national self-awareness and class-consciousness at the imperial peripheries which constantly charged the region like a giant accumulator. From time to time this led to a surge of voltage and flying sparks, as the uprisings in partition-era Poland, anti-Jewish pogroms in western Russia, peasant and workers unrest, and the first Russian Revolution and its repercussions further to the west all testify. But until the First World War, “in sum, despite profound socio-economic divisions and ethnic animosities, . . . the borderlands remained largely violence-free.”17 Only in the course of the First World War, when the iron fist of the empires unclenched and a wave of mass violence swept the region, did the overheated accumulator explode. The result was a total political and geographical reorganization of Central and Eastern Europe, with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 transforming large parts of Eastern Europe into a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the triumph of the people’s right to self-determination triggering the mushrooming of democratic nation states in Central Europe between 1918 and 1921. The resurrected Polish state was situated right at the conflux of these two major historical currents. It is therefore not surprising that, given the maze of competing political and social agendas in the imperial borderlands, the concept of a nation state as the political embodiment of a “Polish people” did not materialize by default. First it had to be developed, and then it had to be implemented—against all odds. R E M A K I N G T H E P O L I S H N AT I O N A N D S TAT E When the First World War broke out, Poland as a state did not even exist. At the end of the eighteenth century, the weakened Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth— which once had been “the largest realm of early modern Europe”18—had been dismantled by its powerful neighbors, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, as the result of one of the biggest robberies in modern European history.19 The euphemistically called “Partitions of Poland” had been the final point of a century’s negative policy pursued by the Russian Empire in order to weaken the adjacent aristocratic republic, its “hereditary enemy.”20 Each of the partitioning powers annexed territories of former Poland, submitting most of its inhabitants (except, of course, the Russianand German-speaking minorities in the respective partition zones) to foreign rule. The largest share, about 60 percent of the former Polish state (180,000 square miles 17 Prusin, The Lands Between, 34, quote: 40. 18  Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 1. 19  Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), vol. 1: The Origins to 1795, 386. 20 Rolf, Imperiale Herrschaft im Weichselland, 25.

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stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea), became an integral part of the Russian Empire as its “Western Territory” (Zapadnyı ̆ Kraı )̆ , bluntly referred to by Polish native speakers as the “Taken Lands” (Ziemie Zabrane).21 During the Napoleonic Wars, a short-lived “Duchy of Warsaw” (1807–15) was established, and the Code Civil was imported and effective there until 1915. In the course of the Congress of Vienna, where after Napoleon’s fall the Central European map was rearranged, three territorial entities came to life which officially were not part of Russian, Austrian, or Prussian state territory, and where forms of Polish statehood continued to exist for some time.22 An at least partly autonomous “Kingdom of Poland” very soon became a Russian puppet state by the grace of the tsar. After 1863, when the last of several unsuccessful Polish uprisings had been crushed, the Russian administration even deleted any reminiscence to the Polish past from the official terminology, referring to it henceforth simply as the “Vistula Lands” (Privislinskiı ̆ Kraı )̆ .23 Cracow, which had been made the “Free City of Cracow” in 1815, was annexed by Austria in 1846; a virtually autonomous “Grand Duchy of Poznań” was erected and dissolved by Prussia along the same timeline. Hence, even any appearance of an independent Polish body politic had been e­ liminated by the mid-nineteenth century. Russia was now in possession of over 80 percent of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (the Vistula Lands included), while Austria held a little more than 10 percent and Prussia a little less than 10 percent of its former territory (see Map 1).24 As much as the notion of Austria as the “prison of nations” is exaggerated, it is fair to say that the image of Russian imperial rule in the Vistula Lands had been exacting, certainly, but not thoroughly despotic. Although ethnic Poles— representing about three-quarters of a population of almost 9.5 million—did not fill the higher echelons of the administration, the deputies of the tsar had little choice but to seek the cooperation of the local elites one way or the other. The main instruments to checkmate the awakening Polish national self-confidence and to bolster the Russian one were censorship and pro-Orthodox religious politics, but these were not used for the implementation of an explicit strategy of rigid “Russification.” After all, in 1913, ethnic Russians still made up only a little more than 1 percent of the population.25 Further to the east, St. Petersburg chose a different path. The Russian Western Territory was a giant melting pot of nationalities. Here, ethnic Poles made up only about 6 percent of the population, in comparison to much larger ethnic groups 21 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 24; Andrzej Jezierski, Historia Polski w liczbach, 2 vols (Warsaw: Zakład Wydawnistw Statystycznych, 2003), vol. 1: Państwo—Społeczeństwo, 21, 147. 22  Eberhard Straub, Der Wiener Kongress: Das große Fest und die Neuordnung Europas (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2014), 118–20. The special issue of the Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte 16, no. 2 (2015) focuses on the global dimensions of the Congress of Vienna and not on its immediate impact on Central Europe. 23 Rolf, Imperiale Herrschaft im Weichselland, 39–82. 24 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 24; Jezierski, Historia Polski w liczbach, vol. 1, 21, 147. 25 Rolf, Imperiale Herrschaft im Weichselland, 415–25; Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 28.

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such as Belarusians (almost one-third of the population, but still lacking a coherent notion of national identity), Lithuanians (almost a quarter), or Latvians (15 percent), Ukrainians (4 percent), Russians (a little more than 3 percent), and Germans (less than 3 percent). Ethnic Jews—who were only allowed to live in an area called the “Pale of Settlement” which covered mostly former Polish territory—made up 5 percent of the population, but often formed a majority in larger cities (as did Poles in the northern governorates of Vilnius and Kaunas), whereas the rural elites were dominated by a few noble Polish landowners, ruling over a mass of non-Polish peasants.26 After 1863, “the Western borderland was imagined on mental maps of the imperial bureaucracy as a site of the fiercest struggle between Russianness and Polishness.”27 As an immediate reaction to the last Polish uprising—and in order to contain the influence of the (Catholic) Polish nobility (szlachta) especially in its southwestern borderlands—the Russian government aimed at strengthening the image of a “triune, all-Russian” (Orthodox) nation (narod ), composed of Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Russians, in one stroke multiplying the Russian share of the population by more than ten.28 But all in all, the Russian nationality policy at its western frontiers from the mid-nineteenth century until the outbreak of the First World War remained a balancing act between safeguarding a maximum of Russian national interests while granting a minimum of necessary concessions to other nations within the empire, notably the Poles. It was neither tolerant nor tyrannic, but rather pragmatic, and in comparison with Prussian nationality p ­ olicies even somewhat moderate.29 On the other hand, the Prussian partition zone—a Polish–German contact zone for centuries—from the very start witnessed a wave of “Germanization” which increased with the foundation of the German Empire in 1871. Here, state policies aimed at national distinction and assimilation of ethnic Poles, who represented one out of three town citizens and three out of five country dwellers, within a total population of almost four million which—with the exception of 1 percent Jews— featured no other considerable ethnic groups. But the discriminating measures had only a contrary effect, reinforcing the strongest Polish nation and identity building process of all three partition zones. Nevertheless, the comparably higher standard of living and the organization of Polish modern representations such as clubs, publishing houses, or workers’ unions along the German model distinguished the Poles on Prussian territory materially and alienated them mentally from their co-nationals in Austria and Russia.30 Concurrently, by contrast, the Austrian share of the spoils, the multi-ethnic province of Galicia, was granted autonomous status in 1868 and henceforth ruled by members of the Polish aristocracy loyal to the emperor, with Polish as the official 26  Figures according to Prusin, The Lands Between, 14, table 1.1. (without Bessarabia). 27  Alexei Miller, “The Romanov Empire and the Russian Nation,” in Berger and Miller (eds), Nationalizing Empires, 309–68, 330. 28 Faith Hillis, “Ukrainophile Activism and Imperial Governance in Russia’s Southwestern Borderlands,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13, no. 2 (2012): 301–26. 29  Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), 198. 30 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 39–42; Berger, “Building the Nation Among Visions of German Empire,” 252–3; Volkmann, Die Polenpolitik des Kaiserreichs.

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language, tacitly neglecting the wants of the other ethnic group of about the same size, the Ukrainians, and of the remaining 10 percent Jews out of a total population of over seven million. Galicia thus became simultaneously the hotbed of Polish national movements and the arena of Polish–Ukrainian animosities, which were consciously enhanced by a Viennese policy of divide et impera.31 The stronghold of Polish nationalism at their border irritated tsarist militaries to the extent that they openly thought about annexing “Carpathian Ruthenia”—the part of Galicia inhabited mainly by ethnic Ukrainians—to Russia. “The former Polish state collapsed during the course of three partitions,” noted General Staff officer Nikolai Obruchev in 1885, “but the Polish nation did not die . . . We have not yet managed to break the Polish spirit, neither in Vilnius nor in Kiev . . . Galicia today is a miniature version of the whole of former Poland, with its Pani [Polish masters] and Jews trading the Russian [Ukrainian] nation like cattle.”32 Nevertheless, recent research relativizes this dark picture. In 1914, a sort of compromise between Poles and Ukrainians was reached in the form of a new electoral law. What is even more important is the fact that ethnic differentiation was rather a side effect of this initiative, which mainly aimed at “preserving and extending both the national and social status quo.” It proved that Galicia was all but a godforsaken region on the lee side of modernity33—that is, before it was heavily hit by the devastations of the First World War.34 When the Polish state re-emerged in the form of the Second Republic in November 1918, not only nationalist zealots might have interpreted it as the result of an unbowed spirit of Polish national unity which had survived even the darkest years of partition and lack of freedom. In reality, visionaries of an independent Polish state at the turn of the century faced extraordinary problems: About fifteen million people who spoke Polish, or who saw themselves or were regarded as Polish, were ruled by one of three non-Polish imperial governments.35 How many of them were loyal to their respective monarch is impossible to say, but virtually none of them had personally experienced a period of Polish sovereignty deserving the name. The partition zones were not only divided geographically by imperial frontiers, but also culturally by over one hundred years of separate development, causing enormous differences regarding for example the state of modernization, literacy, 31 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 14, 34–5; Komlosy, “Imperial Cohesion, Nation-Building, and Regional Integration in the Habsburg Monarchy,” 400–1; Schattkowsky, “Eine Autonomie mit Nachwirkungen”; Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 61–4. 32  Memorandum of Nikolai Obruchev, 1885, discussion and extracts (translated into Polish) in Igor Torbakow, “IV Rozbiór Polski w końcu XIX wieku,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 122 (1997): 230–6, quote: 233–4; Russian original in Istochnik. Documents of Russian History 13, no. 6 (1994): 4–21, quote: 7–8. 33  Börries Kuzmany, “Der Galizische Ausgleich als Beispiel moderner Nationalitätenpolitik?,” in Galizien. Peripherie der Moderne—Moderne der Peripherie?, edited by Elisabeth Haid, Stephanie Weismann, and Burkhard Wöller (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2013), 123–41, quote: 140. 34 Tomasz Kargol, Odbudowa Galicji ze zniszczeń wojennych w latach 1914–1918 (Cracow: Historia Iagellonica, 2012). 35 Prusin, The Lands Between, 14, table 1.1; Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 28; Rudolf A. Mark, Galizien unter österreichischer Herrschaft: Verwaltung, Kirche, Bevölkerung (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 1994), 80; Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt (ed.), Die Volkszählung am 1. Dezember 1900 im Deutschen Reich, 2 vols (Berlin: Puttkammer & Mülbrecht, 1903), vol. 1, 117.

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or freedom of speech.36 The overwhelming majority of Poles at that time—about 80 percent—were peasants. We know little of their attitude towards independence and state building at the turn of the century.37 Since literacy often went hand in hand with a certain political engagement, it is not surprising that the memoirs of Polish peasants from the time of the Polish uprisings against the tsarist regime in Poland reflect a dedication to the national cause.38 But when it comes to the overwhelming majority of illiterate peasants, the writing professions face a myriad of intrinsic problems. As Stefan Kieniewicz admits, “our judgements on the national consciousness of the peasant before his liberation will always be more or less hypothetical.”39 Historians in the past have generally accredited a certain dedication of the Polish peasant to the nationalist cause, but have differed regarding its evolution and extent.40 According to the findings of Keely Stauter-Halsted and Kai Struve, Polish peasants in western Galicia were more politicized, while their peers in eastern Galicia were rather indifferent to political matters.41 It is safe to assume that comparable discrepancies were measurable within and between the other partition zones as well. Władysław Reymont’s Nobel Prize-winning novel “Peasants” (Chłopi), published between 1904 and 1909, describes the rural life in the Russian partition zone as dominated by the national progression of seasons. The four parts of the book are named after the seasons of the year. Adding religious rites as another formative pattern of social life, Reymont invites us into a traditional universe of its own, almost devoid of reference to history, politics, or social change, in which a common dialect is the idiom of the characters as well as of the narrator.42 The notion of a nation as a homogeneous group sharing the same language, ideas, values, and political aims is a misinterpretation which confounds the projection with the projected. Of course, the liberal arts have already tagged and tackled this basic problem. The political scientist Benedict Anderson tellingly has named this phenomenon the “imagined communities.” As soon as the concept of the “nation” exceeds the confines of a space where everybody knows everybody, it has to be imagined. In historical praxis, this leads to a constellation where the unity of the many is imagined by a few. National discourses have always been developed by tiny intellectual societal groups, which first tried to define the national mass and 36 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 23–52. 37  Jan Molenda, “Transformations in the Social Structure and in the Consciousness and Aspirations of the Polish Peasants at the Turn of the 20th Century,” Acta Poloniae Historica 57 (1988): 117–36. 38  Krzysztof Dunin-Wąsowicz, “Świadomość narodowa chłopów w świetle pamiętników w okresie powstań narodowowyzwoleńczych,” Acta Universitatis Lodziensis—Folia Historica 45 (1992): 87–93. 39  Stefan Kieniewicz, “Le développement de la conscience nationale polonaise au XIXe siècle,” Acta Poloniae Historica 19 (1968): 37–48, here: 43. 40  Stanisław Grabski, Myśli o dziejowej drodze Polski (Glasgow: Książnica Polska, 1944), 154–5; Molenda, Chłopi, naród, niepodległość. 41  Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Kai Struve, Bauern und Nation in Galizien: Über Zugehörigkeit und soziale Emanzipation im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005); Kai Struve, “Polish Peasants in Eastern Galicia: Indifferent to the Nation or Pillars of Polishness?: National Attitudes in the Light of Józef Chałasiński’s Collection of Peasant Youth Memoirs,” Acta Poloniae Historica 109 (2014): 37–59. 42  Władysław Stanisław Reymont, The Peasants (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925).

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then to convince that mass of what it—in their eyes—actually was. The Central European rural masses of the outgoing nineteenth century orientated their lives mostly according to the world as they knew, saw, and understood it. When confronted with the modern national projects of the mostly urban intellectual elites, the reaction often was indifference or even outright rejection.43 The assumption that a nation in a predefined form exists a priori and composes itself quasi-automatically behind its national leaders is usually not much more than their own romantic vision and wishful thinking. This does not mean, though, that nations are only dreams. It does mean—as Timothy Snyder has taught us in his brilliant study on Lithuania, Belarusia, Ukraine, and Poland from early modern to our times—that they do not exist as a natural given, but that they have to be constructed.44 The dream of sovereignty for a Polish nation was primarily preserved within the aristocratic milieu. During the nineteenth century, this group had successfully mutated into an “intelligentsia [that] preserved a uniform code of values and style and a network of social connections across the partition-borders [which] was to prove immensely important.”45 Over the second half of the century, the developing intelligentsia opened up to educated sons of the non-noble urban and rural elites.46 The old conservative elites hoped for concessions and compromised themselves by offering their services to the respective partitioning power. On the other hand, the younger set produced mainly two divergent types of Polish nationalism: one inclusive, looking backwards, and the other exclusive, looking forwards. The first one was oriented towards the pre-partition multi-ethnic Polish Commonwealth with its “nobility of [predominantly] Polish and polonized Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, German, and even Tatar, Armenian, and apostate-Jewish stock” which had traditionally and officially communicated in Latin.47 Since the nation was equivalent to this nobility, but much less so with the peasants and townsfolk, revisions to this antique understanding of the Polish nation were highly necessary. To gain credence in an age of mass participation in politics and warfare, it had to be democratized, or better: socialized. In consequence, the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS) under the leadership of the revolutionary and military autodidact Józef Piłsudski headed in the direction of a Socialist Republic dominated by ethnic Poles, but open for participation by other 43  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006); Tara Zahra, “Imagined Non-Communities: National Indifference as a Category of Historical Analysis,” Slavic Review 69, no. 1 (2010): 93–119. 44 Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations. 45  Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1992), 28. 46  More details on the development of a Polish national consciousness in the nineteenth century are given by Tadeusz Łepkowski, “La formation de la nation polonaise moderne dans les conditions d’un pays démembré,” Acta Poloniae Historica 19 (1968): 18–36. 47 Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars, 27. For more on nation building in the Polish part of the confederation, see Sławomir Gawlas, “Die mittelalterliche Nationenbildung am Beispiel Polens,” in Mittelalterliche nationes—neuzeitliche Nationen. Probleme der Nationenbildung in Europa, edited by Almut Bues and Rex Rexheuser (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995), 121–43; for the Lithuanian part, see Mathias Niendorf, Das Großfürstentum Litauen: Studien zur Nationsbildung in der Frühen Neuzeit (1569–1795) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010).

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ethnic groups such as Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Jews, or Germans. The more exclusive form of Polish nationalism favored by the Polish National Democracy (Narodowa Demokracja, short “Endecja” after the Polish pronunciation of its acronym ND) headed by the right-wing intellectual politician Roman Dmowski drew on the ideas of social Darwinism which was en vogue all over Western Europe and in the United States by that time. They believed that the multi-ethnic fabric of the old Polish Commonwealth had caused its downfall, and therefore envisaged the modern nation as the entirety of, as an Endecja slogan put it, “Poles of purest blood.” Other ethnic groups were to have no say in a future Polish nation state, and socialists were regarded as “Jews, foreigners and social misfits.”48 After the war broke out, Polish statehood was soon on the agenda once more— not only as a theoretical concept, but as a political option in different layouts. Between 1915 and 1918, the Central Powers replaced Russian rule in Central Europe. The Baltic coast and other parts of the Western Territory were brought under direct rule of the “Supreme Command of All German Forces in the East” (Ober Ost). In the Vistula Lands, a German and an Austrian General Government (based in Warsaw and Lublin respectively) were established, which both allowed for some degree of Polish self-government.49 On November 5, 1916, both ­emperors even declared the re-erection of a Polish monarchy a political goal. Since, in the same breath, they called their Polish subjects to arms, the “Two Emperors’ Declaration” in favor of a “Kingdom of Poland” exposed itself as a cheap trick which failed to mobilize the masses.50 Still, in 1917 the occupants called into life a Regency Council to run state business until the election of a Polish king. In his earlier New Year’s message, the Russian tsar—who by that time had lost all his prewar Polish possessions—had countered the Central Powers’ propaganda with the promise to reunite the three former patrician zones. In the same month, US President Woodrow Wilson advertised the erection of an independent Polish state as the thirteenth of his Fourteen Points. And while the Allies and the Central Powers were eager to prove how much they cared for future Polish statehood, it was the 48  Kossert, “Founding Father of Modern Poland and Nationalistic Antisemite: Roman Dmowski,” 92, 96. For a more detailed analysis of Piłsudski’s and Dmowski’s differing concepts of Polish nationalism prior to 1914 see Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires, 36–42. 49  On German rule in Ober Ost see Vejas G. Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Robert Nelson, “Utopias of Open Space: Forced Population Transfer Fantasies during the First World War,” in Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe’s First World War, edited by Jochen Böhler, Włodzimierz Borodziej, and Joachim von Puttkamer (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2014), 113–27. On the territory of former Congress Poland see Jonathan E. Gumz, “Losing Control: The Norm of Occupation in Eastern Europe during the First World War,” in ibid., 69–87; Stephan Lehnstaedt, “Fluctuating between ‘Utilisation’ and Exploitation: Occupied East Central Europe during the First World War,” in ibid., 89–112; Cezary Król, “Besatzungsherrschaft in Polen im Ersten und im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Charakteristik und Wahrnehmung,” in Erster Weltkrieg, Zweiter Weltkrieg. Ein Vergleich, edited by Bruno Thoss and Hans-Erich Volkmann (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002), 577–91; Arkadiusz Stempin, “Deutsche Besatzungsmacht und Zivilbevölkerung in Polen: Juden und Deutsche im Vergleich,” in Besetzt, interniert, deportiert. Der Erste Weltkrieg und die deutsche, jüdische, polnische und ukrainische Zivilbevölkerung im östlichen Europa, edited by Alfred Eisfeld (Essen: Klartext, 2013), 153–72. 50  Jan Snopko, “Werbunek do Wojska Polskiego na terenie Królestwa po akcie 5 listopada 1916 roku (XI 1916 – V 1917),” Studia i Materiały do Historii Wojskowości 42 (2005): 133–53.

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formation of their own armed forces—the famous Legions and other combat units—that raised the Poles’ hopes to achieve independence not by anybody’s grace, but by their own efforts. And indeed, after the collapse of the Western Front and the abrupt termination of German and Austrian rule in Central Europe in late 1918, armed clashes sprang up over the redistribution of the Central European map. The conditions were ripe for Piłsudski and Dmowski to partially realize their respective utopian projects for a Polish nation within the borders of a Polish state. Given their contrasting concepts of nationality, they were not partners, but fierce rivals. Both statesmen descended from petty gentry, but Piłsudski’s family roots lay near Vilnius in the Lithuanian part of the former Polish Commonwealth, whereas Dmowski was born in central Poland, in a suburb of Warsaw, to be exact. Piłsudski—a man with a legendary paramilitary and military record—as the Commander in Chief of the Polish armed forces, sought to conquer and secure a territory for a future Polish federal state ideally corresponding to that of the former commonwealth. Dmowski—a political activist who had mastered an impressive number of foreign languages—as the head of the “Polish National Committee” (Komitet Narodowe Polski)51 advocated for international recognition of a Polish core state with a predominantly ethnic Polish population in the couloirs and back rooms of the Paris Peace Conference. Notably, how Dmowski and his fellow campaigners understood the term “ethnicity” was that it mainly encompassed a commonly shared religion, culture, and language. Although they left the door ajar for other ethnic groups willing to assimilate, they practically erected an almost insurmountable boundary around the Polish nation, to which, for example, Jews would never belong.52 Political science today describes both statesmen’s different views on nationalism as a contrast between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism.53 Nevertheless, the difference between Piłsudski’s and Dmowski’s positions was not so diametrically opposed as it seems at first sight: “Both were anti-communist, both advocated national solidarity, both were lukewarm in their support for liberal democracy, and both desired a strong nation state, based on Catholic traditions, headed by an authoritarian leader.”54 Recent studies have added further evidence that the antagonism between the two statesmen was not as developed as historiography usually has it, especially if it comes to Piłsudski’s role: The concept of his “Belweder camp” for a Central European confederation remained awkwardly shallow in 1918–20, his ambitions were clearly imperialistic, and he never foresaw equal treatment for the federation’s members.55 This means that the supremacy of 51  The first legitimate representation of Polish statehood, founded in 1917 in Lausanne by the Endecja. 52 Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate, 189–232; Krzywiec, Chauvinism, Polish Style, 93–140; Piotr Madajczyk, Marzenie o narodzie doskonałym: Między biopolityką a etnopolityką (Warsaw: Neriton, 2017), 57–8, 68–9. Marek J. Chodakiewicz, Wojciech J. Muszyński, and Jolanta MysiakowskaMuszyńska (eds), Polska dla Polakow!: Kim byli i są polscy narodowcy (Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2015) argue more from the Endecja’s perspective, but omit the movements anti-Semitic stance. 53  Brykczynski, “A Poland for the Poles?” 54  Kossert, “Founding Father of Modern Poland and Nationalistic Antisemite: Roman Dmowski,” 97. 55  Conrad, “Vom Ende der Föderation.”

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Poles in a future nation state for both politicians was a matter of course. But Piłsudski and Dmowski never found a common language on how to reach this goal, and to Poland’s misfortune their personal feud impeded its two major ­political camps from acting united even in times of greatest trouble and danger. “If only they could have been separated in time!” exclaimed later Prime Minister of the Polish Republic in Exile, Stanisław Mackiewicz, in 1941. “The fact that these people coexisted in the same era contributed to a weakened Poland.”56 The Second Polish Republic that evolved from the redistribution battles for the former imperial lands was a crossbreed of Piłsudski’s and Dmowski’s visions. Territorially, it expanded over the region inhabited almost exclusively by ethnic Poles, but a confederation with its neighbors to the north and east failed to see the light of day, and diplomatic relations with Lithuania and Ukraine were instead strained for decades to come. Ethnically, it claimed to represent first and foremost the Polish majority of the population, but it was engaged in enormous inner struggles to come to terms with its large Ukrainian, Jewish, and German minorities, which did not ebb away, but were even aggravated in the 1930s. WHO IS IN AND WHO IS OUT? The postwar dilemma of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe was that its materializing states hosted up to a dozen different ethnic groups, but were meant to be the project of and represent only one of them. True enough, there had been attempts at building states for several ethnicities, the two prime examples being Yugoslavia (which translates as “South Slav State”) and Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia was indeed home to Serbs, Montenegrins, Croats, Bosniaks, Slovenes, Czechs, and Slovaks, which all together made up about 85 percent of the population. But the many other ethnic groups which would not consider themselves as “Slavs” were not reflected in the state’s name.57 In addition, there were long-standing tensions between many of the groups. Serbs and Croats, for example, while representing three-quarters of the Yugoslav people, did not get along well from the very start. Serbs, who had fought the Central Powers, regarded themselves as the winners of the Great War. Croats, on the other hand, who had fought in the ranks of the Habsburg Army, had lost. These two ethnicities were opposites at best and enemies at worst.58 From the beginning, the new republic and its institutions were Serb dominated. From the 1920s, Croats fought a constant battle for federalism, trying to nip in the bud all attempts from Belgrade to centralize the country under Serbian supremacy. Dimitrije Djordjevic has called this paradox of combined ethnic 56  Stanisław Mackiewicz, Historja Polski od 11 listopada 1918 r. do 17 września 1939 r. (London: Kolin, 1941), 34, equally cited in Ryszard Kaczmarski, “Romana Dmowskiego spotkania z Józefem Piłsudskim,” Glaukopis no. 5–6 (2006): 222–37, here: 222. 57 Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars, 203, lists Germans, Magyars, Romanians and Vlachs, Albanians, Turks, Gypsies, and “Other.” 58  John Paul Newman, Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building, 1903–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 147–84.

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unity and discord “the Yugoslav Phenomenon,” and traced its reverberations into the present: “Bound by South Slavic ethnicity but separated by particular national affiliations, joined by a common language but distinguished by its dialects, united by the need for survival but divided by history, alphabets, religions, and cultures, the Yugoslav phenomenon has been supported and challenged in the past and present by both common and divergent interests of peoples irrevocably mixed, linked as well as opposed to each other.”59 In May 1991, while he was writing these lines, the country was heading into another disastrous civil war which once more revealed the centrifugal forces of ethnic conflict, which are—as our study will show—by no means an exclusive “Yugoslav” phenomenon. In Czechoslovakia, which also encompassed the two major ethnic groups— making up two-thirds of the population—in the state’s name, lack of equality was the cause of similar ethnic strife, with the Czechs in the position of the Serbs, and the Slovaks in that of the Croats. However, both unanimously regarded the quarter of the country’s inhabitants which made up the German “minority” rather as a residue of the Habsburg ruling elites—and thus an accomplice of Germany and Austria—than as a part of the national project.60 One is compelled to take the ­fixation of ethnic brotherhood in the state names of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia either as a naive dream of its founders or as sheer propaganda for the Western Powers whose approval for their independence they direly needed. It probably would have been more honest to just call them “Serbia” and “Czechia.” All other states that found themselves in the former imperial contact zone at war’s end—Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria— chose or kept a name according to the ethnic majorities (therefore also called the “titular nations”) which would dominate the respective country’s politics and fate through the 1920s and 1930s. In almost all of the aforementioned countries, the ratio between the titular nation and the largest ethnic minority was about ten to one or higher. However, the Second Polish Republic’s statistics deviated significantly from this pattern with a ratio of less than five to one (Poles to Ukrainians), with almost one-third of the population not being Poles.61 Whereas in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia the sheer number of Croats and Slovaks would ensure them respectively a certain measure of political participation,62 Poland’s minorities were 59  Dimitrije Djordjevic, “The Yugoslav Phenomen,” in The Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, edited by Joseph Held (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 306–44, here: 316–19, quote: 306. Percentages according to Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars, 203. 60  Sharon L. Wolchik, “Czechoslovakia,” in Held (ed.), The Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, 119–63, here: 124–7; Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires, 42–6. Percentages according to Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars, 89. 61 Lithuania (1923) 11.1:1 (1,701,863 Lithuanians to 153,743 Jews); Estonia (1922) 10.6:1 (969,976 Estonians to 91,109 Russians); Latvia (1920) 12.6:1 (1,161,404 Latvians to 91,477 Russians); Hungary (1920) 13:1 (7,156,727 Magyars to 551,624 Germans); Romania (1930) 9.1:1 (12,981,324 Romanians to 1,425,507 Magyars). The ratio was lower in Bulgaria (1920) 7.5:1 (4,041,276 Bulgarians to 542,904 Turks), but still significantly higher than in Poland (1921) 4.8:1 (18,814,239 Poles to 3,898,431 Ukrainians/Ruthenians). 62  Yugoslavia (1918): 1.6:1 (4,665,851 Serbs to 2,856,551 Croats). There are no detailed statistics for the ratio between Czechs and Slovaks in interwar Czechoslovakia, which was roughly 2:1, see Charles

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too small to hold their ground against Warsaw’s paternalism, but too large to be marginalized. Thus, it was obvious from the beginning that the formation of an ethnically “Polish” state would not only imply severe external conflicts with the emerging neighbor states, but also internal conflicts with the ethnic minorities, and most probably more so than in the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. This complex starting situation made it a challenging task to define the citizens of the nascent Second Republic. Who belonged to it, and who was to be regarded as an outsider? Since the early twentieth century, the National Democrats were unanimous on the matter: In their eyes, in order to survive, a future Polish state had to be founded on the principle of Polish ethnic supremacy. In Roman Dmowski’s words, “our racial material, if it is not used quickly by Polish civilization for the creation of a Polish national identity and Polish political power, will be swept up by neighbouring cultures and remade by them . . . The surface of the Earth is not a museum for preserving ethnographic specimens intact, whole and each in its own place . . . Nations, in their struggle to bring out the greatest energy from within themselves, to create the greatest amount of this new sort of life, encountering on the way tribes lacking in individuality and creative abilities, creative as a people and not as individuals, without the resources to take part on their own account in the life of history, absorb them, bring them into their sort of life, using them as material for their own creative energy.”63 By its very nature, the minority question was practically linked to Polish t­ erritorial aspirations, especially in the east. In 1918–19, the leadership of the young state from both sides of the political divide unanimously aimed at controlling large tracts of the Polish eastern borderlands (Kresy Wschodnie, short: Kresy), which historically had been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and hosted large Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Jewish populations. What they were split over was how to establish Polish supremacy, and how far it should reach. While Piłsudski’s “federal” concept foresaw cooperation with the neighbors in the east under Polish leadership, the “ethnocentrist” concept of the National Committee aimed at their forceful assimilation. As a result, wherever the arm of the Polish military and civil administration actually reached in the Kresy, it was mainly the Endecja which pursued a program of strict Polonization, while Piłsudskites as a rule stood for a moderate and inclusive policy towards the non-Polish ethnic groups.64 These opposed stances led to a paradox which is often overlooked in historiography. Although at first sight the Belweder’s “federal” concept appears tolerant in a modern Krupnick, Almost NATO: Partners and Players in Central and Eastern European Security (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 48. The census deliberately did not differentiate between both ethnic groups to underline the special status of the “state forming people” in contrast to, for example, the Germans, who even outnumbered the Slovaks in 1921; see Mary Heimann, Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 65. 63  Roman Dmowski, Myśli nowoczesnego Polaka (Lwów: Altenberg, 1907) (first pub. 1903), 126, 200. English translation according to Krzywiec, Chauvinism, Polish Style, 436–7. 64  Joanna Gierowska-Kałłaur, Zarząd Cywilny Ziem Wschodnich, 19 lutego 1919–9 września 1920 (Warsaw: Neriton, 2003), 49–55.

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way, in its core there was an imperialist twist, aimed at expanding its borders as far east as possible. The “ethnocentrist” concept of the National Committee, although chauvinist and outmoded from today’s point of view, aimed at limiting the Polish sphere to areas where the “integration” of minorities was regarded as feasible. Although not genuinely intended, practically this meant national self-determination for many Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians outside Poland instead of their forceful assimilation.65 It should not be overlooked, though, that in the west, Dmowski’s national democratic hard-liners abandoned this line of argument and advocated the most fervent anti-German and annexationist measures. In any case, the ethnic composition of the Second Polish Republic was not so much decided by political visions, be they left or right, but by the border struggles between 1918 and 1921. At their end, millions of its new citizens were members of minorities. To fix citizenship in a future Polish state to the category of “Polishness” alone was highly irrational anyhow, and not only because of the impossibility of clearly defining it, but also because this would have meant to either disenfranchise or expatriate a third of the people living within the new state borders—a terrifying vision, if one thinks about it. Only a few years later, the Greek–Turkish War (1919–22) resulted in a human catastrophe of hitherto unknown dimension. About 1.6 million Greeks and Turks were forced to leave their homes and to cross the new border, as agreed upon in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The immediate consequences were disastrous: diseases, horrible living conditions, and high mortality rates amongst the refugees (or better: expellees). Philipp Ther has made it clear that this was not what such events are often called—a breach of civilization. On the contrary, this kind of engineered ethnic cleansing was “clearly a feature of European modernity” and the dreadful, but logical consequence of ethnic nation-state building. It must be remembered that this population exchange was only accepted under the impression of the extreme brutality of the Greek–Turkish War, and it concerned, in a pejorative Western view, “only” the Balkans.66 Such a scenario was unthinkable in the heart of Europe only a few years earlier. In his utopian essay “The National Principle and the Exchange of People” (1917), the German–Jewish journalist Siegfried Lichtenstaedter (who often published under the pseudonym Dr. Mehemed Emin Effendi) had envisaged only the voluntary movement of millions in order to ease ethnic tensions.67 In the case of Poland, furthermore, the number of people who as “non-Poles” would have had to leave 65  The issue was discussed at length during the session of the National Committee in Paris on March 2, 1919; see protocol and annex in Marek Jabłonowski (ed.), Komitet Narodowy Polski: Protokoły posiedzeń 1917–1919 (Warsaw: Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczna Pułtusk, 2007), 692–715. See also Kawalec, Roman Dmowski, 335–8. 66  Philipp Ther, “Pre-negotiated Violence: Ethnic Cleansing in the ‘Long’ First World War,” in Böhler, Borodziej, and von Puttkamer (eds), Legacies of Violence, 259–84, here: 277–82; quote: Philipp Ther, The Dark Side of Nation-States: Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 249. 67  Siegfried Lichtenstaedter [Mehemed Emin Efendi], Nationalitätsprinzip und Bevölkerungsaustausch: Eine Studie für den Friedensschluß (Dresden: Giesecke, 1917). See also Ther, “Pre-negotiated Violence,” 268, with a reference to Mihran Dabag, “National-koloniale Konstruktionen in politischen Entwürfen des Deutschen Reiches um 1900,” in Kolonialismus. Kolonialdiskurs und Genozid, edited by Mihran Dabag, Horst Gründer, and Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen (Munich: Fink, 2004), 19–66, here: 62.

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Poland for another land after 1918 would have exceeded the numbers in Asia Minor by the factor of five. Apart from the fact that the forced movements of millions of people were yet unheard of in 1918, Poland already faced a refugee catastrophe with millions of people leaving civil-war-torn Russia westward. There was no way of even thinking about actively transporting a part of the population out of the Second Republic’s borders while peace was still pending and the country was dependent on outside help even to feed its people. Trains were fully utilized to transport its soldiers to the front or to evacuate its own population from the advancing enemy armies. On top of that, the material war damage the country had suffered was beyond imagination. Other forms of transportation were limited by the destruction of roads and the lack of fuel. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania—the three Central and Southeastern European states whose ethnic composition was almost as mixed as the Polish one—equally had to deal with the problem of how to treat the significant number of people who lived within their state’s borders, but who were not part of the titular nation. It soon became apparent that the romantic ideal of one state territory for one nation was impossible to realize in the Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European melting pot as long as the nation was defined by ethnicity. This was a constant bone of contention in Paris, where the future constitution of the nation states which superseded the empires was discussed in 1919–20. However, by that time, this was already the prevailing definition all over the Western hemisphere, and therefore a point of no return. In North America, the descendants of European settlers had even killed most of the native Indians and obstinately kept Black Americans from achieving citizens’ rights, while Britons, French, and Italians established this kind of racist rule first and foremost in their colonies all over the globe. The Western powers could simply not argue against a principle they had so much internalized and were still implementing themselves. Nevertheless, they foresaw trouble and the danger of future wars in the middle of the European continent if the gap between citizenship and nationality was not bridged, because there, as Dieter Gosewinkel has stated lately, “the determination of state affiliation, whether as self-designation or as an attribution, inevitably triggered conflicts of decision and loyalty, as well as cultural tensions, in the face of conflicting neighbors. It forced political confessions and options, if necessary to leave an old country or to adapt to a new, culturally and linguistically foreign statehood.”68 Such conflicts, which were prone to threaten the hard-won peace, had to be domesticized one way or another. What the “Big Four”—the United States, England, France, and Italy—finally came up with was a legal construct commonly known as the “Minority Treaties” for Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania, which they had to ratify in 68  Dieter Gosewinkel, Schutz und Freiheit?: Staatsbürgerschaft in Europa im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016), 137. For the relation between citizenship and minority rights in the wake of the First World War see Dietmar Müller, “Staasbürgerschaft und Minderheitenschutz: ‘Managing Diversity’ im östlichen und westlichen Europa,” Themenportal Europäische Geschichte (2006), http:// www.europa.clio-online.de/essay/id/artikel-3309, accessed May 14, 2018.

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order to gain international recognition.69 The treaties were a rather pragmatic attempt to solve the paradox of the nation state of several nations and level ethnic difference by jurisdiction. The signatory Central and Southeastern European states were obliged to accept all persons who lived within their frontiers as citizens, and those persons who did not want to become citizens of the state they were living in had to leave the country within the course of two years. Special clauses protected those citizens who chose to stay but did not belong to the titular nation—the minorities—against discrimination and state persecution, and granted them a certain amount of autonomy in the fields of education, use of language, customs, and religious practices. These rights were guaranteed by the international community, and breaches of the clauses could be brought before its newly founded body, the League of Nations.70 The Big Four themselves obviously regarded it as superfluous to commit themselves to similar regulations, a fact that unsurprisingly incurred their Central and Southeastern European partners’ deep disapproval. 69  Greece—which lies beyond the geographical scope of this book—was the fifth signatory state. 70  Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Zara S. Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919–1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

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2 How to Mobilize the Polish Nation For the time being, we consider the insurrectionary program extremely harmful: lacking any real support within the intelligentsia, it opens up the path to bluster and phraseology which we witness far too often, and distracts attention from actual efforts that seek to [prevail] using means other than armed combat. Among the people, the insurrectionary program immediately stirs up exaggerated hopes, unavoidably followed by an undesirable reaction.1 National Democratic publicist Tadeusz Grużewski, Revolution and Uprising, 1902 I wanted to be sure, when the time came for new frontiers of states and nations to be carved out of the living flesh of our fatherland with swords, that the Poles would not be left out.2 Józef Piłsudski in an order issued at the end of the first year of the war, 1915

Whereas a widespread Polish national consciousness at the beginning of the twentieth century was, as we have argued before, not yet established, the Great War would change things. Soldiers from tripartite Poland served in all three imperial armies, and as a bitter consequence sometimes even had to fight against each other. But at the same time, the participation of Poles in the fighting between 1914 and 1918 raised their expectations for more tolerance and autonomy within the r­espective empire or even for separate statehood after war’s end. It is furthermore important to know that in 1914, not every Polish man fit to fight just sat tight until he was drafted into the armed forces of his respective ­imperial state. Polish political circles, such as all political classes in prewar Europe, had anticipated a continental conflict for years, and they were prepared. Paramilitary organizations in Galicia had trained tens of thousands of young Poles in the art of warfare. Not all of them merged into the ranks of the Habsburg Army. The main aim was to build genuine Polish units which would fight within the ranks and under the command of an imperial army. The idea behind it was that they would nevertheless symbolize a future Polish state—using national icons, special 1  Tadeusz Grużewski, “Rewolucje i powstania,” in Tadeusz Grużewski, Polska i Rosja. Wybór pism, edited by Przemysław Dąbrowski (Cracow: Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej, 2013), 58–73, here: 69, first published in Przegląd Wszechpolski, no. 8 (1902). 2  Bohdan Urbankowski, Józef Piłsudski: Marzyciel i strateg (Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2014), 173.

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uniforms, and Polish as the language of command—and even form the nucleus of its future army. An armed struggle with Polish participation was the long-awaited occasion to try to unite the Polish nation which for more than a century had been constantly drifting apart. In 1914, visionaries of an independent state for the Polish nation were desperately longing to seize the moment. Since the Congress of Vienna, most Polish people in the three partition zones had adapted to the reality of the imperial partitions, and no one had a personal memory of living other than under foreign rule. In the imperial peripheries, they lived together with millions of Russians, Germans, Ukrainians, and Jews. What was to happen to those “others” on the way to an ethnic Polish nation state and where it would be located was an open question. Ethnic differences and resulting tensions were palpable. While the awakening of class consciousness partly bridged such differences, at the same time the ground was prepared for other ruptures. The rural masses, no less than four-fifths of the Polish population, were not fervent fighters for independence, to say the least. The beginning of the twentieth century marked the evolution of a strong Polish agrarian movement which would become even more influential in the first years of the Second Republic. Although Polish peasants in Galicia were more interested in what was going on outside their village confines than peasants in other regions, we cannot speak of a developed national awareness of the Polish rural masses before the outbreak of the Great War. As the sociologist Stanisław Ossowski noted in 1917 (three years before he himself joined the Polish Army to fight the Bolsheviks), the contemporary Polish peasant was genuinely attached to his ethnic roots, but in a much more primeval and spatially limited way: He was ready to defend his native land, language, or religion whenever necessary, while at the same time—unaware of his “nationality”—“the thought of independence fills [him] with fear.”3 Jan Molenda has called this kind of national awareness that of the “private homeland,” in contrast with the next—the national— level, that of the “ideological homeland”; and Stefan Kieniewicz states: “We must not remain blind to scores of pieces of evidence [he means ­diaries] provided by peasants from various regions and sectors of partitioned Poland which are rather unanimous in indicating that in the early twentieth century a Polish peasant-patriot was rather the exception than something typical.”4 So, how to convince the agrarian population—the backbone of any national army in early twentieth-century Europe— of the necessity of leaving their families, farms, and towns threatened by war and fight for independence was an open question, too.

3  Stanisław Ossowski, O ojczyźnie i narodzie (Warsaw: PWN, 1984), cited after Jan Molenda, “The Formation of National Consciousness of the Polish Peasants and the Part They Played in the Regaining of Independence by Poland,” Acta Poloniae Historica 63–4 (1991): 121–48, here: 124. 4  Molenda, “The Formation of National Consciousness,” 125; Stefan Kieniewicz, Historyk a świadomość narodowa (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1982), cited ibid., 126. See also Molenda, Chłopi, naród, niepodległość, 34–47.

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T H E P RO S A N D C O N S O F A R M E D S T RU G G L E FOR INDEPENDENCE The third open question was which would be the best political agenda to achieve national and territorial unity. National-political activists were by and large found amongst the urban elites and the working class. But they harbored completely different conceptions of what the united Polish nation and its future state should look like, and by what means both objectives could be pushed forward. Whereas the old conservatives disqualified themselves by loyalty to the three emperors, the new political right—the National Democracy under Roman Dmowski—was convinced that the nation could only be forged in constant negotiation with Russia for Polish autonomy within the Vistula Lands, which Polish contemporaries cynically would also call Kongresówka (“Congress Poland,” with reference to the Congress of Vienna of 1815). Ukrainians, as members of a Slavic nation and “minor Poles,” could gradually be “Polonized,” while for Jews—due to their alleged “otherness”— there was no place within the Polish nation. Bearing in mind the bloody consequences of the various failed Polish uprisings of the nineteenth century, Dmowski and his followers initially rejected any plans of future armed action in order to reach independence. In contrast, their political opponents—the socialists under Józef Piłsudski—­ prepared for armed struggle. From a theoretical standpoint, their ideology contradicted the national ideal, since it propagated solidarity across the nations. The socialists would soon split along precisely those lines. Some favored a separate path of Polish socialism as Piłsudski did. Others regarded this approach as reactionary, as Polish–German socialist Rosa Luxemburg did. From a practical standpoint, their strategy of illegal and armed struggle against the ruling powers was much better suited to achieve radical changes within a short time, but in the meantime bore risks which the National Democrats abhorred.5 When in 1905 a revolution broke out at the center of the Russian Empire, its precursors and repercussions were also felt at its western fringes. At the end of 1904, the streets of the big cities of Congress Poland were filled with striking and protesting workers, and the Russian authorities reacted with utmost brutality. The socialists proved now that they were ready to fight. In the course of the year, they had built up an illegal “Combat Organization” (Organizacja Bojowa) which initially guarded party rallies and workers’ strikes and was armed only with sticks and clubs, not with guns.6 This changed with the escalation of events. In November 1904, about sixty members of the organization retaliated for a deliberately provoked assault by tsarist Cossacks on a group of several thousand unarmed men, women, and children in the Warsaw city center with gunfire. The fact that the socialists cold-bloodedly had factored in civilian casualties—churchgoers who had nothing to do with the demonstration—led the National Democrats to end all further cooperation with 5 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 53–61. 6 Pawłowski, Geneza i działalność organizacji spiskowo–bojowej PPS.

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the PPS.7 Furthermore, they started to deploy their own party troopers. In 1906 Russian authorities in Congress Poland witnessed, to their considerable surprise, how Polish left and right paramilitaries fought each other with a vengeance, occasionally causing more casualties than Russian sabers and bullets. On the streets of cities such as Łódź, where this miniature civil war produced more than 300 victims on both sides by early 1907, armed struggle as a means to reach Polish independence seemed to have been compromised for good.8 Although their political modus operandi—gain more influence in the Russian parliament (Duma), thus gradually preparing the ground for Polish autonomy—did not work out, the National Democrats profited from one long-term consequence of the revolution: From now on, nationality in Congress Poland was strictly defined by ethnic criteria. Before, it had been difficult but not impossible to change between the “nations,” for instance by converting from Catholic to Orthodox faith. The revolution had served as a giant separator and at the same time a­ ccelerator of the ethno-national turn within politics, urging the individual to take sides. Thus, to quote Malte Rolf, “many nationalist actors within the Russian Empire only developed a perspective of secession and visions of an autonomous state beyond the empire within the context of the 1905 revolution.”9 The combat units of the socialists, for their part, had proved themselves in battle against the superior non-Polish state authority and thus earned legendary fame. “To the dreamers in the PPS,” remarks Piłsudski’s biographer Peter Hetherington, “these men represented the historic idea of a Polish legion.”10 Nevertheless, the events of the Russian Revolution revealed that to fight successfully for Polish independence, the nation’s quarrelling parties had to unite their efforts and build up a professional army for the fight against a common enemy, a situation which would only materialize after the Great War. The formation of a national consciousness which would inspire the whole of Polish society was on the agenda of the Endecja from the end of the nineteenth century.11 The formation of a national army to fight for Polish independence was Piłsudski’s dream. 7 Potkański, Odrodzenie czynu niepodległościowego przez PPS, 57–70; Chodakiewicz, Muszyński, and Mysiakowska-Muszyńska (eds), Polska dla Polaków!, 2015), 66. 8  On the socialist combat organization in general see Potkański, Odrodzenie czynu niepodległościowego przez PPS, and on the struggle with other paramilitary party organizations 131–59, figures: 157. See also Hetherington, Unvanquished, 174–8. A new political history of the revolution in Congress Poland in 1905 is provided by Wiktor Marzec, Rebelia i reakcja: Rewolucja 1905 roku i plebejskie doświadczenie polityczne (Cracow: Universitas, 2016). 9  Malte Rolf, “Die Revolution von 1905 und der Wandel der Nationsbilder im Russischen Reich,” in Revolution, Krieg und die Geburt von Staat und Nation. Staatsbildung in Europa und den Amerikas 1770–1930, edited by Ewald Frie and Ute Planert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 193–210, quote: 194. 10 Hetherington, Unvanquished, 174. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Poles fought in the Napoleonic Wars in military units called “legions.” Poland had just been dismantled by the surrounding three empires, and the soldiers hoped their military support would entice France to come to Poland’s aid. See Ruth Leiserowitz, “‘. . . So That People Talk About Poland Out Loud Again in the World Today!’ (Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz): Polish Volunteers in the Napoleonic Wars,” in War Volunteering in Modern Times: From the French Revolution to the Second World War, edited by Christine G. Krüger and Sonja Levsen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 59–77. 11  Władysław Konieczny, “Formowanie i umacnianie świadomości narodowej jako elementarne zadanie polityczne Narodowej Demokracji na przełomie XIX i XX wieku,” Studia Historyczne 32, no. 4 (1989): 545–59.

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Fig. 1.  Congress Poland, 1905–7: In his portfolio The Revolutionary’s Spirit: Sketches of Bygone Years, published in 1907, the Polish painter and graphic artist Antoni Kamieński depicted a brawl between what appear to be Polish strikers and their opponents. The weapons used are clubs and knives (in front of the man lying on the ground). Obviously, no tsarist troops are involved. The caption reads: Fratricidal Combats. Kamieński spent the war years in Switzerland and returned to Poland in 1919 with the Haller Army. Antoni Kamieński, Duch-Rewolucyonista: Szkice z lat minionych 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Tygodnik Ilustrowany, 1908) (first pub. 1907). Biographical information https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Kamieński (malarz), accessed May 13, 2018. In another illustration of the same series titled “Brownings” (Brauningi), Kamieński sketched the shooting of two civilians in a narrow street in Congress Poland by what, judging by the clothes, appears to be a small gang of Polish workers. © National Library of Poland (Warsaw)

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Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921 “ P O L I S H ” A R M E D F O R M AT I O N S P R I O R TO   I N D E P E N D E N C E

The PPS’s Combat Organization—which between 1904 and 1907 mobilized 7,631 men—was the original predecessor of Polish armed units before the formation of the state army in 1918–19.12 Prior to the revolution, Piłsudski fled from Congress Poland to Galicia to evade arrest. A younger faction took over power within the PPS, steering it in the direction of autonomy rather than independence and civil disobedience rather than military action. In disgust, Piłsudski turned away from party politics. He used the following years and the freer air of the Habsburg hinterlands to systematically build up the party’s military branch under his leadership. This turn of events—initially meant to sideline him—proved providential. As Hetherington has put it pointedly, although Piłsudski never attended a military academy, from 1905 onwards he “would hold some form of command over Polish military forces until his death thirty years later.”13 Lacking the required financial means, the PPS Combat Organization did not immediately achieve fighting strength but proceeded instead to assassinate informers, officials, and police officers and to finance the revolutionary struggle by acts of armed robbery in Congress Poland.14 In the hope of a future war between the partitioning powers which would eliminate at least one of them and weaken the others, from 1909 onwards Piłsudski—unsuccessfully—tried to secure Austrian armament supply for his paramilitaries, offering the services of the PPS’s elaborate intelligence network in Russia in exchange. The Habsburg authorities declined the offer, but at least unofficially tolerated the emergence of Polish paramilitary units on their territory, which might come in handy in case of conflict with Russia.15 From 1910 onwards, several riflemen organizations were founded and trained in military schools in the Austrian partition zone.16 In 1912, over 30,000 volunteers were organized in various Polish paramilitary organizations all over Galicia, ready to join the Habsburg Army in the fight against Russia. They belonged to an assortment of parties of the prewar Polish society: the socialist-dominated Union for Active Struggle (Związek Walki Czynnej) counted 7,500 men, the Falcon (Sokół ) movement under the influence of the Endecja 7,000, the peasant-based “Bartosz Brigade” (Drużyna Bartoszowe) 7,000, and the all-party Polish Rifle Squad (Polski Drużyna Strzelców) 10,000.17 In Congress Poland, only a few Polish paramilitaries 12 Potkański, Odrodzenie czynu niepodległościowego przez PPS, 100. 13 Hetherington, Unvanquished, 177–82, quote: 182. 14 Hetherington, Unvanquished, 191–215. 15  Ryszard Świętek, “Józefa Piłsudskiego współpraca z wywiadem Austro–Węgier, 1909–1915,” Przegląd Historyczny 84, no. 2 (1993): 165–84; Ryszard Świętek, Lodowa ściana: Sekrety polityki Józefa Piłsudskiego 1904–1918 (Cracow: Platan, 1998), 695–722. For the continuation of Piłsudski’s intelligence work in 1915 see ibid., 761–84. 16 Hetherington, Unvanquished, 200–2. 17  Mieczysław B. Biskupski, “The Militarization of the Discourse of Polish Politics and the Legion Movement of the First World War,” in Armies in Exile, edited by David R. Stefancic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 71–101, here: 80; Piotr Wróbel, “The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence, 1918–1920,” in Spießer, Patrioten, Revolutionäre. Militärische Mobilisierung und gesellschaftliche

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were surprised by the outbreak of the war, while most of their comrades were either training in Galicia, on summer vacation, or had been hastily drafted into the Russian Army.18 The clandestine mobilization of parts of Polish society on the eve of the war did not unite its quarrelling political camps. On the contrary. Although—other than in the case of the party pretorians of the PPS—the volunteers’ political orientation was secondary, the Galician rifle clubs were dominated by Piłsudski’s leftists. Furthermore, they accepted members without an ethnic Polish background.19 Thus, they epitomized everything Dmowski and his rightists repudiated. Due to their anti-German stance, they favored an ethnic Polish nation with its fate linked to that of the Russian Empire. While the credo of the Polish left was participation in an armed struggle in order to reach independence, the right still had trouble dealing with this idea. Even the Endecja’s engagement in the Falcon movement did not bridge the differences. Due to its party line, many of its activists in reality saw their duty in controlling and domesticating the “Falcons” instead of preparing them for the fight.20 Only with the war in sight, did the youth organization of the National Democracy oppose Dmowski’s cautious, pro-Russian course and also trained its followers in Galicia for armed action.21 The differences between the political camps were also reflected within the “Polish Legions” when the war broke out. Although they united the volunteers from Galicia who fought within the Austrian ranks, their First Brigade was commanded by Piłsudski and dominated by his men. Meanwhile former “Falcons” rather ended up in the Second Brigade under the command of Colonel Haller who sympathized with the Endecja. The antagonism between those two military leaders would outlast the Great War. The global passage of arms boosted the prominence of the Legions into dimensions which contrasted with their actual strength and efficiency. During the first months of the war, they counted about 10,000, a year later about 15,000, and at the beginning of 1917 about 20,000 men, in comparison to the Habsburg Imperial Army which between 1914 and 1918 mobilized 3,000,000 soldiers.22 Later fame notwithstanding, their first deployment proved a total failure. On the morning of August 6, 1914, the very day Austria declared war on Russia, 144 badly equipped soldiers of Ordnung in der Neuzeit, edited by Rüdiger Bergien and Ralf Pröve (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 281–303, here: 282–3. Marek Orłowski, Generał Józef Haller, 1873–1960 (Cracow: Arcana, 2007), 43, lists 8,000 uniformed “Falcons” at the end of 1913. 18  Tomasz Nałȩcz, Polska Organizacja Wojskowa 1914–1918 (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1984), 13; Jerzy Pająk, Organizacje bojowe partii politycznych w Królestwie Polskim 1904–1911 (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1985), 203–5; Tadeusz Wawrzyński, “Raport Polskiej Organizacji Wojskowej z 9 marca 1917 roku,” Biuletyn Wojskowej Służby Archiwalnej 23 (2000): 189–225, here: 191. 19  For the Union for Active Struggle see Hetherington, Unvanquished, 216. 20  Jan Snopko, “Wpływ działaczy Ligi Narodowej na postawę ‘Sokoła’ galicyjskiego przed I wojną światową,” in Roman Dmowski i jego współpracownicy, edited by Marek Białokur (Toruń: Adam Marszałek, 2008), 465–75. 21  Joseph Hapak, “The Polish Army in France,” in Stefancic (ed.), Armies in Exile, 117–35, here: 117. 22 Jezierski, Historia Polski w liczbach, vol. 1, 159–60; Wróbel, “The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence,” 286; Julia Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge: Polnische Veteranen des Ersten Weltkriegs und ihre internationalen Kontakte, 1918–1939 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011), 26.

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Fig. 2.  August 12, 1914: Soldiers of the Polish First Cadre Company march into Kielce. © National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 1-H-159-1

the “First Cadre Company” crossed the border from Galicia to Congress Poland.23 During the next weeks, they were joined by 2,000 Galician riflemen. In addition, they expected the predominantly Polish population to hail them as liberators from the “Russian yoke” and to fill their ranks on their fifty miles’ march on the regional capital Kielce. But the inhabitants of the towns and villages which the Polish soldiers passed through were hesitant, adopting a “wait and see” attitude. Who knew when the Russian troops, which had hastily evacuated the area, would return with reinforcements? One legionnaire noted, disillusioned: “This wasn’t Cracow, this wasn’t Polish Galicia, this was Russia, and it was populated by a tribe that spoke Polish but felt Russian . . . [,] look[ing] with complete indifference at these madmen, who had not been asked to come here.”24 The commander of the unit, twenty-three-year-old Tadeusz Kasprzycki, registered the first few hundred peasant volunteers as late as September 6, 1914, only one week before the hasty retreat of all Polish and Austrian forces which faced a Russian counter-attack. In Piłsudski’s plans, the Kielce region had figured as the “organizational base of the Polish armed forces”25 (contrary to prewar Austrian orders, which 23  The first Polish reconnaissance unit had even crossed the border already on August 3, 1914, Hetherington, Unvanquished, 254. 24 Kauffman, Elusive Alliance, 68. 25 Tadeusz Kasprzycki, Kartki z dziennika oficera I brygady: Ze szkicami, mapami i ilustracjami (Komorów: Antyk, 2010), 55 (entry Kielce, September 6–8, 1914). On August 27, he wrote: “When recruits arrive—contacts with the ‘civilian population’ grow livelier,” ibid., 49.

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had limited his men’s task to only reconnoiter along the Russian side of the border). It was a gross miscalculation. The rural population of southern Congress Poland was less than enthusiastic about a motley crew of Polish soldiers under a “red” commander with a terrorist past who sided with the Austrians and Germans, commonly more despised in the region than the Russians. From a military perspective, the Polish “invasion” of Congress Poland was of no significance whatsoever.26 What probably also made them equally suspicious to the local people was the fact that the Polish Legions were no socially or nationally homogeneous force. Dominated by Poles, of course, within their ranks fought also soldiers from various other ethnic groups of Central Europe, mainly Jews, followed by Hungarians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Germans, and even—from beyond the region—some Armenians.27 Amongst them, a certain euphoria and the dedication to the Polish cause levelled ethnic differences: “We did not distinguish between Germans, Poles, Jews, or any other nationalities,” recalled Jan Mazurkiewicz. “There was no difference between friends who were believers or atheists. We felt like true brothers.”28 Class differences were almost irrelevant as well.29 Just as the Polish Legions had united many of the paramilitaries in Galicia, the Polish Military Organization (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa) provided the fusion for those in Congress Poland. During the first year of the war, it had to act clandestinely, always risking arrest by the tsarist police, and concentrated mainly on partisan activity behind the Russian troops on the one hand and on the military education of the youth on the other.30 This tactic was not changed much when, in 1915, the Central Powers drove the Russian troops out of Congress Poland. Although its theatre of operation was now occupied by the foreign powers the Legions fought for, the Polish Military Organization preferred to stay in the ­shadows, and over the course of the war became something like their sabotage and intelligence branch, loyal to Piłsudski.31 By 1918, it had assembled about 20,000 soldiers, half of them—finally—from the rural sector.32 As the example of the Polish Military Organization shows, the relation between the Central Powers and Polish soldiers fighting together against Russia was a complicated matter for both sides. The Germans and Austrians were fully aware that the Poles had their own agenda: an independent Polish state, which they were 26 Hetherington, Unvanquished, 251–64; Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 75. 27  Marek Gałęzowski, “Żydzi w Legionach,” UWAŻAM RZE/Special Issue HISTORIA no. 7 (2012): 32–5. The about 600 Jewish legionaries accounted for 3–4 percent of the troop strength. For more on Jews in the ranks of the Polish Legions see Marek Gałęzowski, Na wzór Berka Joselewicza: Żołnierze i oficerowie pochodzenia żydowskiego w Legionach Polskich (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2010); on Hungarians see Endre László Varga, “Węgrzy w Legionach Polskich w latach 1914–1918,” Przegląd Historyczno–Wojskowy 9, no. 5 (2008): 27–58 and his various articles on related archival material in the 2015 and 2016 volumes of Niepodległość i Pamięc. 28  Jan Mazurkiewicz, Los żołnierza (Gdańsk: Zrzeszenie Kaszubsko-Pomorskie, 1975), 30. 29 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 76. 30 Nałȩcz, Polska Organizacja Wojskowa 1914–1918; Kauffman, Elusive Alliance, 27. 31 Nałȩcz, Polska Organizacja Wojskowa 1914–1918, 38–79. 32 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 90. Reports of the Polish Military Organization from southern Congress Poland have been published by Jerzy Z. Pająk and Przemysław Wzorek (eds), Raporty Polskiej Organizacji Wojskowej: Okręg Kielecki i Radomski, 1915–1918 (Kielce: Akademia Świętokrzyska, 2006).

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unwilling to grant them. The Polish commanders were cautious to not be associated too much with the Germans and Austrians who had replaced Russian rule in former Congress Poland. Due to a harsh occupation policy, the Central Powers themselves became increasingly unpopular amongst its predominantly Polish ­population. Occasionally they even detained members of the Polish Military Organization who also occasionally took up arms against the new occupiers.33 After two years of fighting for the Central Powers, Piłsudski got tired of their empty promises for future Polish statehood. In 1916, the Legions left the Austrian forces. In 1917, their full deployment in the German Army was inhibited because the majority of the legionnaires, amongst them Piłsudski, refused to swear obedience to the German emperor, an oath which they had taken on the Austrian emperor without hesitation in 1914. But since then, their engagement and heavy losses had not paid off for the Legions: the “Kingdom of Poland” which the Germans had proclaimed at the end of 1916 was a mere puppet state, and the obvious goal to attract masses of Polish volunteers from the occupied territories for the German war effort was not achieved. By changing his tactics, Piłsudski turned himself and his men from collaborators to martyrs. As was to be expected, they were interned or drafted into the Habsburg Army, and Piłsudski awaited patiently the end of the war under German house arrest in the fortress of Magdeburg.34 To further complicate things, from the very beginning of the war, the tsar had offered the vision of a united autonomous Polish state within the Russian Empire.35 That was what the National Democrats under Dmowski’s aegis had claimed and worked for for more than a decade. But to their disadvantage, the training of Polish paramilitaries in prewar Congress Poland had been out of the question. Their Falcon organization had recruited and trained its men in Austrian Galicia, which now lay on the other side of the frontline, many of them having joined the Legions or the Habsburg Army. The Russian authorities for their part mistrusted the formation of genuine Polish units within the tsarist army. In late 1914 the Endecja hastily formed the Puławy Legion (Legion Puławski), whose roughly 2,000 underequipped volunteers wore uniforms with Polish emblems and used Polish as the language of command. The unit saw some of the worst battles of 1915 and lost 90 percent of its men. Many of those who weren’t dead, wounded, or lost were integrated into the Polish Rifle Brigade (Brygada Strzelców Polskich), which was organized strictly according to Russian Army regulations, corresponded in Russian, but commanded its 8,000 men (April 1916) in Polish.36 33 Kauffman, Elusive Alliance, 48–9, 69, 207–8. 34 Kauffman, Elusive Alliance, 72–103. From the German perspective Volkmann, Die Polenpolitik des Kaiserreichs, 303–29. 35 Kauffman, Elusive Alliance, 26. The proclamation was issued by Grand Duke Nicholas, Commander in Chief of the Russian Army, on August 14, 1914. It is published in Paul Latawski (ed.), The Reconstruction of Poland, 1914–23 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 185–96. 36  Bednarski, “Legion Puławski”; Bagiński, Wojsko polskie na wschodzie 1914–1920, 43–54; Lesław Dudek, “Polish Military Formations in World War I,” in East Central European Society in World War I, edited by Béla K. Király, Nándor F. Dreisziger, and Albert A. Nofi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 454–70, here: 463; Jacek Woyno, “Materiały archiwalne do dziejów polskich formacji wojskowych w Rosji (1914–1920),” Biuletyn Wojskowej Służby Archiwalnej 25 (2002), 160–88.

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Ironically, in 1917 leaders of the Polish left and right abruptly “exchanged” their alliances. The socialists orientated themselves towards Russia now, where a bourgeois revolution was succeeded by a Bolshevik one which altered the political situation more to their liking. With Piłsudski’s internment in Germany, his faction—which was also left-orientated, but promoted Polish nationalism—cancelled its alliance with the Central Powers, counting on the clandestine Military Organization as a loyal paramilitary strike force on Polish territory when the time for action had come. Dmowski lobbied in Western Europe for the Polish cause, headed the Polish National Committee—the pre-governmental institution recognized by the Allies as the representative of Polish affairs—in Paris and prepared the formation of a volunteer army of Polish expats and war veterans in France. By now, he had given up all hope of any future support from Russia.37 For want of options, his peers in Warsaw supported the Regency Council of the puppet Kingdom of Poland, hoping for the German influence in Central Europe to end, the sooner the better.38 The Regency Council for its part looked desperately for Polish troops to ­mobilize as the nucleus of a Polish Military Force (Polska Siła Zbrojna or, as the German occupants called it, Polnische Wehrmacht).39 In the summer of 1917, when the February Revolution had abolished the imperial government in Russia, a “First Polish Corps” under the command of General Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki was formed out of Polish soldiers who had either served before in the tsarist army— many of them in the Polish Rifle Brigade—or had been made prisoners by it. By early 1918, it was able to assemble up to 30,000 men. Along the same lines the “Second Polish Corps” (8,000 men) to the south of Ukraine and the “Third Polish Corps” (3,000 men) in central Ukraine were created. All three corps declared their loyalty to the Regency Council.40 But with Russia plunged into the turmoil of civil war after the October Revolution, the balance of power had changed dramatically in the east. In March 1918, the Soviet government found itself compelled to sign a peace with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk. All of a sudden, German and Austrian troops controlled the better part of Central and Eastern Europe. They saw no benefit in the existence of Polish military units in their sphere of influence, and had them disarmed. Nevertheless, these masses of Polish soldiers proved essential for the construction of the Polish Army when the Central Powers’ reign in the east imploded a few months later as a result of their total defeat at the Western Front.41 37  In his “Memorandum on the Territory of the Polish State” of March 26, 1917, Dmowski stated: “To-day, in Poland nobody and in Russia only a rather small minority, believes in the settlement of Poland’s future by Russia”; published in Latawski (ed.), The Reconstruction of Poland, 197. 38 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 90; Keya Thakur-Smolarek, Der Erste Weltkrieg und die polnische Frage: Die Interpretationen des Kriegsgeschehens durch die zeitgenössischen polnischen Wortführer (Münster: Lit, 2014), 499–500. 39  Zbigniew Grabowski, “Polska Siła Zbrojna, 1917–1918,” Przegląd Historyczno–Wojskowy 15, no. 1 (2014): 35–66. 40 Kauffman, Elusive Alliance, 191–206; Lech Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921 (Warsaw: Neriton, 2006), 17–20. 41 Kauffman, Elusive Alliance, 206; Wróbel, “The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence,” 288–9.

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The Polish Military Force in Russia, however, counted only 4,500 soldiers in its ranks on the eve of independence.42 The Second Polish Corps had been commanded by a man whose biography uniquely embodies the vagaries of Polish military engagement before independence. Born in 1873 near Cracow into a family with German roots, Józef Haller served in the Habsburg Army before the war, and after the 1905 Revolution was instrumental in mobilizing the Falcons as the Endecja’s paramilitary organization in Galicia. When war broke out, he joined the Legions and commanded the Second Brigade (while Piłsudski commanded the famous First). Both commanders’ differing political views and the contrasting loyalties of their men came to light when in 1917 Haller pledged loyalty to and went on fighting for the Germans. In protest at the protectorate treaty of Brest-Litovsk between the Central Powers and the newly formed Ukrainian National Republic (Ukraïns’ka Narodnia Respublika) which assigned territories reclaimed by Poles to Ukraine, Haller deserted in early 1918 with his whole unit to embattled Russia where it became the Second Polish Corps.43 The sudden liquidation of his corps by the Germans was not the end of Haller’s military career. He escaped through Murmansk and reached Western Europe in July 1918. Here, he took command of the freshly built “Polish Army in France” which by that time united under its wings 17,000 Polish volunteers from all over the world. Most of the men were from France and the United States and from the now liberated Central Powers’ prisoner-of-war camps, eager to fight for an independent Polish state which seemed only at an arm’s length towards the Great War’s end. Within half a year, their figure would quadruple, making the “Blue” (in reference to their French uniforms) or “Haller Army” the future backbone of the Polish national forces and a major player in the Central European Civil War.44 The main question for now was how to bring these masses to embattled Poland. Due to their training and the commitment to the cause they were fighting for, the Polish units sometimes displayed a higher morale than their comrades in the imperial armies.45 Nevertheless, their symbolic value and often heroic war record notwithstanding, their deployment had no significant influence on the outcome 42  Grabowski, “Polska Siła Zbrojna, 1917–1918,” 60. More on the history of Polish formations in Russia 1914–18 can be found in: Bagiński, Wojsko polskie na wschodzie 1914–1920; Eugeniusz de Henning-Michaelis, W zamęcie: Przyczynek do historji formacyj polskich w Rosji, 1917–1918 (Warsaw: Gebethner & Wolff, 1929); Wacław Lipiński, Walka zbrojna o niepodległość Polski 1905–1918 (Warsaw: Volumen, 1990) (first pub. 1935), 229–365; Mieczysław Wrzosek, “Z dziejów polskiego ruchu wojskowego w Rosji po obaleniu caratu (marzec maj 1917),” in Polonia w walce o niepodleglość i granice Rzeczypospolitiej, 1914–1921, edited by Adam Koseski (Warsaw: Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczna Pułtusk, 1999), 114–34; Krajewski, “Nie tylko Dowborczycy.” 43 Orłowski, Generał Józef Haller, 56–206. See also the three-volume memoirs of Jan Rostworowski on his time with the Second Brigade under General Haller: Stanisław Jan Rostworowski, Nie tylko Pierwsza Brygada, 3 vols (Warszawa: Egross, 1993). Vol. 1: Z legionami na bój; vol. 2: Przed i po kryzysie przysięgowym; vol. 3: W adiutanturze Rady Regencyjnej. The treaty was signed in Brest-Litovsk as well, almost one month before the peace treaty between the Central Powers and Soviet Russia. That is why both contracts are often mixed up as “The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.” 44 Orłowski, Generał Józef Haller, 149–264. On the day of the armistices, the “Blue Army” counted almost 20,000 volunteers. Figures for July 1918: Hapak, “The Polish Army in France,” 132–3. 45 Hetherington, Unvanquished, 275–9.

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of the war. All in all, the approximately 100,000 soldiers who were mobilized in genuine Polish units prior to independence made up little more than 3 percent of the other Polish soldiers who had dispersed over the three imperial armies. Their diverse and discordant lot would have easily fit into the present world’s largest football stadium. POLES FIGHTING UNDER IMPERIAL FLAGS As we have seen, at the eve of the Great War and during its course, the formation of genuine Polish paramilitary or military units was something which did not just happen, nor was recruiting routine. Mainly activists with certain convictions, aims, and desires toiled to build them up and fill their ranks. It was one thing to become a member first of a rifle organization or the Falcons in Galicia in 1913 and consequently of the Polish Legions, and quite another to just sit and wait for a draft card from the Habsburg Army in 1914 or 1915, hoping it would never arrive. Of course such Polish units were surrounded by a magnetic field of national symbolism and vestiges of a glorious past and the kind of future which would also attract all sorts of tag-alongs and soldiers of fortune. Towards war’s end, things changed. With the three empires facing revolution or defeat, their cohesive forces vanished. At the same time, for Poles who still served in the imperial armies, the erection of an independent state suddenly became a possibility instead of a suicide mission or distant dream, and the diverse patriotic combat forces recorded increasing popularity and inrush of recruits. Be that as it may—this motley assortment of farraginous forces which all for themselves claimed to represent the Polish nation in reality mattered little before independence was achieved. Over the course of the Great War, the overwhelming majority of Polish-speaking men able to carry arms were peasants who were drafted into the imperial armies. And although they shared, as the introduction to this chapter has shown, a “primitive” form of national identity—the attachment to their language, religion, towns, and micro-culture—their attitude towards the formation of nation states after the Great War was hard to predict. In the first days of the war, about 300,000 Poles served in the armies of the partitioning powers, but this number would grow rapidly. All in all, ten times more—over three million—would fight at the various fronts of the First World War: 1.2 million for Russia, 1.4 million for Austria–Hungary, and 800,000 for Germany.46 Although several hundred thousand Polish soldiers of the Central Powers received their baptism of fire at the Western Front, it was at the Eastern Front where the 46 Kaczmarek, Polacy w armii kajzera na frontach pierwszej wojny światowej, 86. Other authors’ estimates are lower: Dudek, “Polish Military Formations in World War I,” 455, gives the figure of 2,225,000 men, but with the limitation “from the territories that constituted Poland after 1921”; Janusz Odziemkowski, “Naród—państwo—armia in statu nascendi,” Przegląd Historyczno–Wojskowy 9, no. 5 (2008): 73–84, here: 74, gives 70 percent of 3.3–3.4 million recruited from the former “Polish lands,” which equals 2.1 million.

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large bulk of Poles were fighting, with a high probability of fratricide.47 Although available statistics must be taken with a grain of salt, the Polish death toll on all fronts was staggeringly high: If historians are approximately right that between 450,000 and 800,000 Polish soldiers died and one million were wounded up to 1918, this means that only every second Polish soldier emerged from the fires of the Great War unscathed.48 For many of them, the fighting did not end in 1918. Conditions for the emergence of any form of organized Polish patriotism within the armed forces of the three partitioning powers had been anything but favorable in the decades preceding the war. Imperial Russia mistrusted its recruits of other ethnic affiliations. Polish soldiers serving in the Russian Army were not, as a rule, stationed within the borders of Congress Poland, but in Central Asia and the Russian Far East, whereas non-Polish soldiers from all over Russia filled the barracks and roamed the streets of Warsaw.49 Similarly, the “distribution system” (Verstreuungssystem) of the Prussian Army—established mainly to urge non-German recruits (Poles, Danes, and others) to master the official military language—required foreign soldiers in peacetime to serve in areas where German was spoken. In addition, the Schlieffen-Plan—which foresaw the concentration of German forces at the Western Front—made sure that most Polish soldiers in Prussian uniforms were far from home when the war broke out.50 Even the Habsburg Army—which indeed featured some ethnically homogeneous military units—did not encourage genuine Polish units and predominantly represented the ethnic patchwork of the monarchy: “German Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Gypsies and Polish Jews, Dalmatians and Hungarians sat in groups . . .,” a young artillerist remarked during his arrival in the fortress of Terezín in 1882. “A mixture of languages filled the halls.”51 Since the Habsburg Empire in the late nineteenth century was the home of more than a dozen nationalities, its army’s major purpose was to “integrate different ethnic groups through common discipline and education and strengthen their loyalty towards the imperial dynasty” rather than to enhance ethnic self-awareness.52 47  Piotr Szlanta, “Unter dem sinkenden Stern der Habsburger: Die Osterfahrung polnischer k.u.k. Soldaten,” in Jenseits des Schützengrabens. Der Erste Weltkrieg im Osten: Erfahrung—Wahrnehmung— Kontext, edited by Bernhard Bachinger and Wolfram Dornik (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2013), 139–57, here: 143–5. 48 Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge, 23; Eichenberg, “The Dark Side of Independence,” 235; Wróbel, “The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence,” 284; Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 14. 49  Werner Benecke, “Die Allgemeine Wehrpflicht in Russland: Zwischen militärischem Anspruch und zivilen Interessen,” Journal of Modern European History 5, no. 2 (2007): 244–63, here: 259–60. 50  Jens Boysen, “Nationale Minderheiten (Polen und Elsass-Lothringer) im preußisch-deutschen Heer während des Ersten Weltkriegs 1914–1918,” in Über den Weltkrieg hinaus. Kriegserfahrungen in Ostmitteleuropa 1914–1921, edited by Joachim Tauber (Lüneburg: Nordost-Institut, 2009), 108–36, here: 110–13. 51  Christa Hämmerle, “Ein gescheitertes Experiment?: Die Allgemeine Wehrpflicht in der multiethnischen Armee der Habsburgermonarchie,” Journal of Modern European History 5, no. 2 (2007): 222–43, 232, quote: 241. 52  Jörn Leonhard and Ulrike von Hirschhausen, “Does the Empire Strike Back?: The Model of the Nation in Arms as a Challenge for Multi-Ethnic Empires in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of Modern European History 5, no. 2 (2007): 194–221, here: 209.

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One might expect that soldiers of ethnic minorities in general did serve less willingly in the armies of the three European land empires during the First World War than those of the respective majorities, but there is no evidence for that. As we have already seen, the age of empires was transitioning to the age of nation states. True enough, at the turn of the century ethnic animosities—together with class, religious, and other antagonisms—had entered also the multinational armies of Russia, Prussia, and especially Austria–Hungary,53 and the war served as an ­accelerator of national emancipation. But, contrary to many a persistent national postwar myth, the imperial subjects’ loyalty to the emperor was not necessarily questioned from its very start. Many of them hoped for more national autonomy within a victorious empire as reward for their devoted military service.54 In Galicia, anti-Russian feelings and the hope of a quick Habsburg victory united the population regardless of ethnic and party differences at war’s beginning. The Poles were particularly excited about the prospect of a Habsburg conquest of the Russian partition zone, where so many of their co-nationals lived.55 But the Russian government’s early announcement of a future Polish state under its wings likewise evoked wide enthusiasm over there. “It seems as if at a moment all of Congress Poland had forgotten about the century-long insults, the harsh suffering, the whole tragedy of the Russian partition—and flies oblivious into Russia’s ‘brotherly’ arms, shrewdly opened because it needs us,” noted landowner Łucja Dunin-Borkowska Hornowska.56 Loyalty to the tsar was the rule rather than the exception amongst the Polish population in the countryside, as the example of the Legions’ assignment in the Kielce area proved at about the same time. In the Prussian partition zone, Poles watched the outbreak of hostilities with more mixed feelings, but here, too, loyalty to the German emperor prevailed, and the Polish recruits enlisted without protest.57 Ethnic tensions within the armies, though, were exacerbated by prejudices of superiors against the rank and file whom they regarded as “alien,” by their ­unequal treatment, and by the use of the titular language for military communication which many of them poorly understood, if at all.58 Nevertheless, at the turn of the century, a behavior best described as “pragmatic adaption” was characteristic for 53  Hämmerle, “Ein gescheitertes Experiment?” 54  Jerzy Holzer and Jan Molenda, Polska w pierwszej wojnie światowej (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1967), 50–63; Michał Baczkowski, “Żolnierze polscy w armii austro–węgierskiej w przededniu odzyskania przez Polskę niepodległości,” Studia Historyczne 52 (2009): 19–32, here: 26–7. 55  Jerzy Z. Pająk, Od autonomii do niepodległości: Kształtowanie się postaw politycznych i narodowych społeczenstwa Galicji w warunkach Wielkiej Wojny, 1914–1918 (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jana Kochanowskiego, 2012), 43, 55–63. 56  Cited from Agnieszka Dębska (ed.), Polski wir i wojny: 1914–1918 (Warsaw: Ośrodek Karta, 2014), 56. 57  Watson, “Fighting for Another Fatherland,” 1142–3. 58  Rudolf Kučera, “Entbehrung und Nationalismus: Die Erfahrung tschechischer Soldaten der österreichisch–ungarischen Armee 1914–1918,” in Bachinger and Dornik (eds), Jenseits des Schützengrabens, 121–37; Kaczmarek, Polacy w armii kajzera na frontach pierwszej wojny światowej, 63–6, 90–2; Tamara Scheer, “Habsburg Languages at War: ‘The Linguistic Confusion at the Tower of Babel Couldn’t Have Been Much Worse’,” in Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War, edited by Julian Walker and Christophe Declercq (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 62–78.

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most minority recruits, an attitude that outlasted the outbreak of hostilities and endured for the better part of the war, before defeat loomed, patience wore out, and desertions increased.59 Although in Vienna, Berlin, and Petrograd60 military leaders occasionally worried about the reliability of their respective minority troops, those all had sworn an oath to their emperor when called to the colors, and by and large stayed loyal until war’s end, even when fighting against soldiers of similar ethnic origin.61 At the Carpathian Front in 1915, where two Habsburg regiments mainly consisting of Czech soldiers almost in a body capitulated to the Russians, two myths were born: one overestimating their commitment to the Czech national cause, and the other questioning their loyalty towards the empire. In reality, the units had surrendered out of desperation, having been abandoned by their army.62 The common war experience established additional ties surmounting national boundaries within the multi-ethnic armies.63 Due to the popularity of their imperial government—at least in comparison to the other partition zones—Polish soldiers in the Habsburg Army were arguably the most loyal to their empire. As a matter of fact, within the officer corps, it was almost impossible to tell a Pole from an Austrian without reference to surname and command of language.64 We know next to nothing about the specific attitude and war experience of those more than one million Poles who were dispersed all over the Russian Army.65 Within the Prussian Army, however, origin made a difference, but did not exclude loyalty to the emperor. Rather it determined its strength: Polishspeaking soldiers from Mazuria and Silesia showed the most patriotic commitment 59  See Rok Stergar, “Die Bevölkerung der slowenischen Länder und die allgemeine Wehrpflicht,” in Glanz—Gewalt—Gehorsam. Militär und Gesellschaft in der Habsburgermonarchie (1800 bis 1918), edited by Laurence Cole, Christa Hämmerle, and Martin Scheutz (Essen: Klartext, 2011), who uses the term exemplarily for the Slovak region of the Habsburg monarchy. 60  “St. Petersburg” had been changed to “Petrograd” in 1914 because to Russian ears it sounded too German; see Paul R. Magocsi, A History of Ukraine: The Land and its Peoples (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 498. 61  Andrzej Chwalba, Samobójstwo Europy: Wielka wojna 1914–1918 (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2015), 581–3. 62  Richard Lein, Pflichterfüllung oder Hochverrat?: Die tschechischen Soldaten Österreich-Ungarns im Ersten Weltkrieg (Münster: Lit, 2011); Ivan Šedivý, Cesi, ceské zeme a velká válka, 1914–1918 (Prague: Lidové Noviny, 2014), 81–2. Thanks to Piotr Majewski for this information. 63 Kaczmarek, Polacy w armii kajzera na frontach pierwszej wojny światowej, 427, citing Mazurkiewicz, Los żołnierza, 29–30. 64  Szlanta, “Unter dem sinkenden Stern der Habsburger”; Jan Rydel, W służbie Cesarza i Króla: Generałowie i admirałowie narodowości polskiej w siłach zbrojnych Austro–Węgier w latach 1868–1918 (Cracow: Księgarnia Akademicka, 2001), 133–52, 175–6; more generally István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Marian Zgórniak, “Polacy w armii monarchii austro–węgierskiej w czasie I wojny światowej,” Studia i Materiały do Historii Wojskowości 30 (1988): 227–46 and Baczkowski, “Żolnierze polscy w armii austro–węgierskiej” omit the question of Polish soldiers’ and officers’ attitudes towards the Habsburg Empire during the Great War. 65  Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 76. Stanisław Rakusa-Suszczewski and Hubert Szaniawski, “O Polakach w armii carskiej Rosji,” Nauka XIII, no. 4 (2006): 101–10 and Mariusz Kulik, Polacy wśród wyższych oficerów armii rosyjskiej Warszawskiego Okręgu Wojskowego (1865–1914) (Warsaw: Neriton, 2008) do not touch on the issue.

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and dedication to the German war effort, whereas their fellows from the Poznań area—where ethnic strife between Poles and Germans before the war had been most intense—were more hostile towards their government’s army and more often deserted its ranks. Nevertheless, from the German perspective, the Polish minority featured “an operationally satisfactory level of compliance.”66 This does not mean, however, that Polish soldiers considered their war experience between 1914 and 1918 within imperial armies as something particularly positive. It means that they obeyed orders and tried to survive, as any soldiers would normally do—and did, in all armies and on all fronts of the Great War. As Julia Eichenberg has emphasized, from the ordinary Polish soldier’s perspective, his service within the imperial armies—at least before the war ended in revolution and civil war—was first and foremost determined by three factors: coercion, consent, and endurance. First, he was drafted; then, he fought to protect his home and family threatened by the enemy, and developed bonds with his fellow soldiers, often regardless of their ethnic or political background; finally, he adapted as well as he could to the war scenario in order to survive. In the constrained world of soldierly deployment, mainly shaped by his own personal experience, not much room was left for personal nationalist zealotism.67 But the cohesion of comradery and military discipline was not to last forever. Erosive tendencies were at work from the outbreak of the war. For most peasant soldiers in the tsar’s service, the Great War was the time of great disillusionment. The largely unprofessional way the war was led, the unprecedented suffering and dying, the use of thousands of men as mere cannon fodder, the toadyism and the dilettantism of the military brass, and the notorious under-provision of the army gradually alienated the troops from their government. The peasants realized that their lot did not matter much in Russian society, and it was their rebellion that finally toppled the empire.68 The policy of torched earth and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Poles which Russian troops implemented during their retreat from the Western Territory in 1914–15 was not apt to increase the popularity of the tsarist regime amongst Polish soldiers who originated from there either. 66  Watson, “Fighting for Another Fatherland,” quote: 1165; Jens Boysen, “Simultaneity of the Un-simultaneous: German Social Revolution and Polish National Revolution,” in Germany 1916–23: A Revolution in Context, edited by Klaus Weinhauer, Anthony McElligott, and Kirsten Heinsohn (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015), 229–50, here: 234–8. 67 Julia Eichenberg, “Consent, Coercion and Endurance in Eastern Europe: Poland and the Fluidity of War Experiences,” in Böhler, Borodziej, and von Puttkamer (eds), Legacies of Violence, 235–58, referring to Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). See also David Monger, Sarah Murray, and Katie Pickles (eds), Endurance and the First World War: Experiences and Legacies in New Zealand and Australia (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014); André Loez, “Between Acceptance and Refusal: Soldiers’ Attitudes Towards War,” in 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, et al. (2014–18), https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/between_ acceptance_and_refusal_-_soldiers_attitudes_towards_war, accessed May 14, 2018. 68  Jörg Baberowski, “Der Anfang vom Ende: Das Zarenreich im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Osteuropa 64, 2–4 (2014): 7–20.

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Although many of the major battles of the Great War were fought on Russian terrain, the tsarist army treated its ethnically mixed borderlands like occupied territory.69 The destruction of their homelands, the experiences endured during some of the worst battles of the Eastern Front and of captivity also changed the Polish peasants’ attitudes in the other imperial armies, and prepared them for Molenda’s second level of nationalism: that of the “ideological homeland.” Here, “the propaganda for independence” met with “a stronger response with the peasants” towards war’s end and the inception of the Second Polish Republic. As we will see, though, it is premature to conclude that their “common attitude towards the State was in 1920 very much the same as that of other social groups.”70 What we can say for sure is that the empires had lost their battles and their men, who now were looking for better options. With the Habsburg star sinking in the first half of the year 1918, approximately 35,000 Polish deserters from the army were arrested in Galicia alone, and many more managed to escape.71 In the Prussian case, surprisingly, Polish soldiers in 1918 proved sometimes even more reliable than their German comrades who were infected with the revolutionary fever.72 The Russian Imperial Army showed signs of erosion already in 1915 as a result of disastrous defeats, when its Third Army in Galicia lost half a million soldiers as “deserters, prisoners or missing in action,” reducing it to the size of a “harmless mob.” In 1917, discipline declined drastically and desertion intensified. But these phenomena were linked to the performance (or better, the lack of it) of the Russian military as a whole, and they affected all soldiers within its ranks, not only those of a certain ethnic group.73 All in all, war-weariness, disintegration, and large-scale insubordination were elements which entered the armies of the Great Powers only in the wake of revolution, defeat, and imperial demise in 1917. Therefore, these sociopolitical processes rather surmounted than established national boundaries. When the armies of future Central European states materialized, they formed reservoirs for ethnically homogeneous groups which, demobilized or deserted, joined them to fight for a specific national cause instead of for a multinational empire. For the Poles fighting in the Great War, it was an interim phase on the road to independence, but only a few of them had that goal in mind when joining the forces in 1914. This ­transformation process was not only at work within the imperial armies. As recent research has convincingly demonstrated, the harsh rule of Russian, German, and Austrian military authorities alienated the Polish civil population and made it increasingly receptive 69  Daniel William Graf, “The Reign of the Generals: Military Government in Western Russia, 1914–1915” (PhD, University of Nebraska, 1972); Joshua A. Sanborn, “The Russian Empire,” in Empires at War, 1911–1923, edited by Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 91–108, here: 93–104. 70  Molenda, “The Formation of National Consciousness,” 138–48, quote: 140, 147. 71  Manfried Rauchensteiner, Der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Habsburgermonarchie 1914–1918 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2013), 1003; Szlanta, “Unter dem sinkenden Stern der Habsburger,” 149–51. 72  Watson, “Fighting for Another Fatherland.” Cases of mutinying Polish soldiers are reported as well, but were rather the exception, see for example Watson, Enduring the Great War, 193. 73  Joshua A. Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 69, 206, quote: 69.

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to a practicable national alternative. The Polish occupation experience between 1914 and 1918 by no means compared to that of 1939–45. But despite contrary declarations of intent, all three empires had missed the chance to grant their Polish minorities full autonomy within their realms before the Great War, and during its course they regarded them rather as a reservoir of material or human resources.74 Thus, the national consciousness of the predominantly peasant Polish ­population from the three partition zones was formed by factors from “outside” rather than from “inside.” It was more the agency of “the other”—the enemy or the occupant— which decided the degree of their devotion to the national cause. Their immediate experience of war and occupation was arguably more formative than the propaganda efforts of their various political activists. BUILDING THE POLISH ARMY At the end of 1918, the vagaries of war had changed everything. Imperial rule in Central Europe had come to an end. Germany and Austria no longer ruled Eastern Europe. Actually, they did not even rule at home. Like Russia, they faced revolution and violent upheaval.75 In the summer of 1917, the United States of America had joined the Allies and sent fresh troops and supplies to France. With the troops of the Central Powers suffering from malnutrition and severely diminished by the Spanish flu, the frontlines in Western, Southern, and Southeastern Europe collapsed.76 To the east, the German and Austrian occupying forces still stood unvanquished in a military buffer zone, a “grotesquely elongated rump, over 1,000 miles long and in places only fifty miles wide” which spanned from the Baltic to the Black Sea.77 This rump separated Central Europe from the territory which experienced the civil war between the Red Army of the revolutionary Bolshevik government and the “Whites,” a hodgepodge of movements, political parties, and military circles of the old imperial society whose unifying goal was the abolition of Soviet rule and the restoration of prewar law and order in their country.78 But in late 1918, the German Eastern Army (Ostheer) was no reliable bulwark against the menace of the “Red hordes” either. On the contrary, its half-million ill-trained, overaged, and war-sick men were often responsive to revolutionary propaganda, and thus constituted a potential threat to Germany themselves.79 74 Stempin, Próba “moralnego podboju” Polski; Kauffman, Elusive Alliance; Stephan Lehnstaedt, Imperiale Polenpolitik in den Weltkriegen: Eine vergleichende Studie zu den Mittelmächten und zu NS-Deutschland (Osnabrück: fibre, 2017). 75  Mark Jones, Founding Weimar: Violence and the German Revolution of 1918–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Rudolf Kučera, “Exploiting Victory, Sinking into Defeat: Uniformed Violence in the Creation of the New Order in Czechoslovakia and Austria, 1918–1922,” Journal of Modern European History 88, no. 4 (2016): 827–55. 76 Gerwarth, The Vanquished, 48–65. 77 Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 24. 78 Gerwarth, The Vanquished, 77–100. 79  Dennis Showalter, “The Homesick Revolutionaries. Soldiers’ Councils and Newspaper: Propaganda in German-Occupied Eastern Europe, 1918–1919,” Canadian Journal of History 11, no. 1 (1976): 69–88, here: 69–70.

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In between lay former Congress Poland, where the situation had reached boiling point. The German military administration was a mere shadow of its former self, and the conservative Polish puppet regime had no backing among the masses. They longed for independence in combination with social (the workers) and land (the peasants) reform. Revolution was an option the Polish right wanted to exclude for good, all the more because this time the odds for its success were much better than in 1905. Back then, the tsarist administration had full control over its police and military forces, but by autumn of 1918, things in Poland had got out of hand. In this critical situation, the leading Polish politicians within former Congress Poland arranged with the German authorities for the release of their arch-opponent, Piłsudski, from his Magdeburg prison. Due to his unquestioned military authority, and since he stood for an independent leftish, but not socialist, Polish republic, his immediate return to Warsaw seemed the only way to prevent revolution, to restore security and order within the emerging Polish state, and to organize the controlled demobilization and evacuation of the German Eastern Army. After one year of exile, the legendary “Commander” (Komendant), as his legionnaires liked to call him, returned to Warsaw, cheerfully welcomed by the crowds as future Chief of State. In mid-November 1918, he took over military and political power in Warsaw and disbanded the German garrison.80 But it is one thing to assume authority; it is quite another to implement it, especially in a devastated country still packed with foreign and domestic armed formations of various affiliations, its frontiers contested, and its political leadership in strife. The disarmament of the German troops in Poland proceeded by and large without major incidents. The only exception was the Podlachia region of eastern Poland, where German troops conducted several attacks on Polish Military Organization units, accompanied by acts of arson, murder, and pillage. They were probably incited by a mixture of motives: the fear that the preceding years of harsh occupation might lead to acts of revenge by the local population or military; the desire to keep things firmly in hand as an inferior foreign force in enemy territory; decline of discipline; and the prospect of personal gain. After final negotiations in Warsaw in December 1918, the evacuation of the last German units was virtually completed without further incidents by the end of February the following year.81 The Polish heartland finally was—for the first time in over a century—not occupied by foreign troops.82 The major task ahead of the new Polish government now was to build up 80 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 92–6. 81  Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt des Heeres (ed.), Die Rückführung des Ostheeres (Berlin: Mittler, 1936). 82 Łossowski, Jak Feniks z popiołów, 243–54. For the German troops stationed and demobilized in Ukraine in 1918–19 see Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, Niemiecka interwencja militarna na Ukrainie w 1918 roku (Warsaw: DiG, 2000), 274–304; for Belarus see Jerzy Turonek, Białoruś pod okupacją niemiecką (Warsaw: Wers, 1989), 17–27, and Klaus Richter, “‘Einziger Beschützer vor der Gewalt der Polen’: Kriegserfahrungen weißrussischer Soldaten in Grodno (1919),” in Bachinger and Dornik (eds), Jenseits des Schützengrabens, 341–58; for Lithuania see Piotr Łossowski, “Nieudana próba odsieczy wileńskiej w grudniu 1918 roku,” in Wojsko, społeczeństwo, historia, edited by Mieczysław Wrzosek, Wojciech Fedorowicz, and Jan Snopko (Białystok: Dział Wydawnictw Filii Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego w Białymstoku, 1995), 249–58, here: 249.

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the state’s institutions as fast as possible. The formation of a powerful army was at the top of the list because danger lurked. Even before Piłsudski’s arrival, an armed conflict between Poles and Ukrainians had erupted in the town of Lviv in eastern Galicia. In December 1918, Poles and Germans clashed in Poznań in Greater Poland, as did Poles and Czechs in Cieszyn Silesia in February 1919, while Poles occupied the Vilnius area in April, to the great displeasure of the Lithuanians (see Map 2 and Chapter 3). It is striking that at the very beginning of the military buildup of the Polish Republic, a nationwide conscription was not considered. Piłsudski later explained that the untenable conditions soldiers encountered in the country’s armed forces— owing to the overall deplorable state of the country after four years of war and occupation—would turn every drafted man into an enemy of the state he was serving: “I believed that volunteers would cope with the material shortcomings significantly better than soldiers conscripted by force. The mass of drafted soldiers would regard the stability of the Polish state with suspicion [since,] in their eyes, it had not yet passed the survival test.”83 He would later repeat this thought with reference to the siege of Warsaw by the Red Army in the summer of 1920, stating that “we just cannot shake off the image of a volunteer army, because in our country, the only ones who fight are those who want to, or those who are simply stupid.”84 In Galicia, where a Polish Liquidation Commission (Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna) in 1918 successfully secured armaments for the Polish state from the Austrian arsenals, its call to the colors went widely unheard, because, in its own words, “the political events have demoralized the former Austrian [now Polish] soldier so much that one can barely rely on him.” Besides, most men fit for military service had already been drafted into the Habsburg Army in the preceding four years of constant warfare. Finally, the region was not safe because the police force was as desperately in need of manpower as the army was, and potential recruits preferred to stay at home and protect their families. The commission considered therefore importing new recruits from former Congress Poland, where no conscriptions had taken place when it had still been a German and Austrian occupation zone.85 Consequently, the backbone of the army in late 1918 was the already existing Polish units regardless which political faction—the right or the left—had been the driving force behind their creation. These were the Polish Military Force (with the manpower of the three Polish Corps from Russia which had been dissolved in the summer by the Germans), the legionnaires (which had been—like Piłsudski— released from custody or from compulsory service in the Habsburg Army), and the Polish Military Organization (which had operated during the war on the Central Powers’ territory). The Polish Army in France under the command of General Haller was a huge asset, too, but for the moment inaccessible. Its contingents 83 Wiesław Jan Wysocki, “Rola czynu zbrojnego 1914–1918 w wybiciu się na niepodległość,” Przegląd Historyczno–Wojskowy 9, no. 5 (2008): 15–26, here: 24. 84 Józef Piłsudski and Michiał Tuchaczewski, Rok 1920/Pochód za Wisłę (Łódź: Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, 1989) (first pub. 1924/1923), 17. 85  Marek Przeniosło, “Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna wobec spraw wokjskowych (1918–1919),” Przegląd Historyczno–Wojskowy 9, no. 5 (2008): 59–72, here: 61.

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would have to be either shipped to Poland by sea or transported by train through Germany or the new Czechoslovakia, both at conflict with the Polish state over vital frontier regions. In any case, the transport of tens of thousands of Polish soldiers across state borders was a delicate matter in war’s wake and could not even be thought of without the unanimous consent of the Entente.86 Nevertheless, at the end of 1918 the Polish land forces had reached a total strength of more than 100,000 men.87 Given the haste and the conditions under which they were put together, this was a considerable achievement. But it was also clear that this force would never suffice to fight for the borders of the new state, which were not only yet undefined, but already contested. On Christmas Day, the War Ministry announced the drafting of men born between 1896 and 1899 in the general district of Cracow, mobilizing 36,984 soldiers. With the successive draft in former Congress Poland in January 1919, about 14,297 more men joined the Polish Army. Many of them were immediately sent to fight at the Ukrainian front, which soon was held by 23,000 soldiers of the first line. At the same time in the former Prussian partition zone (largely known as “Greater Poland”), a Polish uprising against the Germans boosted the draft of 70,000 soldiers, a clear sign that it was easier to get the necessary manpower from a peasant population whose lands were contested. They were organized as the “Army of Greater Poland” (Armia Wielkopolska) under General Dowbor-Muśnicki, former commander of the First Polish Corps in Russia.88 With the blessing of the Entente, a similar contingent of Haller’s men finally reached Poland from France via the German port of Danzig between mid-April and mid-July 1919, bringing new equipment as well.89 Securing necessary supplies for the army was crucial not only for winning battles, but also for attracting more recruits. In mid-1919, the Polish Army already boasted 500,000 men—amongst them about 100,000 volunteers—from all former partition zones, plus tens of thousands of expatriates, many of them having crossed an ocean to participate in the fight.90 As a matter of fact, the Polish “national armed forces” in 1919 were as multinational as any of the three imperial armies of 1914–18 had been. In addition to Polish, which most of them mastered to a certain degree, their service members spoke Russian, Yiddish, Hungarian, German (with or without Austrian accent), French, or English. 86  Mieczysław Wrzosek, “Problem przyjazdu armii generała Hallera do kraju (listopad 1918–czerwiec 1919),” in Polska i jej wschodni sąsiedzi w XX wieku, edited by Hanna Konopka and Daniel Boćkowski (Białystok: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2004), 53–65. 87 Bolesław Woszczyński, “Rola i struktura naczelnej władzy wojskowej w latach 1918–1920,” Najnowsze Dzieje Polski, 1914–1939 14 (1969): 45–79, here: 49. 88  Lech Wyszczelski, “Powstanie i rozwój Wojska Polskiego w latach 1918–1921,” Słupskie Studia Historyczne 13 (2007): 13–38, here: 22–5; Hagen Schulze, Freikorps und Republik, 1918–1920 (Boppard: Boldt, 1969), 107 (note 25). 89 It comprised 80,000 men, 681 guns, 130 airplanes, and 120 tanks; see Benjamin Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung: Die Entstehung der Staatsgrenzen der Zweiten Polnischen Republik 1918–1923 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2014), 125. Figures for late March 1919 in Orłowski, Generał Józef Haller, 261–2. 90  Wyszczelski, “Powstanie i rozwój Wojska Polskiego,” 22–5; Mikołaj J. Szczepkowski, “Warszawski Okręg Generalny w latach 1918–1921,” Rocznik Mazowiecki 8 (1984): 235–52, here: 244.

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Given the precarious situation at the borders, it had been a wise decision of the Commander in Chief not to be selective regarding the recruits’ ethnic background or political affiliation. But Piłsudski lacked alternatives anyway. Anything other than accepting every arm able to carry a weapon that he could get spelled disaster. For the next two years, Poland would be in a constant struggle to mobilize new fighters and send them to the various fronts where the future geographical shape— and thus also the future population composition—of the Polish state was defined with bullets. Between 1918 and 1920, it invested three-quarters of its national budget in its military sector.91 Simultaneously with Piłsudski’s takeover of governmental and military affairs in November 1918, a Polish War Ministry and General Staff were created. Since they materialized in the quagmire of imperial decline and state formation in a period of constant military engagement at the borders, ­improvisation was the order of the day, and the delimitation of competences was confusing, to say the least. As standard practice, the General Staff under the firm supervision of Piłsudski oversaw the organization and administration of the new state’s armed forces, including provisioning, medical care, draft, and mobilization, in the operational areas. The War Ministry was responsible for the same tasks in the hinterland.92 But both institutions would not always harmonize, and in early 1919, the chaos within the War Ministry reminded Piłsudski of the Tower of Babel.93 Within the Second Polish Republic, clear military structures evolved only after 1920. As already hinted, the relatively positive echo of the draft of early 1919, especially in former Congress and in Greater Poland, seems to contradict the notion of the rural population’s indifference to the struggle for national independence. Indeed, we might rightfully assume that the prospect of a state where the Polish peasant was part of a privileged majority instead of a disadvantaged minority in his own eyes was a goal worth fighting for. This was the more true with the danger of the return of his old masters in new disguise—as Russian Bolsheviks or German Republicans— in the air. Anyhow, to secure the state borders and remake the Polish nation, the hearts and minds of its farm folk had to be won. The preponderance of peasants in the Polish Army, although underrepresented in the officer corps, was still remarkable in 1927 (80 percent) and only slowly declined towards the end of the 1930s (60 percent). Those peasants who had made up more than half of the Polish Military Organization in wartime—mostly from Congress Poland, less from Galicia—had been politicized by their service in a clandestine elite force which saw itself as the vanguard of Polish independence in a state with better conditions for workers and peasants, and they can be found amongst the volunteers of the first hours of independence. Their less enthusiastic peers waited fatalistically until they were drafted. For them and their families, service in the armed forces aroused bad memories of tsarist or 91  Wyszczelski, “Powstanie i rozwój Wojska Polskiego,” 21. 92  Tadeusz Böhm, Z dziejów naczelnych władz wojskowych II Rzeczypospolitej: Organizacja i kompetencje Ministerstwa Spraw Wojskowych w latach 1918–1939 (Warsaw: Bellona, 1994), 21–77; Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 38–9. 93  Janusz Pajewski, Budowa Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej, 1918–1926 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2007), 138–40.

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Habsburg times, when the punishment was severe, the language of command unfamiliar, and the service took them to the other end of the empire. Where people were poor and agricultural standards low, every hand was needed for work, and the absence or loss of a son or father was an existential threat.94 In Greater Poland, the situation was different: The peasants here were more politically mobilized by the Endecja’s prewar work in cultural clubs and reading circles which were meant to counter the state’s program of “Germanization.” Furthermore, their farmsteads were generally better off than those further to the east. Many young men here were more motivated and at the same time felt freer to enlist because their families were less dependent on them.95 In addition to that, those who had served earlier in the Prussian Army had the best military training one could possibly get in those days, much better than what their Polish comrades in the Russian or Austrian Army had received. They displayed the esprit de corps of an elite troop, similar to those soldiers who had previously served in the ranks of the Polish Military Organization or the Legions, but in comparison to them they were better equipped, drawing on the material which the Germans had left behind. Like Haller’s wellprovisioned army from France, Dowbor-Muśnicki’s Army of Greater Poland was ideologically dominated by right-wing Endecja partisans, while former legionnaires and members of the Military Organization adhered to the cult of their “Commander” Piłsudski and his ideas of a Polish nationalism with a leftist touch. The Polish national forces in the Central European Civil War were not only ethnically diverse, but also ideologically divided. What consequences the disparity of the Polish political leaders and the composition and self-awareness of their respective armed followers had on their actions in the Central European Civil War is a question we will deal with later in some detail. For now, we complete our overview on the buildup of the Polish armed forces between 1918 and 1921 with a rather surprising note. In the summer of 1920, when all available human resources of Polish society had already been drafted, Piłsudski’s mocking remark about the Polish “army of volunteers” suddenly became a reality: with the Red Army advancing towards Warsaw, the government desperately called on its citizens to join a specially deployed “Army of Volunteers,” and again, about 100,000 answered.96 It can hardly be seen as a mere coincidence that, simultaneously, the Polish parliament (Sejm), suddenly and unanimously, passed a comprehensive land reform which had been pending for a year. From the early twentieth century onwards, the two major Polish parties, the Dmowskian Endecja and the Piłsudskite socialists, were at each other’s throats and sharply divided over the question of whether the independence they were both dreaming of was to be achieved by political or military means. In 1918, history had 94 Janusz Odziemkowski, Wieś i armia w II Rzeczypospolitej (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1988), 18–20. 95 Odziemkowski, Wieś i armia w II Rzeczypospolitej, 7, 19. 96  Szczepkowski, “Warszawski Okręg Generalny w latach 1918–1921,” 249. Zamoyski, Warsaw 1920, 74, gives the probably exaggerated figure of 164,615 volunteers—men and women—referring to Franciszek Adam Arciszewski, Cud nad Wisłą: Rozważania żołnierza (London: Veritas, 1957) (as year of publication, Zamoyski gives erroneously 1942).

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confirmed the latter’s credo of armed struggle as the path which made the dream come true. But this happened in a different way than the “Commander” himself had expected. In reality, despite the impressive war record and the tremendous sacrifices of many Polish units—not only the Legions—they had not really made a difference anywhere. The outcome of the Great War was influenced by the Russian Revolution in the east and the American invasion in the west. Polish independence materialized in November 1918, but few visionaries would have foreseen this in March, when the ink on the peace treaties with Russia and Ukraine signed at Brest-Litovsk had not yet dried. At that moment the Central Powers were the uncontested rulers in Warsaw—the masters of a territory which covered half of the European continent. Although Poles had suffered enormously during the Great War, the Polish war effort had no influence on the Polish independence which followed.97 “There’s very little connection,” says Timothy Snyder, eminent authority on war, violence, and nationalism in modern Central and Eastern Europe, “between how hard you fight for national independence and whether you get national independence.”98 Furthermore, although certain Polish combat units—first and foremost the Legions—were already famous during the war, their glory did not unify the nation either. There is hardly a picture more telling than that of part of the Legions taking an oath on the German emperor and from then on deliberately serving the Central Powers, while the other part refused to take the oath and was interned or drafted by force. And if such disunity was dividing the Legions from inside, how much deeper were the trenches between those who fought for the Central Powers against Russia, and those who fought on the Russian side against them? It tells a lot about the disunity between the various Polish camps engaged in nation and state building that in May 1918, some of Piłsudski’s men raised a mutiny within DowborMuśnicki’s First Polish Corps when its commander acquiesced in the disarmament of his troops by the Germans.99 There was not much uniting the many organized but isolated Polish freedom fighters. On the contrary, the rift between socialists and national democrats which had resulted in bloody skirmishes on the streets of Warsaw and Łódź during the revolution was transferred on a larger scale to embattled Poland after the Great War. As the partitions had separated the Poles outwardly, the ideological differences had alienated the politicized layers of society inwardly. In this light, independence in 1918 was not the logical end of a predictable chain reaction activated by concerted action. It was the result of highly improbable circumstances which were created by the turmoil of war and revolution. The two most prominent Polish leaders of their time were diametrically opposed not only in their views on politics, but also in their mentalities. Piłsudski was a gambler, the battlefields of the Eastern Front a giant roulette table, and Poland’s independence his stake. He had put it all on one number, and won, while Dmowski turned his 97  Borislav Chernev, Twilight of Empire: The Brest-Litovsk Conference and the Remaking of EastCentral Europe, 1917–1918 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017). 98 Timothy Snyder, “Not Even Past: Ukrainian Histories, Russian Politics, European Futures,” presentation at the conference “Ukraine: Thinking Together” (Kiev, May 14, 2014). 99 Rafał Tulicki, “Próba przewrotu w I Korpusie Polskim w maju 1918 roku,” Niepodległość i Pamięć 13, no. 2 (2006): 15–22.

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chips in his pocket, carefully watching the scenery of battlefields and international diplomacy and deciding at every turn anew where to place them. Meanwhile almost unnoticed, and as a side effect, the war had brought up yet another major change in Poland’s fate, a change which arguably proved more influential on Polish nation building than any lobbying from the side of party campaigners. The rural masses—which made up four-fifths of the nation whom both the right and left intellectuals never tired of talking about—bore the greatest part of the war effort and had paid the highest price for it. At war’s end, they finally found their own political representation in the agrarian “Piast” party (Stronnictwo Ludowe “Piast” ) of Wincenty Witos.100 In the years following 1918, no Polish government would function without their participation. Molenda’s “primitive” nationalism proved much stronger, more stable, and more reliable than the “secondlevel nationalism” of the political activists of all colors. Nothing reflects this downto-earth (in the words’ truest meaning) attitude towards the nation better than the anecdote of now head of state Witos, who returned home between two battles with the Red Army in August 1920 to bring in the harvest.101 “In Poland,” the charismatic peasant leader had outlined before the Sejm in 1919, “if anywhere, the soil is the basis for our national existence.”102 100 Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars, 32. The “Piast” Party emerged in 1913 from the agrarian movement in Galicia, but prior to 1918 it did not represent the peasants from all three partition zones. 101  Peter D. Stachura, “The Battle of Warsaw, August 1920, and the Development of the Second Polish Republic,” in Poland Between the Wars, 1918–1939, edited by Peter D. Stachura (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998), 43–59, here: 47. 102  Peter D. Stachura (ed.), Poland, 1918–1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic (London, New York: Routledge, 2004), 52 (Document 35).

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3 The Central European Civil War The war, finished in autumn, has not died away. Peace and a return to stability appear to be as remote, if not more distant, as in autumn when the war was formally approaching its end. Evicted from the trenches, front lines, and from the official and regular struggle of militarized powers, it reached into human societies and transformed itself into a state of permanent chaos, a bellum omnium contra omnes. Formally, the regular war has stopped, but the catastrophe, of which the war was only the first act, goes on and is far from over. Who knows if it is only in its initial stage?1 Michał Römer, Polish–Lithuanian political activist, diary entry for April 1, 1919 It does not look like that complete rest I had been contemplating for after the outbreak of peace.2 Hugh Gibson, first US Minister to Poland, in a letter to his mother, April 15, 1919

In Western Europe, the fighting stopped in November 1918. This was not the case in the areas further to the east, where the collapse of the Russian, Habsburg, Ottoman, and German Empires, the repercussions of the Bolshevik Revolution, and struggles for national independence blocked the road to peace in the years both before and after the armistices of 1918. It was the final stage of a worldwide conflict turned from a largely conventional war between these very empires into a civil war of the heirs. Historiography has had difficulty dealing with this seemingly random agglomeration of armed conflicts. Christoph Mick has identified as many as eight different types of war in Central and Eastern Europe during this period: “civil wars and state wars, state building wars and revolutionary wars, wars of conquest and of liberation, offensive and defensive wars.”3 Jonathan D. Smele’s new interpretation of the Russian Civil War follows this line: he describes it as not one entity, but a whole 1 Michał Römer, Dzienniki, 1916–1919, edited by Agnieszka Knyt (Warsaw: Ośrodek Karta, 2018), 689; English translation as in Wróbel, “The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence,” 303. 2  Hugh Gibson, An American in Warsaw: Selected Writings of Hugh S. Gibson, U.S. Minister to Poland 1919–1924, edited by Vivian Reed, Mieczysław B. Biskupski, Jochen Böhler, and Jan-Roman Potocki (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2018), 43. 3  Christoph Mick, “Vielerlei Kriege: Osteuropa 1918–1921,” in Formen des Krieges. Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Dietrich Beyrau, Michael Hochgeschwender, and Dieter Langewiesche (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), 311–26, quote: 311.

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decade of several intermingled civil wars in Russia which comprised “national wars, international wars, interethnic wars and conflicts, wars of national liberation, and local adjuncts of the ongoing world struggle.”4 Stanley G. Payne therefore proposes plainly to do away with the term civil war and use “the wars of the tsarist succession” instead.5 A C I V I L WA R There are, of course, good arguments for this kind of differentiation. But by splitting up embattled postwar Central and Eastern Europe into such a variety of taxonomic entities, one risks missing the forest for the trees. As Joachim von Puttkamer rightly assesses, “the immediate postwar period in this region appears in general accounts as a nearly impenetrable jungle of overlapping revolutions and national conflicts that is better left to a handful of specialists.”6 But with the very keywords “revolution” and “national conflicts,” one can pick one’s way through this jungle, and Peter Gatrell has done so convincingly: “Two decisive shifts in geopolitics make sense of these conflicts. The first new element was the Bolshevik revolution in November 1917, which had repercussions far beyond Russia. A second, related element was the struggle for the legacy of the disintegrating empires of Austria– Hungary, Germany, Russia, and Ottoman Turkey, a process entailing the creation of new nation-states, often with the kind of friction such as border disputes, ­territorial claims, and population movements that encouraged armed conflict.”7 The first element marks the constituent features of the Russian Civil War, the second of the Central European Civil War and of related, but not immediately connected, developments in Southeastern Europe. Enzo Traverso totally misses this point by stating that the civil wars in Europe between 1918 and 1923 “were no longer the expression of a conflict between nations, but a dialectic opposing revolution and counterrevolution.”8 The depiction of the Central European armed clashes between 1918 and 1921 as part of one ongoing civil war in which several nation states were formed challenges the prevailing interpretation of isolated bilateral conflicts between clearly defined nation states and their respective civilian and armed citizens: Poles against Lithuanians, Poles against Russians, Poles against Ukrainians, Poles against Czechs, Poles against Germans. It does so deliberately because we deprive ourselves of important insights as long as we ignore that these conflicts were not only often 4  Jonathan D. Smele, The “Russian” Civil Wars 1916–1926: Ten Years that Shook the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 36. 5  Stanley G. Payne, Civil War in Europe, 1905–1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 33. 6  Joachim von Puttkamer, “Collapse and Restoration: Politics and the Strains of War in Eastern Europe,” in Böhler, Borodziej, and von Puttkamer (eds), Legacies of Violence, 9–23, here: 10. 7  Gatrell, “War After the War: Conflicts, 1919–1923,” 558. 8  Enzo Traverso, Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914–1945 (London: Verso, 2017), 53.

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intermingled, but that they had one essential thing in common: “Thus after the Great War arises a new war of nations” (hoc modo post magnum bellum mundanum exorta nova bella nationum), the chronicler of the Jesuit college in the Galician town of Chyrów noted for November 1918.9 Clearly defined nations just did not exist at the dawn of Central Europe’s era of independence. Accordingly, nation states were rather the result of this encompassing civil war, even if they officially had been—as ostentatiously as hastily—already declared at its outset. The conflict had been unavoidable because President Wilson’s Fourteen Points program had established national self-determination as the guiding principle for the reorganization of postwar Europe. In Central Europe with its total lack of ethnically homogeneous areas, this automatically spelled trouble. Thus, the Central European Civil War served as a catalyst to carve out the future populations of the Central European postwar states from the mass of imperial subjects they had represented only a few years before. Its outcome defined the boundaries between them and often led to their international recognition. As the strained relation between these new states’ titular nations and their respective minorities between the world wars show, these battles were not solely directed outwards, but inwards as well. Following Gatrell’s definition, it makes sense to treat this civil war theatre ­separately from the contemporaneous civil war in Russia, where the rise of national ambitions was superimposed by and intermingled with other powerful ideological currents: The main opposing powers—the Bolshevik (“Red”) and the conservative (“White”) movement—fought over the future of one country: would Russia become a Soviet state, or would the old order return, even if in a moderate form? Peasant bands for their part fought for more autonomy and against interference and heteronomy from the capital, regardless of whether ruled by imperial elites or a Bolshevik nomenclature. Foreign intervention to the north, south, and east, half-heartedly launched to contain the “Bolshevik threat,” further blurred the picture. Although the experience and forms of violence which accompanied the Russian Civil War very much resemble those of the Central European Civil War, its vast disarray of concurring and competing ideological agendas made it a genuinely different conflict. In Central Europe, many different national armies fought for one political vision—the nation state—to be realized in just as many different countries. Both conflicts overlapped in the Kresy, where Lithuianian, Latvian, Estonian, Belarusian, Polish, and Ukrainian nationalists would—sometimes united, sometimes apart— fight a Bolshevik takeover. Having just discerned two different battle zones, we still have to defend our notion of the Central European Civil War against the established definition of civil war. The Oxford English Dictionary calls it a “war between the citizens or inhabitants of a single country, state, or community,” and Payne goes along with this 9  Cited after “Fragment kroniki klasztoru i konwiktu oo. Jezuitów w Chyrowie za lata 1918–1919,” in Józef Wołczański (ed.), Kościół rzymskokatolicki i Polacy w Małopolsce Wschodniej podczas wojny ukraińsko–polskiej 1918–1919: Źródła, 2 vols (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Papieskiego Jana Pawła II, 2012), vol. 2, 27–79, here: 28. Thanks to Maciej Górny for this quote.

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notion.10 In our view, such definitions, though usually applied to the ­phenomenon, are too static, since they do not pay tribute to the very fact that countries, states, communities, and identities undergo significant changes in the course of civil wars. Thus, civil wars by their very nature are transitional phases rather than periods of standstill. Historical examples where they marked the decline or rise of empires are legendary: the Peloponnesian War, the Roman Civil Wars, the French Revolutionary Wars, just to name the most prominent ones. The case of Central Europe is unique, though, because here civil war set in immediately after imperial power—exerted by three different monarchs—was abolished in the course of conventional war and revolution. Thus, it was a post-colonial battle for a share of former imperial lands, which resulted in the establishment of a multitude of nation states. “This is what the device of national self-determination logically suggests,” writes Joshua Sanborn, “not peace emerging from war, but the shift from an interstate war to an intrastate war.” With respect to its tendency to transgress pre-existing borders, he adds: “These civil wars, especially those in periods of decolonization, are hardly parochial or limited,” and “great wars” on the other hand “are almost by definition conglomerations of multiple conflicts that proceeded simultaneously.”11 Other knowledgeable authors have characterized the region in our period of interest as “a protean world of shifting allegiances, civil wars, refugees and bandit gangs, where the collapse of old empires had left law and order, trade and communications in shreds,”12 as the theatre of “a more extended European civil war,”13 and as “a series of interconnected [inchoate and deadly] wars and civil wars” which modern Europe had only witnessed before once, namely during the Thirty Years War of the seventeenth century.14 The most recent discourse on civil war, which sees it as a human constant which stretches from the dawn of mankind to our modern world, agrees that it does not necessarily respect existing or emerging frontiers: “Yet how do we tell civil wars apart from other kinds of wars, when so many internal conflicts spill over their countries’ borders or draw in combatants from outside . . .?,” asks David Armitage. His answer is as simple as it is ingenious: “Civil war is, first and foremost, a category of experience; the participants usually know they are in the midst of civil war long before international organizations declare it to be so.”15 This book follows that line by concentrating on the experience rather than on the taxonomy of civil war. Its two main characteristics—unrestrained violence and 10  Entry “civil war, n.,” in Michael Proffitt, Philip Durkin, and Edmund Weiner (eds), Oxford English Dictionary: online, www.oed.com, accessed May 15, 2018. 11 Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse, 237, 4. 12  Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2003), 207. 13  Peter Holquist, “Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism?: Russia in the Epoch of Violence, 1905–21,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4, no. 3 (2003): 627–52, here: 644–5: “The violence of the Russian Civil War appears not as something perversely [sic] Russian or uniquely Bolshevik, but as the most intense case of a more extended European civil war, extending through the Great War and stretching several years after its formal conclusion.” 14 Gerwarth, The Vanquished, 7. 15  David Armitage, Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), 15, 238–9.

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blurred boundaries between the protagonists—were already decipherable since the very outset of civilization. In Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, we learn: “The Corcyraeans were butchering those of their countrymen whom they thought hostile to them: bringing their accusations, indeed, against those only who were putting down the democracy; but some were slain for private enmity also, and others for money owed them by those who had borrowed it. Every mode of death was thus had recourse to; and whatever ordinarily happens in such a state of things, all happened then, and still more. For father murdered son, and they were dragged out of the sanctuaries, or slain in them; while in that of Bacchus some were walled up and perished.”16 Julius Caesar was reading from the same page when he noted in his Bellum Civile: “The terror they had been thrown into by their generals, the severity shown in punishing, and the new oath they had been obliged to take . . . changed the soldiers’ minds, and reduced the war to its former state . . . In a civil war[,] it was lawful for every soldier to choose what side he pleased; that the same legion, who a little before had fought on the side of the enemy, might, without scruple, return again to the same cause.”17 Like in ancient Greece and Rome, the radicalization and ambivalence of civil war led to considerable uncertainty, ubiquitous fear, and arbitrary violence in postimperial Central Europe, undergirding our argument for treating its population’s experiences of war, paramilitary conflict, and violence in 1918–21 as a coherent entity, a “transnational zone of paramilitary violence.”18 Therefore, we will focus on underlying s­ imilarities rather than stress formalistic differences of the conflicts in question. If we speak of the armed struggles in Central Europe between 1918 and 1921 as part of a civil war, the question arises naturally whether it was not rather a mere prolongation of the conventional war that shook the region between 1914 and 1918. But several arguments preclude this interpretation. First and foremost, the participants of the ensuing struggle were newcomer states-in-the-making whose shape was significantly forged in its very fire rather than in that of the Great War, which merely allowed for their existence by wiping away or totally transforming their major obstacles, that is the European land empires. Secondly, only one armed conflict shaking the region north of the Carpathian Mountains after 1918 can be regarded as a conventional war between states from its very beginning: the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–20. But what kind of war was 16 Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, edited by Henry Dale (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891), 207. 17  Caius Julius Caesar, The Commentaries of Caesar, Translated into English: To Which is Prefixed a Discourse Concerning the Roman Art of War, edited by William Duncan (St. Louis, MO: Edwards & Bushnell, 1856), 233, 246. For civil war and the experience of unlimited violence in ancient Greece and Rome see Andrew Wolpert, Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Richard Alston, Rome’s Revolution: Death of the Republic and Birth of the Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Werner Riess and Garrett G. Fagan (eds), The Topography of  Violence in the Greco–Roman World (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2016). Thanks to Matthew Trundle for pointing out those and other relevant publications on the classic period to me. 18  Robert Gerwarth, “The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War,” Past and Present, no. 200 (2008): 175–209, here: 177.

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that, really? It is impossible even to say when it started, initially being just a series of skirmishes between Red Army and Polish soldiers. It was a war never declared, along an undefined demarcation line which would only turn into a state border as a result of the peace negotiations in Riga in 1920–1.19 Even its main leaders hesitated to call it a war: Józef Piłsudski instead referred to it as “an unreal war, a half-war, a quarter-war even, a sort of childish tussle, a brawl from which grand military theory was contemptuously excluded.” And Vladimir Lenin underlined its improvised character, complaining that “our recklessly brave, confident vanguard had no reserves, and never once got enough dry bread to eat” and “had to requisition bread from the Polish peasants and the middle classes.”20 Thirdly, the vengeance with which the battles following the world war were fought, and the paramilitary violence which accompanied them, differ from those of the world war itself, a modern war by contrast, which was highly militarized, but still was fought by and large according to the laws of war between 1914 and 1917 in our area.21 The subsequent battles are more reminiscent of the fierce armed clashes in the Balkans in 1912–13 which preceded the world war. The violent course events took after 1918, and the deliberate targeting of civilians, was owed to the fact that this conventional war had changed into a civil war. Now it became a war of ethnically defined nations in which all sides regarded “their” respective civil population as allies and “other” civilians as enemies of their state-building project. This attitude corresponded with an awakening military and national enthusiasm within the belligerent societies because, all of a sudden, independence no longer seemed merely a distant dream, but a reality within reach. “As we stopped at a small country station,” the young American lawyer Artur Lehman Goodhard noted on his train ride through Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1919, “we saw a troop of young boys about fourteen years old marching past in military step. Instead of real guns they carried small wooden imitation ones. ‘It does not seem as if these people believe that the world’s last war has just been finished’, said the Colonel [a fellow traveler]. ‘You will get very tired of this militarism before you are through with your trip. Chauvinism has become popular everywhere. As far as I can judge, every second day in these new Central European countries is a holiday to celebrate their sudden national independence.’ ”22 One of these Central European countries was Poland. In late 1918, it harbored not only the hope for a glorious future, but the memory of a nightmarish past. Its independence materialized in shattered spaces. Before its moment of glory in November 1918, Poland suffered enormously under the effects of the war and witnessed some of the most fervent battles of the Eastern Front. The country was exploited, and hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants were killed or deported far to the east and west by occupying Germans, Austrians, and Russians. Epidemics 19 Borzęcki, The Soviet–Polish Peace of 1921. 20  Both quotes from Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 264, 266. 21  Włodzimierz Borodziej, “The First World War” (working title), in A New History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1: Violence (working title), edited by Jochen Böhler, Włodzimierz Borodziej, and Joachim von Puttkamer (forthcoming). 22  Artur Lehman Goodhart, Poland and the Minority Races (London: Allen & Unwin, 1920), 13–14.

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and famine plagued the rural and urban population in late 1918, and people were still dying in their masses. With the retreat of the Ober Ost troops, large parts of eastern Poland lacked any form of effective state control for months or even years. The area turned into something that has recently been dubbed Poland’s “Wild East.”23 The future US President Herbert Hoover, then heading the American Relief Administration, correctly noted in 1919 that parts of Poland during the war had witnessed seven invasions and retreats, accompanied by mass destruction, with hundreds of thousands of casualties.24 Geographically in the eye of the cyclone, the emerging ethnic Polish nation state claimed territories that hosted minorities of almost all nations involved in the Central European Civil War. Exactly as indicated in the initial quote of this chapter, it was a “bellum omnium contra omnes.” Between 1918 and 1921, Poland was in a permanent state of declared or undeclared war on literally all frontiers except the Romanian. But these—the Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918–19, the Polish–Czech clash of arms in 1919, the Polish–Lithuanian conflict over the Vilnius region in 1919–20, the Polish–Soviet War in 1920, the Polish–German quarrels over Greater Poland and Upper Silesia in 1918–21, and the massive wave of violence perpetrated by soldiers and paramilitaries alike against civilians on territory under Polish control—have almost completely vanished from our memory and do not haunt our imagination. A comprehensive history of the struggle for the t­ erritorial integrity of an ethnic Polish nation state after the Great War by definition also tells the story of the Central European Civil War of 1918–21 in a nutshell, complicated further in its eastern extensions by overlapping and interacting with the ongoing Russian Civil War of 1917–22. As initially stated, the conflicts that evolved in Central Europe after the Great War have hitherto been looked at mainly as unrelated, almost isolated clashes of arms between two nations respectively. This is surely one way to see it. But this book aims to show that we learn more about them if we see them as parts of one encompassing struggle over the postwar order in this part of the continent, which we might call the Central European Civil War. This new approach takes account of the notion that those conflicts were set in the same international context, they were fueled by the same ethno-national dynamics, and they created the same kind of experience for the population of Central Europe. In the following, before we address its accompanying experience of violence, we portray the course, scope, and context of the Central European Civil War in three sections: sections 1 and 2 describe the conflict first at its northern and eastern, and then on its western and southern fringes; section 3 deals with two related conflicts, outwardly with the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–20, a contact zone where the Central European and the Russian Civil War mixed; and inwardly with the ­machinations of the Polish political leadership, whose decades-old quarrels did not cease between 1918 and 1921. 23  Kathryn Clare Ciancia, “Poland’s Wild East: Imagined Landscapes and Everyday Life in the Volhynian Borderlands, 1918–1939” (PhD, Stanford University, 2011). 24 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 97.

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But before we turn our full attention to the way Poland fought for and defended its independence throughout the conflicts with its neighbors, it is important to note that almost all Central and South European countries behaved in similar ways at that time. Paramilitary violence, ethnic or arbitrary, was a ubiquitous postwar phenomenon in the middle of the continent—and sometimes on the fringes. It could be witnessed in Ireland and Italy, it stormed from the Adriatic and the Black Sea to the Baltic coast, raged in Hungary and Ukraine, and shook Germany and Russia. Very often it is almost impossible to say where in these cases and places the threshold of civil war was crossed. By describing a Central European Civil War, this is not to single out its participants as genuinely violent countries where ethnic conflict was more likely to erupt than anywhere else. Poland and its neighbors, in this regard, were very European countries.

A P O I N T O F R E F E R E N C E : PA R A M I L I TA RY V I O L E N C E I N S O U T H E A S T E R N E U RO P E , 1 9 1 8 – 2 1 In order to get a better idea of what this means, and to get the events and phenomena which make up the bulk of this book in proper perspective, an overview, necessarily cursory, of what happened simultaneously further to the southeast shall be given here. There, embittered ethnic skirmishes which were not interwoven with the fabric of the Central European Civil War endured the armistices as well. They originated in similar ethno-political settings, took a similar course, and followed a similar logic. The whole region from the Baltic to the Black Sea witnessed a traumatic transitional phase as it exited from the Great War where paramilitary violence replaced conventionally fought battles. The grand doyen of Europe’s transnational history in the twentieth century, Dan Diner, has appositely described this phenomenon as “a distinct arc of conflict” which “spanned Central and East Central Europe, from the Baltic to northern Italy and the Adriatic,” overlapping “with the culturalgeographical area previously under the control of dynastic supranational empires.”25 South of Poland, the First Czechoslovak Republic was shaken by eruptions of socio-ethnic violence not only at its border with Poland in Cieszyn Silesia (see below), but also against Germans, Jews, and Hungarians within the new confines of the state. The heaviest outbreaks occurred in the Slovakian part of the country, which bordered with Hungary and witnessed a short-lived invasion by the Red Army of Béla Kun’s revolutionary government in Budapest. Czech military and paramilitary units harassed the Slovak population in a way that made the Czech writer Josef Holeček comment: “But those Czechs who invaded Slovakia like the Germans invaded Cameroon or Belgium disgraced their honor and the honor of 25  Dan Diner, Cataclysms: A History of the Twentieth Century from Europe’s Edge (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008).

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their nation. They raided the region in a way which gave sad evidence of their blind imitation of the Germans, for better or for worse.”26 The nation states further southeast—Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia—were not genuine battlegrounds of the Central European Civil War. To be sure, they were not spared the eruption of postwar violence so typical for the borderlands between Russia and Germany either, but in their case, no larger-scale military confrontation with the armed forces of an equally ambitious neighbor state ensued. In Hungary, the background scene was one of internal revolution and counter-revolution. The “White Guards,” the Hungarian counterparts of the German Freikorps (Free Corps), built up ultra-violent environments that served two purposes: to prove themselves in battle as well as to avenge and eventually overcome the despised Red Terror. “We shall see to it,” wrote Hungarian officer Miklós Kozma in August 1919 (referring to the between 400 and 500 victims of the short-lived communist Béla Kun regime), “that the flame of nationalism leaps high . . . We shall punish. Those who for months have committed heinous crimes must receive their punishment.” Since Bolshevism, in the eyes of the counter-revolutionaries, was the result of a “Jewish conspiracy,” their violent acts were directed first and foremost against Jews. A report from 1922 listed 3,000 Jewish victims of the White Terror in Transdanubia alone. For these partisan militias, violence had not only a destructive side, but also a constructive one. By building up a brutalized form of group identity, they demonstratively separated the perpetrators from the “civilized” part of society.27 In our observation, the First Republics of Czechoslovakia and Hungary are hybrid cases, since they feature forms of violence typical for the Central European Civil War’s theatre without being full-fledged participants. Further to the European southeast, we enter a different geographical zone where paramilitary violence was not a legacy of the First World War, but rather had its roots in the nineteenthcentury Balkans.28 Here, writes John Paul Newman, “the disintegration of Austria– Hungary and the creation of a large South Slav state in 1918 linked previously separated regions and actors, creating new and expanded ‘zones of violence’ ”29 which, we would add, were geographically unconnected to the Central European 26  Josef Holeček, Prvé tříletí Československé Republiky (Prague: Československé podniky tiskařské a vydavatelské, 1922), quote: 25. Thanks to Václav Šmidrkal for this quote, and to Matěj Spurny and Stanislav Holubec for its translation from Czech. Miloslav Szabó, “Social or Ethnic Riots?: Popular Violence in Slovakia in the Aftermath of WWI and the Discourse of the Czechoslovak Revolution,” presentation at the conference “Beyond Defeat and Victory: Physical Violence and the Reconstitution of East-Central Europe, 1914–1923” (Prague, September 18, 2015). 27  See Gerwarth, “The Central European Counter-Revolution,” quote: 194; see also Béla Bodó, “Paramilitary Violence in Hungary after the First World War,” East European Quarterly 38, no. 2 (2004): 129–73. 28  For the prewar history of paramilitary violence in the Balkans see Mark Biondich, “Eastern Borderlands and Prospective Shatter Zones: Identity and Conflict in East Central and Southeastern Europe on the Eve of the First World War,” in Böhler, Borodziej, and von Puttkamer (eds), Legacies of Violence, 25–50. 29  John Paul Newman, “The Origins, Attributes, and Legacies of Paramilitary Violence in the Balkans,” in Gerwarth and Horne (eds), War in Peace, 145–63, here: 145.

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Civil War and therefore are treated separately, although they featured comparable patterns of violent behavior and experience. This is less the case for Romania during the first two postwar years, which, sure enough, like Czechoslovakia, took advantage of the tumultuous situation in revolutionary Hungary and invaded the country in 1919. But whether or not this military operation was accompanied by similar patterns of socio-ethnic violence as in the Czechoslovak case, the potential for it was surely high, given the ethnic patchwork of the new Hungarian–Romanian border zone.30 This remains a scarcely researched area of historical study. The historical regions and melting pots of Transylvania, the Bukovina, and Bessarabia, for their part, joined Greater Romania in 1918 without turmoil, thus constituting a remarkable exception to what was the order of the day in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe by that time.31 This did not, though, inhibit massive ethnic conflict and unrest there during the interwar period. With a certain amount of justification, the Balkans immediately after the war can be divided into two larger zones of violence: the Adriatic littoral where the newly-founded Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes bordered with Italy, and the southern Balkans with the historical regions of Macedonia and Kosovo that Serbs with proprietary attitude called “Old Serbia” and “South Serbia.”32 Both zones were highly contested, the first between Italy and Yugoslavia, the second between Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Greece. Italian forces were stationed in the eastern Adriatic from the end of 1918 until its integration in the Kingdom of Italy as an occupying force. Here, the violent encounters were not between two clearly ethnonationally defined groups, such as Italians against Croats and Slovenes. Rather, the political and ideological attitude of the administrative and military apparatus, which ranged from conservative Italian irredentism to fascism, set the agenda. In their eyes, the enemies were the socialists—either Italians or Slavs—in the midst of the population, who had to be identified, checkmated, and bullied publicly to ensure the seamless transition of the highly contested space into Italian state territory. The result was a permanent atmosphere of latent paramilitary violence in everyday life, which was always prone to erupt.33 But the area did not witness waves of massive violence with thousands of casualties as did the contested spaces of Central Europe further to the north. Italy and Yugoslavia were both on the winners’ side of 30  There are references to alleged Hungarian atrocities against the Romanian Moţi minority in the Romanian interwar press; see Roland Clark, “Claiming Ethnic Privilege: Aromanian Immigrants and Romanian Fascist Politics,” Contemporary European History 24, no. 1 (2015): 37–58, here: 40. 31  The accession of Transylvania, the Bukovina, and Bessarabia to Greater Romania was related to the disintegration of the Austro–Hungarian Empire on the one hand, and the threat of revolutionary Russia on the other. In this precarious situation, the non-Romanian minorities in those areas obviously regarded their absorption into a Romanian nation state as the lesser level. See Keith Hitchins, A Concise History of Romania (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 154–6. 32  Newman, “The Origins, Attributes, and Legacies,” 152–3. 33  Borut Klabjan, “Borders in Arms: Physical Violence in the North-Eastern Adriatic, 1918–1920,” presentation at the conference “Beyond Defeat and Victory: Physical Violence and the Reconstitution of East-Central Europe, 1914–1923” (Prague, September 19, 2015).

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the Great War, but were split regarding the future affiliation of the littoral. Nevertheless, both were not interested in unduly escalating the delicate situation. The cold war turned hot when in September 1919 Italian right-wing writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, along with several hundred mercenaries, marched on the Adriatic harbor city of Fiume to prevent it becoming a Free State according to the plans of the peacemakers of Paris. He captured the city without a fight from an inter-allied occupation force and managed to head a half-anarchist, half-protofascist city state for a period of fifteen months. After Italians and Yugoslavs had attributed Fiume the status of a free state in the Treaty of Rapallo, D’Annunzio and his men, who refused to accept the treaty, were thrown out at gunpoint by the Italian Army in the last week of 1920.34 But even during this “Bloody Christmas,” the casualties on both sides were almost negligible.35 On the other hand, bloodshed and arson were the trademark of two of the arguably strongest paramilitary formations in the postwar Balkans: the Green Cadres, part of the Green movements that spread from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). The Green Cadres were bands of tens of thousands of deserters and outlaws without a central command, mostly active in the Croatian hinterland, but also on Czech and Hungarian territory.36 The uncontrollable nature of their locally organized paramilitary groups, mostly headed by charismatic leaders, urged the National Council of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes to issue a plea to not completely demobilized Habsburg soldiers and members of the “Green Cadres,” exhorting them: “Don’t destroy, don’t burn down, don’t kill, since you are destroying and burning that which is yours, soldiers!”37 In the meantime, Yugoslavia and Greece witnessed the rise of a phenomenon which would become instrumental for all (and not only) of Central and Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 1920s: terroristic violence exerted by radicalized minorities in pursuit of their own state, in this case the IMRO. The “largest paramilitary force in the Balkans in the postwar period,” by contrast to the Green Cadres, was a strictly organized terrorist organization, fighting for the establishment of a Macedonian body politic, either independent or associated with Sofia. With its operational base being Bulgaria, from 1920 onwards it concentrated its terrorist attacks against uniformed officials and civilians in the Macedonian regions of Greece and Serbia.38 “The IMRO fighters (četniks) were able to count on a broad supporting environment on site. Farmers, shepherds, popes, monks, and other so-called ‘hiders’ (yatak) provided logistical and medical assistance, as well as reconnaissance services. This dense network of yataks also allowed major IMRO 34 MacMillan, Paris 1919, 294–305. 35  Giacomo Properzj, Natale di sangue: D’Annunzio a Fiume (Milan: Mursia, 2010). 36  Newman, “The Origins, Attributes, and Legacies,” 155–6; Jakub Beneš, “The Green Cadres and the Collapse of Austria–Hungary in 1918,” Past and Present 236, no. 1 (2017): 207–41. 37  John Paul Newman, “Post-Imperial and Post-War Violence in the South Slav Lands, 1917–1923,” Contemporary European History 19, no. 03 (2010): 249–65, here: 254. 38  Newman, “The Origins, Attributes, and Legacies,” 152–5, quote: 153.

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volunteers significant freedom of movement during their many-month stays on Yugoslav territory, teeming with regular army units, police, intelligence agencies, and special paramilitary anti-IMRO formations.”39 As can easily be seen, these conditions came very near a local civil war. In the end, the activities of the Green Cadres as well as those of the IMRO backfired because they only strengthened the position and influence of the Serbian Army in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, although they were far from being internally united. As one Slavonian deputy of the Yugoslav National Council put it: “The people are in revolt. Total disorganization prevails. Only the army, moreover only the Serbian army, can restore order. The people are burning and destroying. I do not know how we shall feed Dalmatia and Bosnia. The mob is now pillaging the merchants, since all the landed estates have already been destroyed. Private fortunes are destroyed. The Serbian army is the only salvation.”40 The Central European Civil War of 1918–21 and the ethno-national conflicts further to the south were all fought with a vengeance. The accompanying experiences of violence were largely comparable. “To a certain extent,” argues John Paul Newman, authority on the postwar violence in Yugoslavia, “violent attempts to impose an integral national programme onto contested regions in the Balkans shared many of the traits of the violent nationalizing projects of post-1918 paramilitary groups in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland, and Ukraine”41 and, to round up the argument, the Baltic. From 1918 onwards, all over this gigantic shatter zone of empires, houses were plundered and set aflame, women were raped, enemies were tortured and their corpses mutilated, and civilians were killed in their masses; in short: paramilitary violence replaced military violence, fist law replaced military law. 1 : T H E E A S T E R N T H E AT R E This afternoon, the drumhead trial of the spies began. Four bandits, the murderers of Kazik Winniski, have already been caught! Hearing the news of his son’s death, Winniski’s father uttered: “He died in the line of duty—like a Polish soldier! And I too shall sacrifice myself for the fatherland.” What a Spartan soul.42 Major Walery Maryański, diary entry for March 17, 1919, in the vicinity of Lviv Hatred so impulsive that we’d tear each other to pieces . . . There has never been a war like this . . . With revenge we suffocated the enemy—the beast! Hardly any

39  Stefan Troebst, “Nationalismus und Gewalt im Osteuropa der Zwischenkriegszeit: Terroristische Separatismen im Vergleich,” Berliner Jahrbuch für osteuropäische Geschichte 3, no. 1 (1996): 273–314, here: 284–5. 40  Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 131. Thanks to Jakub Beneš for referring me to this quote. 41  Newman, “The Origins, Attributes, and Legacies,” 162. 42  Walery Maryański, Dzienniki z lat 1919–1920 i 1941–1946, OSS, Manuscript Deptartment, 16264/I [OSS mf. 27565–27568], 42–3.

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prisoners were taken! On both sides! . . . Oh Lord, these moments of terrible struggle! . . . fighting chest to chest . . . with our teeth . . . with knives . . .43 Veteran Henryk Pietrzak, memoir of the Polish–Ukrainian War, 1918–19 It is difficult to say whether [the Lithuanian peasant] was on the side of Lithuania, whether he realized how the war came about and what it meant, or if he at least had a vague notion of what was at stake. What is certain is that he vividly grasped the tragedy of the situation, in which a fratricidal struggle had suddenly split two nations—bound together for time immemorial—into two hostile camps. I will remember my conversation with a Lithuanian peasant in Ogrodniki. He told me that he lived there in Ogrodniki, while his brother-in-law was down in Bereźniki. Now, he said, this is Lithuania, and that’s Poland. It used to be one, but now there’s a border between Bereźniki and Ogrodniki; there’s a war on. Is that how things should be? Don’t we all go to the same church? Isn’t it a disaster that brothers are divided and fighting?44 Historian Marceli Handelsman on his deployment with the Fifth Legions’ Infantry Regiment in the northern Kresy in the summer of 1920

Let us start our tale of the Central European Civil War in the area where fighting broke out first, the Polish Kresy. In Poland’s ethnically mixed eastern borderlands, two options were available: cooperation or confrontation. Given the fact that the region was under constant threat of a Soviet invasion, Poles, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians would indeed occasionally form short-lived alliances. As has been elaborated above, Józef Piłsudski had more in mind when daydreaming of a Central European confederation under Polish leadership, while Roman Dmowski was not interested in acquiring an area where the Polish-speaking people were outnumbered several times by ethnic aliens, and which, as the site of the former Russian “Pale of Settlement,” was the home of Europe’s largest Jewish population. To the great misfortune of the local population, though, the area was not spared the horrors of civil war. The nationalist agenda prevailed on all sides of the ethnic divide and rendered all scenarios of peaceful political cooperation void. People who surely had not always been on best terms, but after all had got along quite well during the preceding one hundred years, now all of a sudden stood on opposing sides, and were unsolicitedly drawn into a witch’s cauldron where violence often even dwarfed the disasters of the Great War, not in dimension, to be sure, but by its ubiquity and atavistic nature.

Overture in Ukraine Nowhere was the ensuing setting more confusing than in the region which lay east of Habsburg Galicia, in former imperial Russia, where the better part of 43  Henryk Pietrzak, Sześć lat wojny: Pamietnik polskiego żołnierza: Legjony—front włoski—boje polsko–ruskie—wojna polsko–bolszewicka, 1914–1920 (Łódź: [self-publishing], 1936), 165–8. Thanks to Stephen Velychenko for this quote. 44  Marceli Handelsman, W piątym pułku Legjonów: Dwa miesiące ofensywy litewsko–białoruskiej (Zamość: Zygmunt Pomarański i Spółka, 1921), 25–6.

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Ukrainian-speaking people lived. Here, a process of engineered nation building developed during the nineteenth century, but it had faced the same problems that we have already encountered in the Polish case: “Ukrainian nationalists . . . needed to define a modern Ukrainian identity. Nineteenth-century multinational dynastic empires, such as the Russian and Austro–Hungarian, allowed proliferation of multiple identities . . . A nationalist mobilization of the people could succeed only after the notion of mutually exclusive national identities was established.” The chances here were slimmer than in the Polish case: there was no indigenous ruling class, hardly any written language, and at around 1900, almost 90 percent of the 22.4 million Ukrainian-speaking people in the Russian Empire—Europe’s largest minority— were peasants who “were loyal to their family, village, region, church, and perhaps the tsar in faraway St. Petersburg . . . but did not yet have a clear notion of allegiance to a broader Ukrainian nation.” All in all, until the Great War, the Ukrainian national project was more or less a failure in Russia. It was more successful in Galicia, due to impressive efforts in the educational sector and the support of the Greek Catholic Church. According to Ukrainian historians, up to 28,000 army volunteers awaited their deployment in 1914 on the Austro–Hungarian side, but the authorities only allowed for 2,500 nationals to join the ranks of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. Like the soldiers of the Polish Legions, they had been trained in prewar Galicia and now wanted to fight for Austria–Hungary against Russia. The other Ukrainian soldiers had been drafted into the Habsburg (about half a million) or Russian (three and a half million) Armies.45 In wartime, the “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine” (Soyuz Vyzvolennia Ukraïny) failed to mobilize Ukrainian inmates of the Central Powers’ prisoner-of-war camps, who proved immune to the bellicose propaganda and preferred to stay out of the line of fire. However, the foundation of a nationalist awareness was laid among them as well as for the formation of a Ukrainian military elite which was generally more receptive to the dreams of future sovereignty than the average soldiers.46 When revolution broke out in Russia in February 1917 and a Provisional Government was formed in Petrograd, the time for Ukrainian independence seemed to have arrived. Out of the body of the disintegrating Russian Army, Ukrainian units materialized in 1917, and although many Ukrainian recruits preferred to remain with their Russian comrades to whom they felt more attached through the common war experience than to any idea of future Ukrainian statehood, the 45 Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 53–65, quotes: 53 and 54. Figures according to Dmytro Kalynchuk, “From the Imperial to the National Army: How Russian Army Units Were Made Ukrainian,” The Ukrainian Week, March 22, 2012, http://ukrainianweek.com/History/45477, accessed May 13, 2018, for Russia (his figure comprises “ethnic Ukrainians and [other] persons born in Ukrainian gubernias in active or reserve units”) and Zgórniak, “Polacy w armii monarchii austro–węgierskiej w czasie I wojny światowej” for Habsburg: In 1911, 7.8 percent of the Habsburg Army were Ruthenes (Ukrainians). More on the lineup and deployment of the Sich Rifelmen from Galicia in Maciej Krotofil, Ukraińska Armia Halicka 1918–1920: Organizacja, uzbrojenie, wyposazenie i wartość bojowa sił zbrojnych Zachodnio-Ukraińskiej Republiki Ludowej (Toruń: Marszałek, 2003), 18–25; Grzegorz Skrukwa, Formacje wojskowe ukraińskiej “rewolucji narodowej” 1914–1921 (Toruń: Marszałek, 2008), 35–118. 46 Mark von Hagen, “ ‘Kriege machen Nationen’: Nationsbildung in der Ukraine im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Die Ukraine. Prozesse der Nationsbildung, edited by Andreas Kappeler (Vienna: Böhlau, 2011), 279–93, here: 282–4.

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movement gained momentum.47 Wealthier Ukrainian peasants especially responded to the spontaneous call to the colors since they feared that if Ukraine did not become independent from Russia, they would have to share their rich soil with its poorer peasantry.48 However, although the First Ukrainian Soldiers’ Congress in May 1917 declared that a Ukrainian national army would be the nucleus and defender of an independent Ukrainian state and embody “the idea of national rebirth,” it did not materialize. The Central Council (Tsentral’na Rada)—the political representation of a Ukrainian National Republic that unofficially formed in Kiev in the wake of the February Revolution49—vehemently opposed the idea of a Ukrainian army, preferring not to part with the Provisional Government in Petrograd and to seek territorial autonomy within a federation with Russia instead.50 This rift between military and political power structures proved fatal to the Ukrainian national cause. An effective Ukrainian Army was also not established after the October Revolution. When—as a result of the protectorate treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Ukraine in February 1918—the Central Powers sent in their troops, these alienated the Ukrainian peasants by severe requisitions and harsh reprisals. Like in Poland, the new rulers in Ukraine mistrusted national armies even under their own auspices.51 The equivalent to the Regency Council in Warsaw was a Ukrainian puppet regime colloquially called “Hetmanate” (Het’manshchyna) under the ex-officer in the Russian Army Pavlo Skoropadskyi. The Hetmanate prompted the return of the imperial elites and began to build up an armed force, united by rites and uniforms based on ancient Cossack culture. A figure of 65,000 officers and soldiers has been suggested in literature, but that number appears to be exaggerated. With a program associated with the resurgence of the old landlords, the mass recruitment of peasants was out of the question. But somewhat surprisingly, the short-lived Hetmanate propagated a modern understanding of the state defined by the principles of territoriality and citizenship.52 47 Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation, 80–2. The (according to the Julian calendar used in pre-revolutionary Russia) “February Revolution” took place (according to the Gregorian calendar) on March 8, 1917. 48  Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 57. 49  It was officially proclaimed on January 25, 1918 to make it a legitimate signatory of the BrestLitovsk Protectorate Treaty; see Serhy Yekelchyk, “Bands of Nation Builders?: Insurgency and Ideology in the Ukrainian Civil War,” in Gerwarth and Horne (eds), War in Peace, 107–25, here: 117. 50  Mark von Hagen, “The Emergence of Kyiv as Capital of Revolutionary Ukraine, March–July 1917: With a Focus on the War and Soldiers,” in Imperienvergleich. Beispiele und Ansätze aus osteuropäischer Perspektive, edited by Guido Hausmann and Angela Rustemeyer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 377–402, here: 395–401, quote: 397. 51 Mędrzecki, Niemiecka interwencja militarna na Ukrainie w 1918 roku, 217–18. Nevertheless, on Skoropadskyi’s urgent plea, the Austrian Army in August 1918 sent Ukrainian troops—15,000 men and 600 officers of the “First Ukrainian Rifle-Cossack Division”—to Kiev as a police force; Wolfdieter Bihl, “Beiträge zur Ukraine-Politik Österreich–Ungarns 1918,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 14 (1966): 51–62, here: 57–9. 52 Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 67–76. On the Central Powers reign in Ukraine in 1918 see Mędrzecki, Niemiecka interwencja militarna na Ukrainie w 1918 roku. Very useful to track the meanders of Ukrainian competitive efforts of state building and concomitant class struggle, national strife, and military buildup in 1917–19 is Georgiy Kasianov, “Die Ukraine zwischen Revolution, Selbständigkeit und Fremdherrschaft,” in Die Ukraine: Zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft, 1917–1922, edited by Wolfram Dornik, Georgiy Kasianov, Hannes Leidinger, et al. (Graz: Leykam, 2011), 131–79

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On the other hand, what appears to us modern now was just a reminiscence of the old imperial world with its multicultural population, which in the heydays of ethnic nationalism did not stand a chance. With the hasty German and Austrian retreat towards the end of 1918, Skoropadskyi’s botchy militia of costume soldiers and ex-tsarist swashbucklers did not coalesce. The Ukrainian National Republic almost effortlessly took over state power again, now headed by a new “Directorate” (Dyrektoriia) instead of the Central Council. Its most prominent member and de facto leader was its second chairman Symon Petliura, a Ukrainian nationalist who headed the Republic’s army, which was by now significantly increased by tens of thousands of peasant soldiers.53 Ukrainian nationalist elites had finally found their instrument of state building, at least so it seemed. Someone who also realized the crucial role of the peasantry in any kind of armed struggle for Ukrainian independence in 1917–18 was twenty-two-year-old Wilhelm von Habsburg. Inspired by a crude mixture of a romantic view of the past and ambitious plans for the future, the Ukrainian-speaking archduke tried to build up a Ukrainian army out of an unlikely match. Bespectacled volunteer intellectuals from Galicia (what was now known as “Western Ukraine”), the Sich Riflemen who had fought in the Habsburg Army, were merged with soldiers from eastern Ukraine, who emulated the ancient warriors of the Zaporizhian Sich with shaved heads and mounted Cossacks sporting mustaches and sabers. The “Red Prince”—as he was called due to his interest in the common man—was adored by his entourage and the local Ukrainian people. However, the miniature experiment of nation building Wilhelm von Habsburg engaged in with them near an old Cossack stronghold in southeastern Ukraine failed. His motley crew turned out not to be the future of an independent state and got lost in oblivion, just as Wilhelm never became king of Ukraine.54 There was a short period when Petliura’s national armed forces were made up of several rather unorganized peasant armies led by warlords: “Tens of thousands of peasants flocked to the Directory’s headquarters . . . , and the best units of the hetman’s army defected to their side,” writes Serhy Yekelchyk.55 But soon afterwards, they turned their back on the Directory and stirred revolts all over the country in early 1919, becoming major players in the Russian Civil War, sometimes even changing coalitions between the Whites and—rarely—the Reds before the Bolsheviks managed to break their resistance for good.56 Eastern Ukraine had and—still—Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union, 50–75, 114–54. On the fate of the different ethnic groups in eastern Ukraine 1917–20 see Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 536–46. 53 Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 524–30. The figure of 100,000 soldiers he gives (529) is widely found in literature, but most probably an exaggeration. The admittedly vague, but more careful guess above is based on Yekelchyk, “Bands of Nation Builders?,” 118. 54  Timothy Snyder, The Red Prince: The Fall of a Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Europe (London: Vintage Books, 2009), 99–120; Bihl, “Beiträge zur Ukraine-Politik Österreich–Ungarns 1918”; Chernev, Twilight of Empire, 151–6. 55 Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 75. 56  For more on the peasant revolts see Erik C. Landis, “Waiting for Makhno: Legitimacy and Context in a Russian Peasant War,” Past and Present 183, May (2004): 199–236; Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922

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already been turned into a Soviet Republic dependent on Moscow. This move had been prepared by the Ukrainian branch of the Bolshevik party in Ukraine—centered in Kharkiv, 300 miles east of Kiev—since 1917. They were largely supported by the industrial region’s proletariat, and unsympathetic to any other future for Ukraine than as a communist state within a federation with Russia.57 In the former Russian imperial zone, the Ukrainian struggle for a national state had failed. The main reason was that the Ukrainian nationalists had been unable to mobilize the Ukrainian peasants into a regular army. Furthermore, in the turbulent contact zone of revolutionary and national torrents, many sociopolitical factors intermingled and as a result impeded straightforward Ukrainian state building. Agrarian revolutionaries and socialists, Cossacks, atamans and the military, Austrian and German occupants half-heartedly pursued incompatible agendas of Ukrainian nation building, thus paralyzing instead of complementing and supporting each other.58 The ethnic conflict and confusion caused by these quarrels added to the worst cases of violence the area had ever witnessed: Between 1917 and 1920, eastern Ukraine sank into chaos, and the civilian population was at the mercy of merciless ataman, Red and White Armies. Of the many casualties among the general population, more than 50,000 Jews were killed by Ukrainian peasants and antiBolsheviks, less frequently by Bolshevik troops.59 The Don Cossacks’ autonomy within the tsarist empire had been based on their military tradition and an alleged ethnic distinction. They populated the Russian region just southeast of the Ukrainian territories claimed by the Ukrainian National Republic where they proclaimed their own republic in May 1918 and joined the “Volunteer Army” of White General (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Dimitri Tolkatsch, “Lokale Ordnungsentwürfe am Übergang vom Russischen Reich zur Sowjetmacht: Bauernaufstände und Dorfrepubliken in der Ukraine, 1917–1921,” in Akteure der Neuordnung. Ostmitteleuropa und das Erbe der Imperien, 1917–1924, edited by Tim Buchen and Frank Grelka (Berlin: epubli, 2017), 93–111. On the violence perpetrated by peasant warlord—also called “ataman”—armies see Joshua A. Sanborn, “The Genesis of Russian Warlordism: Violence and Governance during the First World War and the Civil War,” Contemporary European History 19, no. 3 (2010): 195–213; Felix Schnell, Räume des Schreckens: Gewalträume und Gruppenmilitanz in der Ukraine, 1905–1933 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012); Christopher Gilley, “The Ukrainian Anti-Bolshevik Risings of Spring and Summer 1919: Intellectual History in a Space of Violence,” Revolutionary Russia 27, no. 2 (2014): 109–31. 57 Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 565–84. 58  On the failure of Ukrainian state building see Yekelchyk, “Bands of Nation Builders?”. 59 Schnell, Räume des Schreckens, 145–378. On the anti-Jewish pogroms see Oleg Budnitskii, Russian Jews between the Reds and the Whites, 1917–1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia: 1914–2008 (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012), 32–43; Thomas Chopard, Le martyre de Kiev: 1919, l’Ukraine en révolution entre terreur soviétique, nationalisme et antisémitisme (Paris: Vendémiaire, 2015); Viktoria Khiterer, Jewish Pogroms in Kiev during the Russian Civil War, 1918–1920 (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2015); Michal Korhel, “Antijüdische Gewalt und die Zivilbevölkerung im Russischen Bürgerkrieg 1918–1920” (MA, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 2015). Figures according to Stefan Wiese, Pogrome im Zarenreich: Dynamiken kollektiver Gewalt (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2016), 259. On violence perpetrated by the Red Army see Holquist, “Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism?,” 643–50; William Rosenberg, “Paramilitary Violence in Russia’s Civil Wars, 1918–1920,” in Gerwarth and Horne (eds), War in Peace, 21–39; Dietrich Beyrau, “The Long Shadow of the Revolution: Violence in War and Peace in the Soviet Union,” in Böhler, Borodziej, and von Puttkamer (eds), Legacies of Violence, 285–316, here: 289–92.

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Anton Denikin.60 They are associated with some of the worst anti-Jewish pogroms of the time. Other smaller and defenseless minorities—as for example Germans of Mennonite faith—also suffered enormously from all those gangs of armed men which passed their dwellings. The reports of those who survived and managed to leave the region are harrowing and foreshadow what happened in the same region a quarter of a century later under German occupation.61 Since the Ukrainian National Republic as well as Skoropadskyi’s regime in principle allowed for participation of the national minorities, the interethnic violence here followed no state program of systematic persecution but was an initiative of the local agents of violence. The state’s role here was limited by and large to its incapacity or unwillingness to control them.62 In the eastern Ukrainian theatre of the Russian Civil War, the diverse Ukrainian parties and governments—except the tiny Bolshevik faction in Kharkiv—were not primarily for or against the Bolsheviks. Rather, they tried to seize the imperial twilight period to erect a Ukrainian nation state according to their liking, within or outside a federation with Russia, and worked alternatively with or against the Bolsheviks or Whites to receive it. Furthermore, as noted above, there was no united Ukrainian independence movement. Sometimes, its splintered factions were at enmity to such a degree that they preferred to cooperate with the Central Powers or the Bolsheviks instead of each other. Under the surface of the Russian Civil War with its strong revolutionary and counter-revolutionary currents, they followed the agenda of national self-determination. More to the west, another Ukrainian party did the same, but it became entangled with another—the Central European—civil war.

Who Rules Eastern Galicia? Thus far, we have only talked about eastern Ukraine, in the former Russian hemisphere. The reader will remember that there was also a western Ukrainian region which lay in the Habsburg province of Galicia, where Ukrainian and Polish ambitions for a postwar order collided. Already in April 1917, an All-Ukrainian National Congress in Kiev had successfully attacked claims of the Polish Provisional Council of State (the precursor of the Regency Council) to both the Chełm province and eastern Galicia, stating that “the Ukrainian people will not tolerate any attempts to seize the rights to the territory of Ukraine covered with her sweat and blood.” When at Brest-Litovsk in early 1918 the Central Powers assigned the region to 60 Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 536–46. 61  Elias Heifetz, The Slaughter of the Jews in the Ukraine in 1919 (New York, 1921); I.M. Cherikover (ed.), Antisemitizm un pogromen in Ukrayne, 1917–1918: Tsu der geshikhte fun Ukrainish-Yidishe batsihungen (Berlin: Mizreh-Yidisher historisher arkhiv, 1923); Committee of the Jewish Delegations (ed.), The Pogroms in the Ukraine under the Ukrainian Governments (1917–1920) (London: Bale, 1927); Dietrich Neufeld, Ein Tagebuch aus dem Reiche des Totentanzes (Emden: [self-publishing], 1921). The issue of anti-Semitic violence in the context of the Central European Civil War will be addressed in Chapter 4. 62 Chopard, Le martyre de Kiev.

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Ukraine in exchange for badly needed food supplies, the Polish side was furious.63 The Ukrainians for their part justified the formation of military units with the existence of similar Polish units within the Russian Army which operated on Ukrainian territory and thus were regarded as a threat.64 Outside the revolutionary turmoil in Russia, two future parties of the Central European Civil War staked their claims and sharpened their knives. By requisitioning what they needed from the local population, the Polish armed forces in the Kresy—Haller’s men and ­others—soon became a nuisance and urged the Main Administration of the Polish Forces in Ukraine (Główny Zarząd Wojsk Polskich na Ukrainie) to issue severe orders preventing their troops from looting.65 The fact that Poles traditionally had been large landholders in eastern Galicia, with Ukrainian peasants working for them, added a social dimension to their ethnic strife. In fact, although their territory had been overrun numerous times by numerous armies during the war, the century-old separation of western and eastern Ukrainians by the imperial border between Russia and Austria was still in existence after 1918, when on both sides two different Ukrainian representatives emerged: the Ukrainian People’s Republic in the east, and the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic in the west. The Polish–Ukrainian conflict over eastern Galicia was in actuality a western, not an eastern, Ukrainian affair. With the imminent defeat of the Central Powers, Ukrainian units of the Habsburg Army took over power in Lviv on the night of October 31, 1918. The eastern Galician capital hosted a predominantly Polish population, but at the same time was the center of Ukrainian cultural and religious life in a region predominantly inhabited by Ukrainians. In the early morning hours, they disarmed their non-Ukrainian comrades in the city and hoisted the Ukrainian colors on the town hall.66 A “West Ukrainian National Republic” (Zakhidnoukraïns’ka Narodnia Respublika) on ethnic Ukrainian territory was proclaimed, according to the will of the Ukrainian people. Public order would be upheld, and the needs and concerns of the Polish and Jewish minorities would be observed. Even Polish recruitment centers on city territory were initially tolerated. To the disappointment of many Polish inhabitants of Lviv, in a desperate attempt not to get caught up in the middle of the Ukrainian–Polish conflict, the Jewish inhabitants declared their neutrality. Over the following days, clashes between a Jewish self-defense militia and Polish paramilitaries became more and more frequent. They would precede one of the worst anti-Jewish pogroms committed by Polish soldiers in early independence.67 The Polish forces in the city consisted mostly of former recruits and officers of 63 Chernev, Twilight of Empire, 131–5. 64  Cited after Hagen, “The Emergence of Kyiv as Capital of Revolutionary Ukraine,” 393–4. 65  Acting Chief of the Supply Department of the Main Administration of the Polish Forces in Ukraine, April 8, 1918, circular to the Commander of the Fifth Cavalry Regiment, transcript in: Stanisław Stempowski, Wspomienia, vol. IV: Winnica (1917/18), 54, Warsaw University Library (Warsaw), Manuscript Department, 1531. 66  Michał Klimecki, Wojna polsko–ukraińska: Lwów i Galicja Wschodnia 1918–1919 (Warsaw: Bellona, 2014), 67–70. 67  Rafał Galuba, “Niech nas rozsądzi miecz i krew . . .”: Konflikt polsko–ukraiński o Galicję Wschodnią w latach 1918–1919 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2004), 46–54. More on anti-Jewish pogroms by Polish soldiers is to be found in Chapter 4.

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the Habsburg Army, members of the Polish Military Organization, and of a some more paramilitary formations.68 Heavy fighting started towards the end of the first week of November. By that time, neither the western Ukrainians nor the Poles disposed of large regular forces in the city: most of the participants of the ensuing fight were paramilitaries. Initially, the mobilization of Ukrainian soldiers from the Habsburg Army proved disappointing, since the majority just wanted to return home, and the city was held by only 1,500 armed men. Within the next three weeks, however, their number tripled, including enforcement by 700 of Wilhelm von Habsburg’s Sich Riflemen who were brought in from the Bukovina.69 The Ukrainian tolerance of Polish mobilization on city territory in the first November days was mirrored by Piłsudski’s reluctance to openly send Polish troops as a relief force. In a letter to General Bolesław Roja on November 16, before his imminent departure with 140 officers and 1,228 servicemen to Lviv, Piłsudski cautioned him against creating precedents which would impede a political solution of the conflict. He advised Roja to decide his action on the spot and in the meantime “to spread rumors that you are only the vanguard, that behind you a very strong unit advances in order to occupy Lviv.”70 Barely a week later, the Poles had managed to mobilize 6,700 regular soldiers and “volunteers.” However, according to Julia Eichenberg, many of the latter in reality had to be recruited at gunpoint: “Announcement No. 6 tells of an incredible flow of volunteers,” veteran of the Polish Legions Captain Karol Baczyński noted in his diary on November 7, 1918. “This is not the truth. In my unit I had to start putting together patrols to look for volunteers for the military among anybody between 20 and 40 years of age . . . We searched every single house [in the whole quarter] and handed those taken over to the medical commission. Despite any opposition (of which there was a lot) these men were put into uniforms and immediately informed where to fight.”71 In any case, as the showdown approached, there were one and a half times more armed Poles in Lviv than Ukrainians. During the street to street fighting, both sides committed atrocities against civilians: “The urban guerrilla warfare of the battle of Lwów [Lviv] in November 1918 saw the civilian population caught between Polish and Ukrainian forces. Some were accidental victims of stray bullets, but others were deliberately targeted as Ukrainian and Polish formations alike killed suspect civilians as they executed prisoners of war, took hostages and terrorised the civilian population to enforce

68  Adam Przybylski, Wojna polska 1918–1921 (Warsaw: Wojskowy Instytut Naukowo-Wydawniczy, 1930), 45. 69 Krotofil, Ukraińska Armia Halicka 1918–1920, 39–40; Christoph Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv, 1914–1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2016), 146. 70 Galuba, “Niech nas rozsądzi miecz i krew . . .,” 61–2. 71  Julia Eichenberg, “Soldiers to Civilians, Civilians to Soldiers: Paramilitary Violence in Poland and Ireland after the First World War,” in Gerwarth and Horne (eds), War in Peace, 184–99, here: 191. Quote from Karoł Baczyński, Pamiętniki, vol. 5, 187–8 (7 November 1918), OSS, Manuscript Deptartment, 12925/I [OSS mf. 2429].

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their rule over this region of mixed population.”72 The irregular nature of the fight was further underlined by the fact that women and even children took part in it. One-quarter of the Polish fighters were under the age of eighteen.73 An eyewitness recalled the tense atmosphere during the first days of the Ukrainian coup: “Numbers of little [Ukrainian] patrols were now beating the streets. Ruthenian spies pointed out to them those passers-by who had been heard talking Polish. It was unwise to be found too near the Ratusz [town hall], the barracks or the Ukrainian House. Civilians, their hands in the air, were there being held at the point of the bayonet. Their lips remained sealed under the shower of insolent jokes and coarse jeers. Their pockets were turned out, they were examined, and if the search yielded nothing, the soldiers at least had the sickening enjoyment of terrifying their victims by shooting into the air.”74 Christoph Mick paints a somewhat different picture of the surreal scenes witnessed in the streets of Lviv in these November days: “It was an odd war. The combatants accused each other of committing atrocities and of violating the laws of war, but at the same time members of the city council and the Polish National Committee were able to meet unhindered in the building of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, located in the part of the city under Ukrainian control. Although subject to occasional searches, Polish societies were able to continue their work in areas controlled by Ukrainians and were able to provide logistical support for their co-nationals in other districts of the city. Binational committees controlled the water works and the power station and ensured that supplies to the city continued. Ceasefires were agreed, allowing the inhabitants of contested streets to go out and obtain food. In the first few days, some Ukrainian and Polish troop leaders even preferred to smoke cigarettes together than let their young soldiers shoot at each other.”75 Contemporaries also interpreted the fight for Lviv as a civil war. On November 15, the Polish Committee for the Security and Protection of Public Good (Komitet Bezpieczeństwa i Ochrony Dobra Publicznego) summarized: “Since fourteen days a fratricidal struggle is raging through the city.” The following day, Polish archbishop Józef Bilczewski and Ukrainian metropolitan Andrey Sheptyts’ky jointly called on their communities to stop the bloodshed. An armistice from November 17 to 21 was agreed upon.76 On November 21, 1918, the Poles finally drove the western Ukrainian governmental troops out of the city, limiting their presence to the countryside, where 72  Eichenberg, “The Dark Side of Independence,” 238. The extent and number of victims still lay in the dark. Ukrainian accusations were published immediately after the events; see Mykhalo Lozynsky and Petro Karmansky (eds), Krivava Knyha, vol. 2: Ukraïnska Halychyna pid okupatsiieiu Polshchi v rr. 1919–1920 (Vienna: Zakhidno-Ukraïnska Narodna Republyka, 1921). 73  Eichenberg, “Soldiers to Civilians, Civilians to Soldiers,” 192–6. 74  Rosa Bailly, A City Fights for Freedom: The Rising of Lwów in 1918–1919 (London: Leopolis, [1956]), 80. The account is biased, though, written from the Polish perspective only. 75 Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv, 1914–1947, 151. 76 Galuba, “Niech nas rozsądzi miecz i krew . . . ,” 60–1. Polish and Ukrainian contemporaries alike often used the adjective “fratricidal” (bratobóczy) in relation to the conflict; see Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv, 1914–1947, 147.

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Fig. 3.  November 1918: Soldiers and civilians in the streets of Lviv. © National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 1-H-356-10

Ukrainian peasants prevailed. Until the summer of 1919, the West Ukrainian National Republic managed to build up an effective strike force—the Ukrainian Galician Army—of 50,000 soldiers and officers who had been trained in the Habsburg Army.77 In contrast to eastern Ukraine, the “western Ukrainian society united in the struggle with its traditional rival, the Poles, and social problems temporarily took a backseat.”78 This goes, of course, for everybody who felt as a Ukrainian and believed in a common national cause. The Polish side received a substantial boost in May 1919 of Haller’s Polish Army which had just arrived from France via the port of Gdańsk, thus assembling 50,000 well-trained and fully armed Polish soldiers at the Galician front.79 After the ensuing powerful Polish advance at the beginning of 1919, Ukrainian soldiers deserted in masses and returned to their farms. With the temporary successful Ukrainian counterattack in early June, volunteers filled its ranks again, swelling its total strength to 65,000 men. The reinforced Polish troops nevertheless pushed them out of eastern Galicia for good in mid-July. In the course of nine months of embittered fighting, 10,000 Polish and 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in battle.80 Both sides conducted 77 Krotofil, Ukraińska Armia Halicka 1918–1920, 45–66. 78 Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 77. 79 Galuba, “Niech nas rozsądzi miecz i krew . . . ,” 168. 80  Bogdan Musial, “Die Ukrainepolitik Polens 1918–1922,” in Dornik, Kasianov, Leidinger, et al. (eds), Die Ukraine, 449–63, here: 454.

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mass arrests of civilians. Twenty-five thousand Poles ended up in Ukrainian camps and prisons before July 1919, 100,000 Ukrainians were subsequently interned in the camps of the ultimately victorious Polish Army. One-fifth of them fell victim to infectious diseases.81 Stunningly, no academic research has ever been conducted on the atrocities which undeniably had been perpetrated by both sides during and after the military conflict. A first assessment of Stephen Velychenko shows that the mass detention and mass dying of Ukrainians in Polish camps continued throughout 1919. The number of Ukrainian and Polish casualties in 1919 is unknown. According to the respective censuses in 1910, up to half a million more Ukrainians had lived in eastern Galicia than in 1921, while the number of Poles had not insignificantly increased. But the reasons could be, of course, manifold, given the fact that a world war had raged for four years in the area. There is no hard evidence for government-controlled mass persecution during the Polish–Ukrainian War from either side. Instead, the study underlines the connection between atrocities and the paramilitary nature of the fights up to March 1919, when no regular armies to speak of were yet involved.82 Although at first glance the struggle in Galicia appears as a clear-cut struggle between two ethno-national foes—Poles and Ukrainians—in reality eastern and western Ukrainians had their own differing political agendas and sympathized with different sides in 1918–19. Serhy Yekelchyk gets to the heart of this complicated constellation, stating that “each side was embroiled in its own civil war with very different aims and enemies. While the Westerners focused on fighting against Poland, to the Easterners Poland seemed a natural ally against their own enemies— the Bolsheviks and the Russian Whites. Likewise, the Galicians did not mind allying themselves with the Russian Whites against Poland. As the two sides were soon to discover, however, befriending each other’s enemy was not the best recipe for winning.”83 After their defeat, the Western Ukrainian Army and government were united with their equivalents in the east, whose sphere of influence had shrunk to a small stretch of land between Polish- and Bolshevik-occupied territory, with its center in Kamianets-Podilskyi.84 However, it was no love match. Political differences prevailed, and “the lack of ideological unity in the middle of a brutal civil war would soon lead them into a tragic ambush.”85 The relations between the Ukrainian troops from Galicia and their comrades in the east as well as the local population were strained, especially since, because of lack of supplies, they proceeded to 81 Piotr Wróbel, “The Seeds of Violence: The Brutalization of an Eastern European Region, 1917–1921,” Journal of Modern European History 1, no. 1 (2003): 125–49, here: 138. A concise overview of the military conflict between Polish and Ukrainian forces in Galicia in 1918–19 can be found in Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 261–76. 82  Stephen Velychenko, “Recalling the Appalling: Polish Excesses and Atrocities against Ukrainians in Western Ukraine 1919–20,” presentation at the conference “1918 in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution” (Lviv, December 2018). Thanks to Stephen Velychenko for sending me his yet unpublished paper. 83  Yekelchyk, “Bands of Nation Builders?,” 118. 84 Krotofil, Ukraińska Armia Halicka 1918–1920, 103–7, 121–2. 85 Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 78.

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r­ equisitioning. With the winter advancing, the Ukrainian Galician Army became increasingly demoralized. Officially, they fought Denikin’s “Volunteer Army” in the south of their small strip of land, but often soldiers only joined the fight to obtain food or clothing. When to its great misfortune the Ukrainian Army lost 70 percent of its men to typhus in October 1919, the surviving soldiers from Galicia joined the White “Volunteer Army” in desperation, but under the condition that they would not have to fight their eastern brothers. They would not have been able to do so anyway: they were totally exhausted, and to regain combat strength, they needed at least a three months’ rest.86 Meanwhile, Symon Petliura gathered his men from eastern Ukraine and made a pact with the Galician Ukrainians’ arch foe, the Poles, to jointly attack pro-Russian Soviet Ukraine which had taken over power in Kiev. After two years of constant struggle, instead of being united, the Ukrainians found themselves a tripartite people.87 Between November 1918 and July 1919, the Polish–Ukrainian conflict had escalated from an unclear situation to an undeclared war which was never officially ended.88 Both sides had their part in the outbreak of violence. Polish textbooks rarely mention that the Ukrainian coup of Lviv occurred on the night before the Polish Liquidation Commission for Galicia planned to meet in Lviv to prepare the incorporation of Galicia into Poland.89 Both sides hesitated to push things too far, and while the fighting was going on, they kept the door for negotiations open.90 Of course, they were both aware of the negative effect that unveiled and unprovoked aggression would have on the opinion of the peacemakers in Paris. But we can justifiably assume that another factor moderated their decisions at least during the first weeks of the conflict: Although without a doubt ethnic enmity fueled the conflict, the afflicted population often referred to it as fratricidal. In this perspective, in its initial phase, the Polish–Ukrainian conflict assumed the character of a civil war. The complexity of the situation was underlined by the fact that the eastern Ukrainians first supported the western Ukrainians and fought the Poles in Volhynia (north of Galicia),91 but later changed sides and formed a coalition with the Poles. The Poles initially were open to considering a model of Ukrainian autonomy in a Galicia under Polish supremacy. The conflict had to be decided on the battlefield only because both sides claimed eastern Galicia, and especially its capital Lviv, for themselves. Thus their ­geopolitical objectives were mutually exclusive.92 Furthermore, both sides claimed 86 Krotofil, Ukraińska Armia Halicka 1918–1920, 125–8. 87 Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 82. For the joint attack of Petliura’s and Piłsudski’s forces on Kiev, see below. 88 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 101. 89 Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv, 1914–1947, 143; Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 98–9; Vasyl’ Rasevyč, “Die Westukrainische Volksrepublik von 1918/19,” in Dornik, Kasianov, Leidinger, et al. (eds), Die Ukraine, 181–200, here: 195. 90 Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv, 1914–1947, 148–50. 91  Adam Radosław Suławka, “Walki polsko–ukraińskie na Wołyniu, listopad 1918–marzec 1919 roku,” Przegląd Historyczno–Wojskowy 16, no. 2 (2015): 63–90; Wrzosek, Wojny o granice Polski Odrodzonej, 1918–1921, 185. 92  Michał Klimecki, Lwów 1918–1919 (Warsaw: Bellona, 2011), 213–14.

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territories (Ukrainians: Chełm; Poles: rural Galicia) where “their” populations did not form the majority. Thus, it was not only ethnic differences which turned Poles and Ukrainians into bitter enemies. It was also the political escalation of this fratricidal episode of the Central European Civil War itself which exacerbated this very difference, and thus expedited the development of their respective national commitment.93

The Vilnius Question Like Lviv, Vilnius in late 1918 was a virtual island: a city of predominantly Polish speakers in the midst of a mixed rural hinterland. Geographically, the Vilnius area was located in the northern part of the Russian “Western Territory.” It featured a large and important Jewish community which lived partly in the local capital, partly in scattered shtetls. Most Lithuanians lived in the countryside, only a few in Vilnius.94 Although the Polish–Lithuanian conflict over the city cost relatively few lives, its nationalistic battles were fought with the same vigor as any in the Central European Civil War. Historically, Vilnius had been the center of Lithuanian statehood from the early fourteenth century through the partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the eighteenth century. Due to the dominance of Polish culture in the Common­wealth, a constant assimilation process had Polonized the city as well as the region over the centuries. As a result of the Third Partition of Poland–Lithuania in 1795, it had been integrated into Russia. After the failure of the 1863 uprising, the government decidedly reduced the influence of the predominantly Polish elites and embarked on a program of Russification. Lithuanian as a written language was only allowed in Cyrillic letters and thus its use in public discourse practically excluded.95 At the beginning of the twentieth century, Poles and Jews made up the better part of Vilnius’s population. The remaining inhabitants were Russians, Belarusians, and Lithuanians (the latter, with a little more than 2,000 souls, not more than 2 percent). While the people in the city referred to themselves as “locals” (tutejsi), the surrounding area, with its village structures extending to the narrow confines of Vilnius city center, was ethnically and linguistically mixed as well.96 93 For further reading on the Ukrainian postwar experience 1917–22 see Yekelchyk, “Bands of Nation Builders?,” and the forthcoming book by Serhy Yekelchyk in this OUP series “The Greater War.” 94  Tomas Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania (London: Routledge, 2009), 36–49. 95  This section draws to a large extent on the pathbreaking study of Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, 15–89 (Part I: “The Contested Lithuanian–Belarusian Fatherland”). For the prohibition of Lithuanian publications see Theodore R. Weeks, “The 1905 Revolution in Vilnius,” in Rewolucja 1905–1907 w Królestwie Polskim i w Rosji, edited by Marek Przeniosło and Stanisław Wiech (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Akademii Świętokrzyskiej, 2005), 213–36, here: 214; Theodore R. Weeks, “Jews and Others in Vilna—Wilno—Vilnius: Invisible Neighbors, 1831–1948,” in Bartov and Weitz (eds), Shatterzone of Empires, 81–99, here: 85. 96 Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, 40; Veronika Wendland, “Region ohne Nationalitat, Kapitale ohne Volk: Das Wilna-Gebiet als Gegenstand polnischer und litauischer nationaler Integra­ tionsprojekte (1900–1940),” Contemporativ. Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und vergleichenden

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During the Russian Revolution of 1905, ethnicity made a difference. Due to their large representation in the city’s small industry, the January strike saw mainly Jewish workers on the streets. Polish socialists and National Democrats demanded more liberal and economic rights, including an increased use of Polish in the public sphere. But it was the Lithuanian Social Democrats—representing only a tiny part of one of the smallest factions of the city’s inhabitants—who followed a national agenda, demanding an autonomous Lithuania with its capital in Vilnius. And even within these small groups, the rifts and shifting loyalties typical for the time were visible. When a “Great Diet of Vilnius” (Didysis Vilniaus Seimas) discussed Lithuanian nationality matters in late 1905, the Lithuanian socialists, although they took an active part in the congress, refused to join its organizational committee. Most importantly, as we gather from Theodore R. Weeks, “the revolution of 1905 . . . was an exceedingly important moment in the development of different national groups in the city . . . The memory of that revolutionary year would inform the hearts and minds of people a bit over a decade later when both German and Russian power seemingly collapsed, leaving a power vacuum to be filled by new national and political actors.”97 On the other hand, the different ethnic groups in Vilnius were not at odds until 1918. Their attitude can aptly be described as minding their own business and broadly ignoring the “national other.”98 At the outbreak of the First World War, “Vilnius was a fairly prosperous provincial center, peopled mainly by Poles and Jews but also claimed by Russians, Belarusians, and Lithuanians, with a population of around 200,000 souls.”99 Within thirteen months, the Germans drove out the Russians from the Baltic and installed their military government called Ober Ost.100 Soon the Germans used ethnic diversity to their advantage by playing one group against the other. They adopted precisely the same form of occupation policy as in the General Government of Warsaw— that is, extracting as much resources and manpower for their war machinery as possible, either by legal means or by acts of plundering scarcely disguised as requisitions—and quickly alienated the whole population. As a Jew from Vilnius noted in his diary, “the German occupation during World War I oppressed everyone more or less equally.”101 In 1917, partly as a result of the harsh occupation and the preceding mass deportations during the Russian retreat in 1915, the city’s population

Gesellschaftsforschung 15, no. 2 (2005): 77–100, here: 81–3; Weeks, “Jews and Others in Vilna— Wilno—Vilnius,” 81–6. 97  Weeks, “The 1905 Revolution in Vilnius,” quotes: 230, 236; Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania, 50–68. 98  Weeks, “Jews and Others in Vilna—Wilno—Vilnius.” 99  Theodore R. Weeks, “Vilnius in World War I, 1914–1920,” in Tauber (ed.), Über den Weltkrieg hinaus, 34–57, 37. 100  For the Ober Ost occupation policy in Lithuania see Abba Strazhas, Deutsche Ostpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg: Der Fall Ober Ost 1915–1917 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993); Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front; Christian Westerhoff, “ ‘A Kind of Siberia’: German Labour and Occupation Policies in Poland and Lithuania during the First World War,” First World War Studies 4, no. 1 (2013): 51–63. 101  Weeks, “Vilnius in World War I, 1914–1920,” 39–46, quote: 43.

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had declined to about 140,000.102 It was in this situation that Lithuanians ­negotiated the erection of a State Council (Taryba) which was totally dependent on the Germans, who would—along the line of the Polish model—allow for a Lithuanian puppet regime, but not much more. The Council’s bilingual declaration of late September 1917 clearly mirrored the differing views of the occupier and the occupied: Whereas the Lithuanian version spoke of “working towards the reconstruction of the country,” the German version only allowed the inclusion of the term “cooperation,” thereby reducing the Lithuanians to the level of mere ­assistants to their German masters.103 Here again, as everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe, the defeat of the Central Powers at the Western Front changed everything. The Poles already had a considerable striking force at their disposal by that time, built on tens of thousands of soldiers who had fought in the Great War and volunteers from all over the world. On the other hand, the Lithuanian example vividly demonstrates the practical obstacles to conjuring up a functioning army for a new national government out of literally nothing. Lithuania’s first Minister of Justice, Petras Leonas, joked in November 1918 that “it would suffice for a group of armed ‘peoviaks’ [members of the Polish Military Organization—POW] to arrive in a large motor-car and take away us, six ministers, plus the Presidium of the Council, and there would be no Lithuania.”104 The first chief commander of the Lithuanian Army was a tsarist general whom the leftist government later had removed because of his sympathies for the counter-revolutionary White armies operating in the country. All commands were initially given in the Russian language. At the turn of 1918–19, when the German troops left the city to itself, the Lithuanian “national forces” counted 150 volunteers, amongst them 82 tsarist officers.105 At the end of 1918, only 500 volunteers could be mobilized for the defense of Vilnius, and not all of them were armed.106 Of course, they were unable to put up an effective defense against the Red Army which advanced from the east. The Lithuanian government hastily evacuated westwards to Kaunas, outside the reach of the Bolshevik soldiers. Polish armed formations were not able to stem the Bolshevik tide either. A paramilitary Self-Defense (Samoobrona) formed by local Poles called for backup by the Polish Army, but the German Ober Ost command, with the backing of the Entente, would not give them free passage.107 Furthermore, the German forces in Vilnius 102 Theodore R. Weeks, Vilnius Between Nations, 1795–2000 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2015), 97–105. 103 Strazhas, Deutsche Ostpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg, 227. 104 Dangiras Mačiulis and Darius Staliūnas, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883–1940 (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2015), 2. 105  Tomas Balkelis, “Demobilization and Remobilization of German and Lithuanian Paramilitaries after the Great War,” Journal of Contemporary History 50, no. 1 (2015): 38–57, here: 47–9. 106  Mačiulis and Staliūnas, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883–1940, 66. 107  Telegram of the Polish Foreign Ministry to the Polish Legation in Vienna, December 29, 1918, Laudański Files, vol. 1, 199, Central Military Archive (Warsaw; henceforth: CAW), I.440.12.1. Local Self-Defense units formed spontaneously towards the end of 1918 all over the region to take over the power from the withdrawing German occupation force and to protect the population against marauding bands. They consisted mostly of members of one ethnic community; see Grzegorz Łukomski and Rafał E. Stolarski, Walka o Wilno: Z dziejów samoobrony Litwy i Białorusi, 1918–1919

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refused to arm Polish units which intended to defend the city against the Red Army.108 It was not a good time for Poland to ask Germany for a favor. Only a few days before, Polish paramilitaries had taken control over most of the German province of Poznań (see below). Leon Wasilewski, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, informed Moscow that a part of Lithuania and Belarus was “indisputably Polish.” The hopelessly shorthanded Self-Defense was dissolved on December 29 and its men officially incorporated into the Polish Army, so that a Soviet invasion would serve Poland as a casus belli. Nevertheless, the Red Army took Vilnius on January 5, 1919, after two days fighting the Polish guards. It reveals the atmosphere of deep mistrust towards Poland that the Lithuanian government had not called upon the Polish Army for help or even proposed the merging of the Lithuanian and Polish paramilitary forces in Vilnius in order to coordinate and strengthen its defense. The Soviet occupation of Vilnius was fleeting. Only a few months later, the Germans finally allowed Polish troop transports through the territory they controlled. Poland gathered its forces. The prospect of the arrival from France of General Haller’s troops in Poland at the end of April encouraged Piłsudski to p ­ ersonally head a small Polish expeditionary force towards Vilnius, to capture or to free it—depending on one’s perspective, Lithuanian or Polish, respectively.109 Indeed, the future of Vilnius in spring 1919 was absolutely uncertain. Would it “belong” to Poland or to Lithuania? The national affiliation of the Vilnius area had been a matter of debate since the turn of the century, and remained unpredictable. In times when language was perceived as the key indicator of ethnicity, Lithuanians had a hard time making their point, given the fact that so few people in Vilnius spoke Lithuanian. They argued—hardly convincingly—that the city’s population consisted mainly of Lithuanians who during the last centuries had been “denationalized,” so that now they spoke Polish or Russian.110 Lithuanian activists, in need of a capital city, were painfully aware that at this point no city in areas where Lithuanians lived had a majority of Lithuanian speakers among its population. Therefore, Lithuanian nationalists went to considerable lengths to reinforce the Lithuanian character of Vilnius by drawing on its historical significance as the Lithuanian capital, while widely ignoring the fact that premodern Lithuania had never been what the new Lithuania aimed to be: an ethno-national state.111 In addition, enthusiasts of a Lithuanian independent state with its center in Vilnius had another problem to face: for the time being, it would be a state without citizens. First and foremost, their “Lithuanians” did not necessarily see themselves as (Warsaw: Adiutor, 1994); Stanisław Iwanowski, “Samoobrona w Lidzie i Grodnie w 1918–1919,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 113 (1995): 110–24. See also Report on the development of the Lithuanian and Belarusian self-defense and Polish military units in the [Polish] Eastern Borderlands [Kresy], February 14, 1919, Laudański Files, vol. 2, 85–95, CAW, I.440.12.2. 108  Report of Major Bobiaczyński, December 18, 1918, Laudański Files, vol. 11, 80–1, CAW, I.440.12.11. 109  Jerzy Borzęcki, “Piłsudski’s Unorthodox Capture of Wilno in Spring 1919: Risk-Taking, Good Fortune, and Myth-Making,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 28, no. 1 (2015): 133–55. 110  Mačiulis and Staliūnas, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883–1940, 53–5. 111  Weeks, “Jews and Others in Vilna—Wilno—Vilnius,” 85–6; Mačiulis and Staliūnas, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883–1940, 77–8.

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Lithuanians.112 “Compact settlements of Lithuanian-speaking people,” writes Veronika Wendland, “were outside the region of Vilna [Vilnius].” The peasants living in the Vilnius area for their part could not be classified simply as “Lithuanians,” “Poles,” or “Belarusians.” Many of them spoke more than one language, and historically, even the boundaries between the different Christian confessions were not insurmountable, having become even more permeable since the revolution of 1905 which brought freedom of religion, as well as other liberal reforms.113 On the other hand, Polish nationalists in the early twentieth century could draw on the Polish majority in Vilnius and in addition on the rich Polish cultural h ­ eritage which had left its traces in the city’s history. The “Sharp Gate” (Ostra Brama)— home of one of the city’s most important religious symbols from the seventeenth century—protected it towards the south. In addition, Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz had studied in Vilnius and later used the area as a setting for many of his most famous plays. But the images of the former capital’s symbols and favored sons, seen as genuinely Polish, were inextricably woven into the multinational fabric of the city. In Lithuanian, the “Sharp Gate” is called “Gate of Dawn” (Aušros Vartai). It served as a sanctuary for Catholic and Orthodox (in Vilnius this usually meant: Belarusian) Christians. Mickiewicz wrote in Polish, but he was a child of the borderlands where his culture mixed with many other influences, which arguably contributed to making his writing so exceptional. These examples demonstrate how misleading it is to project the twentieth ­century’s concept of ethno-nationalism into a time when it was not yet fully developed. Adam Mickiewicz (Adomas Mickevičius) surely would have had his difficulties subscribing to it: his dramas evoked the old federal concept of the Polish nation which included Lithuanians and Belarusians.114 This might sound familiar, and indeed this was Józef Piłsudski’s understanding of nationality. After all, the region around Vilnius was where he had been born in 1867, little more than a decade after the great poet’s death, and a little less than half a decade after the bloody ­suppression of the last Polish uprising. Vilnius was Piłsudski’s territory, and he wanted it to be an integral part of Poland for personal as well as political reasons. Given its position at the juncture of Lithuanian, Polish, and Belarusian settlement zones, it was the undisputed bridgehead for the pursuit of his federal dream. The same dream was dreamt by a friend of Piłsudski, Michał Römer, who was also born near Vilnius, a little more than a decade after the “Commander.” Son of a Polonized Baltic-German family, he studied law in St. Petersburg, Cracow, and Paris, before he joined the First Brigade of the Polish Legions under Piłsudski’s command when the First World War broke out.115 In 1917, he became a judge near Łomża (a Polish town somewhere between Warsaw and Vilnius). Römer was 112  Mačiulis and Staliūnas, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883–1940, 78. 113  Wendland, “Region ohne Nationalitat, Kapitale ohne Volk,” 89–90, quote: 87. 114 Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, 26–30. 115  Michał Römer, “Answer to Józef Piłsudski,” in Modernism: The Creation of Nation States, edited by Ahmet Ersoy, Maciej Górny, and Vangelis Kechriotis (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), 376–7; online edition: http://books.openedition.org/ceup/2015, accessed November 25, 2017.

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a member of a small prewar intellectual elite in the Vilnius area that called itself the “locals” (krajowcy). They opposed the growing nationalism in the areas populated by Poles, Lithuanians, and Belarusians, and regarded Vilnius as “the capital of a historic Lithuania whose association with the Polish crownlands was a central question of Politics.”116 And for a short moment in the spring of 1919, the realization of a multinational concept seemed within reach. In March 1919, a cable reached the judge in his provincial town, inviting him to Warsaw. His diary entries for March and April 1919 give us ample insight into four major issues which concern us here: the character of Polish military engagement on its eastern fringes in spring 1919; the discord among the Polish political elites; Poland’s paternalistic stance towards its Slavic and Lithuanian neighbors; and the sometimes rather ambivalent attitude of people born in ethnically mixed borderlands towards ethnic nationalism. Römer was entrusted with the top secret mission in Kaunas—the temporary site of the Lithuanian government—to lobby for a Polish–Lithuanian confederation. In Warsaw, he was informed by intermediaries that Piłsudski feared that the influence of his political adversaries from the right would destroy his plans for a Polish– Lithuanian union. Some of the troops fighting the Red Army east of Vilnius, Römer was told, had been “recruited . . . from among extremely mixed and obscure stock [and] is not so much a Polish national army as a hired band of mercenaries in the service of the Lithuanian–Belarusian landowners. So far, the Polish Army’s operations in the East have resembled incursions by partisan units.” With the help of these armed forces and their political representation, the reactionary “Committee for the Defense of the Eastern Borderlands” (Komitet Obrony Kresów), the old Polish barons intended to restore the old order in the region. In so doing, they risked alienating the local population and ruling out their future union with Poland. Piłsudski, so Römer was told, would not allow that. He therefore would personally lead a regular Polish force on its advance to Vilnius in the very near future, sure of his ability to win the confidence of the Lithuanians. The final goal was to build a Lithuanian People’s Republic with Józef Piłsusdski as its president. Römer, who was chosen to liaise between Warsaw and Kaunas, was fascinated by the idea, but intuitively sensed its two major flaws: Although to all appearances it was an honest offer, Piłsudski and his followers would never place Lithuanian over Polish interests because parts of the army and the National Democrats would balk at it. And exactly because of this, the Lithuanians would never place the fate of Lithuania in his hands. Lithuanian independence, thought Römer, had to come first, and then one could talk about a future confederation on equal terms.117 There was no reason to believe this would ever be the case: “How could Lithuanians accept a federation with a state ten times as large in population,” asks one of the most informed specialists on the Vilnius Question, Theodore R. Weeks, “in ­particular when the entire modern Lithuanian national movement was aimed against Polish 116 Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, 54–5, quote: 55. 117 Römer, Dzienniki, 1916–1919, 675–82 (entries for March 5–21, 1919, on a meeting with Walery Sławek in Warsaw on March 14, and with the latter and Aleksander Prystor, in Warsaw as well, on March 15, 1919).

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culture and dominance?”118 Thus, the Lithuanian reaction to Piłsudski’s offer was predictable. Römer’s interlocutors in the Kaunas State Council were outraged. They took it as a failure to recognize and respect Lithuanian statehood and independence at best, and an act of mere blackmailing at worst.119 Although it came to naught, Piłsudski’s and Römer’s contrasting approaches to rebuild the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth are revealing: both were born in  the contact zone of Polish–Lithuanian culture, and grew up in the Russian Empire. But obviously, as much as Piłsudski acted as a Pole and was sympathetic to the Lithuanians, Römer felt himself to be a Lithuanian and was sympathetic to the Poles. In his diary, he called himself “a born citizen of Lithuania” (although, of course, a Lithuanian state in his year of birth 1880 did not exist) and a “local.”120 Their common political vision of a transnational federation would have bridged this gap. But instead, the concept of a national Polish state, which finally prevailed, forced them to take sides. In Warsaw, the National Democrats indeed vehemently opposed the idea of a Polish–Lithuanian federation and the inherent possibility of losing Vilnius to the Lithuanians, and the Sejm was against it as well. Both argued that the Polish state should incorporate the Vilnius region and leave the rest of Lithuania to the Kaunas government, which in the longer run would ensure the separation of Poles and Lithuanians. Piłsudski’s troops entered Vilnius on April 19, 1919, unleashing—like a few months before in Lviv—one of many anti-Jewish pogroms121 which became the somber accompaniment of Poland’s regained independence (see Chapter 4, “Soldiers Running Wild”). His proclamation of April 22 was directed “to the inhabitants of the former Duchy of Lithuania,” but did not mention a federation anymore.122 Disenchanted, Michał Römer turned away from Polish politics and became an influential academic and lawyer in the interwar Republic of Lithuania under the name Mykolas Römeris.123 118  Email from Theodore R. Weeks to the author, December 6, 2017. 119 Römer, Dzienniki, 1916–1919, 708–9, entry for April 20, 1919, on a meeting in the Lithuanian State Council in Kaunas on April 17, 1919. On Römer’s “Mission to Kaunas” (misja kowieńska) see also Zbigniew Solak, Między Polską a Litwą: Życie i działalność Michała Römera 1880–1920 (Cracow: Arcana, 2004), 394–410. 120 Römer, Dzienniki, 1916–1919, 685, entry for March 25, 1919. 121  Frank M. Schuster, Zwischen allen Fronten: Osteuropäische Juden während des Ersten Weltkrieges, 1914–1919 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2004), 445–8. 122  Conrad, “Vom Ende der Föderation,” 18. A “Provisional Lithuanian Committee for Vilnius” (Laikinasis Vilniaus Lietuvių Komitetas), however, unlike its government in Kaunas, was still willing to negotiate Piłsudski’s plans for a confederation in the summer of 1919. At the end nothing came of it because neither side trusted the other. Another occasion for a Polish–Lithuanian reconciliation was gone; see Česlovas Laurinavičius, “Aus der Geschichte des provisorischen litauischen Komitees von Wilna (April bis Juni 1919),” Nordost-Archiv 2, no. 2 (1993): 361–74. 123 Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, 55, 62, 69–70; Römer, “Answer to Józef Piłsudski,” 376–7. For Römer’s relation to and interpretation of the Vilnius Question in the interwar years see Rimantas Miknys, “Wilno i Wileńszczyzna w koncepcjach Michała Römera i krajowców,” in Europa nieprowincjonalna. Przemiany na ziemiach wschodnich dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Białoruś, Litwa, Łotwa, Ukraina, wschodnie pogranicze III Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej) w latach 1772–1999, edited by Krzysztof Jasiewicz (Warsaw: Rytm, 1999), 57–65, 1328–9; Witold Biczunas, “Wywiad prof. M. Römera w sprawie wileńskiej, Pierwsza rozmowa: Prof. Römer o zagrabieniu Wilna; Druga rozmowa: Droga do Wilna,” Zeszyty Historyczne 112 (1995): 62–76.

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Fig. 4.  Late April 1919: Polish troops in front of the cathedral in Vilnius. © National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 1-H-402-2

Over the next year, the positions only hardened: Especially after the secret plans of a staged Polish coup d’état in Kaunas were revealed, the Lithuanian government had little confidence in any expressions of goodwill on the part of their adversaries, while in Poland more and more voices bluntly demanded the annexation of the occupied Vilnius region.124 In late August of 1919, the Polish Military Organization expelled the Lithuanian garrison of Sejny in the Suwałki area by force, which the Entente had previously assigned to Warsaw. The operation was successful because the town commander, named Bardauskas, discovered his loyalty to the Polish case as Bardowski, and betrayed his own men.125 In the summer of 1920, when the Red Army advanced towards the gates of Warsaw, the Poles had to abandon Vilnius, which again was occupied by the Red Army. After Piłsudski defeated the Bolshevik troops in August 1920 and drove them eastwards out of Poland (see below), he returned to his former target, Vilnius. The Polish Commander in Chief was fully aware that the time for negotiations and federations was over. In the preceding months, the Lithuanian government had declared neutrality, but profited from the Red Army’s conquests. It had ­established itself in a Vilnius occupied by Bolshevik troops and taken over the 124  Mačiulis and Staliūnas, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883–1940, 74. 125 Krzysztof Skłodowski, “Działalność Polskiej Organizacji Wojskowej, Dowództwa Obrony Kresów Ziemi Suwalskiej oraz powstanie sejneńskie,” Zeszyt Naukowy—Muzeum Wojska w Białymstoku. Ośrodek Badań Historii Wojskowej 22 (2009): 112–43, here: 122; Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 259.

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Polish–Lithuanian borderland around Suwałki. At this point, the Poles saw the Lithuanians as nothing more than vicarious agents of Moscow. The Lithuanians for their part saw their southern neighbors as “Polish landlords who want to enslave us.” In late September, Piłsudski launched a major offensive against the Lithuanian and Bolshevik troops and recaptured Suwałki.126 It would have been a children’s game to direct his troops northeast and conquer the Vilnius region, but he knew that such a blunt operation would at the same time cost him his last credit in the West. The scheme he came up with was a quite simple affair, no army was involved, no street fighting, and no military genius. To implement it, his choice fell, again, on a friend from the multinational Vilnius area. In contrast to Lithuania’s loyal lawyer Michał Römer, General Lucjan Żeligowski was an old warhorse now in Polish service. He had graduated together with Piłsudski from the Vilnius gymnasium in 1885.127 During the Great War, Żeligowski had commanded the Second Battalion and later the 516th Infantry Regiment of the Polish Rifle Brigade which had fought in the Russian Army, followed up by his command of a brigade within the First Polish Corps. After a dispute with General Dowbor-Muśnicki, he was released and henceforth supported the buildup of the Polish Army in France from Russia.128 In July 1918, when leaving for France, General Józef Haller nominated him his successor as commander of the Polish forces in Russia.129 Żeligowski thus had gathered most of his combat experience at the Eastern Front and personally knew the military brass of Piłsudski’s enemy camp. The “Commander” saw in him a trusted man of action, unimaginative and not suitable for the higher echelons, but reliable if given a particular task, despite a “certain dose of vanity and obstinacy of the Vilnius race [sic].”130 On October 7, 1920, Żeligowski concentrated 14,000 men from the First Lithuanian–Belarusian Infantry Division and the Forty-first Suwałki Infantry Regiment for the advance on Vilnius.131 While the group “Bieniakonie”132 had no written order to seize Vilnius, Piłsudski secretly asked Żeligowski to do so. Most of its soldiers were from the area, so that one could pretend their “mutiny” was an autonomous act of imposing the principle of self-determination on their homeland. Nevertheless, the mood amongst these men on the eve of the attack was ambiguous, to say the least. Within the task force, there were officers of the Endecja 126 Balkelis, War, Revolution, and Nation-Making in Lithuania, 1914–1923, 147–50, quote: 149. 127  Andrzej Garlicki, Józef Piłsudski, 1867–1935 (Cracow: Znak, 2017), 29; Andrzej Czesław Żak (ed.), Polska generalicja w opiniach Marszałka Piłsudskiego (Warsaw: Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe, 2012), 31. 128 Piotr Stawecki (ed.), Słownik biograficzny generałów Wojska Polskiego: 1918–1939 (Warsaw: Bellona, 1994), 373–4. 129 Orłowski, Generał Józef Haller, 204. 130  See Piłsudski’s secret evaluation report of Generał Lucjan Żeligowski (undated, c.1922), published in Żak (ed.), Polska generalicja w opiniach Marszałka Piłsudskiego, 34. 131 The Lithuanian–Belarusian Division was built mostly with volunteers from rural areas in 1918–19; see Janusz Odziemkowski, “Żebyśmy wolną Ojczyznę mieli . . .”: Dywizja Litewsko–Białoruska Wojska Polskiego, listopad 1918–czerwiec 1919 r. (Brzeście: Bikstudio Krzysztof Marek Szwaczka, 2013); Wacław Chocianowicz, “Szkic dziejów Litewsko-Białoruskiej Dywizji,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 28 (1974): 124–52. 132  Named after a town in the vicinity.

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camp who disapproved of Piłsudski’s high-handedness. Żeligowski himself was vacillating and asked for further instructions from Warsaw, from where he was again informed that the occupation of Vilnius was “the intention of the Commander in Chief.” The then commander of the Third Army General Władysław Sikorski hastened to the d ­ isoriented group and confirmed the approval from above. On October 8, it finally moved northward. The Lithuanian forces retreated, avoiding major clashes, and leaving Vilnius under the care of the local French military mission. An attempted seizure of Kaunas by Żeligowski’s troops failed. All in all, the Polish casualties added up to some dozen fallen or wounded soldiers.133 In order to keep up the camouflage, Żeligowski proclaimed an independent republic of Central Lithuania which failed to get international recognition, even from Warsaw. In 1922, it was officially annexed by Poland.134 What does the seizure of Vilnius tell us about borderland people in times of civil war? It is worth looking at the attitude of Żeligowski and his men from a different perspective than has been done so far. Historiography has explained their hesitation at the outset of the adventure to the fact that there was no written order, and even the verbal instructions were only known to their commander and a few highranking officers. We can take it for granted that this caused no minor disturbance for soldiers who had internalized the military chain of command, especially if their behavior would constitute a breach of discipline at best, and mutiny at worst. But we also need to take under consideration the very reason why these men—from private to general—were chosen: they were borderland people, stemming from the very area they were to invade. Piłsudski’s calculated gamble to use them as a coverup for his real political motives was prone to put these men into a moral dilemma. Prior to 1918, they had been living with Lithuanians peacefully as neighbors. Some of these men must have had mixed feelings about meeting the Lithuanians in battle the next day. Other units felt differently. The soldiers of the famed Fifth Legions’ Infantry Regiment were not from the area. Their attachment to Vilnius was a mixture of historical sentiment and esprit de corps. In April 1919, they had taken part in the occupation of Vilnius. In July 1920, when the Lithuanians made peace with the Bolsheviks, the Polish troops were forced by the Red Army to abandon the city. What Lithuanians regarded as a last resort to regain their future-designated capital, the enraged legionnaires regarded as treason. Polish-Jewish historian Marceli Handelsman, who earned international fame between the wars, had joined the Fifth Regiment in the summer of 1920, and noted meticulously the mood amongst his comrades, the enemy troops, and the civil population. While he realized the fratricidal character of the Polish–Lithuanian encounters, the recapture of Vilnius for him was a question of honor. “For every ‘Fiver’, Vilnius had become a symbol 133  Grzegorz Łukomski, Walka Rzeczypospolitej o kresy północno-wschodnie, 1918–1920: Polityka i działania militarne (Poznań: UAM, 1994), 139–54, quote: 146. 134 Wiesław Bolesław Łach, “Bunt” Żeligowskiego: Kulisy przyłączenia Wileńszczyzny do Polski, 1920–1922 (Warsaw: Bellona, 2014); Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 268–74. A concise overview of the military conflict between Polish and Lithuanian forces in the Vilnius area 1918–20 can be found in Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 444–52.

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of all the good things in life. The thought that Vilnius might be cut off from Poland was unbearable to our soldiers. They were prepared to go to any lengths to reconquer the city.” For Handelsman, the capture of Vilnius in 1919 was an integral part of the regiment’s identity, and it was as real and determining for its actions as the material conditions in the field.135 For the locals, though, the feeling of uncertainty, ambiguity, and the fluidity of the conflict even outlasted the hostilities. In the “neutral zone” between Lithuania and Poland, an all but forgotten “dirty war” between paramilitaries followed the “official” clash of arms, lasting over two and a half years and witnessing atrocities on both sides. The victims were, as usual, the civilians who lived in these borderlands, and women and children were not spared.136 At the same time, the outright provocation of Żeligowki’s coup which the Lithuanians had to look on helplessly and the prolongation of ethnic conflict in the contact zone not only poisoned Polish– Lithuanian relations for decades, but also “gave to the national self-­consciousness of Lithuanians such an impulse as no other event before and after it.”137 The coup de main in Vilnius was Piłsudski’s last resort to secure the region for the Second Polish Republic. It proves that he could shift effortlessly from the romantic to the pragmatic. His training as a terrorist persecuted by tsarist authority had provided him with the instinct to seize the right moment, even if by unconventional means. In order to build up a state army, he had once robbed a state train in Congress Poland. This does not mean that Piłsudski’s federal concept was made in bad faith. His offer to the Lithuanians was genuine, and for some time in 1919–20 he surely hoped that they would accept and embark with Poland towards a common future. Most remarkably, during the international negotiations on the fate of Żeligowski’s Republic of Central Lithuania, the Polish government in April 1921 agreed to the concept of a Polish–Lithuanian Confederation along the Swiss model, with two Lithuanian “cantons”—Kaunas and Vilnius. For Warsaw, this solution would have meant the irretrievable loss of Vilnius. But it came to naught because the Lithuanian government was against it, apprehanding that, in reality, Lithuania would always come second to Poland.138

135 Handelsman, W piątym pułku Legjonów, quote: 36–7. Considerations on the nature of the conflict: 25–6 (see the third quotation below the section heading “1: The Eastern Theatre”); on the crucial function of mass psychology in military units: 41–2. More on the Fifth Regiment’s prior deployment 1914–18 can be found in the memoirs of Roman Starzyński, Cztery lata wojny w służbie Komendanta: Przeżycia wojenne 1914–1918 (Warsaw: Tetragon, 2012) (first pub. 1937). Thanks to Bogdan Kazimierski for this reference. 136 Balkelis, War, Revolution, and Nation-Making in Lithuania, 1914–1923, 154–6. 137  Danutė Blažytė-Baužienė, Česlovas Laurinavičius, and Artūras Dubonis (eds), Nepriklausomybė (1918–1940 m.) (Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2013), cited after Balkelis, War, Revolution, and NationMaking in Lithuania, 1914–1923, 152. 138  Kaunas feared again being bullied by Poland in such a confederation; see Mačiulis and Staliūnas, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883–1940, 83–6; Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 271. According to the memoirs of a former member of the Polish Military Organization, Piłsudski in 1920 rejected any suggestions to go a step further and occupy Kaunas in order to force Lithuania into the “two canton solution”: see Tadeusz Katelbach, “Moja misja kowieńska,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 36 (1976): 60–97, here: 65–6.

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The federal concept in theory generally allowed for the participation of the “national other,” especially in the Lithuanian–Polish–Belarusian lands that Piłsudski knew since his childhood days. Thus, his flaming appeal to the Lithuanians after the final annexation of Vilnius by Poland on April 20, 1922 was more than cheap political talk: “On this day of great Polish triumph which all those gathered here are so deeply aware of, I cannot help but reach out, despite our differences, to the people in Kowno [Kaunas], who probably regard our triumph as their defeat and a reason for mourning. I cannot help but reach out with a message of love and reconciliation. I cannot think of them as anything but brothers.”139 Mykolas Römeris, bitterly disappointed by Poland’s—as he saw it—arrogant betrayal of his homeland, wrote to Piłsudski in a sharply worded letter: “Sir, I have read your speech delivered in Vilnius. I read it in Kaunas . . . Vilnius is not only the capital of Lithuania—­it is her tragedy, while for Poland it is a mere tidbit to satisfy her greed.”140 It is striking that in the context of both postwar conflicts in Central Europe that we have examined so far, the topic of civil war and war between brothers resurfaces time and again.141 It shows that contemporaries who lived in this part of the continent, characterized as they were by cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity, did not think always in clearly defined ethnic categories. It was the course and outcome of the civil war itself, the changing of tactics and coalitions, the use of propaganda and violence which defined belonging. Previously fluid and overlapping categories of ethnic identity suddenly were forced into narrow channels, clearly distinct from one another. The constellation in Lithuania and in Galicia was exactly the same: The ­processes of ethnic nation building at work did not allow for any kind of compromise in either case. Half a century earlier, when citizenship was still a political category, similar conflicts might have been settled between the two states involved after relatively minor military skirmishes and a negotiation of new borders favorable to the winner. Now, with citizenship being an ethnic category, it no longer sufficed to draw a new frontier on a map. Any population divided by this new frontier posed the crucial question where its members “belonged” by ancestry, culture, language, and historical heritage. Ending up on the “wrong” side of the border fostered the fear of being regarded as an “alien element” within the state one was living in, and constant grieving for another state where one lived as “equals.” The difference between the Galician and the Lithuanian theatres is that in the first case, the Central European Civil War had involved larger parts of the society on both sides of the front in the fighting, first and foremost the peasantry. Thus, participation in the civil war turned the national consciousness of both Ukrainians and Poles from an intellectual game of a few into an existential experience for 139  Józef Piłsudski, “Address Delivered in Vilnius, 20 April, 1922,” in Ersoy, Górny, and Kechriotis (eds), Modernism, 23. Marek Kornat, “Die Wiedergeburt Polens als multinationaler Staat in den Konzeptionen von Józef Piłsudski,” Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte 15, no. 1 (2011): 11–42, here: 23–4, refers to the same speech, underlining Piłsudski’s ambivalence towards federation—never ruled out, never implemented, and always with a notion of Polish preponderance. 140  Römer, “Answer to Józef Piłsudski,” 11, 14. 141  For Galicia see above; for Vilnius, see Grzegorz Łukomski, Wojna domowa: Z dziejów konfliktu polsko–litewskiego 1918–1920 (Warsaw: Adiutor, 1997).

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many. “Relatively few Lithuanians,” Timothy Snyder reminds us, “perished in any of these struggles, whereas more than a million inhabitants of Ukraine died in the state-to-state wars, internecine conflicts, partisan actions, bandit raids, and pogroms that prevailed in 1918–20.”142 Poles and Jews as well suffered enormous losses here, and they would not forget about this either. 2 : T H E W E S T E R N T H E AT R E My father’s stories left a grim impression on me; I saw the horror in his eyes as he gave [me] a detailed account of the bloody suppression of the miners’ strike at Królewska Huta (Chorzów), before a mine inspection at the beginning of 1919. When [Otto] Hörsing and his Saxon satrap [Gustav] Noske’s cavalry charged in to attack the strikers, my father barely managed to cheat death. Shaken by the experience, he ground his teeth in helpless fury as he recounted it, cursing the German nation.143 Leader of Polish irregulars in the third Silesian “uprising” Jan Faska on a meeting with his father in Chorzów, summer of 1920 There was no actual front line to speak of . . . For a soldier who had gone through the great battles in France, the nature of the struggle in this border guard section [Rawicz] was more than peculiar . . . We were at our posts since shortly after midnight. Noon came, the stomach growled; one after the other, the guys from the border guard left our line to go home for lunch! . . . After all, it must be remembered that after such a long war, young people often knew nothing but the soldier’s profession and could hardly find their way back into civilian life. Such people were to be found on the German and on the Polish side. Warfare had become their purpose in life. In my regiment as well, there were Poles who fought against their compatriots. A phenomenon from times past recurred, where nationality was not the defining factor. One was a soldier, a Landsknecht, fighting for pay and food, and was glad to receive orders whose meaning one did not need to think about . . . On the spot, Capt.[ain] Petzel mustered the battery and explained to us the purpose of the whole operation. Through poaching, wood theft and sale, and unauthorized requisitions, a volunteer battalion had caused the greatest damage to the district . . . In any case, one battalion member had been headed off one night returning from the Polish side. He confessed that the battalion had agreed with the Poles to defect to their side, in case they were to be disarmed or court-martialed . . . Nobody would be forced to participate in the disarmament [of the unit] if he had reservations about possibly taking action against his own compatriots.144 Experience report of Dietrich Vogt on his time with the German “Border Guard” in 1919 in the Rawicz district 142 Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, 137. 143 Jan Faska, Garść luźnych wspomnień z czasów dzia[ła]lności plebiscytowej i IIIgo powstania śląskiego, pisanych w roku 1922 i uzupełnionych w 1936, OSS, Manuscript Department, 14792/II [BN mf. 68715], 2. 144  Dietrich Vogt, Der großpolnische Aufstand 1918/1919 (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 1980), 105–6, 108–9.

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Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921 “It is the tragedy of the Upper Silesian that he is neither a German nor a Pole, but simply an Upper Silesian, and that injustice will be done to him in either case whether he be claimed by Germany or by Poland.” Montag thought through various possibilities. He paced back and forth in the room. He resolved to read more about the history of Ireland, of Lithuania, of the Basques, of the Ukraine. Montag stopped pacing. K[orfanty] was a Pole because he wanted to be a Pole. It was as simple as that. He did not want to believe it at first, he sought for some other formulation. But again and again he returned to this lapidary sentence. He was someone who was seeking his identity, who had been set down between Poland and Germany and had opted for one side. Because he wanted to!145 Silesian-born novelist Horst Bienek on his character Georg Montag, persecuted by the Nazis as a “half-Jew,” who in 1939, in hiding, is contemplating on nationality and identity

In comparison to the events in Poland’s eastern borderlands, the balance of power in the west in late 1918 was strikingly different. There the largest contact zone was shared with the former imperial master Germany, which, although defeated, was still a power center to be reckoned with. The mere fact that its army was falling apart did not mean that it was devoid of armed men. The defeated state’s hands were bound, its government dependent on the Allied vision of its future. But thousands of German war veterans, utterly disappointed by the unfavorable outcome of the war, did not lay down their weapons. Rather, they organized in paramilitary formations which were active in the German borderlands and in the center. They fought ethnic and political foes, often on their own account, but also as mercenaries paid for by the German state. It was mainly such paramilitary units which were deployed by both sides in Greater Poland and Upper Silesia, where the Polish–German conflict erupted in 1918–19. Further to the southwest, in Cieszyn Silesia, the young Czechoslovak state, the West’s favorite child, was also no lightweight and possessed an effective military and police apparatus. Amongst the German and Czech elites, a national consciousness had been built up in the preceding decades. Between 1918 and 1922, they fought fierce political and armed struggles for the borderlands with the Poles, and at times it was far from clear who would gain the upper hand. In the end, while the Polish state established facts in the east with its armed forces, in the west it was dependent on the Entente as arbitrator. As a vanquished power and official culprit of the Great War, the Germans had a weak lobby, they lost to the Poles. On the other hand, the Czechs and Slovaks by that time boasted some of the best connections in Paris, and the Poles for their part lost ground to them. 145  Horst Bienek, The First Polka (San Francisco, CA: Fjord Press, 1984), 84. Thanks to Raphael Utz for this quote. More on Bienek’s depiction of Upper Silesian identity in Elwira Pachura, Polen— die verlorene Heimat: Zur Heimatproblematik bei Horst Bienek, Leonie Ossowski, Christa Wolf, Christine Brückner (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2002), 65–8.

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“Insurrection” in Poznań In general, although nationalist agitation had been active in the Prussian partition zone before the outbreak of hostilities, its Polish-speaking population had observed an attitude of “conditional loyalty” to Germany during the Great War.146 This was not least a result of the fact that the region had been spared the devastations of war and occupation. The National Democrats here featured a political line which differed from Roman Dmowski’s anti-German and pro-Russian stance, they were rather non-committal and awaited the outcome of the war.147 But whereas such considerations only mattered to a handful of political activists, the relatively conciliatory policy of the Central Powers towards the Polish inhabitants in the occupied Russian partition zone up to 1918 raised within the Polish community in Prussia the demand for analogous treatment by the authorities.148 Towards war’s end, the antagonism between Dmowski and Piłsudski was felt even here, far from Warsaw and Paris, in the Endecja stronghold of the Poznań area. A branch of the Polish Military Organization was established clandestinely in the city in early 1918 as a first military structure of a future Polish state. In early November 1918, it counted only about 200 men, but by the end of the year, 500 more joined them.149 Many of its members stemmed from the ranks of local Polish Scouts, harboring romantic visions of the Polish nation. In the First World War they had been conscripts in the German Army with usually lower military ranks, and some had seen combat.150 Already since 1916, a clandestine Central Citizen’s Committee (Centralny Komitet Obywatelski) which was dominated by the national democrats functioned as political representation of the Poles living in the area. Although not sympathetic to each other, both organizations cooperated, since they found common ground in the political struggle against the German authority.151 Their existence was an act of “barely veiled Polish nation-state building on PrussianGerman territory.” But unsure how the Polish masses would react in the event of an armed insurrection on the eve of the German defeat, Polish nationalists were inclined to pursue their ambitious political claims—such as the erection of a future Polish state which would encompass West Prussia, Poznań, and Upper Silesia— by peaceful means. In 1918, the province of Poznań, although permeated with German culture, was dominated by Poles, who made up more than three-fifths of 146  The term “conditionally loyal” is used by Boysen, “Simultaneity of the Un-simultaneous,” 237. He also lists the relevant literature to this section. 147  Janusz Karwat, Od idei do czynu: Myśl i organizacje niepodległościowe w Poznańskiem w latach 1887–1919 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2002), 290. 148  Boysen, “Simultaneity of the Un-simultaneous,” 238–40. 149 Karwat, Od idei do czynu, 319–29; Marek Rezler, Powstanie Wielkopolskie: 1918–1919. Spojrzenie po 90 latach (Poznań: Rebis, 2008), 64–6; Wrzosek, Wojny o granice Polski Odrodzonej, 1918–1921, 48. 150 Thanks to Wojciech Pieniazek for this background information. See Wojciech Pieniazek, Paramilitärische Gewaltgemeinschaften im Konflikt um Oberschlesien 1918–1921: Ein deutsch–polnischer Vergleich (working title) (forthcoming). 151  Antoni Czubiński, Poznań w latach 1918–1939 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2004), 13–15.

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its population. On the other hand, in West Prussia, the region that stretched to the north where it bordered the Baltic Sea, these proportions were reversed.152 At that time, the most powerful Polish striking force around were soldiers who served in the Prussian Fifth Army Corps. They secretly organized themselves and were re-enforced by deserters, reservists, and soldiers who—with the help of Polish doctors—feigned injuries and were brought in from the front. In the summer of 1918, they gathered information and hid guns. Neither unequivocally Piłsudski’s nor Dmowski’s men, they featured “a mixed political allegiance and a regional perspective,” but “remained a small clandestine group” and had “little contact with the civilian population.”153 In November 1918, Germany was struggling with defeat and revolution at its center and could not afford to pay too much attention to what was going on at its various borders.154 The fact that the armistice of November 11, 1918 left the entire region under German military control was a heavy blow to Polish aspirations. Berlin underestimated the growing tension within their largest minority in the east, where the signs pointed gradually in direction of creating a fait accompli. The underground Central Citizen’s Committee had been transformed into an official organ—the Polish “Supreme People’s Council” (Naczelna Rada Ludowa)—which followed a nationalist agenda. Despite this, the Germans regarded the presence of local troops and militias sufficient to secure the area, although those were d ­ ominated by ethnic Poles.155 The “Civil Defense” (Bürgerwehr/Straż Obywatelska) numbered over 1,000 men, most of them Poles from the prewar paramilitary Falcon movement, and was de facto under the control of the local Polish Supreme People’s Council, not of the German government in Berlin.156 The number increased rapidly, surpassing 5,000 in late December.157 German socialists naively played into the hands of the Polish National Democrats, primary backers of all these preparations, by further undermining the “bourgeois” Prussian administration’s authority. Towards year’s end, the tide was turning in the Poles’ favor in Poznań and its surroundings. They cunningly distracted the new German government’s fear by stating that they shared its interest in the maintenance of public order. In reality, a powerful ethnic minority’s elite was diligently preparing to take power from a weakened nation state’s majority.158 But whereas the Supreme 152  Mike Schmeitzner, “Deutsche Polenpolitik am Ende?: Alfred Herrmann, der Deutsche Volksrat und die Nationalitätenkämpfe in Posen 1918/19,” in Nationalistische Politik und Ressentiments. Deutsche und Polen von 1871 bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Johannes Frackowiak (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 63–103, here: 71, quote: 73. 153  Boysen, “Simultaneity of the Un-simultaneous”, 240–2; quotes: 242. See also Jens Boysen, “Militärischer Verrat und ‘nationale Tat’: Die konspirative Vorbereitung des Posener Aufstandes durch polnisch–preußische Soldaten im Sommer und Herbst 1918,” in Geheime Netzwerke im Militär 1700–1945, edited by Gundula Gahlen, Daniel Marc Segesser, Carmen Winkel, et al. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016), 142–66. 154 Jones, Founding Weimar. 155  Boysen, “Simultaneity of the Un-simultaneous,” here: 242–5. 156 Karwat, Od idei do czynu, 359–61. 157 Wrzosek, Wojny o granice Polski Odrodzonej, 1918–1921, 47; Vogt, Der großpolnische Aufstand 1918/1919, 33. 158  Boysen, “Simultaneity of the Un-simultaneous,” 245–6.

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People’s Council was still inclined to play the political game, the Polish Military Organization, unsurprisingly, favored armed action.159 The mastermind behind the preparation for paramilitary action was a former front officer in German service, Mieczysław Paluch, who in 1920 would command the second Polish “uprising” in Upper Silesia.160 Germans in the region felt strongly that by granting the Poles more and more influence, their own government had utterly failed and deserted them. In a desperate attempt to counter it, they established their own representations, “German People’s Councils” (Deutsche Volksräte), which, due to the threat of the awakening Polish nationalism, soon recruited tens of thousands of new members. Twenty thousand gathered for a German rally in Poznań on December 12, 1918. As one speaker put it, it was meant to become “the bulwark on which all the waves of the Slavic flood and all so very skillful attempts of Polish art of assimilation will break.” Germans should “remember their nationhood.” Because every type of support was greatly needed, Jews were addressed as “fellow citizens” and invited to join the movement. But despite the considerable number of first enlistments and the huge support of the rally in the regional capital, the German People’s Councils failed to mobilize the masses. After over a century of German political supremacy, they had little experience of autonomous self-organization and could not ground their efforts on national networking and agitation at the grass-root level. Their members represented primarily the bourgeois middle class (mayors, teachers, municipal councilors) and failed to close the ranks with the German socialists and workers’ unions.161 To be sure, Polish nationalists faced similar problems: They were ready to take over, but before they could act, the crucial question of how to unite the Polish masses behind them remained. The European-wide revolutionary swing of late 1918 was no vehicle for the Endecja’s conservative nationalism. What they aimed for was a conservative Polish instead of a conservative German government, but in no way a revolutionary government. Neither approach incited the Polish-speaking masses of the countryside, and a recognizable Polish proletariat did not exist here—the largest industrial area in the German–Polish contact zone lay further to the south, in Upper Silesia. The main impetus for many Poles to jump on the nationalist train was not the attraction of nationalism per se, but the mere fact that the unattractive alternative was to stay in the German camp which in late 1918 was reeling from a lost war and facing revolution, insecurity, immense reparations, and other future hardships. The main question was: Which was the right moment to jump? That moment came when Ignacy Paderewski, world-famous pianist, composer, and restless activist for the idea of a Polish national resurrection, visited Poland in late December 1918. Born in Congress Poland in 1860, he had been two years old when his father was arrested for his participation in the failed January Uprising. 159 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 115. 160 Paluch’s fellow soldier Bogdan Hulewicz was responsible for the contact with Piłsudski’s Belweder camp in Warsaw. Thanks to Wojciech Pieniazek for this background information. For events in Upper Silesia see below. 161  Schmeitzner, “Deutsche Polenpolitik am Ende?,” 71–9, quotes: 77.

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He had spent a nomadic life as an acclaimed concert pianist, with extended travels in Europe and the United States. In 1907, he had completed his sole symphony “Polonia.” It is composed of three movements, which are said to represent Poland’s past (the glory of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth), present (partition and political subjugation), and future (struggle and independence),162 the latter ­culminating in the tune of the Polish national anthem with its first verse: Poland has not yet perished, So long as we still live. What the alien force has taken from us, We shall retrieve with a saber.163

To promote these lyrics—which were written for the Polish legions in Napoleon’s army in the wake of the partitions—at a time when new Polish paramilitary organizations formed in Galicia for armed struggle, was a potent political statement. The year following its premiere, Paderewski funded the erection of a monument memorializing the ­legendary Polish victory over the Teutonic Order in the Battle of Grunwald (1410) in Cracow. It was the start of his political career—after the symphony, he stopped composing and dedicated the next decade of his life entirely to the Polish cause. In 1917, he became the speaker of the Polish National Committee, the body politic headed by Dmowski in Paris which by that time was recognized by the Entente as the Polish representation because the Regency Council in Warsaw was a creation of the Central Powers, scilicet the enemy. Since at the same time Paderewski found a common language with Piłsudski and shared many of his political views, he at least partly bridged the gap between the Polish left and right during the first months of independence.164 Paderewski had been on his way to Warsaw when the Supreme People’s Council invited him to come to Poznań instead. On December 27, he delivered a flaming speech for the re-erection of Poland—in his vision remarkably as a result of a non-party joint effort, mainly accomplished by peasants and workers—which was attended by an audience of 50,000, but also attracted German counter-protesters. When the Allied flags the Poles had hoisted were torn down by German soldiers, these groups clashed violently, and this was the spark which ignited the powder keg. The Poles were better prepared and in the course of the day they assumed power in Poznań and surrounding cities, disarming the startled German soldiers as the Ukrainian units had done with the Habsburg garrison of Lviv two months earlier (see above). For the moment, there was not much of a fight and few casualties. German troops managed to halt the Polish insurgents only in the towns with a German majority further to the north and west.165 162  George Grove, Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1954), 482. 163  “Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, kiedy my żyjemy. Co nam obca przemoc wzięła, szablą odbierzemy.” Slightly modernized first lines of the poem by Józef Wybicki from 1797. 164 Anita J. Prażmowska, Ignacy Paderewski: Poland (London: Haus, 2009); Roman Wapiński, Ignacy Paderewski (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1999). 165 Rezler, Powstanie Wielkopolskie, 99–162, Paderewski’s speech: 103–6.

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In contrast to their German counterparts, the men from the Polish Military Organization and their comrades had a clear goal to fight for. They were politicized military men, and some of them had been waiting for this moment for years. The German soldiers, for their part, were stunned by the events of the previous few weeks: the unconditional surrender of their army; the collapse of the government it had been fighting for; and the formation of a new government that not only left them without a roadmap for the future, but also without clear instructions on how to react in the event of a Polish act of—as the Germans saw it—treason. As an expression of inter-ethnic class solidarity, many German soldiers with a working-class background openly sympathized with their Polish comrades.166 And how should the German government advise its military? Of course, the hawks at headquarters thirsted for a counterstrike. Although initially favoring armistice negotiations, General Erich Ludendorff was thrown out of the Supreme Army Command because he changed his mind in October 1918. The possible loss of the Poznań area—where he was born—before his very eyes, he rattled: “Well, you will trust me that I do not say yes to every peace . . . But if we get the chance to improve our situation through battle to the knife, then, believe me, we will fight to the utmost.”167 But the time when the German military had acted independently in Central and Eastern Europe was gone, and with it its freedom of action. Every military operation had to be sanctioned by the Entente, especially border changes which would only be settled at the forthcoming peace conference. And which soldiers were to defend the nascent Weimar Republic in times of demobilization, mass desertion, and revolutionary soldiers’ councils? The desperate Berlin government called for volunteers for the defense of the eastern frontier, and established a paramilitary force, the Freikorps, in the German-controlled areas of the disputed region. Formally subordinate to the German Army (Reichswehr), they were organized spontaneously and locally, and their loyalty was often directed in the first place at their leaders. They grabbed arms wherever they could get them, which was facilitated by the fact that “weapons literally were left lying on the streets and the state authority was weakened by the collapse of the empire.”168 Not all, but many of those who enlisted regarded themselves as the vanguard of a new radical movement: veterans of the Great War or young men longing to distinguish themselves in battle. Disgusted by the demise of military discipline at the front and the rise of egalitarian mass politics at home, they decided to carry on fighting their own private war for another order. Politically and nationally radicalized by the experience of revolution and ethnic strife, they saw themselves proudly

166 Schulze, Freikorps und Republik, 1918–1920, 103. 167 In a conversation with Albrecht von Thaer, cited from Boris Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration: Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2003), 80 (note 147). 168  Boris Barth, “Freiwilligenverbände in der Novemberrevolution,” in Bergien and Pröve (eds), Spießer, Patrioten, Revolutionäre, 95–115, here: 99.

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as a destructive elite force and the vanguard of an ethnic German nation.169 The Polish paramilitaries for their part were equally highly motivated and resolved to fight for every inch of land they regarded as Polish.170 During the first days of 1919, Greater Poland became the site of a miniature civil war between Germans and Poles. The uncompromising nature of this ethnonational encounter alone would have surely sufficed to blur the line between ­combatants and civilians. Additionally, the ranks of the belligerents on both sides of the frontline were not only filled with soldiers who were convinced they were fighting a “just” battle for their respective fatherland. A complicating factor was that random paramilitary units attracted criminal gangs and smugglers who used the shining hour to “attend their business” in the shadow of the political conflict. Discipline was at its lowest point.171 German warlords would recruit volunteers on the spot and fine restive villages, and whole units would demobilize, stating for example that “they had run out of steam and bought tickets to Berlin.”172 The fact that in this case the undisciplined armed mob paid for the trip home like a group of schoolboys returning from a day trip is noteworthy: It seems that in their understanding, they were leaving a space where the norms and ethics of their world had been disbanded, and now were preparing to re-enter their civic lives. Many of them were probably relieved to go home, since trouble had been brewing in the Greater Polish area. According to the latest findings, between December 27, 1918 and March 8, 1920, both sides combined had suffered about 10,000 casualties, one-third of them fatal. Over the whole period of the conflict, every day an average of eight combatants died. The Polish side was generally more affected than the German.173 Although the Germans managed to secure the frontline against a potential Polish invasion until the beginning of February, their dreams of reconquering the Poznań area experienced a heavy blow when, on February 16, 1919, the Poles asked France for help. Subsequently, the frontline was turned into a demarcation line. Over the same time period, the German eastern voluntary forces had grown to a considerable size, and the Polish forces had been reorganized as the Army of Greater Poland since mid-January, under General Dowbor-Muśnicki’s command, and had gathered 169  On the significance of the Poznań conflict for the formations of German Freikorps see Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration, 232–3. On the general deployment of Freikorps in late 1918, their composition, armament, social structure, and group mentality, see Schulze, Freikorps und Republik, 1918–1920, 22–69. On the ideology and violence of the Freikorps as a postwar paramilitary force in Central Europe, see Gerwarth, “The Central European Counter-Revolution.” 170  Polish paramilitaries in the Polish–German contact zone after the war as agents of violence, hitherto almost unvetted, form a vital part of Pieniazek, Paramilitärische Gewaltgemeinschaften im Konflikt um Oberschlesien 1918–1921. 171  As an example see eyewitnesses’ reports on marauding German frontier guards in February 1919 in Katowice State Archive, 12/15/0/1/32. Thanks to Wojciech Pieniazek for this reference. 172 Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration, 233–4. 173  German forces: 1,240 dead, about 1,000 wounded; Polish forces: 2,289 dead, about 6,000 wounded. Figures according to email from Wojciech Pieniazek to the author, December 11, 2017, based on Grzegorz Łukomski and Bogusław Polak, Powstanie Wielkopolskie, 1918–1919: Działania bojowe, aspekty polityczne, kalendarium (Koszalin: Wydawnictwo Uczelniane Wyższej Szkoły Inżynierskiej, 1995); Marceli Kosman, Powstanie Wielkopolskie na tle walk o przetrwanie narodowe pod zaborem pruskim (Poznań: WBP, 1993).

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Fig. 5.  January 26, 1919: Swearing-in ceremony of General Jósef Dowbor-Muśnicki on the Freedom Square in Poznań. © National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 1-H-335-2

a combat strength of 70,000 men. The ceasefire prevented the miniature civil war from mutating into a full-fledged one. But both sides would not always observe their regulations and clashed violently time and again. Their ranks constantly continued to swell. In May 1919, almost a quarter of a million German volunteers, armed to the teeth, were grouped along the German–Polish frontier, from Greater Poland to the Baltic, while the bulk of Poland’s force was still engaged in battle at its eastern borderlands against the Ukrainian Galician Army (see above).174 Because of their operational superiority, when the Germans received the regulations of the Versailles Peace Treaty on May 8 that they were expected to sign, it came as a shock to society as a whole. The territories occupied by the Polish troops were specified as an integral part of the Polish state. Consternation, disappointment, and uproar were the immediate reaction not only on the streets, but also within the government’s ranks. But there was not much it could do. Wilson’s thirteenth point already foresaw Poland’s access to the sea. In practice this meant a strip of land which could not lead elsewhere than through West Prussia, and in a way already 174 Schulze, Freikorps und Republik, 1918–1920, 110–11. For German Freikorps in the Baltic, who as a rule did not immediately engage with Polish troops, see ibid., 125–201; Hannsjoachim W. Koch, Der deutsche Bürgerkrieg: Eine Geschichte der deutschen und österreichischen Freikorps 1918–1923 (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1978), 132–72; Balkelis, “Demobilization and Remobilization of German and Lithuanian Paramilitaries”; Tomas Balkelis, “Turning Citizens into Soldiers: Baltic Paramilitary Movements after the Great War,” in Gerwarth and Horne (eds), War in Peace, 126–44. See also the forthcoming book by Tomas Balkelis in this OUP series “The Greater War.”

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preordained the loss of large territories in the Poznań area.175 Germany had no choice but to accept these bitter facts by signing the Versailles Treaty in late June 1919. The hundreds of thousands of German volunteers were a strong enough force to invade Poland, but not enough to simultaneously defend a German state in revolutionary upheaval against the Entente’s armies.176 “The day-to-day partisan war,” writes Boris Barth, “was militarily insignificant, but it contributed greatly to the brutalization of the Freikorps, who felt cheated by the government of a sure victory over the despised Poles.”177 And it was most definitely hard to restrain. In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (1827), the title character tries black magic but utterly fails: The enchanted broom meant to serve him gets out of control. In his distress, he cries out “Spirits that I’ve cited my command ignore.”178 In the spring of 1919, the German High Command faced a similar dilemma: It had called for an army of volunteers, telling them they had to protect their nation against a “Slavic flood” from the east,179 and a quarter of a million had answered the call enthusiastically. Now they were told that they were not allowed to do what they had enlisted for. The frustration and roaring anger within the Freikorps was a force impossible to suppress. Upper Silesia was their next field of engagement. There, from the very start (as during the relatively short period of Freikorps deployment in Greater Poland), these units would feature serious disciplinary problems, and their commanders would choose to obey or disobey orders from superiors as they pleased.180

Upper Silesia’s “war in the dark” With Greater Poland in upheaval, there was a risk that the conflict would spread to Upper Silesia in the south. The region was also highly contested between Germany and Poland. Both sides vied for the support of the ethnically mixed population and sometimes utilized paramilitary troops from outside. Polish nationalism was quite strong here as well, an interesting fact given that until the end of the nineteenth century most local residents displayed a regional identity which was neither German nor Polish, regarding themselves as “Silesians.” They would communicate mainly in the local idiom, a mixture of Polish with some German 175 T. Hunt Tooley, “German Political Violence and the Border Plebiscite in Upper Silesia, 1919–1921,” Central European History 21, no. 1 (1988): 56–98, here: 60. 176  A concise overview of the military conflict between Polish and German forces in Greater Poland in 1918–19 can be found in Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 277–89. 177 Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration, 236–7. 178  Klaus Schlichte, In the Shadow of Violence: The Politics of Armed Groups (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2009), 207, cites Goethe’s poem in this context. 179  On the metaphor of the “Slavic flood” see Schmeitzner, “Deutsche Polenpolitik am Ende?,” 69–70, 77, 95, 97, referring also to Peter Walkenhorst, Nation—Volk—Rasse: Radikaler Nationalismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890–1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 255–6. On German military tactics see Robert Michael Citino, The Evolution of Blitzkrieg Tactics: Germany Defends Itself Against Poland, 1918–1933 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987). Thanks to Wojciech Pieniazek for this reference. 180 Koch, Der deutsche Bürgerkrieg, 132.

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thrown in, usually mastering one of these primary languages, too.181 It is important to note that they did not harbor any grievances left over from the partition times—Upper Silesia as a region had never been a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.182 But in the 1870s, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck alienated the Upper Silesians with his anti-Catholic Kulturkampf which was meant to liberalize the state on the one hand and to strengthen his position in domestic policies on the other. Since Upper Silesia was predominantly of Catholic faith (nine out of ten inhabitants), these policies inevitably antagonized the population. But in contrast to Greater Poland, where the Prussian policy of “Germanization” had already to a significant degree divided Germans and Poles in the nineteenth century, in Upper Silesia the Culture Struggle evoked another reaction: Political activists attempted to strengthen Polish nationalism but failed to ignite the masses, whereas the German Center Party with its conservative-papist profile registered a significant rise in members irrespective of ethnic affiliation. Obviously, the Silesians regarded the “Iron Chancellor’s” policies as an attack on their religious identity rather than their national identity.183 Nevertheless, a certain influence of lobbying for the Polish cause had left its mark at the turn of the century, and the area, as much as any in Central Europe, had entered the sphere of national competition. As the Germans built their gymnastics organization (Turnvereine), the Poles established their network of Falcon clubs; German libraries were opened as well as Polish ones.184 Even if Polish nation building was in its infancy, it was undoubtedly happening. And when the rising star of the Polish nationalists in Upper Silesia Wojciech Korfanty, a young journalist from Katowice, entered on the scene in 1903, the pace increased.185 He quickly managed to gather a large group of followers, and in the long run the “Polish Question” in the industrial area was nationalized. By 1918, the socio-economic structure of Upper Silesian society had been transformed in a way that suited Polish secession plans almost perfectly. Sixty percent of Upper Silesians indicated Polish as their first language (this choice included the Silesian dialect), and 60 percent of the inhabitants of the industrial district were workers. As in the case of Ukrainian peasants and Polish landlords in the Kresy, class differences and ethnic 181  Kamusella, “The Changing Lattice of Languages, Borders, and Identities in Silesia.” 182  Roland Gehrke, “Die territorialen Ansprüche der polnischen Nationalbewegung auf Ober­ schlesien im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” in Oberschlesien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Studien zu einem nationalen Konflikt und seiner Erinnerung, edited by Kai Struve (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2003), 47–62. 183 Bjork, Neither German nor Pole; Annemarie Sammartino, The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914–1922 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010); Bolko Janus, Germans and Poles: Identity, Culture, and Nationalism in German Upper Silesia 1918–1933 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1998). 184 Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 175. 185 For a recent biography, see Jan F. Lewandowski, Wojciech Korfanty (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2013). His German opponent was the Catholic priest Carl Ulitzka; see Wojciech Pieniazek, “Die Gegenspieler: Wojciech Korfanty und Carl Ulitzka. Die Generation der politischen Aufsteiger in Oberschlesien vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Generationen in der Geschichte des langen 20. Jahrhunderts: Methodisch-theoretische Reflexionen, edited by Lukáš Fasora, Ewald Hiebl, and Petr Popelka (Münster: Lit, 2017), 101–15.

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differences coincided in Poland’s west, but in reverse order: Polish miners worked here for a German administration staff and were governed by Germans in the industrial facilities which made Upper Silesia “a particular flash point in German– Polish relations.”186 As much as Poznań Poles were “bourgeois,” Upper Silesian Poles were “proletarian,” and they had a history of violent mining strikes and domestic social riots.187 As in Greater Poland, the First World War initially saw obedient Upper Silesian soldiers marching to the tune of the “Song of Germany” (Deutschlandlied), which in its first stanza names the rivers Meuse, Neman, and Adige, as well as the Fehmarn Belt its cultural limits.188 But in the long run, the war experience tempered the enthusiasm of many Upper Silesian recruits. While comradery could overcome ethnic barriers, discrimination on the ground of language caused resentment. Nevertheless, some Polish units returning to Upper Silesia served still on the German side when the conflict there broke out, and therefore had to watch out not to be targeted by masses of Polish demonstrators.189 When in 1918 a series of workers’ strikes and soldiers’ revolts hit Germany as a reaction to the shortages and hardships brought by a war that had lasted too long and was finally lost, Upper Silesia was one of the focal points. The social revolution in the Reich turned national at its eastern fringe.190 The Great War had turned a huge part of Polish-speaking Upper Silesians from patriots to protesters. Whereas before the war “the German nationalizing program had a state behind it[, while] the Polish nationalizing program did not,”191 this situation changed in 1918 when the Second Polish Republic entered the scene. It was the end of Prussia’s “cultural colonization” in Upper Silesia.192 The connection between Polish activists on the spot and the Polish ­govern­ment-in-­the-making was already established in 1917, when Korfanty sought the support of the National Democrats who dominated the Polish National Committee in Paris.193 This seemed an odd choice, since given the already existing workers’ unrest in Upper Silesia, the left rather than the right Polish camp appeared a suitable ally for resisting the German authorities. Korfanty’s choice was logical, though, because Dmowski and his Endecja followers were the anti-German 186  Peter Polak-Springer, Recovered Territory: A German–Polish Conflict Over Land and Culture, 1919–1989 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 1–29, quote: 9. 187 Andrzej Ajnenkiel, Od rza̜dów ludowych do przewrotu majowego: Zarys dziejów politycznych Polski. 1918–1926 (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1986), 209. 188 “Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etsch bis an den Belt.” This stanza gained enormous popularity in Germany after young students allegedly had sung it during a suicide mission at the Battle of Langemarck in Belgium 1914, and became the official German anthem in 1922 and throughout the Third Reich; see George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 70–3. 189 Kaczmarek, Polacy w armii kajzera na frontach pierwszej wojny światowej, 303–14, 502. 190 Polak-Springer, Recovered Territory, 23; Tooley, “German Political Violence and the Border Plebiscite in Upper Silesia,” 59–61. 191 Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 175. 192  Guido Hitze, Carl Ulitzka, 1873–1953, oder: Oberschlesien zwischen den Weltkriegen (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002), 67. 193 Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 191.

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faction amongst the Polish independentists, while Piłsudski and his peers in early 1917 were still in the service of the Central Powers. Thus, Polish-Silesian group identity underwent another turn: After the turn from (Catholic) religion to (working) class, it witnessed now the turn from (working) class to (national) politics. The National Democrats were also chosen because they were the strongest political force at the Poles’ disposal in Greater Poland just to the north, where equal secessionist moves were soon to be expected from the Polish community. It was more reasonable to coordinate activities in Greater Poland and Upper Silesia under one common patronage than to disperse them under two opposing ones. Certainly, except for a short flirt with socialism at the turn of the century, Korfanty himself had been a dyed-in-the-wool National Democrat anyway, but this is not the point here.194 The point is that obviously any of both political options—left or right— was able to carry the revolutionary vigor of Polish workers in Upper Silesia, as long as it supported Polish nationalism. When the wave of defeat and social revolution hit Germany in late 1918,195 it launched the Upper Silesian national revolution. The case was not only similar to Greater Poland, it was intimately connected. Korfanty was elected to the Poznań Supreme People’s Council as one of its most prominent members, and a Silesian off­ shoot (the “Sub-Commissariat of the Supreme People’s Council”—Podkommisariat Naczelnej Rady Ludowej dla Śłąska in Bytom) was established which oversaw a whole web of smaller People’s Councils all over the region.196 The movement was countered by the formation of the German “League of Patriotic Upper Silesians” (Verband heimattreuer Oberschlesier) which, like the German People’s Councils in Greater Poland, was dominated mainly by middle class business men and intellectuals who would stir up the German public through a variety of cultural-political activities.197 Both nationalist camps made no bones about organizing their illegal armed forces. The Upper Silesian branch of Piłsudski’s Polish Military Organization (founded in early 1919 and numbering more than 14,000 men) was the independence movement’s strongest weapon in the industrial area by early May.198 At the turn of 1918–19, the German Army secured the Silesian borders, and German “volunteers” were hired as a “Border Guard” (Grenzschutz). Soon, the German 194 Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 84. 195 Jones, Founding Weimar. For a comparison of the German with the French and North American “culture of defeat” see Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Die Kultur der Niederlage: Der amerikanische Süden 1865, Frankreich 1871, Deutschland 1918 (Berlin: Fest, 2001). 196 Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 189–94; Andrzej Mikołajew, “Podkomisariat Naczelnej Rady Ludowej dla Śląska w Bytomiu,” Studia Śląskie. Seria Nowa 33 (1978): 273–306. 197  In the wake of the plebiscite, the League was said to have 300,000 members; see Wilson, Frontiers of Violence, 48. 198 Wrzosek, Wojny o granice Polski Odrodzonej, 1918–1921, 232; Urbankowski, Józef Piłsudski, 170–1, 696–9. In the light of these newer findings, the figure of 7,000 members in 1920 given by Przybylski, Wojna polska 1918–1921, 199, is a gross underestimation. Nevertheless, in July the Upper Silesian branch of the Polish Military Organization harshly criticized the tactical leadership of the General Staff in Warsaw and requested to be transferred under the command of the military staff in Poznań. See letter of the executive committee of the Polish Military Organization in Upper Silesia to the Supreme People’s Council’s commissariat in Poznań, Bytom, July 1, 1919, Laudański Files, vol. 16, 53, CAW, I.440.12.16.

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paramilitaries in Upper Silesia outnumbered the Polish many times over. To give them leeway, the Imperial Commissioner for Upper Silesia, Otto Hörsing, had proclaimed a state of siege.199 Occasional clashes between Polish and German paramilitaries, as well as heightened state measures of surveillance and persecution against Polish organizations and activists, heated up the tense atmosphere in the summer of 1919. Civil war was in the air.200 The three major Polish paramilitary operations in Upper Silesia are commonly known as “uprisings,” and will be therefore also called so in the following. One has nevertheless to keep in mind that the area with its indigenous population, and especially with its prosperous industrial area, was claimed by Germany and Poland at the same time, and that the Germans had the better arguments—given the fact that the area had been part of the Holy Roman Empire for centuries and was not a Polish territory taken away in the course of the partitions of the late eighteenth ­century. The conflict was about territory and economic assets, not about challenging an oppressive German regime by Polish freedom fighters. The first Polish “uprising” in Upper Silesia broke out on the night of August 16, 1919. The day before, a German Freikorps unit had tried to break a mining strike in Mysłowice, killing ten miners and wounding many more by machine-gun fire.201 But although power relations in the region had improved for the Polish side, 23,225 members of the Polish Military Organization still had to face about 40,000 German paramilitaries and soldiers.202 Within one week, German regular troops and the Border Guard managed to quell the “uprising,” which had been badly planned in the first place.203 In order to prepare a plebiscite on the region’s future affiliation, German forces were replaced in February 1920 by a neutral force of 20,000 Allied soldiers (5,000 Italian, the rest French; later in 1921 some a­ dditional British forces arrived), and General Jules Gratier from France was ­nominated Commander of the Allied Forces in Upper Silesia. Subsequently, the vigorous French anti-German stance proved favorable for the Polish side.204 After the removal of the German military forces and their paramilitary units, they were replaced by the temporary Sicherheitspolizei (security police), a paramilitary police unit for fighting domestic riots. Most of its members were former German volunteers from different Freikorps units of the Border Guard, who strongly repressed the political organizations of the Poles in regular ways and simultaneously fought an asymmetrical

199 Ajnenkiel, Od rza̜dów ludowych do przewrotu majowego, 210–12. 200  Tooley, “German Political Violence and the Border Plebiscite in Upper Silesia,” 61–2. 201  Paweł Brudek, “Labour Movements and Strikes (East Central Europe),” in 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, et al. (2014–), https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/labour_movements_and_strikes_east_ central_europe, accessed March 19, 2018. 202 Wrzosek, Wojny o granice Polski Odrodzonej, 1918–1921, 243. 203  T. Hunt Tooley, National Identity and Weimar Germany: Upper Silesia and the Eastern Border, 1918–1922 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 77–9. 204  Tooley, “German Political Violence and the Border Plebiscite in Upper Silesia,” 66; Karsten Eichner, Briten, Franzosen und Italiener in Oberschlesien, 1920–1922: Die Interalliierte Regierungs- und Plebiszitkommission im Spiegel der britischen Akten (St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, 2002).

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war with the Polish armed underground as Shock Troops (Stoßtrupps).205 One of the more infamous units was the so-called “Special Police” (Spezialpolizei), which in reality was nothing other than a paramilitary group of 200 men headed by nonlocal Freikorps personnel who patrolled the area.206 The Poles for their part continued to arm their paramilitaries across the unsecured Polish western border. They consisted mainly of battle-tested veterans of the First World War, organized and trained by the Polish military intelligence service.207 In the summer of 1920, paramilitary violence in the region was on the rise again.208 When the Red Army stood at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920 (see below), a German demonstration for neutrality (which would impede the transport of supplies and support from France to the desperate Polish troops via Germany) on August 17, 1920 got out of hand, leaving German demonstrators killed by French soldiers and Polish activists killed by German demonstrators.209 Two days later, Korfanty called for a second “uprising.” One of its aims was to disband the German Sicherheitspolizei, which increasingly persecuted the Polish milieu. By the end of the month, the Polish paramilitary troops controlled Upper Silesia. With the exception of the Italian troops, the Allied troops offered little resistance. The Polish insurgents laid down their weapons after they were assured that their paramilitary forces would be left untouched.210 A “Plebiscite Police” (Policja Plebiscytowa/Abstimmungspolizei) built equally of Poles and Germans would henceforth guarantee law and order.211 But during the nine months preceding the plebiscite, the undercurrent of violence swelled. The Germans enforced their military presence with an unofficial volunteer “Upper Silesian Self-Defense” (Selbstschutz Oberschlesien), consisting of four shock troops counting twenty-five men each, which was backed directly by the German Army.212 According to James E. Bjork, “by the late spring of 1921, an undeclared unconventional war was ­raging across central Upper Silesia.”213 In the case of Upper Silesia, as well as in the case of German Freikorps in the Baltic which is outside the scope of this book,

205  Another example of a German Silesian unit was stationed in Zabrze, camouflaged as an ordinary sports club named “Black Eagle” (Schwarzer Adler) under the leadership of the former Sicherheitspolizei officer Karl Bergerhoff. During the third Polish “uprising” in 1921 the Black Eagle transformed into an effective assault unit named “Black Horde” (Schwarze Schar) and fought at the Battle of Annaberg. Although not much is known about these combat groups, some information and further reading can be found in Fanciszek Biały, Niemieckie ochotnicze formacje zbrojne na Śla̜sku,1918–1923 (Katowice: Instytut Śląski, 1976), 74. Thanks to Wojciech Pieniazek for clarifying these complicated and scarcely documented issues for me. 206 Wilson, Frontiers of Violence, 83, 105. 207 Edward Długajczyk, Wywiad polski na Górnym Śla̜sku 1919–1922 (Katowice: Muzeum Śla̜skie, 2001). 208 Tooley, “German Political Violence and the Border Plebiscite in Upper Silesia,” 67–8; Zyta Zarzycka, Polskie działania specjalne na Górnym Śla̜sku 1919–1921 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1989), 55–7. See also various secret Polish reports on the situation in Upper Silesia from April to July 1920 in Baczyński Files, vol. 31, 109–71, CAW, I.476.1.31. 209 Tooley, National Identity and Weimar Germany, 187–8. 210 Koch, Der deutsche Bürgerkrieg, 258–9. 211 Ajnenkiel, Od rza̜dów ludowych do przewrotu majowego, 222. 212 Koch, Der deutsche Bürgerkrieg, 262. 213 Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 355–6.

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historians can observe “an outsourcing of actual state power,”214 leading to a proxy war, assisted by the Polish and German intelligence services. Both governments, although obviously involved by providing logistics and armaments,215 would officially distance themselves from the events in order not to weaken their bargaining hand with the Allies. The intention was “to expand the scope for state policy in a transitional phase between political systems, while concealing their intentions and direct responsibility and participation in the escalation of violence on the ground.”216 The local shock troops of both sides were ordered to protect their own people, to threaten political activists on the enemy’s side, to conduct raids in the shadow of the night, to kill traitors, to spread terror, and all in all to demonstrate superiority in order to influence the outcome of the plebiscite in their respective nation’s favor. As Wojciech Pieniazek demonstrates in his studies on violence of German and Polish paramilitary units in Upper Silesia, the participants regarded the conflict they were a part of as a secret war.217 Questioned by a German court in 1928 about the murders (called Fememorde in contemporary jargon)218 of members or alleged collaborators of the Polish Military Organization, ex-commander of the Special Police Heinz Oskar Hauenstein stated: “I made a little calculation, it may be that it is 200 [Fememorde]. For the murders committed by the Poles, however, no number can be cited at all. Even the number of 1,066 murders is not correct yet.” Incredulous, the chief judge asked: “Why, did you then believe that you were living in a state of war?,” and Hauenstein answered: “Not quite. We called this state a war in the dark.”219 The plebiscite was held on March 20, 1921 and brought a clear majority of almost 60 percent for the German side. What at first glance comes as a surprise in a region with more than 60 percent Polish native speakers is a clear indication that by that time, the language one spoke did not necessarily determine the nation or state one opted for. However, the result did not induce the pacification of troubled Upper Silesia. The disappointment over the lost vote further goaded the Polish paramilitaries, while their German counterparts were determined to defend the victory at the ballot boxes in the streets of Upper Silesia. On May 3, the third Polish “uprising” broke out, lasting until early July. Its military goal was to obtain as much control over the industrial area of Upper Silesia for Poland as possible. Both 214 Peter Haslinger, Mathias Voigtmann, Wojciech Pieniazek, et al., “Frontiers of Violence: Paramiliärs als Gewaltgemeinschaften im Ostmitteleuropa der 1920er Jahre,” in Gewaltgemeinschaften in der Geschichte. Entstehung, Kohäsionskraft und Zerfall, edited by Winfried Speitkamp, Claudia Ansorge, Philipp Batelka, et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 233–54, here: 235. 215 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 121. 216  Haslinger et al., “Frontiers of Violence,” 236. 217 Pieniazek, Paramilitärische Gewaltgemeinschaften im Konflikt um Oberschlesien 1918–1921. 218  Arthur D. Brenner, “Feme Murder: Paramilitary ‘Self-Justice’ in Weimar Germany,” in Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability, edited by Bruce B. Campbell (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 57–83. 219  Haslinger et al., “Frontiers of Violence,” 240. The number of 1,066 people murdered by Polish paramilitaries seems to appear in the court files, but is not elaborated in Hauenstein’s cited testimony. As Wilson, Frontiers of Violence, has shown, there are striking parallels between this conflict zone and the civil war which in the meantime raged in Ireland. A biased description of the Special Police’s actions in Upper Silesia from its members’ perspective is Friedrich Glombowski (ed.), Organisation Heinz: Das Schicksal der Kameraden Schlageters (Toppenstedt: Uwe Berg-Verlag, 2009) (first pub. 1934).

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sides, again, sent in their paramilitary forces, which were more or less openly ­supported by both armies, who set up their command centers on their respective state’s territory bordering Upper Silesia.220 In his autobiographical novel The Outlaws, Ernst von Salomon described his train ride as a teenager to Upper Silesia, with more German paramilitaries of all colors boarding at every station: “In the train we formed the nucleus of a company, a leader was found after a few minutes’ talk, immediately and as a matter of course his authority was recognised; a future sergeant-major wrote out the roll. At Leipzig some young fellows got in, wearing feathers in their caps, talking in the Bavarian dialect and bringing curious luggage: cart wheels, heavy rollers tied up in cloth and odd pieces of iron packed in boxes. I wandered past them, touched some of the rollers and murmured: ‘Guns?’ The man standing nearest to me grinned.” When the station-master at the demarcation line threatened to throw the paramilitaries out, they unceremoniously hijacked the train and went on.221 On the other side of the invisible frontline, Jan Faska was a national hero in the third “uprising” in the area of Strzelce Opolskie in the southern part of Upper Silesia. He had been born in the industrial district in 1893 and served in the German Army during the first months of the Great War. After deserting to the British, he studied economics in London. In 1918 Faska joined Haller’s Army in France and participated in the Galician campaign in 1919, where he was wounded. After returning home in the early summer of 1920, he joined the Polish Military Organization and commanded its branch in Prudnik. His memoirs depict the period up to the third “uprising” as a time of utter bravado and guerilla warfare during which the Allied forces were reduced to the role of mere extras. Several attempts on his life by German shock troops failed. Faska, a local warlord and a new breed of combatant, made his understanding of Polish nationalism absolutely clear when the Italian commander of the local Allied troops threatened to take the Polish population of Strzelce Opolskie as hostages to bring him to terms: “If  [commander] Satteli really did attack our Polish people in Strzelce in an attempt to frighten me and force me into retreat, then even if they died, it would be no great loss to Poland. Since those people did not fight alongside us in our struggle with the enemy, Poland would lose little.” For Faska, a “real” Pole was only one who was willing to take up arms and fight for independence. By contrast, although at the outbreak of the Great War one-third of the population knew Polish, more than 85 percent of the inhabitants of Strzelce had voted for Germany in the plebiscite. The fact that the fate of several thousand men, women, and children who were born near his own birthplace and spoke his language did not concern him much in the summer of 1921 indicates the degree to which his two-year struggle for national independence in the Central European Civil War had radicalized him. After Faska’s men had killed some Italian soldiers in 220 Ajnenkiel, Od rza̜dów ludowych do przewrotu majowego, 224; Koch, Der deutsche Bürgerkrieg, 261. 221  Ernst von Salomon, The Outlaws (London: Arktos, 2013) (first pub. 1930), 218. On the author see Gregor Fröhlich, Soldat ohne Befehl: Ernst von Salomon und der soldatische Nationalismus (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2018).

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hand-to-hand combat, Korfanty—who commanded the “uprising”—hastened to the area with a representative of the Polish government to calm the Allies. Appalled by Faska’s highhandedness, he yelled at him: “What have you done, you heartless beasts?! And what now, damn you? May lightning and thunder strike you down!”222 On another occasion, Korfanty bitterly complained about the activities of the ­terrorist branch of the Polish Military Organization in Upper Silesia which called itself the “Polish Striking Force” (Bojówka Polska) and had been organized by Lieutenant Stanisław Machnicki, clandestinely sent from Warsaw to Upper Silesia for this purpose, from May 1921 onwards: “The Warsaw militias of  Mr. Machnicki, Głupek, and others are at large in Sosnowiec. There are grounds to suspect that these people organise expeditions to Upper Silesia by themselves and commit murder and pillage. Banditry is having a terrible effect on the local population.”223 Faska’s and Machnicki’s units were not the only ones whose attitude deviated from that of their government.224 In late May, Faska’s men captured the St. Anne Mountain, site of the region’s Catholic sanctuary.225 In this most famous battle of the third “uprising,” the German Upper Silesian Self-Defense soon recaptured the strategic and symbolic landmark, although their government and High Command had categorically prohibited the attack. Bernhard von Hülsen, who led the “Group South” of the Self-Defense into the battle, rejoiced: “How did the heart of the braves beat in proud victorious praise, when . . . on top of the steeple the blackwhite-red flag cheerfully proclaimed a German victory, the first German victory since the disgraceful days of November 1918.” They had hoisted the flag of the fallen German Empire, not that of the arisen Weimar Republic, which they utterly despised.226 “Spirits that I’ve cited . . .” 222 Faska, Garść luźnych wspomnień, quotes: 30, 32 (see note 143 on page 95). OSS BN mf. 68715. These memoirs have been published in a significantly revised version as Jan Faska, “Z minionich dni,” in Pamiętniki powstańców śla̜skich, vol. 2, edited by Franciszek Szymiczek (Katowice: Śla̜sk, 1961), 47–84. A short biography of Jan Faska can be found in Zdzisław Janeczek (ed.), Poczet dowódców powstań śla̜skich 1919–1920–1921: Wybrane sylwetki (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Akademii Ekonomicznej im. Karola Adamieckiego, 2009), 101–7. Population statistics for 1910 and plebiscite result in Strzelce Opolskie in 1921 according to Franciszek Hawranek (ed.), Encyklopedia powstań śląskich (Opole: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Śląskiego, 1982), 535, 678. 223 Długajczyk, Wywiad polski na Górnym Śla̜sku 1919–1922, 243–8, quote: 247; Haslinger et al., “Frontiers of Violence,” 242. 224  For a counter-example from the German side see the case of warlord Ludwig Oestreicher and the Freikorps Oberland, presented in Wojciech Pieniazek, “ ‘1.000 Kilometer gen Nordosten’: Der ‘Tiroler Sturmzug’ als studentische Gewaltgemeinschaft,” in Die Vorträge der 74. deutschen Studentenhistorikertagung Dresden 2014, edited by Sebastian Sigler (Munich: Akademischer Verlag, 2015), 167–208, here: 190. 225  This revised later editon of a contemporary report glamorizes the events unreflectedly: Günther Körner, Selbstschutz in Oberschlesien 1921: Eine Bilddokumentation über den Selbstschutz in Oberschlesien (Dülmen: Laumann Druck und Verlag, 1981), 127. 226 Bernhard von Hülsen, Der Kampf um Oberschlesien: Oberschlesien und sein Selbstschutz (Stuttgart: Bergers Literarisches Büro und Verlagsanstalt, 1922), 25; Juliane Haubold-Stolle, “Mythos Oberschlesien in der Weimarer Republik: Die Mythisierung der oberschlesischen Freikorpskämpfe und der ‘Abstimmungszeit’ (1919–1921) im Deutschland der Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Politische Mythen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert in Mittel- und Osteuropa, edited by Heidi Hein-Kircher and Hans H. Hahn (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2006), 279–99, here: 282–3.

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Fig. 6.  June 20, 1922: Polish troops enter Szopienice. General Stanisław Szeptycki in front of a chain, symbolically dividing Upper Silesia from the rest of Poland. © National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 1-H-468

The third “uprising” was finally halted in early July 1921 by an Allied intervention, with Polish forces controlling one-third of Upper Silesia with the lion’s share of its industrial area. In May 1922, a treaty codified the status quo, and the region was roughly split, granting the Poles less than they had hoped for, but more than the Germans had expected, and leaving both sides brooding over violent memories and grieving about lost opportunities.227 As so often in history, the victims of this political strife were the locals on both sides of the ethnic divide. Between November 11, 1918 and June 30, 1922, the region witnessed about 3,000 fatalities, maybe even more.228 Due to the irregular character of the combat and the involvement of intelligence and secret organizations, though, a significant dark figure cannot be ruled out with certainty. Unrest in Greater Poland seems to have produced more than 3,500 deaths, in a shorter conflict which was fought in a far less brutal manner than the ethnic struggle in Upper Silesia (see above). It is nevertheless questionable whether the message which the 227  A concise overview of the military conflict between Polish and German forces in Upper Silesia between 1919 and 1921 can be found in Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 453–66. 228  According to Tim Wilson an estimated number of 2,859 fatalities comprises an upper mark: “Fatal Violence in Upper Silesia, 1918–1922,” in Creating Nationality in Central Europe, 1880–1950: Modernity, Violence and (Be)Longing in Upper Silesia, edited by James E. Bjork, Tomasz Kamusella, Tim Wilson, et al. (New York: Routledge, 2016), 53–86, here: 72.

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violence was meant to spread was actually received. Even if one takes into ­consideration that not only the locals, but also about 190,000 emigrant Upper Silesians from the Reich were allowed to vote, this does not sufficiently explain the overall imbalance between Polish voters and votes for Germany.229 Be that as it may, today’s experts agree that the result reflected the will of the Upper Silesian people as a whole: With 1,186,342 voters, participation rate in the plebiscite was 98 percent.230 Terror had been used by both sides equally to intimidate voters, and there is considerable reason to doubt that the result was primarily influenced by nationalist propaganda: “The average plebiscite voter was motivated not by deeply rooted patriotism, but rather by the everyday issues confronting the typical Upper Silesian.”231 There is indeed evidence that many Upper Silesians experienced a certain indifference concerning their national identity after the exhausting war and postwar years. Often their decisions seem to have been influenced by individual experiences and emotions rather than a commonly shared national dream. Several hundred thousand people who spoke Polish had voted for Germany. What might have tipped the balance in Germany’s favor was the fact that many Upper Silesians were unsure if the nascent Polish state would provide the same level of social security and welfare which had been a characteristic of imperial Germany. Weimar Germany was no safe haven either, but the revolutionary upheavals of November 1918 had already ebbed away, and the country fared pretty well in comparison to the young Second Polish Republic, which was in constant political crises and underwent changes of cabinets at lightning speed from its very beginning. In times of everchanging options and circumstances, many Upper Silesians might have just chosen what they had known since time immemorial. Other border regions which were contested between Germany and Poland had witnessed an even larger disproportion between tongue and heart: On July 11, 1920, a plebiscite was held in the southern part of East Prussia—the regions of Warmia and Mazuria—where German and non-German speakers more or less balanced each other. Two percent voted for the region’s incorporation into Poland. No wonder—and a blessing for the local population—that it did not witness any paramilitary violence before or after the plebiscite. Most obviously, another Polish “uprising” would not have stood a chance here.232 Although it does not appear so at first sight, the ethnic indifference of the Polishspeaking borderland people in Upper Silesia and southern East Prussia also colored the considerations of the Polish political leadership. Paderewski and Dmowski might argue with an alleged ethnic Polish preponderance in Upper Silesia (although 229 Peter Adam Leśniewski, “Three Insurrections: Upper Silesia 1919–21,” in Stachura (ed.), Poland Between the Wars, 13–42, here: 30; Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 171. 230 Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 244–53; total number of voters, percentage of Polish native speakers, and plebiscite result: 244–5. 231 Polak-Springer, Recovered Territory, 31. 232  Andreas Kossert, Ostpreußen: Geschichte und Mythos (Munich: Pantheon, 2005), 217–23; on the pitfalls of language and censuses in the area as a weapon in the pre-1914 cultural struggle: ibid., 177–89; Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 155–64.

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paradoxically, both feared an outcome of the plebiscite in Germany’s favor), but it is evident that economic motivations were at least as powerful for their engagement in the region. This major industrial site in Polish hands would secure the Second Republic’s material future for years and weaken an irredentist Germany to the same degree.233 It is striking, though, that in the Upper Silesian case, a third neither German nor Polish option was discussed in the winter of 1918–19, before the dogs of civil war had been set into the region: autonomy for Upper Silesia. It was a suitable political vision for a population which found it hard to focus its identity either to the west or the east, and it was backed by the region’s most stable undercurrent: Catholicism. The idea kept popping up time and again over the years of the dispute. We would have a much better notion of the ratio between local and national identity amongst the population of Upper Silesia in 1921, had the autonomy project been made a third option during the plebiscite. It is striking that immediately after the ­plebiscite, Polish and German activists alike feverishly tried to reactivate the separatist option. But the partition of Upper Silesia in the summer of 1922 created unalterable facts. By September 1922, the Silesians living in the German part of the region had made their choice: In a last referendum, ten times more of them voted for remaining within Germany than for autonomy.234 Most remarkably, the part of Upper Silesia which had been incorporated into the Polish state was given the status of an autonomous voivodeship, even allowing for a Silesian parliament and treasury, and kept it until the outbreak of the Second World War.235

The Cieszyn Drama One might expect that a state with a nascent standing army which simultaneously is engaged in armed conflicts at its eastern, northern, and western borders would do everything to avoid trouble with another neighbor, but this is exactly what the Second Republic of Poland did not do in late 1918. Bordering Upper Silesia to the south was a region once called the “Cieszyn Principality” which was ruled by Polish kings in the Middle Ages. In the mid-fourteenth century, it had passed to the Bohemian monarchs and then to the Habsburg Empire. After the armistices, its backwater capital Cieszyn, mainly spared the horrors of war, slumbered at the foothills of the Beskid Mountains and at the banks of the Olza river which traversed the region, entering the Odra river in the north. The population of this idyllic borderland of Poland and Bohemia of old was mixed: Czechs were in the middle of the vital statistics, roughly half as many as Poles and twice as many as Germans.236 233 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 138. 234 With 513,760 votes for Germany, 50,400 for autonomy; see Andrea Schmidt-Rösler, “Autonomie- und Separatismusbestrebungen in Oberschlesien 1918–1922,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa­ forschung 48, no. 1 (1999): 1–49, here: 40–7. On Upper Silesian autonomy see also Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 196–213; Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 146–7, 166–8. 235  Józef Ciągwa, Autonomia Śląska, 1922–1939 (Katowice: Muzeum Śląskie, 1988) 236  Adam Przybylski, Walka o Śląsk Cieszyński w styczniu 1919 roku (Warsaw: Wojskowy Instytut Historyczny, 1932), 2.

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Already during the war, Poles and Czechs had staked their claim in the area, the first arguing with its predominant Polish-speaking population, the second with its historical past as a Bohemian crownland. Polish and Czech nationalism had made their appearance here as elsewhere from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Cultural and educational issues were hotly debated between the divergent camps. But one cannot really talk of an overall national euphoria of the population itself for the one or the other option before 1918.237 To put it in proper perspective, what mattered most to the Czechoslovak Republic on the one hand and the Second Polish Republic on the other was the economic significance of Cieszyn Silesia. It was a middle-sized center of the hard coal-mining industry, indirectly linked to the Baltic Sea by the Odra. With the Austrian and the German Empire gone, Poles and Czechs had a free hand to reach out for this prize territory. Czechoslovakia had a vital interest in its possession, since one of only two railway lines which connected the western and eastern parts of Czechoslovakia ran through it. For the Poles, Cieszyn Silesia was rather a sideshow of the Central European Civil War, but they well understood its value and, of course, were sympathetic to the faith of its Polish-speaking population.238 Meanwhile in Cieszyn Silesia itself, two rivalling local representatives emerged to take things in hand. On October 19, 1918, the Polish “National Council of the Cieszyn Principality” (Rada Narodowa Księstwa Cieszyńskiego) was founded in the town of Cieszyn; eleven days later the Czech “National Committee for Silesia” (Zemský národní výbor pro Slezsko) followed suit in Ostrava.239 Oddly enough, the Polish organization’s title referred to the historical past of the region, although Warsaw argued ethnically for its integration into Poland. But then again, by that time, both arguments—ethnic composition and historical past—were used rather arbitrarily by the Polish (and not only the Polish) government. The two local authorities were ready to come to terms in late 1918 based on the then favorable division of the area between Poles and Czechs. “The possibility of a most undesirable Polish–Czech conflict was, for the time being, ruled out by the conclusion of an agreement between the National Council of the Cieszyn Principality and the Národní Výbor [National Council] for Silesia. This initiative was conceived by the Czech side in the first days of November [1918],” remembered Zofia Kirkor-Kiedroniowa years later.240 The Poles were, though, not content to negotiate solutions which would leave more of their compatriots on the Czech side of the final border settlement. Since by that time the Czechs were not happy with their part of the share either, the risk of armed clashes increased. 237  Grzegorz Gąsior, “Stawianie granicy,” in Przez granicę. Polacy–Czesi w XX wieku na łamach “Karty,” edited by Krzysztof Wittels (Warsaw: Ośrodek Karta, 2016), 16–67, here: 17. 238 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 102–11 (with the wrong date of October 20). Conrad incorporates Polish and Czech sources and literature into his accurate description of the Czechoslovak–Polish conflict, see 102–12, 180–90. Somewhat biased—leaning towards the Polish side— but more detailed is Marek K. Kamiński, Konflikt polsko–czeski 1918–1921 (Warsaw: Neriton, 2003). 239 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 104. For the Polish representation see Edward Długajczyk and Miłosz Skrzypek (eds), Protokoły posiedzeń plenarnych Rady Narodowej Księstwa Cieszyńskiego (1918–1920), 2 vols (Cieszyn: Książnica Cieszyńska, 2016) (with further reading). 240  Gąsior, “Stawianie granicy,” quote: 21; Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 104.

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No final agreement was reached between the Czech and Polish governments until the end of the year. Tensions rose as Czech and Polish militaries gathered near the border zone, watching each other suspiciously over a temporary border-line fixed on November 5, 1918 approximately along the linguistic divide.241 On the  Polish side, Captain Wacław Czaczka-Ruciński was reporting regularly to  Warsaw from Cieszyn town. In early January 1919, he sent a nervous cable: “Yesterday (January 2), we intercepted a telegram from Major Sikora, the commander of the Czech garrison in Bohumín, to the military command in Prague. In his message, Major Sikora requests approval of a plan to occupy the Cieszyn region . . . In Bogumin, there are just two of our companies, and another in Jabłonków [Jablunkov]. Personnel cannot be transferred from other places. It will be hard to maintain our troops in Bogumin as well as in Jabłonków. Thus, please inform the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to lodge a protest with the Czech Government in Prague. The Cieszyn National Council is delivering a protest to the ‘Národní Výbor’.” Czaczka-Ruciński’s nervousness was justified: Bohumín had been assigned to the Polish sphere, which was acknowledged by both sides. The single Czech company tolerated in the town was allowed to act only by order of the Polish district command in Cieszyn.242 The Jablunkov Pass and railroad tunnel were of enormous strategic importance.243 Shortly afterwards, the anticipated Czech invasion forces moved towards the border, amongst them the Czech legionnaire Captain Micka: “Then, like a bolt from the blue, [a cry] suddenly shattered our ominous calm: ‘Alert! All aboard!’ And in the dark of the night . . . Prague disappears. Into the carriages once more, and again, after a short break, the regular clatter of the wheels drums a question into our minds: where to? ‘Boys, we’re going home—Cieszyn Silesia is calling to us, she needs us!’”244 Within days, all targets named by CzaczkaRuciński were seized by the Czechs.245 The ensuing Polish–Czech border war spread also to the Karviná coal mine district.246 It lasted one week, from January 23 to 30, 1919, and cost the lives of about 150 Polish and Czech soldiers, leaving about a 241 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 105–9. The agreement is published in Długajczyk and Skrzypek (eds), Protokoły posiedzeń plenarnych Rady Narodowej Księstwa Cieszyńskiego, vol. 2, 33–7. 242  Telegram Captain Wacław Czaczka-Ruciński to the General Staff of the Polish Army, Cieszyn, January 3, 1919, in Andrzej Wesołowski (ed.), Odrodzenie Wojska Polskiego 1918–1921 w materiałach Centralnego Archiwum Wojskowego (Warsaw: ZP Grupa, 2008), 228. In the Great War, Czaczka-Ruciński had served as a legionary under Piłsudski, and was a military representative in the Polish–Czech border commission; Jerzy Bestry (ed.), Służba konsularna Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej w Czechosłowacji (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2005), 145. 243  For the same reason, it became the target of a—famously failed—German commando operation in 1939; see Herbert Schindler, Mosty und Dirschau 1939: Zwei Handstreiche der Wehrmacht vor Beginn des Polenfeldzuges (Freiburg: Rombach, 1979); Witold Pirszel, “O zniszczeniu tunelu pod Przełęczą Jabłonkowską 1.9.1939 r. oraz przebiegu napadu niemieckiego na dworzec w Mostach Śląskich 26.8.1939 r.,” Wojskowy Przegląd Historyczny XIII, no. 1 (1968): 509–13. 244  Captain M. Micka, Czech legionnaire, inscription on the Monument to the Fallen for Cieszyn Silesia, cited after Gąsior, “Stawianie granicy,” 29. 245  Jiří Bílek, Kyselá těšínská jablíčka: Československo–polské konflikty o Těšínsko 1919, 1938, 1945 (Prague: Epocha, 2011), 52–7. 246 Bílek, Kyselá těšínská jablíčka, 58–60.

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thousand wounded.247 Since some of the soldiers on both sides came from this one tiny spot on earth, the fratricidal pattern of all fronts of the Central European Civil War repeated itself.248 Corporal Jan Hórak was outraged: “Dispersed all over the city [of Ostrava], we catch snippets of news, from which we’re finally starting to realize what this is about. Our Polish ‘brothers’, it seems, want to annex the whole of Silesia and the entire Ostrava region . . . We have plenty of scores to settle with our Polish ‘brothers’. As we all know, the Poles had their legions [during World War I] on both sides: in France, as well as in Austria.”249 In order “to recover Cieszyn Silesia for Czechoslovakia  .  .  .  without any unnecessary widows and orphans,” the Czech commander of Ostrava, Lieutenant Colonel Josef Šnejdárek, put some French, English, Italian, and American officers of the Allied forces together as a phoney “Inter-Allied Commission” and thus tried to convince the Polish commander in Cieszyn town, Colonel Franciszek Latinik, to order the withdrawal of his troops from the area. But Latinik did not buy the hoax, and the bloodshed began.250 Two snapshots, certainly no isolated cases, illustrate the nature of this irregular war: On January 24, 1919 Czech soldiers reported from Dąbrowa that they had been shot at by civilians from the houses and executed those whom they had caught in the act. The same day on the Jablunkov Pass, a handful of Polish workers with guns, inexperienced in warfare, faced a unit of professional Czech legionnaires, who—according to eyewitnesses’ reports—killed the wounded in battlefield frenzy. Polish and Czech troops ordered the mass arrest of civilians, who were occasionally maltreated and starved. Thousands of refugees filled the country roads. The little “principality” sank into chaos.251 Around the same time, the Spiš and Orava area further to the east, in the southern part of Galicia, went through similar tragic experiences, with several subsequent Polish and Czechoslovak (here: mainly Slovak) invasions in 1918–19.252 The ceasefire of January 30, arranged by Allied pressure, saw the Czechs in the possession of large parts of the embattled territory. However, in many places resided more Poles than Czechs. This posed the question—as had been the case in Upper Silesia on both sides of the divide—how to protect one’s own people in territory controlled by the enemy. An Allied commission arrived in Cieszyn Silesia 247 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 110–11. A concise overview of the military conflict between Polish and Czechoslovak forces in 1918–19 can be found in Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 290–9. 248 Przybylski, Walka o Śląsk Cieszyński w styczniu 1919 roku, 21; Bílek, Kyselá těšínská jablíčka, 46–51. 249  Corporal Jan Horák, 7th Company, 21st Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment, inscription on the Monument to the Fallen for Cieszyn Silesia, cited after Gąsior, “Stawianie granicy,” 29. 250  Gąsior, “Stawianie granicy,” here: 29–30, quote: 29; Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 110–11, referring to communications of the Third Department of the Polish High Command operative report January 23, 1919 (evening), in: Marek Jabłonowski and Adam Koseski (eds), Komunikaty Odziału III Naczelnego Dowództwa Wojska Polskiego 1919–1921 (Warsaw: Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczna Pułtusk, 1999), 31. 251  These and other experiences from this civil war theatre are in Gąsior, “Stawianie granicy,” 31–5. 252 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 104–9, 183–4, 188; Kamiński, Konflikt polsko–czeski 1918–1921.

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Fig. 7.  Polish–Czech War in Cieszyn Silesia, end of January 1919. According to Polish eyewitnesses’ reports, most of these twenty Polish soldiers were killed by Czech legionnaires from the Twenty-First Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment after their surrender on January 26, 1919. Photo taken at the cemetery of Stonava, where they were buried in a mass grave on January 29, 1919. These details are based on eyewitness reports which have been published in Kalendarz Ewangelicki na rok Pański 1920: Wydany przez grono pastorów i nauczycieli (Cieszyn: [no publisher], 1919), 92–3. The Czechoslovak unit had just arrived from France, ibid., 92. More archival material on alleged Czech atrocities during this short border war is to be found in the Cieszyn Library, record groups TR-015 and TR-016. Some of these documents are available as well online on the website of the Silesian Digital Library, https://www.sbc.org.pl, collection “Cieszyn Silesia”, accessed November 30, 2017. Czech military evidence on the border war of 1919 is scarce. Thanks to Grzegorz Gąsior for this information (emails to the author, November 28–30, 2017). © National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 1-H-476.

in early 1920 to oversee the Entente’s idea to settle the conflict by a plebiscite. The Polish and Czech forces had to withdraw, but the Czech gendarmerie and a civic guard were allowed to operate in its realm. Also active since November 1919 was a network of 4,000 Polish paramilitaries, organized in a “Secret Military Organization” (Tajna Organizacja Wojskowa), made up of demobilized soldiers of the Polish Army. They infiltrated the Czech side of the demarcation line under the auspices of the War Ministry’s second department’s political section. A small group of seventy-two Polish fighters who called themselves the “Silesian Confederation” (Konfederacja Śląska) committed terrorist acts against Czech activists and security personnel. The Czechs organized their own shadow armies and paid the Poles back in their own coin.

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What we observe here is an almost completely forgotten shadow war similar to the one which raged in Upper Silesia between German Freikorps and the Polish Military Organization. Most definitely, the region faced the same accompanying problems as well. In his groundbreaking work on Polish and Czech paramilitary organizations in Cieszyn Silesia, Edward Długajczyk states for the first half of 1920: “Terror and violence had more than one face. Out of the criminal offences, robberies, murders and personal vengeance, however, we must set apart those which were committed on ideological, national or class grounds. This is not to condemn the one and justify the other, but for the sake of clarity, in order to grasp the scale of the phenomenon.” Paramilitary violence, he concludes, was an accepted form of political struggle on both sides. But “it is not always possible to distinguish the political sphere from the rest. What at the decision-making and command level was born out of a political plan could in practice take the form of settling criminal or personal scores. Here arises another problem, namely, to what extent the decisionmakers and commanders were actually capable of controlling the machinery of terror and violence they had activated. There is no doubt that this machinery, once set in motion, was inevitably doomed to go out of control.”253—“Spirits that I’ve cited . . .” After a summer of fear and loathing in Cieszyn Silesia, the final settlement was drafted in late July 1920 in Paris. It came at a moment when Warsaw was fighting desperately to stem the Soviet advance and therefore could not concentrate on other trouble spots. It left the railway, the coal mines, and the better part of the river Olza on the Czech side. The town of Cieszyn was halved into Czech and Polish sectors.254 One wonders if the armed clash between Czechs and Poles was unavoidable. For Poland, the provisional line of November 5, 1918 was the best, but the final frontier of July 28, 1920 the worst of all options that were discussed within that ­period.255 It is hard to imagine that a compromise which would have satisfied both sides could not have been reached by way of negotiation. But several factors bedeviled such a mutual agreement. The Warsaw government had to consider not only the situation on the spot, but also the international context and the situation at Poland’s other borders. In early 1919, when a Czech invasion was in the air, it hesitated to act, despite flaming appeals from the Polish military garrison in Cieszyn.256 Furthermore, timing was a factor. The conflict over Cieszyn Silesia was geographically separated but politically linked to the conflict over Spiš and Orava, so that developments in the one spot immediately influenced those in the other. In addition to that, during the time of the conflict, both countries were engaged simultaneously at different fronts, the multiple Polish armed engagements being the subject of this chapter. In the Czech case, the conflict with Hungary 253  The whole book of Długajczyk, Polska konspiracja wojskowa na Śla̜sku Cieszyńskim (quote: 14) can be recommended for the study of paramilitary and terrorist violence in Cieszyn Silesia in the first half of 1920, which Kamiński, Konflikt polsko–czeski 1918–1921, hardly mentions. 254 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 185–90. 255 Kamiński, Konflikt polsko–czeski 1918–1921, [485], map 2. 256  Gąsior, “Stawianie granicy,” 27–8.

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over Slovakia and with Germany and Austria over Bohemia both had a pronounced impact on the situation in Cieszyn Silesia as well. And if this would have not been enough to drive the negotiators on both sides crazy, nothing could be finally decided without the d’accord of the Allies in Paris and their representative bodies on site, who did not always speak with one tongue either. The entanglement of four different levels of discord obviously strained the negotiation skills of the ­opponents. It would have taken angelic patience and godlike foresight to come to terms. Instead, each side lay in wait, ready at any time to take advantage of a moment of weakness in the other. It was Poland’s bad luck that the Allies were tired of the issue and therefore wanted to close it once and for all in the summer of 1920, the very moment when Poland was working desperately to hold its eastern front. The Polish–Czech conflict over Cieszyn Silesia is revealing. Arguably, there was not much at stake and it was low-key by nature. Nevertheless, it generated a hatred which poisoned Polish–Czech relations over the whole interwar period. Since the swords of both sides crossed at its very beginning, there was no turning back afterwards. Even when the guns went silent, violence accompanied the troubled months until the final settlement, and it did not totally cease after it either. On November 11, 1920, a Polish–Czech group of surveyors and soldiers were in the act of marking the border in the Beskid Mountains when they met a group of sixteen to eighteen Poles whom they mistook for tourists. But after a small conversation, the latter pulled guns and rifles, and unceremoniously interrogated the group. The Polish quartet of geometers and soldiers were allowed to leave, the three Czechs were severely beaten, the soldier amongst them being found shot the next day. According to Czech and Polish police’s findings, the attackers spoke the local dialect and were members of a Polish “Military-Political Committee” (Komitet Wojskowo-Polityczny). Many of them were known by name, but they lived on the Polish side of the border where they were never brought to justice.257 Paramilitary violence had left its mark on the region, and nothing was as it had been before. The idyll was gone. 3: T RO U B L E AT T H E G AT E S A N D AT H O M E And if there had only been Magdeburg and Szczypiorno in November 1918, and no Haller’s Army or the National Committee in Paris—Poland would not have been present at Versailles among the nations that had fought and been victorious.258 National Democratic politician Stanisław Grabski, 1935

257 Długajczyk, Polska konspiracja wojskowa na Śla̜sku Cieszyńskim, 136–8; Petr Majer, “Tragický incident na svahu hory čantoryje v těšínských beskydech,” Vlast, November 11, 2015, https://vlast.cz/ tragicky-incident-na-svahu-hory-cantoryje-v-tesinskych-beskydech, accessed May 13, 2018. 258  Mieczysław Pruszyński, “Rozmowa historyczna ze St. Grabskim,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 36 (1976): 38–50, here: 41. Józef Piłsudski was interned in Magdeburg and the better part of his legionnaires in the Szczypiorno camp in 1917–18 because they had refused to swear an oath on the German emperor.

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Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921  . . . that the influence of the current government in Warsaw is so pernicious to society that one should not postpone an armed intervention at home in order to change the government . . . The possibilities of a political coup d’état in Warsaw and the intervention of Polish troops [from France] into the country were discussed. Mr. Dmowski presented a plan of action, which, according to him, consisted in bringing the troops through the Prussian partition zone and harden them in the baptism of fire with the Germans.259 Annex to the Protocol of the 165th session of the Polish National Committee in Paris, December 11, 1918 But yet I will state that this Poland was not, and is not, a mother to us, but a stepmother. We are suffering the greatest losses, with nothing in return. And I have two on the front. One is seventeen years old. He was [there] and I don’t know where he is. In your son’s squadron. The second is fifteen years [old], in the Second Uhlan Regiment. The third, the eldest, your son’s friend, is with Piłsudski. He’ll be going to the front any day now.260 Letter of condolence of M. Z. Piotrowski to Mr. and Mrs. Kamler, Warsaw-Sielce, January 1919

The preceding two sections have introduced the notion of a Central European Civil War waged mainly from 1918 to 1921. It was the sum of the evolving states’ ethno-national struggles of competing histories and contested territories in the border regions of the Second Polish Republic with their mixed populations. This section addresses two related topics which will help us to understand more of the external and internal dynamics. First of all, the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–20 will be presented as the missing link between the Central European and the Russian Civil War. Both sides met in a violent clash of arms, but their entangled histories were not driven by the same forces and did not obey the same logic. Therefore it is necessary to briefly describe the course of events which led to the near seizure of Warsaw by the Red Army in August 1920. As we will see, they were also intertwined with at least two conflict zones of the Central European Civil War: the Polish–Ukrainian struggle for Galicia— as described above; and the struggle for the Baltic region between local armies, Bolshevik soldiers, and German Freikorps mercenaries, which will be outlined cursorily for a better understanding of the complexity of the situation. The Polish– Soviet War in reality had more than just one frontline, and therefore can only be understood in reference to the conflicts which were fought out s­ imultaneously in the rest of Central Europe. By now, the reader hopefully has already a better notion of the complexity of the overall situation. In the Polish national memory, the Soviet advance into Poland, the Battle for Warsaw, and the final expulsion of the Red Army by the Polish forces play a dominant role. Without a shadow of doubt, the victory of the Second Republic over 259  Jabłonowski (ed.), Komitet Narodowy Polski, 623. 260  Letter of condolence of M. Z. Piotrowski to Mr. and Mrs. Kamler, Warsaw-Sielce, undated (January 1919), Eastern Archive (Warsaw)—KARTA, AW III/596.04.06. Thanks to Monika Lipka for referring me to this document.

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the Red Army in the summer of 1920 was an enormous achievement—not only for its military and political leaders, but also for the soldiers who fought the battles on the ground and the civilians who supported them logistically and morally. The “Red Threat” launched a wave of mobilization, with 100,000 volunteers joining the war effort that year in addition to half a million drafted men. Parts of Polish society joined in solidarity and forgot temporarily about ethnic or religious differences. Even the political opponents within the Polish leadership put aside their feud for a while. Nevertheless, the picture of one united Polish nation fighting unanimously the common foe is an exaggeration. For those on the frontlines it was quite clear who  to fight against, but this did not automatically imply whom to fight for. Furthermore, as we have shown in an earlier chapter, the Polish peasants had not been won over for the national idea prior to independence. This was still true in the summer of 1920. Peasants within the ranks of the Polish Army who were not from the embattled Mazovian area struggled with the idea of losing their lives far from home on the battlefields rather than working their own bucolic fields during the harvest and supporting their war-weary families. On a related note, the prewar and wartime dissensions between the Piłsudski and Dmowski camps endured, and literally split the country in half. While the border struggles were fought, the dispute brought the country to the brink of a domestic civil war which was only prevented by the formation of a common government in early 1919. But apart from the short moment of immediate danger in the summer of 1920, when the Red Army stood at the gates of Warsaw, the enmity prevailed. Those domestic political quarrels, fought from different locations— Warsaw (Piłsudski’s Belweder camp), Paris (Dmowski’s Polish National Committee), Poznań (the “Endecja Fortress”), and Cracow (the Polish Liquidation Commission)— significantly influenced the course of the Central European Civil War.

The Polish–Soviet War As has been argued above, the Central European Civil War was not an integral part of the Russian Civil War.261 Therefore, the Russian Civil War forms only part of our examination at its western fringes—in Ukraine, eastern Poland, and at the Baltic coast—where it interfered and overlapped with the Central European Civil 261 The Russian Civil War itself has been described in detail in countless valuable studies. Most recently, Jon Smele (ed.), Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926, 2 vols (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), with further reading; Smele, The “Russian” Civil Wars 1916 –1926; Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). For works until the turn of the millennium consult Jonathan D. Smele (ed.), The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917–1921: An Annotated Bibliography (London, New York: Continuum, 2003). For the Allied interventions see Ian Moffat, The Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918–1920: The Diplomacy of Chaos (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Carl J. Richard, When the United States Invaded Russia: Woodrow Wilson’s Siberian Disaster (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013); Robert L. Willett, Russian Sideshow: America’s Undeclared War, 1918–1920 (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003); John F. N. Bradley, Allied Intervention in Russia (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968); and the eyewitness report by Ralph Albertson, Fighting Without a War: An Account of Military Intervention in North Russia (New York: Harcourt Brace & Howe, 1920).

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War. It is no coincidence that the Central European Civil War of competing nationalist projects emerged here in the orbit of the Russian Civil War of revolution and counter-revolution. Those two major postwar torrents met and mixed in a contact zone which after the partitions of the Polish Commonwealth had been integrated in the Russian Empire, accompanied by brutal acts of criminal and paramilitary violence which more often than not lacked any political agenda. Between the Central Powers’ victory in the east in March and their defeat in the west in November 1918, the former “Western Territory” of the tsarist empire from the Baltic coast to the Black Sea were illuminated by a kind of “twilight of empire,”262 a power vacuum which promoted the wholesale reorganization of the no longer existing order. It illuminated a fierce struggle, the confrontation of the Russian revolutionary forces and the Polish national army, which in turn also influenced the course of the Central European Civil War. A victory of the revolutionary forces would have severely hampered the efforts of nation building in Central Europe. If they were defeated by the Polish nationalist forces, those could continue to safeguard the formation of the Polish state. The scattered armed clashes with the Red Army were the bracket which held the eastern fringes of the Central European Civil War together. Above, we touched cursorily upon the Red Army’s advance in Lithuania and the capture of Vilnius. Now we address its central move in 1919–20: the invasion of Poland in the summer of 1920. On the bayonets of the Red Army, the revolution was meant to be carried to the industrialized heart of Europe (Germany, England, and France) with its mighty proletariat, precisely the point of departure for the movement’s intellectual fathers Marx and Engels. In the eyes of their diligent disciple Lenin, revolution in Russia with its large peasantry and its delayed industrialization had only been a detour. To revolutionize the West would mean to trigger the world revolution. The confrontation lines of the Polish–Soviet War thus seemed clear from the outset, but they were not. Although an undeclared border war was in the air in 1919, both sides kept their communication channels open, and mutual offers between Poles and Bolsheviks were made to settle the conflict peacefully until May the following year.263 Soviet Russia was reluctant to open another front while it was fighting the White armies in both the south and northwest. Those were initially supported by Allied intervention forces, but the Western powers for their part nevertheless abhorred any fait accompli concerning Russia’s western borders. If Poland was to look for potential allies for its eastern policies, it had to do so in the immediate neighborhood. Given the fact that it was simultaneously fighting almost all countries with which it shared a common border, it was running out of  options. Poland had alienated the Lithuanians over Vilnius and openly fought with the western Ukrainians over eastern Galicia. The Belarusian national 262 Chernev, Twilight of Empire. 263 Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 221–9; Antoni Czubiński, Walka Józefa Piłsudskiego o nowy kształt polityczny Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej w latach 1918–1921 (Toruń: Marszałek, 2002), 185–203; Badziak, W oczekiwaniu na przełom, 371–93.

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movement was too weak to be reckoned with as a political factor. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were all held up with fighting the German paramilitary Freikorps (formations which we have already met in the Polish–German conflict over Upper Silesia) and the Red Army at home. The Baltic battlefield of the Central European Civil War as such does not concern us much here because Poland, at the center of our interest, had little part in it. Since it bordered the Polish–Soviet War to the north, it shall nevertheless be addressed, but a short summary might ­suffice here. At the turn of the year 1918–19, the invading Red Army threatened the existence of the newly founded Estonian, Lithuanian, and Latvian national councils. Since Baltic national armies barely existed at the time, they had to call in the German Freikorps—since the regular German troops were dissolved and on their way home after the armistices—which halted the Red Army tide in early 1919. But the German mercenaries in the long run were hardly more welcome than the Bolsheviks. They were tempted into this region harboring a strong German upper class (mainly in Latvia and Estonia) and a long tradition of German presence with the promise of Baltic citizenship and (so they hoped) parcels of the arable land. What resulted was a triangular constellation in which each party—Baltic nationalists, German ultra-conservatives, and Russian Bolsheviks—struggled for ­dominance in a dog-eat-dog combat. The Germans alternately fought together with or against the Baltic national forces, while Baltic communists fought Baltic nationalists, especially in Latvia where initially an estimated 30 percent of the population was sympathizing with the Bolsheviks.264 In the end, both the Germans and Russians had to withdraw completely from the scene, the former because their central government shied away from the looming conflict with the Western Allies, the latter because they were driven out of the country by a joint Latvian–Polish military advance in January 1920. In the same year Soviet Russia ratified the peace treaties of Tartu (in February with Estonia) and Riga (in August with Latvia) and thus de jure recognized the Baltic eastern border.265 The commander of the Freikorps, Rüdiger von der Goltz, resigned from his post only reluctantly and after Allied pressure in the summer of 1919. His troops were comprised not only of former veterans of the Great War, but also of all sorts of criminal elements from the Reich who had followed the call of the land. The mercenary force had killed thousands of Latvians, ravaged the countryside, and established a reign of terror with a draconian military jurisdiction which was largely blind to atrocities committed by German soldiers. The Red Army displayed exactly the same kind of behavior. An estimated 10,000 Latvians fell prey to the 264 Bernhard Sauer, “Vom ‘Mythos eines ewigen Soldatentums’: Der Feldzug deutscher Freikorps im Baltikum im Jahre 1919,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 43, no. 10 (1995): 869–902, here: 871. 265 Prusin, The Lands Between, 77–80; Georg von Rauch, The Baltic States: The Years of Independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, 1917–1940 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1974), 100–5; Endel Krepp, The Estonian War of Independence 1918–1920: On the Occasion of the 60th Anniversary from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the Treaty of Peace at Tartu (Stockholm: Estonian Information Centre, 1980).

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encroachments, divided more or less equally between the two militias. Both sides were notorious for killing their prisoners.266 The main battle between the Bolsheviks and their nationalist adversaries took place on Polish soil. Single clashes between Polish and Soviet forces occurred more and more often with the German Ober Ost troops, who had been a buffer between the two neighbors, withdrawing in early 1919. From then onwards until spring 1920, the Polish Army was constantly strengthening its foothold in the east, with its largest extension along the rivers Dniestr, Słucz, and Berezina. But who can tell exactly when this border wrestling match mutated into the full-grown life-anddeath battle for Poland’s eastern and Russia’s western frontier? It was a violent ­symphony which had started piano, crescendoed in the summer of 1919, and reached forte sometime in the second half of 1919, when the conflict had turned into bloody guerilla warfare which also heavily affected the civil population. However, in late 1919, the finale furioso was still pending. After April 1920, with a Polish advance into Soviet Ukraine, both sides could no longer deny that they were in a state of undeclared war. Now, all hell broke loose. “The fighting in the Polish–Soviet War,” writes its first Western annalist Norman Davies, “was undoubtedly vicious. The Poles frequently shot captured commissars outright. The Bolsheviks shot captured officers and cut the throats of priests and landlords. On occasion, both sides murdered Jews. The atmosphere was somehow ripe for atrocity. The soldier was surrounded by confusion and insecurity. He rarely found himself in a comfortable trench, or in the reassuring company of his regiment. More often he was on his own out in the forest, or standing guard on the edge of a village, never knowing whether the surprise attack would come from in front or behind, never knowing whether the frontline had moved forward or back. Ambushes and raids bred panic, and invited vengeance. Meetings with the enemy were infrequent but bloodthirsty.”267 Neither Poles nor Russians could be sure of the support of the locals in the ethnic melting pot of the Kresy, which was the home of Lithuanians and Belarusians in the north, and Ukrainians in the south, with large Polish, Jewish, and German minorities spread all over the place. Reliable statistics giving an overview of military and civil victims of such atrocities in this remote and mainly rural area are not available. With tensions rising at its eastern borders, Poland was looking for a partner. And it might be taken as a final argument for the notion of a Central European Civil War that it finally found one in Petliura’s Ukrainian National Republic. Fluid coalitions and ever-changing sides are rather the exception in conventional warfare. In civil war, on the other hand, they are the order of the day. Although Petliura 266 Mark R. Hatlie, Riga at War 1914–1919: War and Wartime Experience in a Multi-Ethnic Metropolis (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2014), 112–20, 124–33, gives examples of White and Red terror in Riga. He ascribes some credibility to 4,500 victims of Freikorps atrocities (131), and 2,800 people had been shot during the Bolshevik takeover of Riga in January 1919 alone (116). For the violent aftermath of the First World War in the Baltic see Balkelis, War, Revolution, and NationMaking in Lithuania, 1914–1923; Balkelis, “Demobilization and Remobilization of German and Lithuanian Paramilitaries”; Balkelis, “Turning Citizens into Soldiers.” 267 Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 38.

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fought the Polish forces in Volhynia in a coalition with the western Ukrainians in  early 1919, he buried the hatchet in March. In Serhy Yekelchyk’s words, he “reached an agreement with the Galicians’ sworn enemy, Poland. The rupture between the two Ukrainian armies was now complete, and military catastrophe assured. The Polish Army then moved into the Western provinces of Volhynia and Podillia, where Petliura and his government were travelling in several railroad cars [which were] attacked by local peasant bands; the state treasury was stolen, and the staff of the War Ministry was left behind. On 15 November Petliura was officially proclaimed a dictator, but had to flee to Warsaw soon afterward.”268 There, at the end of 1919, plans were forged for a mutual move of Piłsudski’s and his forces to recapture Kiev from the third Ukrainian—the Soviet—government which had taken over power in the city. To make the deal work, Petliura accepted the loss of eastern Galicia to Poland, which permanently severed his relations with the West Ukrainian government, since it was its prospected state territory he gave away, along with Lviv as the designated capital. Since Petliura competed with his own Ukrainian state in Kiev, he accepted the rift.269 At the end of April 1920, the Polish and Ukrainian troops were set in motion. The story of the “Kiev Operation” (Wyprawa kijowska) itself does not concern us as much as the consequences for Ukrainians and Poles: it was a complete failure. The joint Ukrainian–Polish forces entered Kiev facing almost no resistance, but a Ukrainian nation state under Petliura did not materialize. The Ukrainian peasants were weary of civil war with its ever-changing governments and incessant waves of violence and simply did not answer the nationalists’ call. Initially, Petliura’s expeditionary force averaged only 12,000 men, and it did not number much over 30,000 at its ­largest.270 Without a standing army to speak of, the current Ukrainian national project was in limbo, while the Polish forces were soon attacked by the Red Army’s elite cavalry, the Red Cavalry (also: “Horse Army” or Konarmiya), which came to help their Soviet Ukrainian partners. By messing around in the Bolsheviks’ backyard, Piłsudski had deliberately taken the risk of a Russian move to the west, which he had been anticipating since late 1919 anyway. When the Russian counteroffensive into the heart of Poland was set in motion, his troops had to retreat from Kiev.271 It has been a matter of discussion in the past whether the Russian peace offers of 1919–20 were just a tactical ruse or sincere. The first would make Piłsudski’s a preemptive strike, the latter an aggression. The bellicose speeches and newspaper articles at the time by Lenin and Trotsky can hardly be regarded as evidence. However, since the Bolsheviks believed in their own logic of historical materialism 268  Yekelchyk, “Bands of Nation Builders?,” 123. 269 Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 534. 270 Quite detailed, although also quite biased—leaning to the Polish side—is Hetherington, Unvanquished, 406–24; Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 105–29; Zamoyski, Warsaw 1920, 32–63, figures of Ukrainian troops: 37. See also Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 479–88. A fresh approach is to be expected from a forthcoming monograph by Stephan Lehnstaedt on the Polish–Soviet War. 271 Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 339–56.

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with deadly determination, any peace order reached at its western border, however unfavorable for Russia, was only temporary in their eyes and would be blown away by the storms of the World Revolution. Borislav Chernev has called this “the Bolshevik dual foreign policy of ideological warfare and formal negotiations.”272 This had been the logic behind the peace settlement with the Germans at BrestLitovsk, and between March 1918 and March 1920, of course, this dogma of Soviet foreign politics had not lost its validity. In February 1920, the Soviet High Command was working on a preliminary operational plan against Poland.273 In his informed study which draws amply upon evidence from Russian and Polish archives, Jerzy Borzęcki concludes that “the Red Army’s advance into the Borderlands, especially into the territories Warsaw considered ethnically Polish, led to the outbreak of hostilities. For Moscow, however, the advance and the concurrent establishment of national Soviet republics in this region was necessary as a means of spreading revolution to the rest of Europe.”274 The Soviet invasion of Poland brought the Red Army to the outskirts of Warsaw in the summer of 1920. Although its defeat and ejection by the Polish troops has made its entry into the history books as the “Miracle at the Vistula,”275 it was, quite profanely, a strategical operation elaborated by Piłsudski which had contained an enormous risk factor, but worked out. The Bolshevik troops had been overstretched and exhausted, and they did not get the support from the lower echelons of Polish society which had been an integral part of the offensive’s design. Peace talks began in Riga in late September 1920, opening the door for the clandestine Polish seizure of Vilnius by means of Żeligowski’s staged “mutiny”. The Polish–Russian border was finally fixed in March 1921 at Riga and ended all nationalist dreams of Belarusians and Ukrainians for their own nation state.276

The Polish Society Facing the Soviet Invasion Let us take a break now from the meandering details of top-level military ­operations and fluctuating political affiliations at the eastern flank of the Central European Civil War, and look instead at how Polish society in general reacted to the Soviet advance in the summer of 1920, for which it was totally unprepared. Because the breakdown of the Central Powers occurred at the Western Front, the Polish heartland had been spared further battles and devastations.277 And in many places where Polish military or paramilitary forces had been deployed since then, the Polish

272 Chernev, Twilight of Empire, 5. 273  John Erickson, The Soviet High Command: A Military-Political History, 1918–1941 (London, Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2001), 86. 274 Borzęcki, The Soviet–Polish Peace of 1921, 22. 275  This mystical labelling started already soon after the events and is still unchallenged today, see e.g. in Hetherington, Unvanquished, 425–58; Zamoyski, Warsaw 1920, 64–109. 276 Borzęcki, The Soviet–Polish Peace of 1921; Conrad, Umkämpfte Grenzen, umkämpfte Bevölkerung, 238–51. An overview of the military conflict between Polish and Bolshevik forces in 1919–20 can be found in Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 300–443. 277 Szczepański, Społeczeństwo Polski w walce z najazdem bolszewickim, 41.

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c­ olors of old—red and white—were hoisted on a flagpole: Lviv in November 1918, Posen at the turn of the year, Vilnius in April 1919. True enough, a battle against Czechoslovak troops had been lost at Skoczów in late January 1919, but it happened in a distant fairyland called Cieszyn Silesia and the casualties had been limited. Poles from other regions would not necessarily even have heard of it before, let alone have regarded its inhabitants as kin or even understood their dialect. The situation in neighboring Upper Silesia was unclear at that time, or even a little more favorable to the Germans, but for most Poles not living there it was not regarded as an existential threat to the nation’s survival. The Central European Civil War certainly had tragic consequences for the people living in the border regions, especially in eastern Poland. But for those living in the territory intermittently controlled by the Second Republic, those armed conflicts did not interfere with their everyday lives unless they had family members fighting in one of the limited disputed areas. With the Soviet advance, war re-entered the scene totally unexpectedly. On May 18, 1920, Piłsudski had returned victorious from Kiev and was frenetically ­celebrated as a hero in the Sejm, even by his political rivals and arch foes.278 A month and a half later, on July 4, 1920, the grand offensive of the Red Army was launched.279 Another month later, with its westernmost thrust, the Bolshevik soldiers even bypassed Warsaw to the north and occupied areas 100 miles west of the Polish c­apital. To understand the real impact of the Red Army’s assault on Polish society, one has to envision that all of a sudden more than half of the territory Poland controlled in early 1920 was now under Soviet occupation, with the fate of the state capital itself hanging by a thread. Between the easternmost Polish and the westernmost Russian front of 1920 spanned over 500 miles of Polish lowlands, inhabited by tens of millions of people who were immediately concerned by the outcome of the Soviet invasion (see Map 2). Most interestingly, within these territories lay two major sites of the Central European Civil War: To the southeast, half of eastern Galicia—except Lviv—was now in the Soviet sphere, to the northeast the whole Vilnius area, and in between lay the Kresy, the envisaged eastern extension of Piłsudski’s confederation plans. As mentioned, in these borderlands lived large percentages of Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Lithuanians who—for differing reasons—were disappointed by Poland’s part in the Central European Civil War. Poland had taken Lviv and eastern Galicia from the Ukrainians, tried to bully the Lithuanians into a union which they rejected, and disappointed the hopes of Belarusian independence. Most inhabitants of the Kresy regarded the Polish civil administration of 1919–20 as an occupation in disguise, mostly because it implemented a policy of Polonization propelled mainly by the country’s and the region’s conservative circles. This ignited a craving for the return of the “old times” under imperial Russian administration, or sometimes even for a Bolshevik takeover, which was wholesale abhorred only by 278 Władysław Pobóg-Malinowski, Najnowsza historia polityczna Polski, vol. 2: 1914–1939 (London: Świderski, 1967), 434–5; Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 114. 279 Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 145.

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the Polish-speaking population, because it had the most to lose. The others could at least hope for more access to land than the Polish administration actually granted them. At the latest after the Polish occupation of Vilnius in April 1919, Lithuanians openly opposed Polish rule in the Kresy. When the Red Army approached, Ukrainians and Belarusians formed armed partisan units to fight the “Polish masters.” The Jewish population supported the Polish administration, but was generally troubled by the attitude within the Polish administration and army which were both dominated by the Endecja’s anti-Semitic mindset. Most of all, they were horrified by the pogroms which Polish soldiers, sometimes assisted by civilians, instigated in the Kresy, not only in small villages off the beaten track, but also in towns like Vilnius, Pinsk, and Lviv (see Chapter 4). The Jewish inhabitants of the Kresy were divided according to age: The younger generation was more in favor of the Bolsheviks, while the older folks usually preferred to stick with the Poles. Not surprisingly, Poles for their part generally supported the Polish administration and its policies unanimously. However, because they were a minority, an anti-Polish mood in the Kresy prevailed. Thus, instead of laying the foundation for inter-ethnic cooperation within a future federal state dominated by Poles, the Polish civil administration in the Kresy alienated and antagonized its mixed, borderland population almost to the same extent as the armed conflicts did elsewhere.280 The mood in the heartland, where the majority of Poles lived, was not much better. The population in general held the government, the military, and the army responsible for the imminent assault. Peasants resisted the draft and preferred to stay home. Workers called for peace negotiations with Soviet Russia.281 The government itself had entered a phase of constant crisis. Poland had won most border struggles, but now was about to lose its very center. “During this tragic and dangerous period,” legendary emigrant historian Władysław Pobóg-Malinowski wrote in 1967 in his—admittedly a little antiquated, but still fascinating—“Newest Polish Political History,” “the Sejm as a body did not hold itself higher than society. There, one could witness the same confusion that fostered gossip, accusations hurled instinctively, and helpless defeatism. In this atmosphere, both in the Sejm and society itself, one peculiar absurdity was a dogged adherence to old ways and ­methods, completely misjudging the severity of the consequences. As the enemy penetrated deeper and deeper into the country, inter-party rivalries inside the Sejm gave rise to a protracted governmental crisis.”282 Although he penned these lines almost half a century after the events, one still senses the veteran of the Polish– Soviet War’s anger and disappointment over the Polish society’s inability to unite as a nation behind the fighting army in those dangerous days. In the end, three initiatives were launched to avert the pending disaster. The first thing that was needed was a united leadership. For this, a “Council of National Defense” (Rada Obrony Państwa) was invoked on July 1, 1920. It was endowed 280 Szczepański, Społeczeństwo Polski w walce z najazdem bolszewickim, 149–65. 281 Szczepański, Społeczeństwo Polski w walce z najazdem bolszewickim, 169–242. 282 Pobóg-Malinowski, Najnowsza historia polityczna Polski, 444–7, quote: 446.

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with far-reaching authority and immediately coordinated the nation’s war effort without detouring via the quarrelling Sejm. The concept was not undisputed, and even within the council Piłsudski was heavily attacked by Roman Dmowski.283 But be it Piłsudski’s authority, or be it the momentary lack of capable military leaders with a comparable standing in the army, the Council stuck by him. It was the leader of the National Democrats who left the table.284 After a functional governing body—a “Shadow Sejm,” so to speak—had been improvised, the second thing on the list was to convince the masses to send the men fit for service into the ranks of the Polish Army. The mobilization of a large part of society for the war effort was attempted through an impressive combined effort of state and civic institutions. The growing risk of an invasion since spring 1920 had already done some serious persuading. Now, the Catholic Church chimed in. The priests called the men to arms from the pulpit. They bade their communities to collect money and send material to the front. Women were encouraged to join the forces as nurses. Priests should enlist as army chaplains to raise troop morale.285 In response to this flaming appeal, primarily addressing the rural masses, the Sejm hastily passed the long-awaited wide-ranging land reform on July 15.286 It might be hard to believe, especially in the light of the prevailing Polish sagas of the War against the Bolsheviks, but these efforts to incite the countryside for the defense of the fatherland failed widely in 1920. Polish historians have ascertained a total lack of patriotism beyond the city borders of the Second Polish Republic, even in the summer of 1920. The peasants had to be bullied into giving up their sons or their goods and possessions for the war effort. Ironically, it seems that for many of them, only “state coercion [was] real evidence of the need to pay taxes, as well as essential proof of the state’s existence,” as the Gazeta Warszawska wrote on July 3, 1920. The rural masses had not participated yet in the nation-building process. They still thought in categories which had vanished with the Great War, equating the state with its nobility, who were led by a monarch. The new state would be defended by the landlords, the priests, and the educated classes who in their eyes had wanted it in the first place. In other words: The peasants held the Polish elites responsible for an independence which in their eyes had only replaced their habitual prewar order with a lot of trouble at the new state’s borders which was now about to descend upon them.287 When a Polish “Volunteer Army” (Armia 283  See the following section: “Inner-Polish Conflicts during the Civil War.” 284 Pobóg-Malinowski, Najnowsza historia polityczna Polski, 449–50. No mentioning of this episode in Badziak, W oczekiwaniu na przełom, 167–8, although the author explicitly claims to re-evaluate the role of the left and right political camps during the first years of the Second Republic. 285 Szczepański, Społeczeństwo Polski w walce z najazdem bolszewickim, 206–15. 286  Sejm Ustawodawczy (ed.), Ustawa z dnie 15 lipca 1920 roku o wykonaniu reformy rolnej, Dziennik Ustaw Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej no. 70 (1920), position 462 no. 70 (1920), 1229–37. 287  Henryk Lisak, “Niektóre grupy i kategorie społeczne wobec najazdu Rosji Sowieckiej na Polskę w roku 1920,” Poznańskie Zeszyty Humanistyczne VI (2006): 111–27, here: 112–16, quote from Gazeta Warszawska: 113.

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Ochotnicza) was hastily put together under General Haller’s command,288 only every fifth of its soldiers had a rural background, although in 1920 four out of five Poles were peasants. The situation in Greater Poland was a little better than in former Congress Poland or Galicia, for reasons already explained.289 But this cannot hide the fact that although in the eye of the storm many Poles started to develop patriotic and nationalist feelings, they were still a minority in comparison to the unaffected rural masses. As a third emergency measure, the “Volunteer Army” of 100,000-odd members was recruited mostly from all other layers of society, mainly “university students, scouts, young workers and craftsmen.”290 University professors beat the drum to attract their students to the service. Scout organizations mobilized their members. Even the Polish workers’ associations, which by their very nature one would rather expect to sympathize with the army of the “workers’ paradise” about to invade the country, were carried away by the wave of patriotism. After the war, Polish Jews faced accusations that they had ducked out in the moment of need, but on the contrary they gave a lot of money to support the army—as did the whole Polish middle class—and the younger generations, especially Jewish university and high school students, readily enlisted.291 The volunteers were highly motivated but lacked elementary skills in the theory and practice of warfare. Many of them had never held a rifle in their hands before. Even the officers were relatively inexperienced.292 Therefore, the “Volunteer Army” was not used as one stand-alone formation but divided into single regiments or used to backfill the frontlines.293 There, they met with the inertial mass of drafted peasants. Although they still did not enthusiastically—let alone voluntarily—join the colors, at least they acquiesced and no longer resisted the draft of 1920, which in total yielded more than half a million soldiers.294 “In the end,” the Polish writer Bohdan Skaradziński reflected three-quarters of a century later, the determining factors of Poland’s expansive policy in the east in 1919–20—and its risks—“included social acceptance. In spite of the rallies and the newspapers, if not for society’s tendency—at a certain level—for self-sacrifice and self-denial, both personal and material, there would have been no one to pursue any kind of policy, nor anything [to implement it] with.”295 He is right concerning the wealthy and educated layers of Polish society. One would think that the real 288 Odziemkowski, Wieś i armia w II Rzeczypospolitej, 20. 289  Lisak, “Niektóre grupy i kategorie społeczne,” 112–13. For a case study on the voivodeship of Kielce which confirms these findings see Mieczysław B. Markowski, Społeczeństwo województwa kieleckiego wobec wojny polsko–bolszewickiej 1919–1920 (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej Jana Kochanowskiego, 1998). 290  Odziemkowski, “Naród—państwo—armia in statu nascendi,” 80. 291 Szczepański, Społeczeństwo Polski w walce z najazdem bolszewickim, 220–51. 292 Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 222. 293  Wyszczelski, “Powstanie i rozwój Wojska Polskiego,” 22. 294  Mikołaj J. Szczepkowski, “Zarys organizacji Wojska Polskiego w latach 1918–1920,” Wojskowy Przegląd Historyczny XXXV, no. 3–4 (1990): 3–36, here: 19; Szczepański, Społeczeństwo Polski w walce z najazdem bolszewickim, 227–34. 295 Bohdan Skaradziński, “ ‘Telefony’ Lenin–Piłsudski,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 110 (1994): 86–92, here: 86.

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“Miracle at the Vistula” in August 1920 was the rapid transformation of Polish society from war-weary and estranged to belligerent and united in the preceding weeks—had it not been for the majority of the rural population which largely stood apart. The educated circles and the middle class, though, were animated with the nation’s mission. Within this wave of popular excitement of the summer of 1920, a twenty-two-year-old high school graduate from Ostrowiec, a small town forty miles east of Kielce, volunteered for military service. His commitment to the Polish cause was already beyond doubt. While still a teenager, Michał Słowikowski had been a member of the Polish Military Organization in his home town. He commanded excellent powers of observation and combined them with ruthless candor, even towards his own weaknesses. It was probably these virtues which after the war led him to become a priest who restlessly took a stand for his people. During the Second World War, the Germans imprisoned him in one of the—even by their standards—worst prisons in occupied Poland, but they were not able to break his spirit. Not surprisingly, in communist Poland he was part of the Catholic opposition. He died in 1991, after having lived through two historical moments of Polish independence (1918 and 1989). In between, he had survived two deadly totalitarian regimes unbowed and was nominated Domestic Prelate by the Vatican.296 Patriotism and nationalist enthusiasm led Słowikowski to enlist voluntarily in 1920. We can take his records from the battlefields as firsthand insights into the mentality of an average Polish frontline unit in the Polish–Soviet War. He joined the army with a romantic vision of the Polish Legions which did not stand up long against reality. If he soon reported relentlessly on the defeatist mood and the flaws he witnessed among the troops, he was not doing so out of spitefulness, but with a touch of puzzlement and sorrow. Thus, we can detect the ruptures and differences within Polish society as if through a magnifying glass when we pause with the unit at the Warsaw outskirts in August 1920, and follow its route eastward towards the Hrubieszów area, where in the first days of September its final reckoning with the Red Cavalry took place. By turning the pages of Słowikowski’s diary and following the soldiers’ conversations it contains, one gets a notion of the importance of Warsaw not only in 1920, but generally as an emblem of Polish history. In the eyes of the soldiers, the fate of the city equaled the fate of the Polish nation. On August 10, 1920, Słowikowski registered a discussion in his unit over the likely fall of the city: “ ‘We can defend ourselves outside the capital,’ said Bolek Kulczuga. ‘You will defend yourself ’— answered Duczański—‘and what was it like during the January Uprising [of 1863]? Then, they also said they could defend themselves without the capital, but their morale was quickly sapped and the army fell into disarray.’ ”297 The population sixty miles to the south had a vital interest in the proceedings at the front: “The citizens 296  Maria Kozioł, “Ksiądz infułat Michał Słowikowski,” Lubartów i Ziemia Lubartowska XII (1993): 437–8; Krystyna Korzon (ed.), Inwentarz rękopisów Biblioteki Zakładu Narodowego im. Ossolińskich we Wrocławiu: Rękopisy 15321–15680 (Pamiętniki) (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1984), 101. 297 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 65, entry for August 10, 1920 (see note 3 on page vii).

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of Kozienice were very anxious. During their conversations with the soldiers, they tried to find out . . . what would happen next. The question of whether Warsaw would defend itself was an issue not only for the nation, but for individual citizens, too. Could the beautiful mirage of freedom really be coming to an end?”298 Most understandably, their concern for the capital was directly linked with their concern for their home town. The second important notion is that there was obviously a vital difference between soldiers from the countryside who were drafted and those volunteers who had joined the same unit from school or university. Słowikowski noted in his diary that he and his comrades who had enthusiastically joined the colors from high school watched with a certain perplexity the indifference of the rest of his unit, who were more interested in mundane things such as clothes or meals.299 “What honor!?,” exclaimed Pytel, a peasant, in anger and frustration, after he had confessed to his comrade that he had thought about deserting and generally believed in the Bolshevik propaganda that the landlords had caused the war. “It makes me shit! What does honor give me when the lice are biting?! Did you see all the soldiers

Fig. 8.  Peasant volunteers armed with scythes—known since the Kościuszko uprising of 1794 as “Scythemen” (“Kosznierzy”)—mustered in Warsaw in August 1920. The writing on their sleeves reads “Join us.” In reality, the Polish peasantry by and large ignored the call to the colors even at the heights of the Polish–Soviet War. © Eastern Archive (Warsaw)—KARTA, IS_SZB2010_0006

298 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 89, entry for August 15, 1920. 299 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 112, entry for August 22, 1920.

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from our company? Do they all have boots on their feet? And you know how many haven’t got shirts? Their uniforms are draped on naked bodies. Honor, my ass! If there’s nothing to eat, the lice are biting, and the soldiers have no underpants.” Obviously exhausted from this outburst and longing to return home for the harvest, he added after a pause: “Whoever wants war is welcome to fight, but it’s a farmer’s job to cultivate the soil.”300 Notable words, considering that they were uttered in the vicinity of Warsaw, which the Red Army was just about to attack. Another peasant remarked soon after: “ ‘Does any government take care of its soldiers the way this damned one does?’—The soldiers fell silent. Perlik flew into a rage . . . ‘I’ve been walking without boots for two months already . . . Well, I’m a peasant’s son, so I’m hardy, obviously! If the sergeant’s got no boots, why should I have any, a common soldier? But . . . my underpants are in rags, farted to death, and there aren’t any shirts to be had . . .’ He unbuttoned his uniform, showing his naked body. ‘That’s how Poland takes care of me! It’s rifles they need, not peasants . . .’” The message he had just heard—the Bolshevik troops had been pushed back by the Polish Army and Warsaw was saved—had not left the expected impression on him. To the contrary, it actually had triggered his “serenade.”301 A conversation amongst the soldiers concluded that the problems of the army were of a structural nature, and that the government of Prime Minister Wincenty Witos (the peasant leader) and his deputy Ignacy Daszyński (the socialist) already represented the peasants’ and workers’ interests. But the soldiers from the countryside had their doubts about the effectiveness and implementations of the land reform it had passed a month ago.302 Słowikowski’s comrade, another volunteer, was obviously right when he commented on the mood and behavior of the other men: “ ‘So you think that these old soldiers are thirsting for battle again? Like Latra—he cleaned out some soldiers [at cards] today. And some of them just want to eat, drink, and fondle a girl.’ ‘And I  thought the Polish Army would be like in the romantic poetry’,” interjected Słowikowski. “ ‘And meanwhile’,” his friend continued, “ ‘they’re destroying the country [and are] no better than the Bolsheviks. I pity the fish in the ponds. What do [Polish soldiers] get out of tossing grenades into the water?’”303 By then, a rift between volunteers—most of them educated—and peasants had become apparent in Słowikowski’s unit, which marched in the ranks of the second battalion304 of the Second Legions’ Infantry Division. A few days earlier, Pytel had had a chat with Słowikowski, where he commented on the latter’s literacy and wondered why he had not used it as an excuse to avoid service. Obviously, with the volunteer students and the drafted peasants, two worlds collided. But the differences had diminished during the weeks spent together in service. When told by Pytel that he had been a fool when reporting voluntarily for the front, Słowikowski noted: “It’s

300 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 109, entry between August 19 and 21, 1920. 301 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 116–17, entry for August 22, 1920. Original ellipses. 302 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 118–19, entry for August 22, 1920. 303 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 113, entry for August 22, 1920. 304  Słowikowski’s was the third platoon of its sixth company.

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hard to argue with that.”305 Just prior to this conversation, he had assisted Pytel robbing a Jew’s orchard—despite certain reservations, which were quickly overcome by his comrade’s persuasiveness (see Chapter 4: second epigraph). After the Polish victory at the gates of Warsaw, the unit was redeployed to pursue the Red Army eastward into the Hrubieszów area. Here the famous Red Army cavalry of General Semyon Budyonny was encircled by the Poles, and Słowikowski and his comrades searched the towns for Russian soldiers. In Szpikołosy, he was suddenly reminded of the fluidity of identity in border zones: What he, in ambush position, first took for two chatting Red Army soldiers turned out to be two local peasants: “I had forgotten that the local ‘Tutejsi’ villages had a mixed population. [They spoke] not Russian, but Ruthenian.”306 The locals communicated with him as easily in his idiom as they probably had with the twenty Red Army soldiers who had left the village just about an hour before.307 For him this was a reminder that as much as the Bolsheviks were depicted as devils and beasts by the Polish propaganda, they were still related Slavic people. When he and a handful of other men of his dispersed unit were captured, Bolshevik soldiers spared their lives—albeit they took everything from them except their underwear.308 The captives were lucky—the surroundings of Hrubieszów were a witch’s cauldron in the first days of September. About 1,000 soldiers from the Second Legions’ Infantry Division died here.309 The Red Cavalry, trapped in the evernarrowing “Ring of Zamość,” was running wild, pointedly attacked by their Polish counterparts on horseback, the famous Uhlans, while the Polish infantry was scattered all over the little villages. The frontline gradually disappeared, the enemy armies amalgamated, and the laws of war became a distant memory. This was civil war at its worst.310 One could hardly blame the Słowikowski crew when, overpowered by the Red Cavalry, it had finally surrendered without throwing itself into a last suicidal fight. While the volunteers hesitated, the peasants had already tossed away their weapons.311 A few miles from there, the Red Cavalry’s famous columnist Issac Babel noted these days in his diary: “Miserable villages. Jerry-built hovels. Half-naked inhabitants. We ruin it completely . . . We exchange blows, but can’t hold on to our gains. Talk about the decline of the army’s fighting fitness more and more persistent. Desertions from the army. Countless reports of men on leave, men off sick.”312 The Battle of Warsaw had decided the fate of the capital. The Polish victory at the “Ring of Zamość” decided the fate of the republic. With the Red Cavalry severely 305 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 106–8, quote: 108–9, entry between August 19 and 21, 1920. 306  A dialect spoken in the Polish–Ukrainian borderlands by Ukrainians. 307 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 165–6, quote: 165, entry for September 2, 1920. 308 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 180–4, entry for September 3, 1920. 309 Wyszczelski, Wojna polsko–rosyjska, 1919–1920, vol. 2, 388–9. 310 Descriptions of the battle—and the threat to the lives of civilians caught in between—in Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 226–31. 311 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 180–4, entry for September 3, 1920. 312  Isaak Babel, 1920 Diary, edited by Carol J. Avins (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 91.

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weakened in the southeast, the Poles could afford to concentrate their forces to the northeast, where the last battles of the Polish–Soviet War took place.313 The impressions depicted in Słowikowski’s diary suggest that the experience of military service did not mobilize the Polish peasant either. Its sobering and harsh reality prevented the peasant soldier from participating in the national elevation. To the contrary: Starvation and destitution was an overall phenomenon in postwar Poland, and its consequences will be addressed in Chapter 4. But the soldier on the frontlines not only had to suffer this, but was also expected to obey the orders of a government to which he obviously felt no loyalty whatsoever and which at the same time was unable to care for him properly. On top of that he had to exert a maximum of physical performance. While at home the newspapers celebrated the Polish Army as the nation’s hope and its victories as the self-confirmation of the nation, many frontline soldiers saw it as an instrument of coercion, while they risked their lives every day and got nothing in return. Meanwhile, they were often ignorant of the situation at home, and of how their families were coping. Last but not least, news of the efforts of the Polish national mobilization at home did not reach the frontline equitably. Rather conflicting Bolshevik and Polish propaganda messages made the circuit.314 Not surprisingly, what remains is the insight that wars are experienced very differently at the front than at home. For Polish urban society and especially the educated classes, we can draw a different conclusion. If since the partition times there was ever a moment they were united as a nation, felt and acted together, and forgot about religious and ethnic differences, it was in August 1920, in and beyond the outskirts of Warsaw. Only through joint effort and concerted action had it been possible to face the Bolshevik attack, to strike back, and finally to win. The mobilization was led by the Catholic Church, political parties, civic societies, and professional associations. Even Polish social revolutionaries adjourned their activities and got in line. This reaction was comparable with the German or French “party truce” (Burgfrieden or union sacrée) of 1914. But there were differences. At the end of the Great War, the army in Germany was demobilizing, revolutionary zealotism was inflamed, and the ­political and military elites had lost all authority. While external and internal forces had destroyed the German national unity in November 1918, for Poland in August 1920 such forces simply forged the nation. This process was shorter, but it still had a strong impact on Polish society, since it encompassed not only the political representation of the people, but the large middle- and working-class parts of the population. The trigger was the immediate threat to which they were exposed, and which allowed them to forget the political and military crisis of the preceding weeks. Now, an effective army was jump-started to avert disaster. But the unification process was incomplete, because it omitted the country’s silent majority: the peasants. 313 Zamoyski, Warsaw 1920, 115–23. 314 Aleksandra J. Leinwand, “Organizacja i funkcjonowanie propagandy bolszewickiej podczas wojny polsko–sowieckiej, 1919–1920,” Studia z Dziejów Rosji i Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej 42 (2007): 95–135; Bogusław Korzeniewski, “Wróg nadchodzi: Polska propaganda polityczna w obliczu bitwy warszawskiej,” Przegląd Historyczny 95, no. 4 (2004): 467–84.

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Inner-Polish Conflicts during the Civil War As we have seen, the main political leaders of the Polish-speaking population of Central Europe up to 1918 could not agree upon one common strategy to achieve independence. It does not come as a surprise that this situation did not change overnight once this goal was within arms’ reach. The diligent reader might remember that Roman Dmowski, the leader of the National Democrats, had abdicated from the Russian option and left for Paris, where from 1917 onwards he headed the Polish National Committee which the Entente recognized as the legitimate representation of a Polish state in autumn that year. The Central Powers for their part dealt only with a Polish Regency Council, which they had allowed to form in Warsaw under their auspices on October 27 that year, mainly to counter Allied diplomacy towards Poland and to win over more Polish recruits to fight on their side. With the looming defeat of the Central Powers in autumn 1918, developments on Polish soil picked up pace, and new governing bodies materialized. The s­ ituation was complex, to say the least. The Polish lands were still separated, although almost entirely ruled by the Central Powers during the better part of the world war. The Baltic Sea coast had been largely controlled by the German military command Ober Ost; former Congress Poland had been divided into a German military government centered in Warsaw and an Austrian military government centered in Lublin; Galicia and Cieszyn Silesia were integral parts of the Austrian Empire, while Upper Silesia, the Poznań area, and Pomerania were part of the German Empire. With imperial power faltering everywhere in 1918, political bodies emerged which, one way or another, claimed to represent the whole (or at least parts) of the Polish nation. Confusion, even trouble, was inevitable. One of these political bodies we have already met. In Galicia, the Polish Liquidation Commission was to oversee the transition from imperial Habsburg to national Polish rule. But before it took up office in late October 1918, its founding delegation was already quarrelling in Cracow about vital issues. Was it to be subordinate to the Regency Council, as the National Democrats demanded, or to act independently from Warsaw, as the socialists and the Peasant Party preferred?315 The underlying motives were evident: The Regency Council had the backing of Roman Dmowski’s National Committee in Paris316 and at the same time was still officially an organ of the Central Powers which held prisoner the socialist legend and at the same time the only political figure who could, due to his enormous popularity, hope for at least a certain measure of cross-party acceptance: Józef Piłsudski. Between both antagonizing camps, the center-left members of the Commission hesitated to officially acknowledge the supremacy of the Regency Council, which for its part unceremoniously nominated a Commissary General for Galicia and “the Polish territory of [Cieszyn] Silesia” who would use the 315  Marek Przeniosło, Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna 1918–1919 (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jana Kochanowskiego, 2010), 16–18. 316 Kazimierz Smogorzewski, L’union sacrée polonaise: Le gouvernement de Varsovie et le “gouvernement” polonais de Paris, 1918–1919 (Paris: Costes, 1929), 9.

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Liquidation Commission’s structures as a mere administrative body at his ­disposal.317 Count Witold Czartoryski, who was chosen for the post, visited Cracow in early November to meet with the Commission’s speakers, but he was not taken seriously. While listening to him, peasant leader Wincenty Witos slouched on a couch, ostentatiously cleaning his fingernails with a pocket knife. Czartoryski understood that he was not wanted in Cracow, and returned to the capital.318 It did not make much of a difference. The days of his government on Germany’s sufferance were numbered anyhow. In the meantime, the Liquidation Commission had to direct its attention towards Lviv in eastern Galicia. There it opened a branch on October 31 under Karl Huyn, the last Austrian governor of Galicia, to counter Ukrainian ambitions in the region.319 That very night, though, the Ukrainians moved to detain Huyn and, as has been elaborated above, seized power in the city. The situation for the Poles who were not willing to accept this was precarious. There was a tentativeness about the legitimate governmental representation—that in Vienna (officially, the Habsburg Army was still in charge in Galicia), Cracow (the Liquidation Commission), Warsaw (the Regency Council), or Paris (the National Committee)—and who should actually command a counterstrike in the city. Apart from a handful of former recruits and officers of the Habsburg Army, the Polish forces in the city comprised a few hundred men: largely members of the socialist Polish Military Organization, of their new-founded equivalent from the National Democratic camp, the Polish Military Cadres (Polskie Kadry Wojskowy), and of the “Polish Auxiliary Corps” (Polski Korpus Posiłkowy), legionnaires who had served in the Habsburg Army after Piłsudski’s internment by the Germans in the summer of 1917. They could neither agree in their assessment of the situation, nor upon who would command the Polish forces in case of a Ukrainian move.320 Thus, the rift in the Polish political leadership divided their forces on the ground, where displaying a united front was a matter not only of victory or defeat, but of life and death. On November 20, while street fighting was still going on, a new dispute over the command occupied the minds of the Polish military forces in the city, left and right.321 Another fluctuant government, the “Provisional People’s Government of the Republic of Poland” (Tymczasowy Rząd Ludowy Republiki Polskiej) which Polish socialists had evoked on November 7 in Lublin, even hindered troops of the Regency Council embarking as a relief force for Lviv.322 Governing, 317  Regency Council Warsaw, announcement of the nomination of Witold Czartoryski as commissioner general for Galicia and Cieszyn Silesia, October 31, 1918, Monitor Polski, November 2, 1918. 318 Przeniosło, Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna 1918–1919, 123–6. A report from November 3, 1918 on the stance of the Liquidation Commission towards Czartoryski can be found in the files of the Polish Army Command, Laudański Files, vol. 1, 10, CAW, I.440.12.1. 319 Przeniosło, Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna 1918–1919, 21. 320 Przybylski, Wojna polska 1918–1921, 45; Klimecki, Polsko–ukraińska wojna o Lwów i Galicję Wschodnią, 53–5, 64–6. 321 Galuba, “Niech nas rozsądzi miecz i krew . . .,” 62. 322 Galuba, “Niech nas rozsądzi miecz i krew . . .,” 128. Przeniosło, Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna 1918–1919, 127–8. On the “Provisional People’s Government” see Ewa Maj (ed.), Tymczasowy Rząd Ludowy Republiki Polskiej w Lublinie (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii CurieSkłodowskiej, 2009).

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it seems, was an obsession in those days. Less than 100 miles to the southwest of Lublin, a peasants’ “Republic of Tarnobrzeg” materialized, which soon drowned in banditry and anarchy, and had to be abolished by Polish troops in early 1919.323 The arrival of Piłsudski in Warsaw on November 10, 1918, after his release from German custody, put a temporary end to the competition of the two regimes sporting the ambition to represent the whole Polish nation. The Provisional People’s Government in Lublin and the Regency Council in Warsaw, both realizing that they lacked the support of the masses, dissolved and left the field to him, making the “Commander” temporarily head of the army and Chief of State in one person. The National Committee in Paris had to stand back in this time of crises and armed struggle watching while all state power fell into the lap of the popular leader, their most hated enemy. For the time being, Dmowski regarded it as futile to challenge the new rulers in Warsaw, supposing that a supremacy of Freemasons, Jews, and international financial capital was at work in Poland with the backing of the Entente.324 Henceforth, the Polish rightist circles boycotted the government, watching with awe how at the turn of the year the country was pushed into reforms which conjured up connotations of Bolshevism. Piłsudski, for his part, had to realize that his left government alone was not strong enough to rule the country which simultaneously was engaged in several armed conflicts at its borders. He needed the support of the National Democrats, since they also represented a huge part of Polish society, and with Haller’s Army in France and Dowbor-Muśnicki’s Army of Greater Poland in Poznań, they had the bulk of the Polish military striking force at their command. Furthermore, although the majority of the Polish representations outside the capital—the People’s Councils in Upper Silesia and Poznań, even the Liquidation Commission in Cracow and its branch in Lviv325—generally recognized the government in Warsaw, they leaned towards the National Democrats and denied its claim to speak for the whole of Poland. The isolation of the ruling Polish left in late 1918 is clearly expressed by the refusal of the Peasant Party—the biggest political force between left and right—to dispatch their deputies to the Sejm in Warsaw unless it would also accept representatives from the rightist camp in Poznań.326 At the turn of the year 1918–19, Piłsudski ruled only in the center of Poland, while the better part of the embattled borderlands were Endejca turf. Developments in Cieszyn Silesia demonstrated vividly how the existence of ­several Polish power centers could work against Poland. True enough, the National Council of the Cieszyn Principality had been erected in accordance with the Liquidation Commission and retroactively received the blessing from Warsaw.327 323  Marek Przeniosło, “Republika Tarnobrzeska (1918–1919): Fakty i mity,” in Polska w XIX i XX wieku. Społeczeństwo i gospodarka, edited by Wiesław Caban (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jana Kochanowskiego, 2013), 477–84. 324 Kawalec, Roman Dmowski, 321; Ajnenkiel, Od rza̜dów ludowych do przewrotu majowego, 66. 325  The “Provisional Governing Committee in Lviv” (Tymczasowy Komitet Rządzący w Lwowie) was inaugurated immediately after the cessation of fights on the city territory in late November; see Przeniosło, Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna 1918–1919, 275–92. 326 Przeniosło, Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna 1918–1919, 131. 327 Przeniosło, Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna 1918–1919, 129–36.

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It had even come to a—from the Polish perspective—favorable provisional ­agreement on its own with its local Czech negotiation partner in early November 1918. But the authorities in Prague procrastinated about its legalization. They dispatched a Czech consul to Cracow instead of Warsaw, and declared the Polish National Council in Cieszyn illegal. Until the official recognition of the Warsaw government by the Entente in February 1919, Prague simply denied the existence of a Polish state,328 and seized the moment by invading the Polish-controlled part of Cieszyn Silesia in late January. The Polish National Council established a “Regional Government of the Cieszyn Principality” (Rząd Krajowy Księstwa Cieszyńskiego), in accordance with all Polish parties involved. Until its dissolution in early 1920, it had no disputes with Warsaw, but no influence whatsoever on the outcome of the Polish–Czech dispute either.329 In the Poznań area, traditionally an “Endecja fortress,”330 the situation was the reverse. The Supreme People’s Council did not recognize the authority of the government in Warsaw, only that of the National Committee in Paris.331 It became the driving political force in the conflict with Germany over the region. Between December 3 and 5, 1918, a “Regional Sejm” (Sejm Dzielnicowy) coalesced in the former Prussian partition zone, without any delegate from former Congress Poland. The Poznanians even proposed to dissolve the government at the Vistula and to build a new one headed by one of their leading spokesmen, Wojciech Korfanty from Upper Silesia, or just to overthrow it.332 When during the last days of 1918, in coordination with Paris, Ignacy Paderewski was brought to Poznań and local forces attacked the German garrisons in the area, Warsaw did not care much to support them.333 To the perplexity of contemporaries, instead of one independent Poland, two arose. It was a dangerous situation, with two enemy camps separately building up their armed forces within their respective domains. In their anger and frustration, conspirators from the Endecja camp staged two amateurish and abortive coups in Warsaw at the turn of the year 1918–19.334 But this was drizzle in comparison to 328 Kamiński, Konflikt polsko–czeski 1918–1921, 12–23. 329  Bogdan Cybulski, “Rząd Krajowy Księstwa Cieszyńskiego (1918–1920),” Studia Śląskie. Seria Nowa 33 (1978): 241–72. On the genesis of the idea for a regional government see also protocol of the meeting of the Polish National Council, December 17, 1918, published in Długajczyk and Skrzypek (eds), Protokoły posiedzeń plenarnych Rady Narodowej Księstwa Cieszyńskiego, vol. 1, 172–9. 330 Henryk Lisiak, Narodowa demokracja w Wielkopolsce 1918–1939 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2006), 5. 331 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 102. On the foundered negotiations between the delegation from Poznań and the government forming in Warsaw in mid-November 1918 see Janusz Kutta, “Separatyzm i dzielnicowość w Wielkopolsce i na Pomorzu w latach 1918–1926” (PhD, Uniwersytet Warszawski, 1979), 25–7. Thanks to Maciej and Justyna Górny for providing me with access to this unpublished PhD. 332  Antoni Czubiński, “Rola Wielkopolski i Poznania w kształtowaniu zachodnich i północnych granic odrodzonego państwa polskiego (1918–1921),” in Polska myśl zachodnia w Poznaniu i Wielkopolsce. Jej rozwój i realizacja w wiekach XIX i XX, edited by Andrzej Kwilecki (Warsaw, Poznań: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1980), 63–127, 23, 29. 333 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 102. 334 Urbankowski, Józef Piłsudski, 420–2. Some military reports on the failed coups can be found in Laudański Files, vol. 2, 17–21, CAW, I.440.12.2.

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the storm clouds that gathered in Paris in December. Encouraged by the French Foreign Ministry, the National Committee forged plans to ship Haller’s troops from France to Poland for a coup d’état.335 Dmowski admitted in hindsight that had his National Democrats seized power in late 1918, it would have brought the nascent state to the brink of a civil war.336 As the army General Staff noted in early January, the National Democrats tried to move the center of Polish national life to Poznań before Piłsudski would have a chance to meet Paderewski, tireless ­moderator between both enemy camps.337 To stay informed on what was going on further west, Warsaw sent some of its military personnel to Poznań. Lieutenant Colonel Julian Stachiewicz, the former chief of staff of Piłsudski’s secret Military Organization, had taken part in the Polish–Ukrainian War. In January 1919, he acted as chief of staff of DowborMuśnicki’s Army of Greater Poland. His reports to the Belweder reflect the uncertainty of the situation. “A moment ago,” he noted on the afternoon of January 20, “the bomb exploded.” On behalf of the Supreme People’s Council, the soldiers of Greater Poland were to be released from their oath to Warsaw, and pledge allegiance to the Poznań government. “Unless Commander [Piłsudski] wishes to go to war with [Dowbor-]Muśnicki, I consider it advisable to consent,” recommended Stachiewicz.338 A week before, the Supreme People’s Council in Poznań had officially refused to tolerate any longer the further dispatch of officers from Warsaw to Greater Poland.339 The crisis was overcome during the second half of January by the formation of a new “Government of National Unity” (Rząd Jedności Narodowej) in Warsaw under Paderewski as Prime Minister. Himself without party affiliation, the speaker of the National Committee with his excellent connections to the Western world seemed an ideal candidate for the post. From Piłsudski’s point of view, it might also have played a role that Paderewski was rather inexperienced in politics and therefore presumably easy to manipulate.340 Be that as it may, the crisis was averted (at least for the moment), but the country was not united. Elections were held in late January 1919, but only in the uncontested Polish core areas of former Congress Poland and western Galicia, and they resulted in a stalemate. The left and the right 335  Czubiński, “Rola Wielkopolski i Poznania,” 95–6. Janusz Pajewski, Odbudowa państwa polskiego, 1914–1918 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1985), 324–5. See also protocol Ad 165 I. of the Polish National Committee in Paris, December 11, 1918, published in Jabłonowski (ed.), Komitet Narodowy Polski, 622–3. Badziak, W oczekiwaniu na przełom, 46, denies that such plans even existed. 336 Biskupski, Independence Day, 25. 337  High Command of the Polish Forces, Politico-informational Report on the situation in the Districts: Lublin, Warsaw, Kielce, Cracow, January 6, 1919, published in: Marek Jabłonowski (ed.), Raporty i komunikaty naczelnych władz wojskowych o sytuacji wewnętrznej Polski 1919–1920 (Warsaw: Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczna Pułtusk, 2000), 23–4, quote: 24. 338  Report of Lieutenant Colonel Julian Stachiewicz to Supreme Commander, January 20, 1919, General Adjutancy of the Supreme Commander, vol. 3, 149–50, Józef Piłsudski Institute of America (New York; henceforth: JPIA), 701/2/2. 339 Letter of the Supreme People’s Council to the Chief of General Staff in Warsaw, Poznań, January 14, 1919, Laudański Files, vol. 2, 112, CAW, I.440.12.2. 340 Prażmowska, Ignacy Paderewski, 75.

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each won somewhat more than a third of the votes. Since the areas where significant numbers of Germans, Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians, and Lithuanians lived did not take part in the poll, the minorities were not represented in the first independent and freely elected Polish Sejm, and thus also not involved in the preparation of the country’s preliminary constitution.341 The National Democrats decided for now to bury the hatchet and to further fortify their Poznań stronghold. As expressionist painter Jerzy Hulewicz secretly reported to Piłsudski in late March 1919, the Greater Poland area was becoming the hope of the Polish right-wing circles, a kind of renegade magnet at the country’s western border, apt to cause the central government in Warsaw ­trouble.342 The customs barrier to former Congress Poland remained. Complementary elections were held here in early June 1919. A “Ministry for the Former Prussian Partition Zone” (Ministerstwa byłej Dzielnicy Pruskiej) took office in Poznań in August and functioned as a regional government, largely independent from Warsaw, until 1922.343 Nevertheless, the urge for autonomy was not strong enough to make people forget the peril the country had just evaded. In May 1919, the Army of Greater Poland was put under the command of the Polish Armed Forces led by  Piłsudski. Poznań was self-confident, but not separatist. In November 1919 Premier Paderewski would sum up the policy of his government: “Poland is going neither leftward nor rightward, it is going forward . . . ”344 This could, though, change very quickly. In July 1920, under the threat of the Red Army’s advance towards Warsaw, Dmowski harshly attacked Piłsudski for having brought the peril upon the country by his hazardous capture of Kiev in April, and even publicly accused him of betrayal. Immediately afterwards, he left the capital and rushed directly to Poznań.345 Soon afterwards, alarming messages from there reached peasant leader Witos, whom Piłsudski had just nominated head of a “Government of National Defense” (Rząd Obrony Narodowej).346 As he noted in his memoirs, “deliberately proclaimed news about defeated Polish troops on the front, and how Piłsudski has sold out to his enemies, must be great cause for concern. Some people allege that Roman Dmowski is behind the whole business . . . The local community is not only hostile to Piłsudski, but also to the government and to me.” According to sources he deemed completely reliable, the secession of Poznań and even the removal of Piłsudski and the overthrow of his government were being promoted. Witos hurried west and faced an agitated Poznanian crowd, which he barely managed to appease. “At the gates of Warsaw,” he felt inclined to remind his audience, “we are not only defending the capital, but Poznań, Toruń, 341 Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 104. 342  Report no. XVIII of Jerzy Hulewicz to the Head of State, Kościanki, March 19, 1919, Laudański Files, vol. 16, 48–9, CAW, I.440.12.16. 343 Czubiński, Poznań w latach 1918–1939, 48–55; Andrzej Gulczyński, Ministerstwo byłej Dzielnicy Pruskiej, 1919–1922 (Poznań: Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, 1995). 344  Record of Proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, November 12, 1919, no. 97/22, cited after Wojciech Roszkowski, “The Reconstruction of the Government and State Apparatus in the Second Polish Republic,” in Latawski (ed.), The Reconstruction of Poland, 159–77, quote: 164. 345 Pobóg-Malinowski, Najnowsza historia polityczna Polski, 449, annotation 15b. 346 Ajnenkiel, Od rza̜dów ludowych do przewrotu majowego, 181.

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and Cracow as well.”347 For the time being, he had closed ranks. But he knew only too well that his words would be measured against the outcome of the war. “If Warsaw fell,” Norman Davies concluded, “Poznan would go its own way and the coalition leaders would travel as refugees to a province ruled by Dmowski’s ‘Government of National Salvation’.”348 Between 1795 and 1918, Poland had been a partitioned country, and between 1918 and 1920, it was still not united. It is well known that its two most profiled political figures of the time, Józef Piłsudski and Roman Dmowski, differed widely in their worldviews, geostrategical goals, and choice of coalitions. It is only a small exaggeration to say that their camps sometimes fought each other on the parquet of domestic politics with the same passion as their enemies on the battlefields. But in the shadows of those two giants of Polish history, the notion that their personal rivalry had caused a split not only through the country’s political landscape, but also through its armed forces and population, has somehow got lost. Roughly speaking, after a short initial phase of chaos, the Polish state in the making was divided along the former border between the Prussian and Russian partition zones. West of it, Dmowski’s National Democrats monitored the t­ akeover of the territory from Germany by use of military and paramilitary units with the backing of the French as their strongest ally. East of it, Piłsudski employed all the armed forces he could gather for a program of territorial expansionism which, although propagated as a federal project, in reality neared imperialism. Piłsudski regarded the settlement of Poland’s western borders as a matter for the Paris Peace Conference. His main enemy was Russia. Dmowski eyed with apprehension the annexation of territories far to the east which, due to the scarce Polish settlement structures there, challenged his project of a “Poland for Poles.” His main enemy was Germany. Both statesmen disapproved of the other’s program and fought each other, whenever the occasion occurred, with a vengeance, not only in words, but also in deeds, even if to do so threatened to destroy the independent Polish nation state they both had dedicated their lives to. As this chapter has shown, in literally all border zones with their mixed populations, the conflicts fought out by the Polish leadership and armed forces took on the character of a civil war. In addition, Poland had to fight not only for its external borders, but also for its internal cohesiveness. At the turn of 1918–19, the Second Republic was on the brink of civil war in its core lands as well. Without the allparty consent of late 1918 that Piłsudski was the man of the hour, and without him realizing in early 1919 that he needed the participation of the National Democrats to rule the country, it would have sunk into chaos, and probably not survived. Instead of bridging their differences, the Bolshevik threat in the summer 347 Wincenty Witos, Moje wspomienie, with an introduction by Stanisław Kot, 3 vols (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1964–5), vol. 2, 316–19, quotes: 317, 320. 348 Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 190. While the biography authored by Kawalec, Roman Dmowski, evaluates Dmowski’s political performance before, during, and after the Great War mainly positively, it omits the fact that he was obviously personally engaged in two scenarios to overthrow the Warsaw government when the country was fighting at its borders.

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of 1920 manifested the fragility of this party truce due to the irreconcilability of the country’s political leadership. One wonders if without their engagement in the conflicts at Poland’s periphery between 1918 and 1921, Poles would not have started to actually kill each other in its very center. As a matter of fact, Chapter 4 will illustrate and analyze how under this surface of political strife, Polish armed formations mutinied against superior authorities, attacked each other, harassed, robbed, violated, and even killed civilians in devastated and embattled Poland in 1918–21.

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4 Violence and Crimes Beyond the Battlefields Returning later from Berezhany [Brzeżany], the soldiers reported with bitterness how, as soon as the column had arrived in the city, the rear-echelon units, particularly the gendarmerie, attacked the [Ukrainian] prisoners like a flock of ravens. They locked them up in the barracks, barred the exit, and the pillaging began—they looted everything, even the best underwear, leaving the worst kind of rags in return. All the requisitioned items and clothing presumably became the robbers’ personal booty. In this respect, the Galician units were generally the worst element in the [Polish] Army. Already during the winter fighting near Lviv, rumors spread amongst the troops about Captain Roman Abraham’s unit and others who—when capturing Ruthenian [Ukrainian] villages—would plunder from the peasants all that could be carried or transported, to the extent that even dirty underwear from the attics was loaded onto sledges and hauled off “to Lviv.” Now that we have seized the eastern part of Galicia, local “caciques” have taken charge everywhere. There is plenty of scope for abuse of power. Former scores have been avenged and, like the Ukrainian yellow-and-blue cockade before it, the [Polish] eagle1 now gives unrestricted right to “ordinances.” Yes, the Galicians learned well from the ranks of the Austrian Army, and are now applying their skills extensively. The most striking features of the war on Red Ruthenia in 1918–19 were that prisoners were frequently murdered, and it was customary for the temporary victor to steal everything that appealed to them.2 Private Jerzy Konrad Maciejewski, diary entry for June 2, 1919, in the vicinity of Brzeżany Meanwhile, it had grown brighter outside; darkness gave way to dawn, then the full light of day. The morning watch arrived. “What will you do now?,” asked Pytel. “I’m off to sleep.” “Instead of sleeping, let’s go hunting . . . ” “Hunting? Where?” “I saw a cottage, maybe half a verst [two thirds of a mile] away, and the cottage had a big orchard.” “So?” 1  Emblem of the Polish forces, usually sewn on the front of the cap. 2 Maciejewski, Zawadiaka, 152–3.

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“In that orchard there were pears, apples, maybe plums too . . . ” “Want to buy some? It’s too early, the people are asleep . . . ” Pytel started to laugh. “Soldiers don’t buy. Soldiers take.” “I disagree. We’re in Poland, after all. Our home. I understand requisitions in a foreign country . . . ” “Well, maybe that’s true . . . When we were leaving Minsk, we certainly robbed the Jews . . . ” “What about the officers?” “The officers? Maybe they didn’t see—or pretended not to—who knows?” “I thought the Poles never robbed.” “If we hadn’t stolen it, then the Bolsheviks would have.” I fell silent. It was rather an original philosophy.3 Private Michał Słowikowski, near Warsaw, diary entry for August 19–21, 1920 in the vicinity of Warsaw We got into our automobiles, turned on the headlights, because it was now after nine o’clock, and started driving round. We saw that a large number of stores had been broken into and occasionally we saw soldiers carrying away  their booty. Count [Jerzy] Potulicki[-Skórzewski] jumped out of the automobile and stopped some of them. He whistled for a patrol, but there did not seem to be any on the streets. Farther down the street we heard some shots and then a cry. General [Edgar] Jadwin decided that it was impossible for us to organize ourselves into a police force, as we had no authority to arrest Polish soldiers. He therefore decided to go and see the Polish General . . . General [Daniel] Konarzewski said that he had so few officers that he could not send any of them out as they were needed in the camps to keep the men in hand. His officers had been fighting all day and were too exhausted now to go on patrol duty. General Jadwin pointed out that the soldiers apparently were not too tired to rob.4 Arthur Leman Goodhart, American lawyer and member of the Morgenthau Commission, report on the pogrom in Minsk on August 8, 1919

As we have seen, the (re)construction of nations at the beginning of the twentieth century was not only a unifying and constructive development, but also a divisive and destructive process.5 Whoever praises the concept of the nation state must also keep in mind that it was never implemented peacefully. On the contrary, violence seems to be an integral part of nation-state building. It is used not only to enforce new state borders, but also to define belonging. To quote a recent article on the subject by Eric D. Weitz: “As the scholarship of the last generation has so forcefully demonstrated, the construction of citizenship necessarily involves boundary-drawing, of territorial borders but also of peoples. The creation of rights for some is, then, 3 Słowikowski, Michał Słowikowski, 106–8, quote: 106–7, entry between August 19 and 21, 1920 (see note 3 on page vii). Original ellipses. Afterwards, both soldiers rob the garden, which is owned by a Jew whom Pytel chases away with his bayonet. 4 Goodhart, Poland and the Minority Races, 74–5. 5  For further reading see Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations.

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inextricably wound up with denying others the access to rights . . . Historically, then, rights and crimes emerged together.”6 In other words: By wielding violence, self-appointed members of a nation put the prevailing notion of “who is in and who is out” into practice. The process of nation building therefore is often accompanied by the turmoil of war, civil war, and inter-ethnic violence. The Polish case is no exception. The fact that all parties involved in the Central European after-battles of 1918–21 had a similar record substantiates the findings of current leading sociologists and historians that the “fires of hatred” that constituted the “dark side of democracy” were the nemesis of the twentieth “century of nation states.”7 In the preceding century, Europe had witnessed a transitional phase of declining empires and rising nation states. As described in Chapter 1, historians today perceive their relation as a “complex balance” rather than a “teleological progression.” To pay tribute to its diversity, they have described the complex intersection of empire and nation in the European borderlands and its implications not only at state, but also at international and regional level.8 In describing the clash of arms between the heirs of the Central European empires, we have to apply the same modus operandi. The notion that different forms of violence were at work in Central Europe after the Great War necessitates additional dimensions of perception and description rather than solely that of the nation state which still dominates the relevant literature, plainly because altered forms of violence were exerted by divergent actors. In the case of violence designed to further the emergence of a nation state, the perpetrators are conspicuously protracted arms of the state authority, however embryonic it might be, putting its own policy into practice. This is highlighted by the military guidelines for the treatment of the civil population and the overall occupational policy for conquered territories. But the phenomenon of ethno-political violence—mainly propelled by the drive for independence and ethnic supremacy—does not sufficiently explain other forms of violence, accompanying and intertwined with them. These often serve totally different goals, for instance mere survival, the establishment of a charismatic leadership, or the strengthening of group coherence. In civil wars, “much of what might appear to be political, or was indeed claimed to be political by actors at the time, was motivated by pre-existing social tensions or was a by-product of envy, greed, or lust.”9 In a landscape permeated with violence and marked by war-related scarcity, reasons for taking up arms could be of a very mundane nature, such as the “organization” of food, clothing, or shelter in order to survive, or the satisfaction of other basic instincts. 6  Eric D. Weitz, “Self-Determination: How a German Enlightenment Idea Became the Slogan of National Liberation and a Human Right,” American Historical Review 120, no. 2 (2015): 462–96, here: 465. 7  Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 8  Matthias Middell and Lluís Roura i Aulinas, “The Various Forms of Transcending the Horizon of National History Writing,” in Transnational Challenges to National History Writing, edited by Matthias Middell and Lluís Roura i Aulinas (Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1–35, here: 2. 9  Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, “The Great War and Paramilitarism in Europe, 1917–23,” Contemporary European History 19, no. 3 (2010): 267–73, here: 270.

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To trace such forms of non-political and arbitrary violence, we have to leave the  state level and zoom in on the regional, where political goals often became ­subsidiary. Here, the only real perceptible fronts ran between the opposing military or paramilitary units, whose members frequently changed sides. Since literally all formations operated remote from their center, they were cut off from any kind of regular supply and therefore relied heavily on looting. In some parts of eastern Poland, Polish soldiers routinely harassed and victimized civilians between 1918 and 1921. These decisions were not made in the state center, but rather autonomously by local commanders of small units, or even spontaneously by rank and file soldiers. The central command and its local units remained intimately interlaced, since the state alternately reacted to such incidents by either prosecuting or defending the perpetrators. Indeed, for our purpose—to get to the process, the causes, and mechanisms of paramilitary violence in embattled Poland—these cases are the most enlightening ones, since they not only document violent behavior as such, but provide us with the interpretation patterns of contemporaries—agents, victims, and arbitrators of violence. Although a great many representatives of the armed forces of independent Poland committed heinous acts of violence, it is worth noting that the only reason we know so much about such incidents is that they are on record, scrupulously documented in hundreds of files left behind by the Polish military authorities of 1918–21. Before we address the forms and experiences of paramilitary violence below the state level in eastern Poland, it seems necessary to visualize the prevailing living conditions in our area as a whole. The suffering of the locals was by no means limited to physical violence, which logically could only materialize where potential perpetrators met potential victims. The devastating consequences of the Great War were much more comprehensive than that. If we speak of the experience of violence in the postwar years, we should always bear in mind that epidemics and starvation had cost the lives of more people than acts of immediate physical violence. They should be regarded as, so to speak, the indirect violent consequences of the war and its continuation. LU N A R L A N D S C A P E S To begin with, soldiers’ casualties had hit new dimensions during the Great War. A postwar statistic estimated a total of thirteen million fallen troops, half of whom came from Central and Eastern Europe (including Austria and Greece). But the author concluded that “it may fairly be estimated that the loss of civilian life due directly to war or to causes induced by war equals, if indeed it does not exceed, that suffered by the armies in the field. In view of the facts cited, such an estimate must be regarded as conservative. And yet this does not take into account the appalling effects, some of them unquestionably permanent, of war, famine, pestilence, and disease on the sufferers who did not die.”10 10  Ernest L. Bogart, Direct and Indirect Costs of the Great World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1920), statistics: 277, quote: 282.

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The last cited scourges of humankind affected first and foremost Central and Eastern Europe. Serbia had been the first victim, with hunger and disease ravaging the occupied country in 1916 and 1917.11 Central and Eastern Europe were soon to follow. At the banks of the Volga and at the foothills of the Ural, between one and two million people died of starvation between 1921 and 1922.12 According to the latest findings of Łukasz Mieszkowski, the first wave of the Spanish flu “affected within the Polish Republic’s territory, in autumn and winter 1918/19, 3,400,000 to 6,570,500 people per year (at a minimum), of which 68,000 to 130,000 died.”13 Between 1919 and 1921, a raging typhus epidemic peaked in Russia (700,000 to 1,200,000 cases), Poland (219,066 to 231,206), and Ukraine (591,842)14 and threatened to proliferate to the west. “From this vast centre of infection [Russia] the disease is carried westward by an unceasing stream of immigrants. Prisoners returning to their homes, refugees flying for safety, crowd the railways,” Arthur James Balfour warned in a letter to the League of Nations in August 1920. “Two millions of these unfortunate persons have passed the Polish Disinfection Stations since the armistice, and doubtless many more have entered Poland without being subject to medical examination.”15 As the quote suggests, masses of people—sick or healthy—were not simply staying where they were in the immediate postwar years. During the war, hundreds of thousands of them had been deported, mainly by Russian troops, and now sought their way back westwards to their homelands, anxiously to what might await them there, 400,000 alone fleeing Russia—in whose western parts the number of displaced persons had increased beyond seven million in 1917—between May and November 1918. “By 1925 the total number of Polish citizens who had been repatriated from the Soviet Union stood at 1,265,000, of whom the majority returned to Poland in 1919–22.”16 The Special Commission on Typhus in Poland noted in 1921 that the years of warfare had left a devastated country and an impoverished starving population which was extremely vulnerable to the threatening disease: The area visited in the northern part of the eastern territory is poor and has suffered heavily as a result of the war which has been waged there almost incessantly since 1914. The retreat of the Bolshevik forces had taken place only a few weeks before the time of our visit. The destruction of a large number of houses, especially in the villages, has brought about an almost incredible amount of overcrowding. In one place we saw the entire population of a village which had been completely destroyed, and 11  Andrej Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Hurst, 2007), 110–13, 232–5. 12  Bertrand M. Patenaude, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 197–8. 13  Łukasz Mieszkowski, “A Foreign Lady: The Polish Episode in the Influenza Pandemic of 1918,” Acta Poloniae Historica 113 (2016): 195–230, here: 221. 14 According to Paul Julian Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe 1890–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 432–4. 15  Arthur James Balfour, “The Typhus Epidemic in Central Europe: Letter from the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, O. M., M. P., Containing a Further Appeal from the Council to the Members of the League, 21st August 1921,” International Conciliation, no. 160 (1921): 117–19. 16  Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell, “Population Displacement, State-Building, and Social Identity in the Lands of the Former Russian Empire, 1917–23,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4 (2003): 51–100, here: 64, quote: 76. Böhler, “Generals and Warlords,” here: 51–4.

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which had formerly consisted of a hundred houses, herded together in a single building which was itself in an advanced state of disrepair. Requisitions have impoverished the country. Information given us by the local authorities indicates that food reserves for the winter are non-existent. The number of horses and cattle are reduced to a quarter of the pre-war standard . . . In Eastern Galicia, as in the area described above, warlike operations which have continued with slight intermissions since 1914 almost up to date, have been responsible for very extensive destruction of dwellings. The resulting conditions of poverty and overcrowding are specially favourable to the ­propagation of epidemic disease, notably typhus fever.17

Members of foreign relief organizations would confirm the impression that especially the eastern parts of Poland at the end of the war resembled the nightmarish landscapes of Early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch: “There now remained to the village of Powursk [Povorsk] sixty peasant farms against three hundred in 1914; thirty-two horses against one hundred and twenty; two oxen against six hundred; and forty cows against two thousand six hundred. And there were many villages a great deal poorer along the banks of the river of a hundred ways.”—“We came presently to a house made out of half a cistern. A widow, with three small children, had found her way back from Russia, leaving the husband behind her on some typhus death-bed. She had got back at last to her six desatines [hectares] of ground. She had recognized it by the ups and downs. The house she expected was not standing—not one board of it. Searching round at her wits’ end, she had found the half of a large galvanized-iron cistern, which one of the armies had left behind instead of the house, and she and her children had gone to live inside as a dog and its puppies go into a kennel.”18 Although it might appear an impossible task, shortly after the war it was even attempted to quantify the property losses of the belligerent countries and their successors. With $7,500,000,000, the Central and Eastern European states carried one-quarter of the total estimated damage.19 Given their financial and economic inferiority, it is clear that in comparison to the West, these countries were incapable of coping with such wastages alone. Throughout the first postwar years, they were heavily reliant on foreign, mainly American, relief.20 One gets a pretty good idea of the surreal Central and Eastern European scenery with its war-scarred landscapes and endless refugee treks at war’s end when one reads about children playing with human remains as if they were toys.21

17  “Report of the Special Commission on Typhus in Poland, to the Assembly of the League of Nations,” published in: Hoover and Balfour (eds), Central European Relief, 18–20. 18  Joice M. NanKivell and Sydney Loch, The River of a Hundred Ways: Life in the War-Devastated Areas of Eastern Poland (London: Allen & Unwin, 1924), 27, 40. For more reports on Poland during the Polish–Soviet War in the eyes of foreign relief workers see Matthew Lloyd Adams, Cadillacs to Kiev: The American Relief Administration in Poland 1919–1922 (Savannah, GA: Kortusphere Publishing, 2017). 19 Bogart, Direct and Indirect Costs of the Great World War, 287. 20  Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916–1931 (London: Lane, 2014), 353–439. 21  NanKivell and Loch, The River of a Hundred Ways, 85–6.

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In his autobiographical novel “The People from the Berezina” (Nadberezyńcy), forgotten through the years, Florian Czarnyszewicz described life, suffering, and death in the Polish Eastern Territories during and after the First World War from a national-political perspective: “The Poles lived through harsh, dreadful times near the Berezina at the turn of the years 1917–18. Blood and tears gushed in streams. No night passed without someone being burned alive or murdered in a secluded spot. Everyone feared they would be the next in line, and could never count on tomorrow. Anticipating death can be more terrifying than death itself.”22 One might be surprised that the main part of the work concentrates on the years from 1917–18 onwards. The years 1914 to 1918 appear in the book only as a distant cannon thunder which the residents hardly perceive while digging trenches by the Berezina—a small stream passing through the Ruthenian capital of Bobrujsk before running into the Dnieper. But even before 1918 the experiences of war described by Czarnyszewicz—although not a single soldier of the Central Powers enters the scene—are far from a rural idyll. On the contrary, the actual frontlines in the Kresy, largely spared by conventional war, do not run between Russian and German or Austrian troops, but rather between the many ethnic, religious, social, and political groups that have lived side by side in these regions for centuries: Russians, Poles, and Jews, Catholics and Orthodox, aristocratic landowners, peasants and small townsfolk, loyal citizens and fighters for the reconstruction of an independent Polish state as a monarchy or democracy, followers of the traditional way of life and partisans of the Bolshevik modernization project. What awaits the reader in almost 600 pages is not a multicultural Utopia, but a true witch’s cauldron, which constantly simmered during the Great War and boiled over at the turn of 1917–18. In fact, the East European experience of violence by then was not limited to a number of armed conflicts. The civilian population was less concerned with fighting between combatants, than with the comportment of armed ​​ units in their area towards them, and below that level with the multifaceted relations between the different local stakeholders. Who sympathized or collaborated with the new rulers, who conspired against them? How could the new power relations be used for one’s own protection or advantage? Where did the greatest dangers stem from? Such elementary issues presumably occupied most of the region’s inhabitants in their day-to-day lives more than the outcome of the national struggle. By way of example, this field, hitherto barely researched, can be examined with reference to the Polish Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories (Zarząd Cywilny Ziem Wschodnich), which was initiated by Piłsudski as a catalyst of his ­federation project in the northeastern Kresy at the beginning of 1919, only to be 22 Florian Czarnyszewicz, Nadberezyńcy: Powieść w trzech tomach osnuta na tle prawdziwych wydarzeń (Cracow: Arcana, 2010) (first pub. 1942), 205. For more information on the author, see M. Czapska, “Florian Czarnyszewicz,” in Pamiętnik wileński, edited by Kazimierz Okulicz, Franciszek Wysłouch, and Halina Chocianowiczowa (Łomianki: LTW, 2010), 225–36.

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dissolved again a year and a half later, as a result of the final occupation of the ­territory by Soviet Russia.23 It temporarily covered a territory framed by the cities of Daugavpils and Kaunas to the north, Grodno and Brest-Litovsk to the west, Pinsk and Mazyr to the south, and Bobrujsk and Barysaw to the east.24 This was a region in which the Poles were one of many ethnic groups, their 30 percent competing with Belarusians (40 percent), Russians (5 percent), Jews (10 percent), and Lithuanians (3 percent).25 Here, Polish troops often acted rather like an occupation force. Due to the closure of schools, unpaid horse and cart work, dismantling of infrastructure, looting and other abuses, they were often more despised by the non-Polish majority of the population than the previous German and Bolshevik masters. According to a report of the Polish Border Guard (Straż Kresowa) from April 1919, Polish soldiers are “very inexperienced, proficient under a good officer, but extremely unruly if their superiors cannot or will not keep them under control.”26 The local police forces were notorious for the unlawful collection of “contributions.”27 “The gendarmerie are busy distilling illicit vodka, and requisitioning pigs for their butchers and mistresses,” a situational report from the district of Lutsk summarized in the spring of 1920.28 The bureaucracy of the civil administration, in turn, to a large extent consisted of poorly trained, sometimes corrupt officials, who occasionally “disappeared” inconvenient decrees of the civilian commissar—their supreme superior—or even publicly discredited them as Bolshevik propaganda. The civil authorities, for their part, were in constant conflict with the local troops, which proclaimed martial law in Volhynia in June 1919 in order to have a free hand.29 Even though members of other ethnic groups sometimes complained about an alleged preferential treatment of the Jews in the economy, soldiers’ pogrom-like attacks on local Jews were frequently recorded.30 Insecurity, arbitrariness, and jeopardy were ubiquitous in the Kresy from the north to the south between 1918 and 1921, and the feverish temperature was additionally increased by the constant threat of a Soviet invasion, which indeed happened in the summer of 1920 and plunged the region, again, into turmoil. 23 Gierowska-Kałłaur, Zarząd Cywilny Ziem Wschodnich. 24  See Gierowska-Kałłaur, Zarząd Cywilny Ziem Wschodnich, illustration 11, “Territory under the Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories,” following 447. 25  Nina Zielińska, “Mozaika narodowościowa i wyznaniowa Ziem Wschodnich w 1919 roku na przykładzie okręgu mińskiego,” Studia Podlaskie 19 (2011): 181–97. 26  Report no. 1 of the Border Guard in Słonim, undated [March–April 1919], quoted in Joanna Gierowska-Kałłaur, “Organizacja służby bezpieczeństwa na ziemiach podległych Zarządowi Cywilnemu Ziem Wschodnich, luty 1919–wrzesień 1920 roku,” in Europa Środkowa i Wschodnia w XX wieku, edited by Andrzej Koryn and Piotr Łossowski (Warsaw: IH PAN, 2004), 139–72, here: 163. 27  Jan Jerzy Milewski, “Stosunek Wojsk Polskich do ludności oraz władz cywilnych na ziemiach północno-wschodnich w latach 1919–1920,” in Wojsko, społeczeństwo, historia, edited by Mieczysław Wrzosek, Wojciech Fedorowicz, and Jan Snopko (Białystok: Dział Wydawnictw Filii Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego w Białymstoku, 1995), 275–86, here: 275. 28  Report of the District of Łuck, February 11–March 11, 1920, quoted in Gierowska-Kałłaur, “Organizacja służby bezpieczeństwa,” 169. 29  Joanna Gierowska-Kałłaur, Straż Kresowa a Zarząd Cywilny Ziem Wschodnich: Współdziałanie czy rywalizacja? (Warsaw: Neriton, 1999), 336. 30  Milewski, “Stosunek Wojsk Polskich do ludności.”

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Additionally, Polish civil, military, and policing authorities on the spot, as well as the political left and right in the capital, fought embittered turf battles over the area. Owing to the fact that it had been run before by tsarist, German, Austrian, and Soviet authorities, the judicial system of the Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories was a highly dysfunctional patchwork which, in the case of doubt, favored the Polish-speaking population.31 “Yesterday,” Michał Römer noted in his diary on March 16, 1919, “I emphasized the nature of the Polish troops’ advance onto Lithuanian–Belarusian soil . . . It is sad and pitiful in nature, and certainly cannot contribute to glorifying Poland in the hearts and minds of the local people and is not conducive to the idea of those lands uniting with the Polish state voluntarily.”32 That was an understatement. In areas of eastern Galicia which prior to the erection of the Polish administration had witnessed only meager draft results into and mass desertion from the Western Ukrainian Army, tens of thousands of Ukrainians joined it voluntarily after liberation (see Chapter 3: “Who Rules Eastern Galicia?”).33 A spotlight recently shed on the city of Buczacz—situated 100 miles southeast of Lviv—in 1918–19 shows, though, that such arbitrary treatment of the “ethnic other” occurred as well on the Ukrainian side.34 As in the northeastern Kresy, in eastern Galicia, chaos, deprivation, and inter-ethnic tension reigned in the wake of the Great War. The socialist activist and journalist Stanisław Stempowski, son of a family of Polish nobles, was born here half a century earlier, near the town of Vinnytsia, which was also known by the name “Pearl of Podolia.” Towards the end of his studies in Tartu in 1892, he was arrested by tsarist authorities for his political activities, and subsequently put under house arrest in Podolia. Afterwards, his travels brought him to France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, before he returned to his birthplace in 1906, where he spent the war years. Like Michał Römer, Stempowski was multilingual and a restless arbitrator between the ethnic groups which dominated his habitat, in his case Poles and Ukrainians, and he counted numerous Polish Jews as his companions. As Grażyna Borkowska puts it, his credo was “to live as a Pole among Ukrainians, not relinquishing his national affiliation, and not forgetting that he was surrounded by neighbours of another nationality, another faith, and another language.” Most tellingly, in 1920, he first served as an undersecretary within the Polish Civil Administration of the Volhynian Lands and the Podolian Front (Zarząd Cywilny Ziem Wołynia i Frontu Podolskiego) which bordered the Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories to the south, and then, during 31  Gierowska-Kałłaur, “Organizacja służby bezpieczeństwa”; Joanna Gierowska-Kałłaur, “Władza sądownicza na terenie byłego Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego w czasach Zarządu Cywilnego Ziem Wschodnich,” in Konopka and Boćkowski (eds), Polska i jej wschodni sąsiedzi w XX wieku, 67–92. 32 Römer, Dzienniki, 1916–1919, 676–7, entry for March 16, 1919. 33  Stephen Velychenko, State Building in Revolutionary Ukraine: A Comparative Study of Governments and Bureaucrats, 1917–1922 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 214. 34 Omer Bartov, The Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 65–70.

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Fig. 9.  Polish officials at an exhumation site, probably taken near Zolochiv (a little less than 50 miles east of Lviv) in April 1919. The picture is part of a photo spread which was sent to London by the British Legation in Warsaw in June 1919. It allegedly documents Ukrainian war crimes against Poles. During the Polish–Ukrainian War in 1918–19, both sides blamed each other for committing atrocities. © National Archives/Public Record Office London, FO 608/63

the short-lived coalition between Piłsudski and Petliura, as a minister of health and agriculture in the government of the Ukrainian National Republic.35 Stempowski’s voluminous recollections of his activities in Ukraine between 1917 and 1920 mirror the dense atmosphere of uncertainty, danger, and adventure in a region on the move: Revolutionary Ukrainian peasants and soldiers plunder Polish manors and destroy Polish dwellings in the course of what the local Poles call “pogroms,” but they are matched by Polish soldiers and units of the Red and White Armies also “living off the land.” Ukrainian peasants kill three Polish soldiers—amongst them one woman—and in reaction a Polish punitive expedition with an ensuing battle causes the death of forty to fifty Ukrainian peasants. Stempowski’s wife gets arrested by the Ukrainian authorities because she dares to speak Polish in public. The minister he works for in the Polish civil administration gets killed in a Bolshevik train raid. The Endecja-dominated Polish military based in the region behaves as if in an occupied country and alienates the non-Polish population. 35  Grażyna Borkowska, Maria Da̜browska i Stanisław Stempowski (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1999), 5–25, quote: 20.

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With its retreat and the dissolution of the Polish–Ukrainian coalition in the summer of 1920, Stempowski returns, disillusioned, to Warsaw, which is besieged by the Red Army. There he listens through the window to the thunder of cannons while caring for his nineteen-year-old son Paweł, who soon after succumbs to a fatal combination of measles and dysentery. No wonder that, after all these ­troubled years, in 1924, he is haunted in a nightmare by the ghost of his former acquaintance, a Polish landlord who had been killed by his Ukrainian neighbors.36 Shortly after, Stempowski became the life companion of famous author Maria Dąbrowska, whose enigmatic question “Where is Poland?” opened the introduction of this book. He wrote down his memoirs in Warsaw under German occupation, between 1940 and 1943, where he died seven years after the final march-in of the Red Army and the installation of a Polish People’s Republic by Moscow’s grace.37 Not far from Vinnytsia lived Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, daughter of a Polish noble landholder and horse breeder and a young mother of two infants, when in late 1917 all hell broke loose upon Volhynia. The traumatic experience of socio-ethnic struggle between Ukrainian peasants who would ransack and burn Polish manors and get hit back by acts of retaliation inspired the autobiographical debut book “Conflagration” (Pożoga) of the later well-known novelist, rescuer of Jews under German occupation during the Second World War, and fighter in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. On every occasion robbed by people from neighboring villages or drunken soldiers from a Cossack unit stationed nearby, she and her family persevered in 1917–18 under the protection first of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, and later of Polish partisans who took quarters in their house. In the countryside, far from the final battles of the Great War, small paramilitary groups were the masters of life and death.38 One would assume that such precarious conditions only prevailed in the “Wild East” of the newly founded Polish state, induced there by destructions brought by war, ethnic variety, the dispersion and quarrelling of the governing and policing bodies, the instability of the politico-military situation, and the long distance to the central government in Warsaw. But across the whole country, people had to endure unprecedented suffering. Whosoever wants to get a better impression of the living conditions in the villages of Central and Eastern Poland can find ample evidence in the peasants’ memoirs which were collected in the 1930s in the course of several writing contests organized by the Warsaw-based Institute for Social Economy (Instytut Gospodarstwa Społecznego) as a reaction to a similar pilot project in France.39 Thumbing through their recollections, one understands what physical 36  Stanisław Stempowski, Wspomienia, vol. IV: Winnica (1917/18)/Ukraina (1919/20), passim; the nightmare in Wspomienia, vol. VIII: Winikowce II (1914–17) and annex, 98–101, 104, Warsaw University Library, Manuscript Section, 1531. 37 Stanisław Stempowski, Pamie̜tniki, 1870–1914, ed. Maria Da̜browska (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1953), xvi. 38  Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, Pożoga: Wspomnienia z Wołynia, 1917–1919 (Katowice: Towarzystwo im. Zofii Kossak, 1990) (first pub. 1922), 46–89. 39 Katherine Lebow, “Autobiography as Complaint: Polish Social Memoir between the World Wars,” Laboratorium. Russian Review of Social Research, no. 3 (2014), http://www.soclabo.org/index. php/laboratorium/article/view/377/1170, accessed May 3, 2018.

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and psychological damage the years of war and insecurity had caused in the countryside. Almost every memoir reports in words which are as simple as they are touching the general hardship and poverty surrounding Polish independence, often augmented by requisitions and plunder by soldiers of every color, epidemics, destructions by storm and fire, and the wounding or death of a close relative in one of the after-battles of 1918.40 These memoirs ignore, though, that Polish peasants for their part would also actively participate on a mass scale in the carnival of postwar anti-Semitic excesses. This is worth a study on its own, and has indeed just been dealt with extensively and expertly in William Hagen’s monumental work on popular anti-Semitic violence in the Polish lands between 1914 and 1921.41 In any case, it is little wonder that the majority of those peasants did not embrace the national project in 1918 with enthusiasm, and the first years of the Second Polish Republic did not bring much change for them. Edward D. Caldron captures the political indifference which reigned beyond the large cities for years in an anecdote: “In the mid-1920s, upon encountering a local official, a peasant in Eastern Poland reportedly asked when the Russian tsar would begin buying produce again from village farmers. After the official explained that the tsar no longer controlled Poland, which now had its own democratic government, the peasant asked what democracy meant. He suddenly interrupted the official’s lengthy explanation by stating that he and his neighbors did not care about this democracy—all they wanted was a way to sell their crops at a price sufficient to purchase the basic goods required to keep their families alive. When the official pointed out that the important thing was that Poland was finally ruled by Poles instead of foreigners, the peasant snorted derisively that if they could not do a better job, he would just as soon have the Russians return!”42 S O L D I E R S RU N N I N G W I L D The precariousness of life in the early Second Republic is, so to speak, the canvas on which the following three sections will sketch the processes of violence, p ­ erpetrated by Polish soldiers against the civil population in the slipstream of the military conflicts, and reflect on their underlying motives. Their often impressive performance on the battlefield notwithstanding, the numerous and heterogeneous troops fighting under the banner of the Polish white eagle displayed grave disciplinary problems from the very start. The reasons for this are quite obvious. First of all, the Polish Army had to be put together in a hurry from such differing and even antagonistic units as the troops in Poznań and France attached to the National Democratic camp on the one hand, and from Piłsudski’s Legions and his Polish Military Organization on the other. These were reinforced by volunteers who had either served before in one of the three imperial armies or had no military experience at all. As has been demonstrated, at the start of independence, the national 40  Krzywicki (ed.), Pamiętniki chłopów. 41 Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920.

42 Wynot, Caldron of Conflict, 28.

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ideal was worshipped only by a few. For many, however, it was not much more than a hollow phrase at best, or a pretext for putting their lowest instincts into practice at worst. The result was that control of these divergent military units was very limited. “During most of the period 1918–20,” writes Julia Eichenberg, “there was no functioning chain of command from Józef Piłsudski as the new head of state and official commander of the Polish Army to the troops wandering the country. Even though the Polish Army was proclaimed before the existence of the new independent Polish state, in October 1918, it is difficult to speak of a national Polish state army during the period in question.”43 At the end of the year, the Inspectorate General of the Infantry reported on the hitherto deplorable state of training and equipment of the Polish ground forces: lack of boots and coats, insufficient uniforms, unusable arms, shortage of hand grenades, 80 percent illiterates among the soldiers, varying drill per sample of the three imperial armies, indolence amongst the drafted officers, shortage of machine-gun instructors—such problems were only the top of the list and severely impaired troop morale.44 In the reserve battalion of the Fortieth Infantry Regiment, the soldiers’ morale was deplorable. They lacked interest in service and drill, and respect towards their superiors, and openly complained about the bad material conditions. Their officers hung about together, gave a bad example themselves, and neglected their organizational and training duties. Discipline was at its poorest. In Lviv, most soldiers and officers overtly omitted saluting higher ranks, or they did it with ostentatious slackness.45 Such were not isolated cases, they illustrated a mass phenomenon. Consequently, as the situational reports of the High Command and local representations of the Polish Forces of the years 1919 and 1920 vividly show, abuse, criminality, corruption, and banditry were the order of the day during the first years and all over the territory of the Second Republic. The alarming account on the situation in Lviv which reached the High Command in Warsaw in February 1919 was but one of many: “The composition of the army, the proximity of the front, and the insufficient numbers of field gendarmes are unfavorable for maintaining discipline in the units; today there are still cases of robberies and illegal requisitions, especially in the suburbs, particularly due to the fact that the Polish troops are volunteers, and ideological agitators mingle with criminal elements who regard the war as a profitable profession. When soldiers are constantly on the frontline in gruelling fighting conditions, it aggravates their resentment and discontent, and sub-unit commanders must turn a blind eye to offenses, as long as the soldiers persevere and are still keen to fight.”46 The most recent, accurate, and comprehensive 43  Eichenberg, “The Dark Side of Independence,” 235. 44 Protocol of the briefing of staff inspection officers of the general districts and the training inspectors at the front commands, December 20–1, 1919, CAW, I.300.24.17 (not paginated), passim. 45  Report from Deputy Inspector General of the Infantry, Lieutenant Colonel Michał TokarzewskiKarasewicz to the Inspector General of the Infantry, General Aleksander Osiński, December 20, 1919, CAW, I.300.24.17 (not paginated, 6–7 of the document). Exemplarily, numerous cases of insubordination and lack of discipline within the Polish troops in 1918–19 can be studied in the correspondence of the Haller Army in CAW, I.123.1.134, passim. 46  High Command of the Polish Forces, Politico-informational report on the situation in Suwałki and Lviv, February 20, 1919, published in Jabłonowski (ed.), Raporty i komunikaty naczelnych władz wojskowych, 74–6, quote: 76; numerous analogical reports can be found spread all over this very

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study on the Polish infantry in 1919–20 confirms that robbery, desertion, shortage, inexperience, epidemics, lack of discipline, technical difficulties, mass panic, demoralization, black marketing, exhaustion, and abuse of the civil population were problems the army had to face constantly.47 All these shortcomings produced a national armed force that, although it stood the test at the front, now had many of its members running wild in the hinterland.48 The most prevalent and most visible form of Polish soldiers’ encroachments against civilians was the beating up, robbing, and murder of Jews in broad daylight and in sight of and often compliance with parts of the local population. In this sad manner, they were not alone. Literally all parties engaged in fighting in EastCentral Europe killed Jews. Outbreaks of anti-Jewish—as well as anti-Polish and anti-German—violence had started as the coordinated policy of tsarist troops early in the war in the Russian western borderlands.49 From 1917 onwards, the borderlands witnessed large-scale anti-Semitic violence, including mass killing. In Ukraine alone, between 1918 and 1920 some 1,500 anti-Jewish pogroms cost the lives of between 50,000 and 60,000 people.50 The perpetrators were soldiers of the White, Red, and Ataman Armies.51 Admittedly to a lesser extent elsewhere, but nevertheless in an area covering the whole of Central and Eastern Europe, Jews fell prey to military and paramilitary units, often assisted by raging mobs. In the Polish Kresy and heartland, Polish soldiers were the main perpetrators, while in the Balkans the Green Cadres gained a questionable reputation for harassing and sometimes also killing Jews. Jews were also the main victims of ultra-conservative and fascist phalanxes which like a crescent opening to volume, as well as e.g. in Jabłonowski and Koseski (eds), Komunikaty Odziału III Naczelnego Dowództwa Wojska Polskiego, or in the files of the Military Governor of Warsaw, pars pro toto CAW, I.304.2.2 and CAW, I.304.2.16. More evidence of and reports on Polish soldiers’ abuses of the civil population in the various record groups of the Central Military Archive in Rembertów listed in ‘Archives Consulted’ at the end of this volume. 47 Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 35, 62, 86–7, 102–3, 168, 184, 194–6, 207, 265, 358, 375, 517–18, 562, 587, 627, 631–3, 787, 791. 48  e.g., Odziemkowski, Polskie formacje etapowe na Litwie i Białorusi 1919–1920, passim, addresses the problem marauding units and bands of deserters caused to the rear units in the summer of 1920 in the northern Kresy. 49  Graf, “The Reign of the Generals.” 50  Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 110. The upper mark of c.60,000 victims is confirmed by Wróbel, “The Seeds of Violence,” 136, Sanborn, “The Genesis of Russian Warlordism,” 208–9, and Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 573. See also Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland; Frank M. Schuster, “‘Für uns ist jeder Krieg ein Unglück’: Die Auswirkungen des Ersten Weltkriegs auf die Welt der osteuropäischen Juden,” in Tauber (ed.), Über den Weltkrieg hinaus, 153–75. 51  Piotr Wróbel, “The Kaddish Years: Anti-Jewish Violence in East Central Europe, 1918–1921,” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 4 (2005): 211–36; Mark Levene, “Frontiers of Genocide: Jews in the Eastern War Zones, 1914–1920 and 1941,” in Minorities in Wartime: National and Racial Groupings in Europe, North America, and Australia During the Two World Wars, edited by Panikos Panayi (Oxford, Providence, RI: Berg, 1993), 83–117, here: 98–105; Alexander Victor Prusin, “A  ‘Zone of Violence’: The Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Eastern Galicia in 1914–1915 and 1941,” in Bartov and Weitz (eds), Shatterzone of Empires, 362–77; Felix Schnell, “Der Sinn der Gewalt: Der Ataman Volynec und der Dauerpogrom von Gajsin im Russischen Bürgerkrieg (1919),” Zeithistorische Forschungen 5, no. 5 (2008), http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/16126041-Schnell-1-2008, accessed November 14, 2017.

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the east spanned from the Baltics via Germany, Austria, and Italy to Hungary, Romania, and Croatia. “The anti-Jewish animus, however,” Mark Levene concludes, “clearly transcended the division between military victors and losers and was much more pointedly a transnational phenomenon.”52 It was the most discernible common form of ethnic violence the borderlands between Russia and Germany witnessed between 1917 and 1921. The most fatal cases of anti-Jewish violence in the first years of the Second Republic are the major pogroms instigated by the Polish Army—and assisted by the local Polish population—in Kielce (November 11, 1918), Lviv (November 22, 1918), Pinsk (April 5, 1919), Lida (April 17, 1919), Vilnius (April 19–21, 1919), Częstochowa (May 27, 1919), and Minsk (August 8, 1919), which resulted in the death of more than 200 men, women, and children, and left some hundred more wounded. Hundreds more cases of soldierly anti-Jewish brutality were documented in nascent Poland, so that total fatalities have to be located somewhere in the range between 500 and 1,000.53 The underlying motives differ from what has been described above in the context of the Central European Civil War. In contrast to the inter-ethnic violence which accompanied Poland’s various clashes of arms with Ukrainian, Lithuanian, German, or Czech military or paramilitary forces, Jews did not constitute a real, but an imagined adversary. As recent studies painstakingly show, the behavior of Polish soldiers and civilians who engaged in the pogroms was heavily influenced by both century-old beliefs and new ideas. Medieval imaginations of Jews as ritual murderers of Christian children mixed with the modern ideology of anti-Bolshevism. Especially in the confrontation with Soviet Russia, the Jewish population in the front zone was summarily assumed to side with the foe. Desperate attempts by the Jewish organizations to build up structures of self-defense led to baseless a­ ccusations of their armed struggle against the Polish Army. Although the Jewish minority was the only ethnic group within the frontiers of the Second Republic without any claim to its territory, they were, more than any other, regarded as economic rivals and in the meantime opponents of the Polish national project. It is impossible to overlook the influence of Dmowski and his National Democrats’ anti-Semitic worldview in this line of argumentation, which nurtured rumors that spread like wildfire and further instigated the local outbreaks of mass hysteria and violence.54 The news of these pogroms triggered international outrage, and as a result, ­several foreign investigative commissions were sent to Poland. Their research on the ground revealed that no state-directed policy was at work here. Nonetheless, in Western countries the riots strengthened the image of genuine Polish anti-Semitism

52  Mark Levene, The Crisis of Genocide, vol. 1: Devastation: The European Rimlands 1912–1938 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 192. 53 Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920, 512; email from William W. Hagen to the author, April 2, 2018. 54  Some of the abundant literature has already been given (Chapter 3, note 59). The newest findings are in Reder, “Pogrome im Schatten polnischer Staatsbildung”; Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920; Tomaszewski, “Pińsk, Saturday 5 April 1919.”

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and the Polish state was portrayed as a pariah on the international scene.55 However, double standards were applied here since the simultaneous mass murder of Jews in Ukraine was not an issue—neither was, by the way, the persecution and murder of German settlers and Mennonites by Nestor Makhno’s peasant army.56 In addition, the members of the American Morgenthau Commission had to put up with the ironic question in Warsaw whether Poland should in exchange send a fact-finding mission to the United States, where the race riots in the summer of 1919 in Washington and Chicago had caused several hundred wounded and nearly forty fatalities on both sides.57 The pogroms, though, were only the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the country, scenes of the extorting, mugging, humiliating, and injuring of Jews could be witnessed. The Polish parliament faced summary complaints handed in by Jewish deputies, describing the avalanche of anti-Semitism which turned Polish Jews into fair game and seemingly gave their attackers carte blanche.58 In nearly all documented cases, they were Polish soldiers. “My righteous heart boils with indignation,” Jan Niedzielski, a veteran of the 1863 uprising against the tsarist government in Congress Poland, wrote in a letter to General Józef Haller on June 8, 1919. The day before, he had witnessed in the streets of Cracow how soldiers of the Polish Army, newly arrived from France, had harassed a Jew, tearing at his caftan, beard, and sidelocks. Furthermore, a friend had told him of a holdup in an apartment on 5 November Street, where a group of Polish civilians led by another of Haller’s soldiers had obviously robbed clothes, jewelry, and cash worth 100,000 Austrian crowns from a Jewish family. “In my old age, I’d like to go to the grave believing that the Polish commanders acted decently,” Niedzielski added, shaken by the events, and he adjured Haller to use his influence on the newspapers in order to stop the anti-Semitic press which he held at least partly responsible.59 Besides the streets and houses in the Jewish quarters of Polish cities, train stations were popular locations for anti-Jewish raids. Both soldiers and Jews were often on the move, soldiers between postings and Jews attending to business or religious services. Both wore distinctive, traditionally recognized outfits—uniforms or religious costumes—so they had no difficulty spotting each other. In the whole country, 55  Norman Davies, “Great Britain and the Polish Jews, 1918–20,” Journal of Contemporary History 8, no. 2 (1973): 119–42; Andrzej Kapiszewski, Hugh Gibson and a Controversy over Polish–Jewish Relations after World War I (Cracow: Secesja, 1991); Andrzej Kapiszewski, “Polish–Jewish Conflicts in America during the Paris Peace Conference: Milwaukee as a Case Study,” Polish American Studies 49, no. 2 (1992): 5–18; Andrzej Kapiszewski, “Controversial Reports on the Situation of the Jews in Poland in the Aftermath of World War I,” Studia Judaica 7, no. 2 (2004): 257–304; Russell Mark Wallis, “The Vagaries of British Compassion: A Contextualized Analysis of British Reactions to the Persecution of Jews under Nazi Rule” (PhD, University of London, 2010). 56  See Schnell, Räume des Schreckens, 204, plus the eyewitness report by Neufeld, Ein Tagebuch aus dem Reiche des Totentanzes. 57 Goodhart, Poland and the Minority Races, 108. See also the letter by Hugh Gibson of July 27, 1919, published in: Gibson, An American in Warsaw, 134. 58  David B. Kaufman, This Troublesome Question: Poles, Jews and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Saarbrücken: Lambert, 2012), 123–85. 59 Letter from Jan Nadzielski to General Józef Haller, June 8, 1919, CAW, I.123.1.184 (not paginated).

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railway junctions became the sites of unequal struggles, where single or small groups of Jews were chased by uniformed mobs. Sometimes they were assisted by bystanders. There were cases reported where the station personnel blocked the exits to prevent the escape of Jews who were being beaten up by soldiers.60 Sometimes such excesses provoked reactions from other military units in order to protect the Jewish victims. Such a case occurred at the railway station of Zawada near Lublin on July 16, 1920, where about 500 soldiers from the Sixteenth Cavalry Regiment from Greater Poland under the command of cavalry captain Stefan Czarnecki on their way to the front had left the train to stretch their legs. Spotting two Jews on the platform, they encircled them and proceeded to cut their beards. When a young cadet witnessed the scene, he went to their rescue and was attacked himself by the soldiers’ mob, who shouted: “You Jewish gaffer, we’ll teach you to defend Jews! Into the carriage with him, then we can really work him over[!]” When he tried to defend himself, they disarmed the cadet by taking hold of his revolver and saber and started to beat him up. This was witnessed by two military gendarmes and eight soldiers of the Ninth Legions’ Infantry Regiment who came running and, with some difficulty, managed to disperse the pack. “As in dozens of other similar [incidents],” in the course of the ensuing investigation, the transport commanders—who, according to the reporting officer, were those responsible for the incident—could not be found. “[They] do nothing to prevent the excesses. The transports arriving at railway stations disperse unimpeded around the stations and surrounding areas. Since there are no guards to maintain order, should any excesses occur, the gendarmerie patrols, comprising a few men, are helpless in the face of a few hundred insolent, armed soldiers.”61 In fact, since military discipline was at its lowest in certain units, they could only be stopped by force of arms. In May 1919, the Military Command of the Polish Railway complained especially about soldiers of the Haller Army, who did not even meet the most primitive of disciplinary requirements, and were “ready to butcher anybody, even a general, who tried to restrain their marauding inclinations.”62 Unsurprisingly, this sort of misconduct of uniformed men in public severely undermined the military authority and often led to skirmishes with other units. On the 60  Statement of Jakób Markusfeld to the office of the National Club of Jewish Members of Parliament, Warsaw, May 12, 1919, CAW, I.123.1.324 (not paginated). More evidence on soldiers’ anti-Semitic violence as performed at railway stations in 1918–21 can be found in the correspondence of the Military Gendarmerie Command, e.g. CAW, I.300.51.222 passim. See also the ample documentation in the record group of the Haller Army CAW, I.123.1–17, especially the report of the Military Command of the railway station in Tarnów on acts of anti-Jewish violence perpetrated by soldiers of the Haller Army, dated May 28, 1919, CAW, I.123.1.184 (not paginated); letter from Army General Haller to General Massenet, Commander of the Third Corps of the Polish Army, headquarters, June 5, 1919, asking for the clarification of cases of anti-Jewish excesses performed by soldiers of the First Corps and of similar excesses of soldiers of the Third Corps at the Kowel train station in Warsaw on May 12, 1919, ibid. 61  Report titled “Soldiers’ excesses in Zawada” by the commander of the military gendarmerie in Lublin [signed, illegible] to Military Gendarmerie Headquarters in Warsaw, September 11, 1920, CAW, I.300.51.219 (not paginated). 62  Report of the Military Command of the Polish Railway, Tarnów, 8 May 1919, CAW, I.123.1.184 (not paginated).

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afternoon of June 11, 1919, private first-class Jerzy Giedroyć entered the office of the second district company in Olkusz, and to the astonishment of the officer on duty, silently placed several items on the desk: a hip flask with a strap, a mess tin with a lid, a haversack, a shirt, two towels, two pieces of (used) soap, a mirror, a brush, a spoon, and a strap. Asked what on earth this meant, he reported that when strolling around the market of Olkusz, he had been asked for help by a Jew. Another Jew had just been injured with a knife by a soldier of the Haller Army, who fled over the roofs when Giedroyć arrived at the crime scene, leaving the shown items behind. The next day, three soldiers of the Haller Army entered the company’s office and unceremoniously demanded the handing over of the stolen goods. When their claim was firmly refused, they started to make a fuss, shouting that “Piłsudskites are Jewish [sic] lackeys.” When they returned the following day and threatened to next bring their whole company in full gear, they were disarmed at gunpoint and arrested. Their officers were nowhere to be found. Instead, after a short while, thirty to forty comrades of the arrested soldiers gathered in front of the building and threatened to free them with the aid of hand grenades and rifles. To de-escalate the situation and avoid bloodshed, the deputy commander of the Będzin military district ordered the release of the prisoners. His men were hopelessly outnumbered. As he stated, “the intention is to forestall the uneven fratricidal battle that our internal and external enemies so long for, and which the hostile press would use to spread stories dishonoring our Fatherland.”63 At the end of 1920, a night brawl in nearby Sosnowiec and a group of about 200 demobilized Silesian soldiers who had returned to take part in the forthcoming plebiscite culminated in a shootout with the local police, military gendarmerie, and troops, during which three persons were wounded. The incident had been provoked by the deputy stationmaster, who, in the company of a Jew and his two daughters, had entered the packed station restaurant where the Silesians were hanging out and chased some of them away in order to get a free table. Their leader, a wanted deserter, was brought to the military court.64 For many Polish soldiers, Jews by their mere appearance were both a red flag and an easy prey. At the Eastern Front, parts of the rank and file fighting the Red Army might have bought into the hoax of Judeo-Bolshevism and used it as an excuse for anti-Jewish excesses. In Silesia in 1919–20, however, this spurious argument was not applicable: As a report of the Army High Command from April 1919 noted, the troops in the Dąbrowski coal basin were both hostile to Jews and sympathetic to communism.65 Contingent on circumstances and location, the all too frequent

63  Report of the district company in Olkusz to the rear-echelon district command in Będzin, June 17, 1919, CAW, I.123.1.184 (not paginated). 64  Reports of the Gendarmerie Division Command no. 3 to the Military Gendarmerie Command, November 21 and December 11, 1920, CAW, I.300.51.219 (not paginated). 65 High Command of the Polish armed forces, “News from the Dąbrowski coal basin: AntiSemitism and the relations of the armed forces to the communists,” April 19, 1919, Laudański Files, vol. 16, 228–30, CAW, I.440.12.16.

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acts of violence could take on different dynamics and escalate, totally detached from the anti-Jewish motives which triggered them in other places. The anti-Jewish violence of Polish soldiers in early independence has not yet been sufficiently quantified, analyzed, and contextualized. Many units which engaged in anti-Jewish pogroms were involved in atrocities against other groups of the local population as well, even against their own kind.66 While being aware of the singular significance of anti-Semitic violence in the context of the First World War and its aftermath, especially in view of parallels and differences to the extermination of the European Jews in the course of the Second World War, it seems reasonable to see it as the extreme case of a wave of paramilitary violence that inundated Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of war and revolution.67 In reality, soldiers of the Polish Army pillaged to a large extent and on a daily basis, especially in 1920, and they targeted not exclusively Jews, but the local ­population as a whole.68 They did not even spare the impoverished Polish refugees who returned from Russia to their homeland.69 They revolted by the thousands against the bad supply situation or abuse by their officers, as in the garrisons of Grudziądz, Pińczów, Łódź, or Gniezno in the late summer of 1920.70 Clashes between soldiers and gendarmes, like in Olkusz, happened quite often, and also for reasons totally unrelated to the nature of the contact between the stationed troops and the local Jews.71 After the Great War, the whole country witnessed a permanent state of emergency which lasted for years. Banditry and desertion were not only endemic, but immediately linked, since many soldiers who left their posts 66  For such different approaches in the case of violence perpetrated by Polish soldiers during the Polish–Soviet War in the Kresy compare Borzęcki, “German Anti-Semitism à la Polonaise” and Łukasz Lewicki, “Przestępczość w Wojsku Polskim podczas wojny polsko–bolszewickiej,” 2015, http://www. konflikty.pl/historia/1918-1939/przestepczosc-w-wojsku-polskim-podczas-wojny-polsko-bolszewickiej/, accessed June 4, 2018. 67 Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920, xiii–xiv. 68  Information Bulletin no. 5 (72) of the General Districts: Warsaw, Łódź, Kielce, Lublin, Lviv, Cracow, Poznań, Pomerania, and the Upper Silesian plebiscite areas, January 23, 1920, published in Jabłonowski (ed.), Raporty i komunikaty naczelnych władz wojskowych, 308–9; Information Bulletin no. 8 (75) of the General Districts: Warsaw, Łódź, Kielce, Lublin, Cracow, and the Upper Silesian plebiscite areas, February 5, 1920, published in ibid., 328; Information Bulletin no. 13 (80) of the General Districts: Warsaw, Kielce, Lviv, Cracow, Poznań, and the Cieszyn plebiscite areas, February 21, 1920, published in ibid., 363; Information Bulletin (military affairs) no. 47 (114) on the drafting of volunteers to the army, desertion, communist agitation, and the situation in Pomerania, August 24, 1920, published in ibid., 530; Information Bulletin (military affairs) no. 54 (121) of the General Districts: Warsaw, Kielce, Cracow, Lviv, Łódź, Poznań, and Pomerania, September 19, 1920, published in ibid., 572. 69 Letter from Captain R. Giedrojc, Chief of the Justice Department of the Haller Army, to General Haller, Army Commander, August 5, 1919, CAW, I.123.1.322 (not paginated). 70  Situational report of the Military Gendarmerie Division Command no. 8 to the Military Gen­ darmerie Command, September 3, 1920, CAW, I.300.51.219 (not paginated); Military Gendarmerie Division Command in Kielce, report “Revolt of 1,800 soldiers in the Kielce garrison command” to the Military Gendarmerie Command, September 20, 1920, ibid.; Information Bulletin (military affairs) no. 54 (121) of the General Districts: Warsaw, Kielce, Cracow, Lviv, Łódź, Poznań, and Pomerania, September 19, 1919, published in Jabłonowski (ed.), Raporty i komunikaty naczelnych władz wojskowych, 572. 71  Information Bulletin (military affairs) no. 54 (121) of the General Districts: Warsaw, Kielce, Cracow, Lviv, Łódź, Poznań, and Pomerania, September 19, 1919, published in Jabłonowski (ed.), Raporty i komunikaty naczelnych władz wojskowych, 572.

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during the night did not just go home but, organized as armed gangs, harassed the local population.72 One major undercurrent of this paramilitary wave was the terrible poverty and brutalization which the war had brought to the Polish lands, and which was not relieved during the times when the Polish state was still struggling at its borders for survival. Soldiers, peasants, refugees, and Jews—all were poor. But soldiers were also armed and often acted in larger groups. Nevertheless, the overwhelming task of protecting the state notwithstanding, the military authorities in Poland not only knew and unsparingly reported their soldiers’ violence. They initiated hundreds of investigations and ordered courts martial against the culprits.73 Given their potential to cause diplomatic outrage and a bad press abroad, cases of anti-Jewish violence were handled with special care. In May and June 1919, the Haller Army, among whom excesses of this sort did not cease, issued severe orders to condemn past and to prevent future crimes against Jews.74 General Haller had a special envoy—Lieutenant Konrad de WorwanNawrocki—sent to sites of anti-Jewish violence to carry out investigations, which he did scrupulously, although not without bias.75 But not only anti-Jewish violence was opposed firmly by the military leadership. When at the turn of 1918 and 1919 Polish soldiers marauded large-scale in Volhynia, commanding general Edward Śmigły-Rydz issued three orders to prevent further damage to the troop’s reputation in the eyes of the whole local ­population.76 The most detailed order, formulated in French and Polish and signed by Haller and Piłsudski, condemning acts of violence against the local population in the Kresy no matter of what nationality, was issued on May 15, 1919 as “Order no. 35.” It read: “Eastern Galicia, Lithuania, and Belarus are under the enemy’s yoke . . . More than two million Poles are suffering there in hunger and misery. See villages razed to the ground! See Lviv in ruins! See Polish peasants robbed of their land and belongings! See destitution and chaos! There, just like at home, Polish soldiers must alleviate this suffering by helping and protecting the whole civilian population, especially the working class, since military honor and dignity forbid soldiers from harming anybody. Regardless of their class and nationality, peaceful civilians should have the support of the army, and any excesses . . . will be punished by court martial.”77 A general “Law on the responsibility of military personnel for property crimes” followed a few months later.78 At the same time, of course, the constant repetition of such orders testifies to the degree to which they were disobeyed.

72  Jabłonowski (ed.), Raporty i komunikaty naczelnych władz wojskowych, passim. 73  A detailed local study on the military courts in Lviv is Kania, W cieniu Orląt Lwowskich. 74  Order of General Haller, undated (c.mid-May 1919), CAW, I.123.1.53 (not paginated); Order of General Haller to the officers no. 3, June 1, 1919, CAW, I.123.1.184 (not paginated). 75  Report from Lieutenant Konrad de Worwan-Nawrocki to General Haller, Chief Commander of the Polish Army, May 5, 1919, CAW, I.123.1.324 (not paginated); similar reports to General Haller (as of May 15, and June 2, 20, and 30) in CAW, I.123.1.184 (not paginated). 76  Suławka, “Walki polsko–ukraińskie na Wołyniu,” 69. 77  Order no. 35, Headquarters, May 15, 1919, CAW, I.123.1.324 (not paginated). 78  Law on the responsibility of military personnel for property crimes, August 1, 1919, CAW, I.123.1.319 (not paginated).

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Although the misbehavior of Polish troops was one of the most severe interior problems with which the young republic had to deal, one has to keep in mind that the proper behavior of Polish soldiers had much less cause to go on record. Consequently, we know much less about it. For military commanders and judges, what mattered most and what most frequently demanded action was any development that threatened military discipline, public security, or the army’s fragile relations with the local population. Had the majority of Polish soldiers not conformed to discipline, the days of the Second Republic would most probably have been numbered. And it was these very soldiers—along with local policemen and military gendarmes—who were responsible for maintaining peace and order in embattled Poland. On March 18, 1919, anti-Semitic riots, instigated by local civilians, started in Wieluń. In this case, the Jewish inhabitants were defended and the main perpetrators arrested by soldiers of the local garrison and police force.79 Seen from this angle, Adam Przybylski was right when he stated a decade after the events: “In the prevailing conditions, the expression of Poland’s free, independent existence had to be—and became, first and foremost—its soldiers. From the state’s first moments of existence, [it was they who] guarded its rights, ensured the freedom and security to build it up, and secured what was rightfully theirs. The pages of reborn Poland’s first two years of history are, above all, the history and deeds of soldiers.”80 But this is only one part of the story. In 1918–21, Polish soldiers were not only the protectors of their state—they were also its menace. WA R L O R D S I N P O L I S H S E RV I C E One example of how hostility towards and violence against Jews and other abuses could be blurred in one single military unit is the case of cavalry captain Roman Abraham, known for his participation in the Polish struggle for Lviv in November 1918, the Polish–Ukrainian War in Galicia and Volhynia in 1918–19, and the Polish–Soviet War in 1920.81 He was born in 1891 in Lviv of noble Polish ancestry. His father was a known law professor, and he himself had studied law and philosophy before he served as a lieutenant in the Habsburg Army during the Great War.82 In September 1918, Abraham entered the Polish Military Cadres in Lviv, the paramilitary force which was supported by the National Democratic movement. During the embittered street fights of the first weeks in November, he operated in the western parts of the city. Apparently, he gathered and assembled his unit, dubbed “Execution Hill” (Góra Stracenia, named after the location in Lviv 79  High Command of the Polish Forces, Politico-informational Report on the situation in the Districts: Kielce, Cracow, Łodź, March 22, 1919, published in Jabłonowski (ed.), Raporty i komunikaty naczelnych władz wojskowych, 138. 80 Przybylski, Wojna polska 1918–1921, 32. 81  Leszek Laskowski, Roman Abraham: Losy dowódcy (Warsaw: PWN, 1998). 82 Laskowski, Roman Abraham, 19–22; Reder, “Pogrome im Schatten polnischer Staatsbildung,” 96 (annot. 426), with reference to the curriculum vitae of Brigadier-General Roman Abraham in Akta Romana Abrahama, vol. 1, Archive of the New Files (Warsaw; henceforth: AAN), 2399/18 (unpaginated).

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where it received its baptism of fire), on his own initiative, without waiting for instructions from above.83 Isolated, exhausted, poorly equipped with arms, provisions, and clothes against the cold, it fought fiercely against superior Ukrainian forces. The overall supply situation in the city was catastrophic. Not only bandit gangs, but ordinary citizens and soldiers proceeded to plunder the stores near the train station. On November 14, men belonging to Abraham’s unit (according to him, military gendarmes who had just been put under his command that very day) killed a Jewish innkeeper, plundered his flat, and left his tavern to the looting mob.84 Abraham kept a regiment as strict as it was unorthodox: Soldiers who left their post while on duty were brought back, tied up, and forced to hold out in the cold for twenty-four hours, and only then brought to a court martial.85 In the embittered ethnic struggle for the Galician capital, neither side shied away from atrocities. When Abraham’s unit took two Ukrainian officers and several privates prisoner who allegedly had treated Polish civilians harshly, he had the latter collectively hanged without trial.86 The Jewish self-defense unit complained that the men from “Execution Hill” plundered the Jewish quarter, while Abraham accused it of shooting at Polish soldiers. Since men in Polish uniforms were amongst the marauders, both allegations are not mutually exclusive, but complementary. To shoot at Polish forces would have been not only senseless from the perspective of self-defense, but suicidal, and predictably would entail the most severe consequences for the whole Jewish community in Lviv. To protect Jewish shops against any looters, in contrast, was its raison d’être.87 What can be witnessed here is the birth of the myth of a Jewish stab in the back of the Polish Army which subsequently led not only in Lviv, but also in other places, to outbreaks of deadly anti-Jewish violence. It originated immediately from the quagmire of criminality and paramilitary violence during the first days of Polish independence, where the lines between soldiers, deserters, and bandits were blurred.88 Jewish members of the self-defense and survivors of the Lviv pogrom 83  Karol Baczyński, “W spomnienia z czasu obrony Lwowa,” in Obrona Lwowa, 1–22 listopada 1918. Relacje uczestników, edited by Eugenjusz Wawrzkowicz, vol. 1 (Warsaw: Volumen, 1933), 1–23, here: 12. 84  Jacek Miliński, Pułkownik Czesław Maczyński, 1881–1935: Obrońca Lwowa i polityk Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Trio, 2004), 73–4, 86, 120–1. Report from First Lieutenant Abraham to the Command at Konarski School (no date), CAW, I.341.120, 39–40, published in excerpts in ibid., 124 (annot. 149). The notoriety of Abraham’s unit and the plunder of his men in Żurawno which was first officially declared as part of a punitive expedition (see below) cast more than a shadow of doubt on his version. Nevertheless, after the battle for Lviv, he was promoted to the rank of cavalry captain. 85  Order no. 13 of the III Section of the Second Company, machine-gun unit, November 13, 1918, CAW, I.341.120, 29, published in excerpts in Miliński, Pułkownik Czesław Maczyński, 125 (annot. 156). 86  High Command of the Polish Forces in Lviv, protocol (draft) of a telephone conversation in November 1918, CAW, I.341.120, 27. Miliński, Pułkownik Czesław Maczyński, 129 (annot. 174). 87  Letter from the Jewish self-defense command to the high command of the Polish forces in Lviv (no date), CAW, I.341.1.76, 38–9; Report from First Lieutenant Abraham to the High Command of the Polish Forces in Lviv, November 21, 1918, CAW, I.341.1.120, 58–9. Miliński, Pułkownik Czesław Maczyński, 130–1. 88  See also Roman Abraham, “Pododcinek Góra Stracenia,” in Obrona Lwowa, 1–22 listopada 1918. Relacje uczestników, edited by Eugenjusz Wawrzkowicz, vol. 2 (Warsaw: Volumen, 1936), 799–822, here: 808 (annot. 1). Reder, “Pogrome im Schatten polnischer Staatsbildung,” 96, though, mentions

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Fig. 10.  Roman Abraham (above cross) with his unit “Execution Hill” in Lviv in late November 1918, after the retreat of the Ukrainian forces from the city. The death skulls on the sleeves were a distinctive marker of the paramilitary formation. © Archive of the New Files (Warsaw), Akta Romana Abrahama, 2/2399, Sign. 18. Thanks to Tadeusz Krawczak and Tomasz Jabłoński.

later remembered that, following their arrest, Abraham had ordered them shot. Instead, after some days of imprisonment, they were beaten up and then released on November 21, 1918, just to witness Polish civilians and soldiers storm the Jewish quarter, rob Jewish shops, and kill Jews under the pretext that they had sided with the enemy.89 Meanwhile, in the early hours of November 22, after the ultimate retreat of the Ukrainian forces from the city, the unit from “Execution Hill” hoisted the Polish flag on top of the city hall.90 Nevertheless, the Polish military leadership was not unanimously in favor of Abraham’s performance. Karol Baczyński, commander of the Fifth Sector of the Polish-controlled parts of the city, stated years after the event that “none of these new commanders wanted to listen to their sector commanders [and instead] acted on their own, according to their own views, thus preventing the operation from the existence of a Ukrainian combat unit in the ranks of the Jewish self-defense in the testimonies of two of its former members, which, if it was true, would have been a grave breach of the unit’s selfdeclared neutrality in the conflict, but still no proof for Jews firing on Poles in combat. 89 Kania, W cieniu Orląt Lwowskich, 156; Eva Reder, “Pogrom lwowski 1918: Inicjatorzy, bierni obserwatorzy, podżegacze,” in Galicja 1772–1918. Problemy metodologiczne, stan i potrzeby badań, edited by Agnieszka Kawalec, Wacław Wierzbieniec, and Leonid Zaszkilniak, 3 vols (Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2011), vol. 2, 38–55, here: 44–6. 90 Miliński, Pułkownik Czesław Maczyński, 138.

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developing properly. The personal ambitions of individual commanders prevailed over the defenders’ sacred cause and duties, and in fact it is a miracle that the Ukrainians [ever] left Lviv.” In addition to Abraham, Baczyński criticized first lieutenants Jerzy Schwarzenberg-Czerny and Walerjan Sikorski: All of them had single-handedly defined their own operational areas in neglect of order no. 2, issued on November 5, 1918 by the Polish headquarters in Lviv.91 According to the famous explorer Antoni Jakubski, the first Pole to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in 1910 and Second Chief of Staff in embattled Lviv, the military command had almost no control or even knowledge of such local units’ actions.92 Towards the end of the year, Abraham faced a criminal charge for insubordination, ­appropriation of war booty, and falsification of his unit’s strength in order to avoid its reduction.93 Moreover, tales of the unit robbing Ukrainian villages soon spread within the Polish troops (see the opening epigraph to this chapter). This was more than just rumors. Hardened in the merciless street fighting in Lviv where the rules of military law were widely ignored, Abraham’s men clearly continued to combine their combat missions with the satisfaction of their personal needs. In the summer of 1920, they were joined by a wave of inexperienced volunteers who undermined the unit’s cohesion.94 On September 22, 1920, Abraham’s men conducted a punitive expedition against the Ukrainian town of Żurawno and the surrounding villages, confiscating over 200 cattle and eighteen horses plus a considerable amount of oats and cash from local farms. According to the commander of the Polish Southeastern front and the Sixth Army, General Robert Lamezan-Salins, who had ordered the operation, the population there—which consisted mostly of Ukrainians and Jews—had previously robbed Polish refugees on their way through. Twenty-three privates of Abraham’s unit, with the blessing of their superiors, used the ensuing punitive expedition as a cover for plundering the locals. The prosecution of the suspects was postponed for several months, so that in February 1921 there was nobody left to be court martialed.95 In May, Abraham went to Upper Silesia to support the paramilitaries active in the area with his experience in guerilla tactics as the General Staff’s liaison officer to the leader of the third “uprising,” Wojciech Korfanty. Abraham’s task was to organize volunteers and weapons. At his disposal, he had some brothers in arms from the battle for Lviv. The reports he sent to Warsaw and the skills he displayed

91  Baczyński, “Wspomnienia z czasu obrony Lwowa,” 11–12, quote: 12. 92 Antoni Jakubski, “Walki listopadowe we Lwowie w świetle krytyk,” in Wawrzkowicz (ed.), Obrona Lwowa, 1–22 listopada 1918, vol. 1, 109–282, here: 112–13. 93 Miliński, Pułkownik Czesław Maczyński, 1881–1935, 184–5. 94  Information Bulletin (military affairs) no. 54 (121) of the General Districts: Warsaw, Kielce, Cracow, Lviv, Łódź, Poznań, and Pomerania, September 19, 1919, published in Jabłonowski (ed.), Raporty i komunikaty naczelnych władz wojskowych, 576. 95  Report of the “Punitive expedition unit of major Abraham’s detachment,” September 27, 1920 (no recipient, unsigned); letter from the commander of the general district Lviv, Lieutenant General Robert Lamezan-Salins, to the War Ministry, Sixth Department of the Polish General Staff, January 10, 1921; command of the Sixth Army, justice department, to the War Ministry, Chief Military Judge, February 16, 1921, all in CAW, I.301.21.25 (not paginated).

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in the course of negotiations with the local paramilitaries and allied forces paved his way to a stellar career in the armed forces of the Second Polish Republic.96 Another well-known warrior from the Polish struggles in the Kresy was Feliks Jaworski, Abraham’s contemporary. Son of a Polish landlord of noble ancestry, he was born in 1893 in Cyganówka, a Podolian village 100 miles west of Vinnytsia, where Stanisław Stempowski (see above) came from. During the Great War, he had served as a hussar in the Russian Imperial Army, where he was appointed as a second lieutenant and commanded a mounted reconnaissance unit within the Polish Rifle Brigade.97 When the tsarist army disintegrated, he and his men became a paramilitary force to be reckoned with in Podolia by the Ukrainian peasant armies which frequently attacked and devastated wealthy Polish dwellings, abusing and killing the inhabitants. Feared for its nightly raids on Ukrainian villages, in the inferno of unleashed inter-ethnic violence in early 1918 so densely described by Stempowski, Jaworski’s unit adopted and perfected a unique technique of partisan warfare on horseback for which it would become famous in the years to come, atrocities against the civilian population included.98 In the words of eminent writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, “this unit consisted almost entirely of old cutthroats, fearless in battle, fearsome in combat, grim and disciplined; nothing surprised them . . . There is no doubt that the partisans would not have been themselves without Jaworski, and Jaworski would have been nothing without his partisans. The squadron and commander complemented one another so perfectly that it was hard to imagine one without the other. That was their chief strength. This very young man, with his inscrutable face and small, twinkling eyes, commanded bizarre authority.”99 Operating as an irregular force, the unit was on its own when it came, for ­example, to care for its wounded. Stempowski’s son Hubert had joined it at the turn of 1918–19, after bad experiences in the regular Polish forces with superiors from the former Austrian Army who abused recruits. Since his leave was not regarded as desertion, it appears unofficial arrangements existed between Jaworski’s partisans and the regular forces which would officially deny any such contact. His father found him in a deplorable state in a hospital in Lublin, “lying under a sheepskin coat on the floor of some unburned furniture warehouse, with a jug of freezing water and a hank of bread beside him.” As in earlier times, his comrades had carried him there in a basket, suspended between two horses. The doctor in charge was finally convinced to take Hubert into his apartment for his recovery—as an irregular fighter, the hospital would not even grant him a bed.100 Despite such catastrophic conditions reigning within the unit, Jaworski enjoyed cult-like status 96 Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 61–82. 97  Cesary Leżeński and Lesław Kukawski (eds), O kawalerii polskiej XX wieku (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1991), 38. 98 Zychowicz, Sowieci, 239–45. 99 Kossak-Szczucka, Pożoga, 93–4. I found excerpts of this extraordinary quote first in Suławka, “Walki polsko–ukraińskie na Wołyniu,” 68. 100  Stanisław Stempowski, “Ukraina (1919–1920),” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 21 (1972): 64–88, here: 73–4, quote: 74.

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amongst his young followers. When one of them had to have his leg amputated by  Kossak-Szczucka’s uncle, he expressed only his relief that Jaworski was safe and sound.101 Another famous Polish poet, Władysłąw Broniewski, was in his early twenties when he met Jaworski in February 1919 at the Volhynian Front of the Polish– Ukrainian War, where the former partisans fought as a regular cavalry unit of the Polish Army. According to Broniewski, local Jews would close their shops when Jaworski and his men showed up. Indeed, although esteemed for their bravado, they upset the Polish authorities with acts of robbery and violence against the local population. Remarkably, though, owing to their origin in the Kresy, the people there did not regard them as a Polish force, but as local bandits, a fact that, in a way, saved the Polish Army from blame. Even more remarkably, in the eyes of their comrades from central Poland as well, they represented not a Polish, but “a Ukrainian unit . . . in Russian clothes.”102 Subsequently fighting in the Polish–Soviet War, the unit underwent several redeployments—always under Jaworski’s personal command—but kept its daredevil record. According to Piotr Zychowicz, “Mad Feliks” paid back the murders of some of his captured men by the Red Army in its own coin.103 In summer 1920, on Jaworski’s order, Lieutenant Józef Siła-Nowicki formed the Volunteer Cavalry Division (Diwizja Jazdy Ochotniczej) in Białystok, whose members partly came from Jaworski’s unit and were also known as “Hussars of Death” (“Huzary Śmierci” ). Like Abraham’s “Execution Hill” unit, which, by the way, called itself alternatively the “Death Battalion” (Batalion Śmierci), they chose a skull as emblem.104 Even Colonel Michał Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz, commander of a unit which was known itself as the “Wild Division” (Dzika Diwizja), did not mince matters, calling them “a gang of highwaymen, not a regular army.” The officer whom he designated in the same breath to take command of the “Hussars of Death” anticipated severe difficulties while discussing the matter with his comrades: SiłaNowicki was wanted by the gendarmerie to be court martialed for insubordination, his deputy rated as a hangdog. The whole matter was considered a suicide mission, and it was therefore advised to approximate the Hussars’ headquarters only with a powerful escort and heavy artillery. They had clashed with the division’s artillerymen several times already and were looked upon as a band of remobilized deserters notoriously robbing the surrounding villages. Consequently, the change of command had to be implemented by force of arms.105 If the ethnic association of Jaworski’s squadron caused difficulties even for contemporaries, all the more did the colorful unit of Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz. 101 Kossak-Szczucka, Pożoga, 95. 102 Władysław Broniewski, Pamietnik: Wydanie krytyczne, edited by Maciej Tramer (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Krytyki Politycznej, 2013), 91, entry for January 19, 1919, quote: 91; Suławka, “Walki polsko–ukraińskie na Wołyniu,” S. 68–9. 103 Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 469–73; Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 129; Zychowicz, Sowieci, 246–7.   104  Stefan Brzeszczyński, Dzika dywizja: Wspomnienia z lat 1918–1922 (Poznań: Akwilon, 1996), 188; Kania, W cieniu Orląt Lwowskich, 70, 134. 105 Brzeszczyński, Dzika dywizja, 186–94, quote: 186.

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In comparison to Abraham and Jaworski, he was a warlord in advanced age in 1918 with his thirty-five years. However, like the others he was born in the Polish borderlands—in his case the Vilnius area—so he boasted a Polish–Belarusian background. Fighting with the tsarist army at the Russian Western Front in late 1914, he received his paramilitary education quite early, heading a partisan unit of the Russian Second Cavalry Division (Vtoraya Kavaleriı ̆skaya Diviziya) in 1915. After that, he joined the forces of ataman Leonid Punin, an independent partisan leader who fought the Germans at the Russian Northern Front with the blessing of the imperial family. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks granted BułakBałachowicz permission to form a Polish military unit, but when he got wind that the Red government wanted him dead, he defected and joined the White forces under the command of General Nikolai Yudenich. This brought him into a short alliance with his former enemies, the Germans, and their paramilitary Freikorps units which operated in the Baltic.106 To put it simply, Bułak-Bałachowicz followed two goals: first, to fight the Red Army, and second, to erect an independent Belarusian state, the one national project in the northern part of the Kresy which—in contrast to the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian—had not been completed by early 1920. The ethnic composition of his unit—Poles, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Finns, Latvians, and Jews—seemed not to be the most convincing prerequisite for such an endeavor.107 Piłsudski is said to have characterized Bułak-Bałachowicz himself in his moody way as “a bandit, but not only. Today a Russian, tomorrow a Pole, a Belarusian the next day, and a Black the day after that.”108 In late 1919, BułakBałachowicz entered into talks with the Council of the Belarusian People’s Republic, but when Estonia made peace with Russia in December that year, he had to leave the area of Pskov—where he had been building up his forces—in haste. His extradition to the Bolsheviks would have meant his certain execution. Like Symon Petliura, he now sought for an anti-Bolshevik coalition with Poland in order to fulfill his national dream after a victory over the Red Army. Earlier, he had arrested General Yudenich and dispersed his army’s war chest amongst his men. In June 1920 his force joined the Polish troops near Chernobyl, where he additionally pooled his forces with two local Ukrainian ataman units.109 106  Grzegorz Jacek Pelica, “Kmicic II RP,” in Generał Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz. Ostatni kmicic II RP i wyklęci żołnierze wojny polsko–sowieckiej 1920 r., edited by Marek Cabanowski (Cracow: Oficyna Wydawnicza Mireki, 2013), 5–14, here: 5–6. 107  Oleg Łatyszonek, Białoruskie formacje wojskowe 1917–1923 (Bialystok: Białoruskie Towarzystwo Historyczne, 1995), 168–71; Eva Reder, “Bułak-Bałachowicz-Einheit,” in Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 5: Organisationen, Institutionen, Bewegungen, edited by Wolfgang Benz (Berlin: De Gruyter Saur, 2012), 77–9, here: 77. 108  Marek Cabanowski (ed.), Generał Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz: Ostatni kmicic II RP i wyklęci żołnierze wojny polsko–sowieckiej 1920 r. (Cracow: Oficyna Wydawnicza Mireki, 2013), 69. 109 Łatyszonek, Białoruskie formacje wojskowe 1917–1923, 147–54. On Bułak-Bałachowicz’s short coalition with Estonia see Tomasz Paluszyński, “Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz w estońskiej wojnie narodowo–wyzwolenczej w latach 1918–1919,” Poznańskie Zeszyty Humanistyczne VI (2006): 81–99; on the arrest of General Yudenich see Anatol Hryckiewiecz, “General Stanisław Bulak-Bałachowicz jako wojskowy dowódca i dzialacz polityczny, lata 1918–1920,” in Europa Orientalis. Polska i jej wschodni

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Fig. 11.  Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz and the Estonian General Johan Laidoner in Pskov, August 25, 1919. The ataman’s alliance with Estonia was evanescent. © Estonian State Archives, A-271-149. Thanks to Ülle Kraft.

This seems to have been a fitting match, since Bułak-Bałachowicz’s force and his commanding style still resembled rather a partisan than a regular unit. “Do not look for any general staff qualities in him, and you will not be disappointed,” was Piłsudski’s advice. “He is a typical churl and partisan, but a perfect soldier, and more of a skillful ataman than a European-style commander.”110 Hardboiled German mercenaries had the same impression when they got a taste of his reign in the Baltic in the summer of 1919: “‘Buba’ hangs and judges with strength. For all capital crimes, death by hanging is announced. The day before Ascension a Communist from Petrograd was hanged. She was wearing red riding boots and the rope ripped. Bu-Ba himself jumped up and hanged her. Today, an ensign Molotov from the Bu-Bas is dangling for robbery against the civilian population, which we approved more than the first case.”111

sąsiedzi od średniowiecza po współczesność, edited by Zbigniew Karpus, Tomasz Kempa, et al. (Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, 1996), 437–46, here: 445; on his raid from Estonia to the Polish front see Tomasz Paluszyński, “Przejście oddziału generała Stanisława Bułak-Bałachowicza z Estonii do Polski, marzec 1920 roku,” in Polska i Europa w XIX–XX wieku. Studia historyczno–politologiczne, edited by Jadwiga Kiwerska, Bogdan Koszel, and Dariusz Matelski (Poznań: Arpress, 1992), 109–24. 110 Cabanowski, Generał Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz, 95–7. 111  Tagebuchblätter Alfred Jaskowski, Baltenregiment, 16, entry of June 1, 1919, Herder Institute (Marburg), DSHI 120 BR/BLW 021.

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During the Polish–Soviet War, the unit committed uncounted crimes—mostly plunder, rape, and murder—against the local population, first and foremost against Jews.112 Two detailed Polish reports give rare insights into the routine and psychology of a murder squad. Anti-Bolshevism was a driving force, but anti-Semitism was stronger. Jews were persecuted regardless of their political view, while captured Red Army soldiers, if they were not Jews, were at times spared and brought to the rear for “re-education.” Although the troops stayed firm in battle, discipline was almost absent, and drinking bouts were a common entertainment. General BułakBałachowicz fraternized with his men, but his reign among them was harsh, unorthodox, and erratic. Orders which interdicted encroachments were not worth the paper they were written on. Atrocities declined when the commander was around and occasionally set a warning example. When he was away, his unit ran amok again. The Polish military observers allocated to his unit were convinced that those men had no political conviction whatsoever and would sell their services to anybody who would let them have their way. Obviously, although Jews were the main target in satisfying their most basic needs, the paramilitary orgy they unleashed on the Kresy affected the whole local population. The material and political damage and the disgrace on the international parquet which the unit’s misconduct caused the Polish state thus outweighed its military use. It was therefore proposed to dissolve the unit.113 In the meantime, Bułak-Bałachowicz’s national project had received a serious setback, since the Poles allocated him to the Russian Political Committee in Warsaw which prepared for a takeover in Moscow after the prospected fall of Bolshevism. This option, though, went up in smoke after the Polish–Soviet ceasefire in October 1920, and Bułak-Bałachowicz and his men continued a forlorn fight on their own. On November 6, they took Mozyr, east of the Polish–Soviet demarcation line, where Bułak-Bałachowicz declared himself head of a Belarusian Republic, only to be thrown out by the Red Army by the end of November. They voluntarily went into Polish captivity and were released again in March 1921, after the Peace of Riga had been signed.114 Since no Belarusian state saw the light of day, BułakBałachowicz’s political mission had turned out a complete failure. On the other hand, neither the commander nor his men were ever brought to justice for their crimes and raids in the Kresy.

112  On the atrocities against Jews see Reder, “Pogrome im Schatten polnischer Staatsbildung,” passim. 113  Report from Liaison Officer Stanisław Lis-Błoński no. 3 to the Chief of the Second Department of the Third Army, August 30, 1920, General Adjutancy of the Supreme Commander, vol. 28, 15–24, JPIA, 701/2/28; Report titled “On the behavior of the Group of Gen.[eral] [Bułak-]Bałachowicz” to  the General Adjutancy of the War Ministry, October 6, 1920, Laudański Files, vol. 10, 154–6, CAW, I.440.12.10. 114 Borzęcki, The Soviet–Polish Peace of 1921, 157.

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AMBIGUITIES As one can see, the military and paramilitary battles of the Polish state along its borders were partly fought by units whose methods, ethnic composition, and national affiliation were questionable, to say the least. In its fight for survival, the government of the Second Republic could not afford to be picky, and therefore deployed any force that would strengthen the war effort on the various fronts. But there is another side to the story. By definition, the border wars were fought in the borderlands, and the borderlands featured an ethnic variety which defied unambiguity. As a result, not only the population in the embattled areas, but also some of the units operating there were mixed. As was the case with their uniforms, armament, and equipment, the idioms and cultural background of its members represented an omnium gatherum of the times of partition and imperial rule. As a result, for many fighters, their engagement in the ethno-political struggle for national independence was not only a matter of origin, but also of choice. A change of scenery from the eastern to the western theatre of the Central European Civil War might illustrate the significance and complexity of this conundrum. The violent encounter between German and Polish paramilitaries in Greater Poland or Upper Silesia after the Great War has in the past been interpreted usually as an embittered and clear-cut confrontation between two nations over the allotment of a disputed territory. But if one remembers what has been stated on the first pages of this book in relation to the fluid character of nationality and identity, and if one takes into account the specifics of ethnically mixed border regions, one wonders how far the category of nationality really carries if it comes to the developments on-site. Of course, the conflict over the industrial area of Upper Silesia in the Polish–German borderlands was a political confrontation between both governments, with international implications. But if one leaves the state level and enters the realm of ethnic ambiguity, such clear-cut lines get blurred. What seem to be plain facts from a bird’s perspective, debated at conferences and presented in memoranda, lose its persuasiveness, and sometimes even its meaning, on the spot. In his swashbuckling civil war tale, the Polish insurgent leader Jan Faska (whom we encountered in the section on Upper Silesia), on a Harley-Davidson with ­his driver, accidentally runs into a group of Polish paramilitaries, and both sides initially take the other for Germans: “We stared hard and unrelentingly at each other for a second, until one of them roared in a rough voice: ‘Right, you cheeky bugger, get off that blasted contraption, you German prick. Don’t you worry, you bloody roughneck, this is the last time you’ll ever whizz around this holy Polish soil on a contraption like that.’ . . . He then prodded my belly and chest with his bayonet . . . When I heard our beautifully clear, robust [Silesian] language, I felt my guts swell with joy and delight. Good old local lads, I could’ve kissed the lot of them on the lips.”115 115 Faska, Garść luźnych wspomnień, 26 (see note 143 on page 95). Faska also records encounters with Germans where both sides initially had problems identifying the enemy, ibid., 8, 24–5.

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What sounds comical at first sight could have lethal consequences in ethnic conflicts on a local level where mixed identities are rather the rule than the exception: How does one discern the friend from the enemy under such conditions? Faska’s memoirs are full of Polish “traitors” who defected to the Germans. Heinz Oskar Hauenstein’s Special Police was especially seeking and killing such kinds of “traitors” (of course Germans defecting to the Poles) on their side of the indistinct frontline. Whereas it is indisputable that someone who betrays friends who trust him is a traitor, it might in each case be quite difficult to ascertain if “a Pole” changed to the “German” side (or vice versa). In the ambiguous world of fluid identities, ethnic markers—like language, appearance, or specific religious ­knowledge—would be interpreted for clarification, and violence would be used to mark seemingly established differences.116 As we have seen, the paramilitary nature of all conflicts conducted by the nascent Polish state characterizes them as civil war rather than war between nation states, a  confrontation of intermingled people rather than between opposing nations. In his monograph on the German Civil War of 1918–23, Hannsjoachim Koch underlines the ambivalence of the German eastern border with Poland as a place of encounter: “The complex dispersion of populations of different n ­ ationalities in the disputed areas made any hope for a reasonable solution appear hopeless. Neither did all Poles in these regions necessarily wish to become citizens of a Polish state, nor did all Germans necessarily want to remain citizens of a German state. During the three years of this nationality struggle, it was actually a civil war, and this is especially true of the factions that were recruited from the population of those areas.”117 On which side was a family with bilingual children and parents of two different mother tongues? Was one not to defend one’s best friend during a bar brawl with co-nationals any more, just because, all of a sudden, he belonged to the “wrong” ethnic group? Did neighbors who had celebrated Christmas together last year have to shoot at each other this year? Were people of conflicting loyalties really eager to find out the answers to those questions, or to get into situations where they had to take sides? If one starts to think of the possible answers to these questions, one gets an idea of two important things: that the complexity of identities and social networks in border regions defies the painting of black and white pictures at the outset of violent conflicts; and that the application of ethnic violence intends and manages to erase the grayscales by either forcing the protagonists to take sides or showing them where they allegedly belong. 116 Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State (Oxford: Berg, 1999); Baron and Gatrell, “Population Displacement, State-Building, and Social Identity”; Tim Wilson, “Boundaries, Identity and Violence: Ulster and Upper Silesia in a Context of Partition, 1918–1922” (PhD, University of Oxford, 2007); Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War; I. William Zartman, “Introduction: Identity, Movement, and Response,” in Understanding Life in the Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion, edited by I. William Zartman (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2010); Patrice M. Dabrowski, “Borderland Encounters in the Carpathian Mountains and Their Impact on Identity Formation,” in Bartov and Weitz (eds), Shatterzone of Empires, 193–208; Biondich, “Eastern Borderlands and Prospective Shatter Zones.” 117 Koch, Der deutsche Bürgerkrieg, 123.

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In the course of the last decade or so, different attempts to understand the underlying motives of violence performed between 1918 and 1921 in Central Europe, and especially in the imperial borderlands, have been made.118 By singling out special groups of victims or perpetrators, they are mostly mono-causal. Not surprisingly (and correctly), the wave of pogroms in Ukraine and on the territory of the Second Republic between 1917 and 1921 is generally interpreted as the expression of a deeply rooted anti-Semitism on the side of the perpetrators. This view was already widespread at the time of the events, when the shocking news of the murder of hundreds of Jews in eastern Poland made headlines in the international press. The Polish state, it seemed to readers all over the world, was not mature enough for independence, since it used its newly gained freedom of action immediately to reckon with its ethnic rivals. This notion was furthered because Roman Dmowski, the state’s representative in Paris, made no secret of his anti-Semitic worldview. In the meantime, the Western powers watched with growing distress that Poland’s armed military and paramilitary forces constantly enlarged the country’s territory. Polish nationalism, so it seemed, had been unleashed, and its proponents executed a strict program to erect a nation state for ethnic Poles only.119 The Polish government for its part argued that the victims had brought their deplorable lot upon themselves by siding with the enemy—Soviet Russia— and attacking Polish soldiers. From today’s scientific point of view, the latter allegation can be discarded. Jews had not taken up weapons against Poles in the aftermath of the First World War. The fundamental assumption that the Polish state was in a way responsible for the violence, and that anti-Semitism was its underlying motive, though, is obviously correct. But, as Henry Morgenthau, chief of the US factfinding mission sent to eastern Poland in 1919 to investigate the murder of Jews by Polish soldiers, had sensed already, things were a little more complicated at the end of the Great War.120 In the light of archival evidence, Morgenthau was right when he named the devastating economic state of the country along with anti-Semitism as the main causes of the violence in Poland. The chaotic situation especially in the war zones, with lack of discipline and the poor equipment of the army, and a military-political leadership which was too beleaguered to prevent the violence, added infinite complexity. But it may also be said that the Polish government did not react with 118 Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland; Prusin, The Lands Between; Schnell, Räume des Schreckens; Bartov and Weitz (eds), Shatterzone of Empires; Wilson, Frontiers of Violence; Chopard, Le martyre de Kiev; Tim Buchen and Frank Grelka (eds), Akteure der Neuordnung: Ostmitteleuropa und das Erbe der Imperien, 1917–1924 (Berlin: epubli, 2017). 119  Kapiszewski, “Controversial Reports on the Situation of the Jews in Poland.” 120  Although crucial to our understanding of anti-Jewish violence in Poland 1918–19, the field trip of the Morgenthau Commission itself in the summer of 1919 has never been made the subject of a stand-alone study, but much information can be found in Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920, 354–62, in the memoirs of the mission’s chief Henry Morgenthau, All in a Life-Time, edited by French Strother (New York: Doubleday Page, 1923), and in the dense description of a commission member, Goodhart, Poland and the Minority Races. The missions’ files are recorded in the US National Archives, Morgenthau’s personal papers and diary in the Library of Congress (Washington, DC). More hitherto scarcely consulted records on anti-Jewish violence in Poland 1918–20 can be found in the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New York), which had been established in Vilnius in 1925.

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sufficient determination either.121 In addition, the most recent works on the topic place more emphasis on situational and anthropological aspects: According to Eva Reder, the pogroms were a form of carnival, a public spectacle which developed a dynamic of its own. Trigger for most soldiers’ pogroms in 1918–20 were allegations of a Jewish participation in the fight against Poles or of Bolshevik activities, although, paradoxically, during the humiliation, maltreating, and killing process, the desecration of religious symbols—which are meaningless in the communist worldview—was a central element. Pogroms went always hand in hand with property crimes. Soldiers would usually start the pogroms, and parts of the civil ­population would join them. The behavior of officers—approval, indifference, or disapprobation—could significantly influence the course of events.122 William Hagen shows that the pogroms “served as brutal stagings by ordinary people of scenarios dramatizing popular anti-Jewish fears and resentments” which had long been part of Polish folk tradition, and that they represented a form of “grassroots ethnic violence, perpetrated independently of state authority far more often than not and mostly in defiance of it.”123 Both scholars thus confirm Morgenthau’s general assessments, and they further our understanding by stressing the ­traditional and performative aspects of ritualized collective violence. Morgenthau had exonerated the Polish state from persecuting a planned program of ethnic cleansing against its Jewish citizens, and here, he was right as well. Neither the anti-Semitic pogroms in 1918–20, nor the ubiquitous abuse and robbing of Jews were government controlled. The negative reaction the pogrom in Lviv caused in the world press was a major blow to Polish aspirations on the international parquet and severely damaged the country’s image. As William Hagen put it, “ethnic violence generally damaged the ‘rational interests’—slippery concept— both of perpetrators and of state and society.”124 Accordingly, the upper military circles tried to stem the tide with a number of investigations, courts martial, and prohibitive orders. True enough, local military authorities were often hesitant to prosecute acts of anti-Semitic violence, or blamed the Jews themselves for what had happened to them. But there is no evidence whatsoever that they had been encouraged to do so by the central government in Warsaw. Just before the Lviv pogrom, on November 18 and 19, 1918, the Warsaw Court of Appeal sent the case  of two Jews who had been abused by the military police to Piłsudski in ­person. Lieutenant Colonel Stanisław Laudański, who in the 1920s documented the first years of Polish independence for the Office of Military History, indignantly noted in red letters on a copy of the document: “A trenchant illustration of the circumstances of the time! The head of state had to arbitrate, even in the 121  Henry Morgenthau, “The Morgenthau Report: American Commission to Negotiate Peace, Mission to Poland,” in The Jews in Poland: Official Reports of the American and British Investigating Missions (Chicago: The National Polish Committee of America, 1920), 4–9. 122  Reder, “Praktiken der Gewalt”; Reder, “Pogrome im Schatten polnischer Staatsbildung.” 123 Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920, blurb, xiii. The author already anticipated some of these findings and offered a broader perspective in Hagen, “The Moral Economy of Popular Violence.” 124 Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920, xiv.

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case of two Jews who had been beaten.” Laudański himself was a prime example of anti-Semitism within the Polish Army, given the fact that in 1921 he authored a commissioned pamphlet of 140 pages titled “Genesis of the Jewish Soul.” He had a point, though, when he continued his note stating that such cases should have been instead submitted to the legal branch of the War Ministry or the town mayor.125 The Polish National Committee in Paris had first tried to deny or downplay the news of anti-Semitic violence from Poland, or to at least partly put the blame on Jewish sympathies for Bolshevism, but internally, in a draft appeal to the Polish people, it condemned the atrocities as ­counterproductive to the national project, and called for inter-ethnic solidarity in the face of the chaos and anarchy which threatened it.126 While the acts of deadly anti-Jewish violence in Poland in 1918–20, their underlying motives, and their public discourse have been described over and over again,127 remarkably little research has been conducted regarding the perpetrators of these very acts themselves. Where it has been conducted, there is agreement that the Haller Army and the Army of Greater Poland were notorious for such acts, and, indeed, plundering and abuse of Jews in public and in their homes were endemic within their ranks.128 Both commanders, Generals Józef Haller and Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, were associated with the National Democratic movement of Roman Dmowski. General conscription was only introduced in March 1919,129 and volunteers with a rightist political background would certainly prefer to serve under conservative flagships like Haller or Dowbor-Muśnicki, while soldiers from the left would rather join forces built out of Piłsudski’s legionnaires and members of the Polish Combat Organizations. The first deciding factor, though, was not what the new recruits believed in, but simply where they joined the colors. The Haller Army was built in France and Dowbor-Muśnicki’s troops in the western 125  Letters from the Warsaw Court of Appeal to the Head of State (with annexes), November 18 and 19, 1918, Laudański Files, vol. 1, 167–73, CAW, I.440.12.1. Lieutenant Laudański, manuscript “Genesis of the Jewish Soul,” May 1921, Laudański Files, vol. 8, 132–217, CAW, I.440.12.8. See Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland, 117. 126 Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, 102–15; Protocol of the 160th meeting of the Polish National Committee in Paris, November 28, 1918, annex 1: Draft concerning Jewish affairs presented to the Polish National Committee by Paderewski, read aloud by Dmowski, published in Jabłonowski (ed.), Komitet Narodowy Polski, 612–13. 127  Jerzy Tomaszewski, “Lwów 22 listopada 1918 r.,” Przegląd Historyczny 75, no. 2 (1984): 279–85; Tomaszewski, “Pińsk, Saturday 5 April 1919”; Carole Fink, “Two Pogroms: Lemberg (November 1918) and Pinsk (April 1919),” in Varieties of Antisemitism: History, Ideology, Discourse, edited by Murray Baumgarten, Peter Kenez, and Bruce A. Thompson (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2009), 151–68; Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, 43–55; Levene, Devastation, 187–97; Götz Aly, Europa gegen die Juden, 1880–1945 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2017), 146–56; Kapiszewski, Hugh Gibson and a Controversy over Polish–Jewish Relations; Neal Pease, “ ‘This Troublesome Question’: The United States and the ‘Polish Pogroms’ of 1918–1919,” in Ideology, Politics and Diplomacy in East Central Europe, edited by Mieczysław B. Biskupski (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003), 58–79; Wallis, “The Vagaries of British Compassion,” 98–129; Kaufman, This Troublesome Question. 128 Levene, Devastation, 191–2; Eva Reder, “Haller-Armee,” in Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 5: Organisationen, Institutionen, Bewegungen, edited by Wolfgang Benz (Berlin: De Gruyter Saur, 2012), 299–301. 129 Wyszczelski, Wojsko Polskie w latach 1918–1921, 6.

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parts of Poland, while Piłsudski formed his forces in the center. Nevertheless, those three armies soon developed their own esprit de corps. But the troops from France and Greater Poland entered central and eastern Poland only in April 1919, and therefore cannot be blamed for anti-Jewish transgressions there before that date.130 What a commander expects from his troops is first and foremost transmitted to them by the tone and content of the orders he passes down to the rank and file. No order of anti-Semitic content issued by Haller can be found in the files of his army. What can be found is a report on the shooting of Jews in Pinsk on April 5, 1919 by soldiers of General Antoni Listowski, signed by General Haller, which he sent to the Polish National Committee in Paris four days after the event. Haller erroneously took the victims for members of a Bolshevik conspiracy, and thus justified their execution.131 But first of all, this was a letter which his officers and soldiers would not know of; secondly, it was written after the fact, and thus by definition could not have instigated it; and thirdly, he had issued several orders explicitly condemning and penalizing encroachments against the civil population in general and Jews in particular (see above). Certainly, he was from a conservative Catholic background—before embarking in France with his troops to go to Poland, he had sent a letter to Pope Benedict XV, asking for his blessing.132 But in his published diaries, he describes how, after soldiers of his army had plundered Jewish shops in Cracow in the summer of 1919, a review was ordered and weapons were found in Jewish homes. Haller states that he had nobody arrested for it since he found out that the Jews had asked the local military authorities to give them arms so that they could defend themselves against marauding soldiers. True or not, Haller must have been aware that by publishing this anecdote he would take the wind out of the sails of conspiracy theorists suspecting Polish Jews in 1918–20 of organizing armed resistance against the Polish forces. Even Piłsudski, in an outright negative assessment of Haller’s qualities as a general, acknowledged his adherence to the military code of honor.133 Wherever the impetus to maltreat, torture, and kill Jews came from, Haller was obviously not the source for it. The same goes for Dowbor-Muśnicki’s Army of Greater Poland, which is also often named in the context of anti-Semitic excesses and other digressions in the Kresy in 1919. An internal report from September 30, 1919 alarmed the Army High Command in Warsaw: At the Eastern Front, the “Poznaniańs” were running wild, plundering excessively, torturing Jews. The o­ fficers had no control whatsoever, and preferred to turn a blind eye or even hide away when their men were raging in the cities, towns, and villages in the Kresy. Officers with a legionnaire’s background were even frequently beaten up when they tried to discipline the marauding soldiers. The report concluded that “with three complete Poznanian divisions one could plunder all of Bolshevik Russia by selecting great 130 Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920, 179–80. 131  Letter from General Haller to the National Committee in Paris, April 9, 1919, Laudański Files, vol. 12, 223, CAW, I.440.12.12. 132  Letter from General Haller to Pope Benedict XV, undated (c.April 1919), CAW, I.123.1.13 (not paginated). 133  Żak (ed.), Polska generalicja w opiniach Marszałka Piłsudskiego, 19.

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cities as military objectives.”134 But Dowbor-Muśnicki was not to blame: He was sidelined in Poznań when those incidents occurred, and was called back to duty by Piłsudski only in the summer of 1920, when the Red Army was threatening Warsaw.135 Bad provision and clothing was one of the main motives next to antiSemitism for the plunder of well-stocked Jewish shops and homes by Polish soldiers. But Haller’s and Dowbor-Muśnicki’s troops were elite forces, the best equipped of the whole army. Every Polish schoolchild knew the blue uniforms of the Army from France and the typical high caps of the Army of Greater Poland.136 Although perpetrators from these units were thus generally easier to identify than others, this does not sufficiently explain why Haller’s and Dowbor-Muśnicki’s men feature so much more prominently in the criminal records of 1918–20 than ­others.137 If one tries to understand the underlying motives for their soldiers’ violence against Jews besides a general leaning towards the National Democratic ideology—which not all of them necessarily shared anyhow—one will have to look elsewhere. Where the lack of authority of the Poznań officer corps originated from is easy to explain. When the army was built up in 1919, it consisted mainly of recruits from the former Prussian Army, where Poles would not be admitted into the higher ranks. As a result, until the end of the Polish–Soviet War, the force had to cope with a permanent shortage of qualified officers. The High Command tried to counter this by sending officers who had already served during the war in Legions or the Polish Military Organization, but the “Poznanians” were reluctant to obey their orders.138 In contrast, those few officers who came with Dowbor-Muśnicki from Russia and built up the force in Poznań—called “Dowbor’s men”—were reluctant to confront their soldiers in disciplinary measures, fearing to lose popularity. While their training and military performance were exemplary, if it came to contact with the local population, the soldiers of the Army of Greater Poland deployed in the Kresy in 1919–20 were a force without the firm hand of an experienced and accepted officer corps.139 The fact that the generally hostile attitude of the soldiers from Greater Poland was displayed not only towards the civil population, but also to brothers in arms when sent to the east, is puzzling. It does not at all fit into the picture of a Polish Army which fought the Central European Civil War united at all of its country’s borders. Jerzy Borzęcki has recently provided an interesting case study on atrocities of the Poznań troops against Jews in the Kresy with a convincing explanation for this phenomenon. Their behavior was rooted in their self-awareness as a secessionist elite force. They did not feature a Polish, but a Greater Polish identity. This made 134  “Report on Poznanian troops,” September 30, 1919, General Adjutancy of the High Command, vol. 5 (unpaginated), case no. 1588, AAN, microfilm 393; published (in English) in Borzęcki, “German Anti-Semitism à la Polonaise,” 701–4, quote: 703. 135  Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki (ed.), Wspomnienia (Warsaw: Bellona, 2003) (first pub. 1935), 275–81. 136 Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 189. 137  Reder, “Praktiken der Gewalt,” 167. 138 Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 187–8, 195. 139  Borzęcki, “German Anti-Semitism à la Polonaise,” 700.

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them look down not only on the Jewish and non-Jewish population that was living in eastern Poland, but even on all troops from outside Greater Poland, whose ­officers they—most remarkably—regarded as Jews, no matter what their real e­ thnic or religious background was.140 Borzęcki’s further conclusion that the Greater Poles’ attitude represented a variant of German anti-Semitism which they had internalized while living in competition with assimilated Jews under German rule before 1918 is therefore only partly convincing. After all, German soldiers did not rob or kill Jews on a mass scale in occupied Poland between 1915 and 1918. But he rightly identifies a pattern of cultural superiority complex, a colonial attitude within the “Poznanians” ’ ranks.141 We can assume that the same goes for Haller’s men, who had travelled by sea to come to Poland. Entering the backward and poor Galician and Ukrainian towns— which in addition had been destroyed and stripped of their resources by the war—in their full gear of the French Army, and hearing the local population communicate in languages and idioms and following customs unintelligible to them, must have come as a shock. Was this the Polish homeland they had enthusiastically enlisted to fight for? Supreme contempt was the response of the average volunteer, especially if he had come all the way from the United States. According to the command of the Eleventh Infantry Division, he “does not understand the chaos and disorder in the country and criticizes it, so he is more prone to breaches of ­discipline, especially since he lacks the sufficient military training and is young to be a soldier.”142 Furthermore, many soldiers who had enlisted in the United States or France had hoped to start a new life in independent Poland after a short deployment against the German troops in western Poland. Instead, after one year of service, there was no end in sight, but rather a war with Soviet Russia. Discontent was on the rise, negatively affecting troop morale. On the other hand, Haller’s soldiers would adjust to the local conditions when they were stationed for a longer period in one place, and outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence ebbed away when soldiers took up quarters in Jewish houses and engaged in (consensual) sexual relations with Jewish women.143 The same adaption process could be witnessed among the Poznań troops, who after a week of common service started to show signs of respect to officers of “foreign” units.144 As the violence deployed by soldiers of the Haller Army against Jews they met in train stations vividly demonstrates, it was first and foremost a liminal phenomenon. Like Haller’s troops, the Poznań troops would adapt with time, but they would not lose their elitist attitude. It was not only rooted in their superiority in terms of 140  In comparison, see the episode where soldiers of the Haller Army called other officers “Jewish lackeys” (above). 141  Borzęcki, “German Anti-Semitism à la Polonaise.” This is confirmed (with further archival evidence) by Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 196. 142  Report of the Command of the Eleventh Infantry Division on the morale of the volunteers from the United States, December 13, 1919, cited from Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 207. 143  Secret report of the Civil Commissar at the Mazovian Front, October 10, 1919, Laudański Files, vol. 3, 46–51, CAW, I.440.12.3. 144  Borzęcki, “German Anti-Semitism à la Polonaise,” 701.

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military equipment and training, but also in the separatist history of Greater Poland, which for the better part of 1919 would not acknowledge Piłsudski’s government in central Poland, and not even subordinate their troops to his command. As late as in summer 1920, Greater Polish and central Polish forces almost killed each other in Siedlce, 100 miles east of Warsaw. Soldiers from Poznania who had just arrived at the train station robbed a Jewish shop and resisted their arrest by the town commander: “Two Polish Army units confronted each other. One was as large as a whole battalion, the other very small, not even a full platoon. The commander stood near the frontline, white as a sheet . . . The rebel unit hurled threats and curses . . . The officer, however, stood firm with his platoon. Fortunately, the drama ended without bloodshed.” At the very last minute, an officer of the Poznań unit managed to calm down his men.145 After almost two years of independence, the armed forces of the young Polish state were still not united. As the report on the Army of Greater Poland from September 1919 stated, “the Poznanian soldier had received a prejudiced upbringing and, in my view, the fault is to be found not only with his misdeeds but also with their source—within Poznan area[,] where they apparently had no desire to inculcate the soldier with a favorable view of Poland, but rather with an ­unfavorable one. This calamitous attitude seeped in at the time when Poznanian troops were being formed, and now the psychology of all of Poznanian troops is [already] set.”146 It would be misleading, though, to assume that only the troops from Poznań or France had quite such a record. As said, those troops would enter central Poland only in spring 1919, when military brutality was already in full swing.147 They did thus, for instance, not participate in one of the worst pogroms, in Lviv on November 21, 1918. In the troubled years of 1918–21, not only the paramilitary formations described in the previous section, but also units immediately associated with Piłsudski’s legionnaire movement committed atrocities against the local population, Jewish and non-Jewish. The Polish Legions’ mythical depiction in popular memory conceals the fact that from the very start they faced severe disciplinary problems. The commander of the First Cadre Company noted already in August 1914 “tightening of discipline, briefings at Headquarters, eradication of theft (mandatory death penalty). Requisitions [to be performed] only by battalions. Local rear-echelon commands must beware of marauders.”148 Their own allies during the Great War described the legionaries as “habitual thieves and robbers” and an “ill-disciplined mix of rogues, idealists, adventurers, charlatans, criminals, and shirkers.”149 This, plus the fact that the formations of the Polish Army which were created in central Poland out of these units were hopelessly underequipped, explains why the wave of paramilitary violence 145 Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 195–6. 146  Borzęcki, “German Anti-Semitism à la Polonaise,” 702. 147 First units of the Army of Greater Poland reached the Eastern Front in spring 1919; Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 189. 148 Kasprzycki, Kartki z dziennika oficera I brygady, 48, entry Kielce, August 23–5, 1914. 149 Kauffman, Elusive Alliance, 70 (first quote: contemporary source, second quote: Kauffman’s summary of contemporary sources).

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which inundated the country was not limited to the forces of one side of the  political spectrum.150 Even Piłsudski himself made a revealing—though generalizing—­observation while reflecting on the Legions’ war experience up to 1917: “There are many things in war that happen to soothe the nerves of lower and higher rank commanders. You overload your subalterns with work, you set fire to windmills, you hang innocent people—everything under the pretext of avoiding danger, but actually to calm the shattered nerves of this or that gentleman. À la guerre comme à la guerre!”151 There were even cases where troops from Poznań or France would act as advocates for the local population harassed by other units. On October 18, 1919, Second Lieutenant Daudenarde wrote a bitter letter to Piłsudski: “The Third Division of the former Haller Army arrived at Tarnopol and Zbaraż to relieve the Fifth Division of the [Polish] National Army during the last days of July. We were immediately surprised by certain behavior of the departing [forces], but we had no time to verify [the matter]. As of now, since the Fifth Division returned two weeks ago, more damage has been done than one would have expected in enemy country.”152 It is noteworthy that the Fifth Division was formed in April that very year, during the Polish–Ukrainian War, and mostly out of volunteers from the Lviv area.153 Obviously, their engagement in the ethno-political struggle in the eastern borderlands heavily affected their deployment in a region where Ukrainians formed the majority, even when the battles had ceased and a Polish civil administration had been installed. In Włodawa in the summer of 1920, soldiers from Greater Poland had put the local Jews to forced labor and publicly abused and humiliated them by cutting their beards. However, when the unit of Bułak-Bałachowicz arrived and started to kill the Jews, the “Poznanians” protected them against the assaults of the mercenary force, with which they even exchanged fire. Jewish s­ urvivors of the Minsk pogrom in 1919 reported that soldiers of the Second Division of the Haller Army did not join their comrades from Greater Poland in the massacre.154 To sum up, the violence of regular forces of the Polish Army can be explained by three elements: an ideological mindset which featured a superiority complex and ethnic prejudices against the population, and especially Jews, in Silesia, central Poland, Galicia, and the Kresy; the situational circumstances, first and foremost undersupply and lack of authoritative and well-trained officers; and by the men’s lower instincts, such as sadism, or the satisfaction of material or sexual needs. The case of the paramilitary formations in Polish service operating in Ukraine, Belarus, Greater Poland, Upper and Cieszyn Silesia differs in some regards: Mental, material, and emotional dispositions were quite similar, but command structure and the character of their military missions were different. Sociologically, we have 150  To establish how many crimes had been committed by “Endecja,” and how many by “Piłsudskite” troops, additional quantitative studies on the basis of the available military and civil records are necessary. 151  Józef Piłsudski, Moje pierwsze boje (Warsaw: Bibljoteka Polska, 1925), 22. Thanks to Maciej Górny for this quote. 152  Letter from Second Lieutenant Daudenarde, Sanitary Division of the Third Division of the former Haller Army, to Józef Piłsudski, October 18, 1919, CAW, I.301.21.6 (no pagination). 153 Odziemkowski, Piechota polska w wojnie z Rosja̜ bolszewicka̜, 145–6. 154  Reder, “Pogrome im Schatten polnischer Staatsbildung,” 189.

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to deal here with so-called “spin-off groups,” which typically appear in unclear political and military situations. “In situations in which governments feel they cannot exclusively rely on their army, they tend to either tolerate or deliberately create other informal armed forces,” writes Klaus Schlichte. “Like a royal court society, they produce their own symbolic world and work as socializing institutions for their members.”155 Analogously, the Polish paramilitaries formed relatively small violent communities under charismatic leaders which fought the enemy from the rear, with partisan or terrorist techniques. It was not lack of authority which generated deviant behavior, but the example of their respective commanders who themselves would not obey the rules of warfare. Commonly executed forms of violence and criminal acts would serve two additional purposes here: to terrify the enemy and to strengthen the group’s coherence.156 The German Freikorps functioned exactly along the same

Fig. 12.  Snapshot of an unknown Polish paramilitary unit in Upper Silesia in 1920, probably taken by Captain James A. Stader. For reasons unknown, he noted on the reverse side: “Polish irregulars for the Plebiscite. In reality the Murder Squad.” Polish and German paramilitaries committed acts of terror against both each other and the civilian population during the Polish–German conflict over Upper Silesia. © Hoover Institution Archives (Stanford), James A. Stader papers, Box 1, 18894

155 Schlichte, In the Shadow of Violence, 48–56, quotes: 51, 18. 156 Winfried Speitkamp, “Gewaltgemeinschaften in der Geschichte: Eine Einleitung,” in Gewaltgemeinschaften in der Geschichte. Entstehung, Kohäsionskraft und Zerfall, edited by Winfried Speitkamp, Claudia Ansorge, Philipp Batelka, et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 11–39; Winfried Speitkamp (ed.), Gewaltgemeinschaften: Von der Spätantike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013); Beatrice Heuser, Rebellen, Partisanen, Guerilleros: Asymmetrische Kriege von der Antike bis heute (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013), 118–20.

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lines, and we can rightly assume that similar mechanisms were at work in Czech, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian paramilitary units between 1918 and 1920. The existence of such groups is as old as human civilization, and they typically form under the conditions of civil war. For the states which created or tolerated such groups, they comprised an asset and a threat at the same time. They could be used for special missions that the common troops were not suitable or could not officially be used for—such as the seizure of Vilnius by Żeligowski’s men in the autumn of 1920— but due to their freelance deployment, they were hard to control. Insubordination and even mutiny were always to be reckoned with. Especially if the policies of the state they were lending their “services” to was not considered congruent with their own political or ideological agenda any more, they could turn against it any day. Disappointed beyond measure by the territorial losses at the German eastern border, the German Freikorps from 1920 onwards formed a radical milieu inside the Weimar Republic and destabilized its fragile beginnings with acts of terror, such as the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in June 1922.157 “Spirits that I’ve cited . . . ” Against this, in the Polish case the spirits vanished, and the paramilitary violence exerted by soldiers ebbed away with the border struggles. Roman Abraham made a career in the Second Republic as Brigadier General.158 Feliks Jaworski was ­decorated for his achievements with the war order of Virtuti Militari in October 1920, but his mind was occupied with something else. Bitterly disappointed by the predictable loss of his family property in Podolia as a result of the peace negotiations with the Bolsheviks in Riga, he brooded about staging a paramilitary coup along the lines of the capture of Vilnius by Lucjan Żeligowski, his brother in arms during the last days of the tsarist army. But the time for this kind of adventure had passed. The Polish military command curtailed his plans, dissolved his unit, and dispersed his men all over its armed forces. Three years later, during a controversy in a Lviv restaurant which got out of hand, he accidentally shot his mother who had thrown herself between his revolver and the perplexed waiter at whom he aimed. Jaworski spent the rest of his life in a mental institution in Lviv.159 Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz avoided extradition to Soviet Russia—he had become a Polish citizen in 1918—and between the wars headed the “Main Board of the Union of the Veterans of National Uprisings” (Główny Zarząd Związku Byłych Uczestników Powstań Narodowych). In September 1939, when the German Wehrmacht invaded Poland, he assembled a volunteer unit comprised of 2,000 men and 250 horses, desperately trying to defend the capital. After its dissolution, he trained recruits for a “National Volunteer Army” in partisan warfare, before he was probably killed, at almost sixty years of age, during an attempted arrest by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1940.160

157 Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration. 158 Laskowski, Roman Abraham, 83–103. For a short period in 1930–1, he was also a Member of Parliament. 159 Zychowicz, Sowieci, 248–52.   160  Pelica, “Kmicic II RP,” 12–14.

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Conclusion Civile bellum; genus hominum; quod liceret libere facere, et sequi quod vellet. Civil war; human race; what is allowed is to act freely and follow what one wishes.1 Gaius Julius Caesar, 40s bc The love the Poles cultivate for the land of their fathers arose only from the struggle for independence, from historical memories, and from calamity. Today, it still flares as fervently as in the days of Tadeusz Kościuszko, maybe even more. Almost to the point of ridicule, the Poles now honor everything that is patriotic. Like a dying man struggling in despair against death, their mind is outraged and rebels against the idea of the annihilation of their nationality. This twitch of the dying Polish national body is a terrible sight! But all the peoples of Europe and of the whole earth will have to survive this death-struggle, so that from death may arise life, from pagan nationality Christian fraternity.2 Heinrich Heine, On Poland, 1823

In the Central European Civil War, the Second Polish Republic self-confidently used any scope of action to secure for itself a border as far east and west as feasible, with as many human (Poles), geographical (access to the sea), and material (an industrial area) assets as possible. It may be remembered here that this was a state which had had to fight for survival since its conception. A war that Poles were not responsible for had devastated their country, which their two most powerful neighbors—occupants there for over a century—had been forced to leave, turning them into mortal enemies of Poland, waiting only for an opportunity to strike back. Poland had to recover from its massive material and human wartime losses, and at the same time it had to hold its ground in the postwar race of nationalities for statehood in Central Europe. The Second Republic’s objectives in the border wars of 1918–21 were ambitious. Here was a state which once had been brutally wiped from the face of the earth, and whose leadership was convinced that it had 1 Ayelet Peer, Julius Caesar’s Bellum Civile and the Composition of a New Reality (New York: Routledge, 2016), 106. 2  Heinrich Heine, Über Polen, edited by Karl-Maria Guth (Berlin: Contumax, 2014) (first pub. 1823), 11. On Heine’s essay see Jeffrey L. Sammons, Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 87–9; William W. Hagen, “Von ‘heidnischer Nazionalität’ zu ‘christlicher Fraternität’ und ‘allgemeiner Völkerliebe’: Heines Überlegungen zur polnischen Frage und zum europäischen Nationalismus,” in Aufklärung und Skepsis: Internationaler Heine-Kongreß zum 200. Geburtstag, edited by Joseph A. Kruse (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999).

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not only the right, but the obligation to re-erect it again as a viable entity and was determined to do so, without cloying sentimentality. As might have become clear, the battles for the Central and Eastern European postwar order, mockingly labelled by Winston Churchill as “quarrels of the pygmies,”3 in reality turned into merciless carnages that affected mostly civilians of every age and gender. While the Polish government followed an agenda of conquering and nationalizing territories where a Polish-speaking population lived, it was only partly in control of the military and paramilitary formations it sent out to complete the mission. On all sides, armed men engaged in battle as well as in atrocities. This would severely affect both the inner constitution and the foreign relations of the interwar Polish state. Historians have estimated that in the course of the battles of the Central European Civil War in which the Polish Army was involved between 1918 and 1920, about 180,000 soldiers were killed immediately in open combat or did not survive their injuries. Roughly 100,000 Poles did not return from the battlefields of eastern Galicia, the Vilnius area, Cieszyn Silesia, and the Polish–Soviet War.4 On the other side of the front, approximately 60,000 Russians, 15,000 Ukrainians, 50 Czechs, and a few Lithuanians died in battle or shortly afterward.5 Many more were wounded or got lost. Nobody has ever counted the number of people who died other than in open combat in the course of the Central European Civil War. To complicate matters, due to the paramilitary nature even of the “official” encounters of national armies, it is almost impossible to draw a clear line between casualties and victims of atrocities on all battlefields. Therefore, such a calculation would necessitate a major effort to gather and evaluate all available data on the issue—compiled by the military, the police, civilian authorities, fact-finding missions, interest groups of all color, and the press—in Ukrainian, Russian, Latvian, German, and Czech archives, and thus surely keep a multi-member and multinational expert team busy for years 3  According to Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 21, Churchill commented to Lloyd George on the night of the armistice: “The war of the giants has ended; the quarrels of the pygmies have begun,” but Davies gives no evidence, and the episode is presumably apocryphal. It originates probably from Winston Churchill, “Britain’s Foreign Policy,” Weekly Dispatch, June 22, 1919, 6, where the cheap and often quoted witticism reads: “The war of the giants is over; the wars of the pygmies have begun.” 4 Czubiński, Walka Józefa Piłsudskiego, 415, gives 103,000 Polish privates and officers fallen in battle against Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Russians. According to Stanisław Alexandrowicz and Zbigniew Karpus (eds), Zwycie̜zcy za drutami: Jeńcy polscy w niewoli (1919–1922). Dokumenty i materiały (Toruń: Marszałek, 1995), VII, half of them were missing in action, but can be presumed to be dead. The ninety-three Polish casualties from the war against Czechoslovakia in late January 1919 do not really influence this statistic; see Jaroslav Valenta, Česko–polské vztahy v letech 1918–1920 a Těšínské Slezsko (Ostrava: Krajské nakladatelství, 1961), 356. 5  Ukrainian figures: Michał Klimecki, “Wojna Polski z Zachodnioukrainską Republiką Ludową (1918–1919),” in Odrodzona Polska wśród sąsiadów, 1918–1921, edited by Andrzej Koryn (Warsaw: IH PAN, 1999), 88–105, here: 105; Lithuanian figures: Piotr Łossowski, Konflikt polsko–litewski, 1918–1920 (Warsaw: Ksia̜żka i Wiedza, 1996), 179–85; Russian figures: Rudolph J. Rummel, Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 50, 55, referring to Melvin Small and Joel David Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816–1980 (London: Sage, 1982), 89; Czech figures: Valenta, Česko-polské vztahy v letech 1918–1920 a Těšínské Slezsko, 356.

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with evaluating and separating the facts from fable. This does not mean that such an endeavor would not be worth the effort, but it certainly exceeds the scope of this book. Given the intensity of the respective conflicts, their impact on the population, and the prevailing living conditions as reflected in available books and files, it is safe to assume that in Cieszyn Silesia and the Vilnius area respectively, the collateral damage of the conflict amounted to some hundred lives—of civilians, soldiers, and paramilitaries—on both sides; some thousand on both sides in Upper Silesia and in Greater Poland respectively; and some ten thousand on both sides in Ukraine. The explanation for the remarkable geographical differences is simple: Cieszyn Silesia and Vilnius had seen temporarily and geographically rather limited conflicts, and in the Polish–German contact zone the presence of Allied forces prevented the situation going way out of hand, whereas in the Polish–Ukrainian borderlands no such restrictions existed. Since the more than 50,000 Jews killed in the course of pogroms in Ukraine in 1919–20 belong to a different theatre of war, they were not immediately linked to the Central European Civil War, whereas the murder of up to 1,000 Jews by the hands of Polish soldiers and peasants certainly was. It is important to note, though, that the majority of the victims beyond the ­battlefields listed in the preceding paragraph died not by immediate application of force, but from malnutrition and lack of hygiene in detention camps. About 20,000 of 100,000 Ukrainians—soldiers and civilians—and 20,000 of 110,000 Red Army soldiers died in Polish camps. On the other hand, of about 40,000 Polish POWs, roughly 25,000 returned alive from Russia.6 These human losses must be considered mainly as the deplorable results of the disastrous living conditions in embattled Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, all countries which at that time were hardly able to care for their own people. For sure, in neither of these cases were genocidal state policies involved. But the respective governments did not show a strong interest in the preservation of the lives of people regarded as members of an “enemy nation” either. They hazarded these bitter consequences by engaging in the Central European Civil War in 1918–21, and all in all, it cost the lives of more than a quarter of a million people. The violence displayed on the local level was often the result of a total lack of demobilization and of ethnic conflict in the borderlands after the Great War. Here, the world war transitioned almost seamlessly into civil war, only that the actors had changed their assignments and agendas. Many soldiers kept their arms after the armistices of 1918, not only because they were used to violence and alienated from postwar civilian life, but also because with the Russian and Central Powers’ loss of territories and control post-1917, national independence came into reach. Violence after the Great War in Eastern Europe was used not to extend the war, but to end it in a fashion more favorable to the parties involved. 6  Wróbel, “The Seeds of Violence”; Danuta Hanak, “Jeńcy sowieccy w obozach polskich 1919–1921,” Biuletyn Wojskowej Służby Archiwalnej 18 (1995); Alexandrowicz and Karpus (eds), Zwycie̜zcy za drutami; Tadeusz Wawrzyński, “Jeńcy polscy w niewoli sowieckiej 1919–1921,” Biuletyn Wojskowej Służby Archiwalnej 18 (1995).

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What added to the violent outbreaks was the impairment of state control for months or even years in these areas, which was not totally absent, but had to be negotiated by force of arms between the military and paramilitary formations sent to the embattled borderlands. What these units actually did on the spot was often beyond the immediate reach of their respective governments. As Piotr Wróbel has put it, “between 1918–20 when states did not exist or had only recently been formed and a power vacuum existed in Central and Eastern Europe, most fighters and victims were civilians or former soldiers operating outside of government control and convinced that their cruel behaviour was necessary and served a good cause.”7 While in the case of considerable-sized armed forces violence against civilians can often be traced back to a fatal mixture of a lack of discipline and supplies, smaller groups additionally relied on violence as a technique of establishing authority and group coherence. Apart from marauding soldiers and mercenaries, nomadic deserters and displaced persons added to the overall insecurity. Between the collapse of the empires and their replacement by nation states, the borderlands were the most dangerous tracts of land in Europe in which to live. As Alexander Victor Prusin has put it, “the ‘cost of violence’—previously controlled by the ­imperial governments—declined and multiple protagonists were able to make their own rules of warfare.”8 Such forms of locally confined micro-violence have rarely been interpreted in the context of the Great War in the east,9 let alone of its after-battles. What we learn by studying them is that violence is often triggered by a combination of situational and motivational factors—presence of victims who match the perpetrators’ target group, assumed impunity, worldview, expectations and behavior of comrades and superiors—which together determines the sequence and outcome of events. The foundations for further studies in this rather new field have been laid by the sophisticated studies on violence perpetrated during the Second World War.10 Anthropologists and ritual experts have added to our understanding by pointing out the symbolic meaning of this kind of violence which often marks periods of societal upheaval, calling it “liminal” violence (as, for example, pogroms).11 Various explanations have been offered to explain the violence accompanying the process of aggressive nation building on the passage from war to peace in our region. Joshua Sanborn has argued that the Great War was the first war of 7  Wróbel, “The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence,” 282. 8 Prusin, The Lands Between, 73. 9  For German atrocities at the Western Front see the elaborate study by John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). 10  The foundation has been laid with the seminal work of Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), on the combination of motivational and situational factors as a trigger of violent behavior, and has found many followers since then, e.g. Harald Welzer, Täter: Wie aus ganz normalen Menschen Massenmörder werden (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2006). How such approaches can be made fruitful for our period has been recently demonstrated by Lewicki, “Przestępczość w Wojsku Polskim podczas wojny polsko–bolszewickiej,” Borzęcki, “German Anti-Semitism à la Polonaise,” and Hagen, “The Moral Economy of Popular Violence.” 11  Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).

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“de-colonization” which propelled the emancipation of the Central and Eastern European people from imperial rule. But while this interpretation applies in the Asian and Caucasian parts of former imperial Russia, it does not in the Polish Kresy, where the “de-colonized” Polish heirs of the vanished empires used practices of colonial rule to control and subdue their ethno-national rivals. This was the tragic result of the transition of Polish nationalism from inclusive to exclusive which had occurred in the nineteenth century, when, with the words of Brian Porter, it “began to hate.”12 In 1823, German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine prophetically depicted the bitter consequences for those who would be counted “out,” by calling it a turn from the concept of “Christian fraternity” to “pagan nationality” (see the epigraph at the start of this Conclusion). As Rogers Brubaker and Kathryn Ciancia have aptly shown, in the early 1920s a core (prevailingly Catholic-Polish) nation attempted to build and dominate a state. This core regarded as legitimate all means that served this goal, including the use of violence and of a restrictive legislation against the state’s minorities.13 This work agrees with this line of thought, but argues that the process of combative nation building—by all sides involved—set in a few years earlier, when the battles for national independence were actually fought with a vengeance, and not after they were settled. The first to bring a colonial attitude to the Kresy following independence were not civil institutions, but the ideologized armies from France and Greater Poland, and the spin-off groups led by radicalized commanders such as Abraham, Jaworski, and Bułak-Bałachowicz. Although in line with the National Democratic circles within the Polish government, they thus antagonized the policy of Józef Piłsudski and the civil administration he installed in the Kresy in order to win over instead of losing its non-Polish population for the project of Polish nation-state building. The ethnically mixed Kresy was the most fiercely embattled turf of Central Europe in the twentieth century, and in this regard probably most comparable to Southeastern Europe’s Kosovo. New structures evolving from the chaos which Central and Eastern Europe had been plunged into by war and revolution needed time to crystallize. Since the armies of the new states were born within this chaos, coordination and control of the large-scale violence entered the scene only at the beginning of the 1920s. But the eastern borderlands did not come to a rest. The new frontier in the Kresy, suddenly dividing territories that had been bound together for centuries, created a whole new profession: bands of smugglers populated the borderlands hither and thither, sometimes clashing in the woods and marshlands with bands of bandits composed of former soldiers and impoverished peasants or with Polish or Bolshevik frontier guards. A young man living in this area could be a carpenter during the day, a smuggler at night, speak Polish with his family, sympathize with the communists, and still visit, like his forefathers, the Orthodox church, just because it might be 12 Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate. 13  Rogers Brubaker, “Nationalizing States in the old ‘New Europe’—and the new,” in Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe, edited by Rogers Brubaker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 79–106, here: 84–103; Ciancia, “Poland’s Wild East.”

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the only one in walking distance and had long been so. Nationality was not a major category in which these people arranged their world. The remoteness of the territory, which lacked almost all infrastructures characterizing a modern state such as railways or paved roads, largely hampered state projects of modernization and ethnicization until the mid-1920s. It is a strange world, a “Wild East,” brilliantly depicted in the novels of former contrabandist Sergiusz Piasecki.14 As has been shown, despite one century of industrious political engineering, the unification of the Polish nation had not been achieved by 1918, and the ensuing fight for the borders did not unite it either, not even when, in 1920, the Polish– Soviet War threatened the country’s mere existence. Instead, the character and course of the national struggle widened the gaps between the different ethnic and political factions of Polish postwar society. The Polish military did not even provide for inter-ethnic solidarity within its own ranks. In December 1919, Lieutenant Colonel Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz, by that time Deputy Inspector General of the Infantry, stated in an internal report that according to him, Jews—who were serving in the Polish Legions from August 1914, and from November 1918 onwards also in the Polish armed forces—as “foreigners” should not be accepted into the Polish Army. If they were, he went on, they would have to sign a separate contract with the Polish government.15 In August 1920, War Minister Kazimierz Sosnkowski had thousands of Jewish soldiers, who were summarily suspected of siding with the Bolsheviks, interned in a special section of the prisoner-of-war camp in the Warsaw suburb Jabłonna.16 Even the diverse veterans’ organizations of the interwar period were divided not only between those who had served in one of the imperial armies and those who had served in genuine Polish formations up to 1918, but even more along ethnic lines.17 In other words: The violent military and paramilitary potential of the Second Polish Republic was domesticized, institutionalized, and instrumentalized in the service of the state. From 1921 onwards, with improving living conditions and the reconstruction of the devastated country, criminality ebbed away, and marauding soldiers and paramilitaries vanished from the territories of the Second Polish Republic. A crucial factor of this demobilization process was the fact that Poland had—apart from its setback in Cieszyn Silesia—emerged victorious from the Central European Civil War. In contrast for example to Weimar Germany, its paramilitary groups had no reason to be disappointed and harbor resentments against their own state. The goals they had set out to fight for in the first place— the erection of a nation state—had been by and large achieved. Only Stanisław 14  Sergiusz Piasecki, Lover of the Great Bear (London: Routledge & Sons, 1938); Sergiusz Piasecki, Piąty etap: [powieść o polskim wywiadzie, pogranicze polsko–sowieckie, lata dwudzieste] (Warsaw: LTW, 2001) (first pub. 1938); Sergiusz Piasecki, Jabłuszko (Warsaw: LTW, 2002) (first pub. 1946); Sergiusz Piasecki, Nikt nie da nam zbawienia (Warsaw: LTW, 2009) (first pub. 1947). 15  Inspectorate General of the Infantry, protocol of the briefing of staff inspection officers of the general districts and the training inspectors at the front commands, Warsaw, December 22, 1919, CAW, I.300.24.17 (not paginated, 11–12 of the document). 16  Christhardt Henschel, “Jabłonna als Erinnerungsikone: Juden in den polnischen Streitkräften 1918–1939,” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 9 (2010): 545–71. 17 Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge, 144–69.

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Bułak-Bałachowicz had to cope with the fact that it was not a Belarusian, but a Polish nation state he found himself in after civil war’s end. Given his rather pragmatic attitude towards ethnicity, this probably cost him little effort. Its armed forces tamed, the country nevertheless did not come to a rest. The inner political strife between right and left and the disputed relations of the Polish titular nation towards its minorities were a constant source of trouble. They even culminated in the political assassination of Poland’s first democratically elected head of state, Gabriel Narutowicz, on December 16, 1922. The moderate ­politician had been Piłsudski’s candidate of choice, replacing his provisionary political leadership during the troubled years of war and paramilitary violence since independence. The preceding week, violent riots had shaken the streets of the capital, since the votes of delegates from the minorities’ block (and of the peasant parties, but that did not incite the public uproar) had tipped the scale for his presidency. The National Democratic Party’s electorate foamed with rage.18 But the assassination had been carried out by a lone perpetrator, a radicalized painter who sympathized with the National Democracy. It was no staged overthrow of the current Polish government with the support of a military or paramilitary force. Nevertheless, further developments proved that the demobilization process had not been completed, and could even be reversed when parts of the armed forces fell out with the legal government. The former legionnaires, although temporarily pacified, were not completely won over for the rules of parliamentary democracy either. Their armed participation in the First World War and the ensuing civil war created amongst the men who had fought together under Piłsudski’s command an elitist consciousness. It was not national, since it failed to bind the nation together. It was undemocratic, since it was not directed towards the “Commander” as a state representative, but as a person, and it does not take a crystal ball to see where this led: The constant governmental crisis, paired with the Endecja’s supremacy in the Sejm, had repelled Piłsudski in 1923 and urged him to retreat to his suburban manor in Sulejów. Later, in May 1926, he returned to the political scene with a vengeance and took state power by a military coup.19 In a way, this was just a repetition of the seizure of Vilnius a few years before, when he had taken by force what he could not take by legal means. His aura did not build the nation, it created an authoritarian military regime, led by him and implemented by his disciples, which lasted until his death in 1935. His regime did not represent the Polish nation.20 Joseph Rothschild stated what was to be expected: While preparing his coup d’état, Piłsudski “had anticipated that the entire army would rally to him, its creator and victorious former chief, and that this cohesion of the military would morally oblige the politicians to yield without fighting. Instead, the army had split between those units, usually commanded by his fellow Legion veterans, that followed him and those that, from political or legal 18  Paul Brykczynski, Primed for Violence: Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016). 19  Antoni Czubiński, Przewrót majowy 1926 roku (Warsaw: Młodzieżowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1989); Andrzej Garlicki, Przewrót majowy (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1987). 20 Hein, Der Piłsudski-Kult, 51–4.

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motives, remained loyal to the constitutional Right-Center government . . . That he, the restorer of the Polish state, the father of its army, the protagonist of a strong presidency, should lead a revolt against the state authorities, sunder the unity of the army, and overthrow a constitutional president—for [President Stanisław] Wojciechowski refused to legitimate the coup by remaining in office— were facts that would haunt Piłsudski for the remaining nine years of his life.”21 Timothy Snyder once wrote that “Piłsudski’s camp won the war against the Bolsheviks, and lost the peace to the National Democrats.”22 That was prior to 1926. One might wonder if for him, the Machiavellian man of action, parliamentarianism had not just been a concept in which he very well believed, but which he would rid himself of if it did not produce the expected result: one Polish state for one united Polish nation. He had done so with socialism; he had done so with federalism; now he had done so with democracy. Although he did not hold office between 1926 and 1935, the Second Republic was so dependent on him that one might have called it no longer the Second, but the Third Republic.23 Many of the independent fighters of 1918–21 ended up in its prisons in the 1930s, the most prominent probably being Wojciech Korfanty, leader of the third Upper Silesian “uprising” and mentor of Upper Silesian autonomy.24 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Second Republic exhibited a colonial attitude towards its minorities. In propagating a “civilizing mission,” border guards, teachers, policemen, national activists, military settlers, bureaucrats, scouts, and ethnographers were sent from Warsaw to the eastern borderlands.25 The German minority in the west also faced a repressive policy steered from the center.26 “Nationalization tendencies,” as Christhardt Henschel and Stephan Stach have concluded, in the institutions of the Second Polish Republic were “far more effective than purely pragmatic thinking, geared towards the well-being of the state and all its citizens . . . The basic assumption, typical of a nationalizing state, that at the end ethnic Poles owned the state and legitimately could decide on its constitution, was generally left untouched.”27 21 Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars, 55. 22  Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 12. 23  Peter Oliver Löw, “Zwillinge zwischen Endecja und Sanacja: Die neue polnische Rechtsregierung und ihre historischen Wurzeln,” Osteuropa 55, no. 11 (2005): 9–20. 24 Lewandowski, Wojciech Korfanty, 171. 25  Wojciech Śleszyński, Andrzej Smolarczyk, and Anna Włodarczyk (eds), Wychować lojalnych obywateli: Polityka oświatowa państwa polskiego na Polesiu (Cracow: Avalon, 2016); Ciancia, “Poland’s Wild East”; Janina Stobniak-Smogorzewska, “Osadnictwo na Wołyniu 1921–1940,” Niepodległość i Pamięć 15, no. 1 (2008): 153–76; Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, “Polacy i ich Wołyń 1921–1939,” ibid.: 125–51; Wojciech Śleszyński, “Wojsko a bezpieczeństwo wewnętrzne na kresach północnowschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej,” Studia i Materiały do Historii Wojskowości 42 (2005): 211–31; Szczepański, Społeczeństwo Polski w walce z najazdem bolszewickim, 453–69. 26 Winson Chu, The German Minority in Interwar Poland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 27 Christhardt Henschel and Stephan Stach, “Nationalisierung und Pragmatismus. Staatliche Institutionen und Minderheiten in Polen 1918–1939,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropaforschung 62, no. 2 (2013): 164–86, quote: 186.

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Although the First World War was the cradle of the Central and Eastern European nation states, its violent outcome, accompanied by material destruction, inward revolution, and outward border clashes, hampered the development of a harmonic postwar order. Just as the land empires fragmented into numerous successor states, these very states were not able to overcome their multifarious ­difficulties and differences. To the contrary: starting as democracies, literally all of them—including moderate Czechoslovakia—until the end of the interwar period had mutated into virtual one-party states under an authoritarian or at least pseudoauthoritarian leadership. Furthermore, the fights over the new state boundaries had turned the new neighbors into fierce enemies from the start, thus preventing the formation of a Central and Eastern European federation tied together by mutual assistance pacts. International treaties in this area before the Second World War were characteristically aimed against, not towards, local ­cooperation, seeking outside assistance from the Western powers or Russia rather than from adjacent states. These developments also slowed economic development at least as much as the severance of former trade and transportation lines by war destruction and hermetic frontiers. It would simply be unfair to blame the interwar states of Central and Eastern Europe alone for this development. On the one hand, much of this outcome was, as has been shown, an immediate result of a disastrous world war these countries’ inhabitants had never pledged for, but under which they had suffered the most. The primacy of the principle of national self-determination, applied by the West to a region which for centuries had been a supranational melting pot, was not a splendid idea either and conflicted with the principles of religious and cultural freedom and minority rights uttered in the same breath.28 Thus, the young democracies of interwar Central and Eastern Europe were precarious entities with an inbound tendency to falter and fragment and an outward tendency to isolate. Under the new assault of the Second World War, it was everyone for themselves again. And the outcome this time was not so much decided by the struggling nation states themselves, but by the world’s Super Powers, which—with devastating consequences for the people affected—agreed to divide the center of the continent once again along new lines and to ensure with expulsions, deportations, and the movement of population that this time, these very lines coincided more with the national demarcations carved out more perceptibly in the fires of combat, occupation, and ethnic cleansing less than a quarter of a century before.

28 For a critical assessment of Wilsonianism and the implementation of the principle of self-determination in the wake of the Great War, see most recently Leonard V. Smith, Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

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Epilogue At the outset of this book, I asked the question “Who is a Pole?,” and the reader might have noticed with growing irritation that throughout its pages I have not really answered it. Frankly, I think that from an academic perspective, this is impossible to do. In my personal view, a Pole is somebody who identifies as a Pole, usually has been born in Poland or brought up by people who were, and has developed a strong feeling towards this country. It does not necessarily have to be love, but for sure it is neither hate nor indifference, it is a feeling which makes one care for the country’s history and fate. I am convinced that nobody else can tell this person that she or he is not a Pole, producing “evidence” such as following the “wrong” religion, political conviction, worldview, or lifestyle, or featuring the “wrong mixture” of blood and genes. I regard such lines of argument as an absurd form of modern paganism. I, myself, am not a Pole. I have not even been raised in a Polish–German contact zone. My borderland is the German–French–Luxembourg trijunction, but since I was seven when our family moved there, I have not one Romance bone in my body. To my own bewilderment, I feel a strong emotional attachment to the Black Forest and to Westphalia where my parents respectively stem from. I never lived there for a long time in a row, but I spent considerable periods of my childhood and youth there, and in both places I have a lot of relatives: aunts, uncles, and cousins. For them, though, I am surely not a “local,” because I do not speak the local dialect, plus I do not know the local history, humor, customs, or cultural codes. A victim of globalization, my earliest memories are inextricably linked to the Ruhr Valley instead, where for the first time in my life I heard the strangesounding Slavic names of the large Polish immigrant community, to the city beach of Accra in Ghana, and first and foremost to Trier with its exceptional architectural amalgamation of antique Roman and German history from ancient to our times. When I visit these places, it feels like coming home. I would say I am a German with a geographical identity problem. After my studies, I lived in Warsaw for ten years, but it somehow feels too late to become part of my personality. It was enough to gather a basic knowledge of Polish and to love the beautiful country where it is spoken, and first and foremost my Warsaw family—but not to become a Pole. My sons, though, are Polish and German, their mother being a proud Varsovian. They speak both languages fluently and love their grandparents from both countries, where they spend a considerable time every year with their families. Tragically, their great-grandfathers fought on opposite sites during the Second World War, but this was a very long time ago. They will learn about it eventually, because it is

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also part of our common family history. It will be harder to tell them—let alone to explain—what Germans generally did to Poles during the occupation of Poland in 1939–45, given the fact that they are descendants of both. Where do our sons belong in times when ethnic nationalism is on the rise again? In the supermarket in Jena in Thuringia where we now live, my wife is told by total strangers to talk German with our kids. In nearby Leipzig, crowds of German ethnic nationalists meet on a weekly basis for demonstrations to “defend” the German nation against “alien” influences. When I then watch the annual transmission of the rallies in Warsaw commemorating the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 on August 1, or the independence of 1918 on November 11, and the dignity of the events is disturbed by radical youth shouting slogans of hate—then I think that ethnic nationalists look and act everywhere just the same, while the real patriotism allows for a wider variety of biographies, beliefs, experiences, and ways of life. I have no better answer.

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Archives Consulted The listed archives have been visited or consulted online during the research for this book. Their record groups (RG) are highly relevant for the presented issues and therefore recommended for further investigation. POLAND Archive of the New Files (Warsaw) RG 8 The Presidium of the Council of Ministers RG 9 Department of the Interior RG 39 Polish National Committee in Paris RG 40 Polish Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference RG 45 Collection of essay and documents on Poland’s relations to Latvia, Lithuania, Soviet Russia, Gdańsk, and Ukraine RG 349 State Police Headquarters in Warsaw Various RGs Files of Local Police Stations Archive of the Polish Academy of Science (Warsaw) RG 4 Diary of Michał Stanisław Kossakowski Central Military Archive (Warsaw) RG I.122.1. Polish Formations in the East RG I.123.1.13 Haller Army RG I.124.1.461 Polish Military Organization RG I.243.18.7 Revolutionary Authorities in Latvia and Belarus RG I.301.7–11 Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Departments I–V RG I.300.12 Staff of War Ministry, Department VI (Justice) RG I.300.51 Military Gendarmerie Command RG I.300.58 War Ministry, Justice Department RG I.301.19 Field Gendarmerie Command RG I.301.21 Military Jurisdiction Command (in the field) RG I.301.22.2 Military Courts RG I.303.3–7 and 9   General Staff, Departments I–V RG I.304.1 Command of the Polish Armed Forces in Eastern Galicia RG I.304.2 Military Governor in Warsaw RG I.304.3 Command of the Armed Forces of Central Lithuania RG I.305.5 State Commissar for the Red Cross RG I.310.1 Galician Front Command RG I.310.2 Galician-Volhynian Front Command RG I.310.3 Lithuanian-Belarusian Front Command RG I.310.4 Mazovian Front Command RG I.310.5 Podolian Front Command RG I.310.6 Polesia Front Command RG I.301.7 Southeastern Front Command RG I.310.8 Southwestern Front Command

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Archives Consulted

RG I.310.10 RG I.310.11 RG I.310.12 RG I.310.14 RG I.310.15 RG I.310.16 RG I.310.17 RG I.310.18 RG I.311.1–7 RG I.330.1–4 and I.332.33–39 RG I.336.1–21 RG I.341.1 RG I.351.1–37 RG I.391.1–58 RG I.440.12.1 RG I. 476.1 RG VIII.807.29

Pomeranian Front Command Northeastern Front Command Northern Front Command Silesian Front Command Middle Front Command Ukrainian Front Command Greater Poland Front Command Volhynian Front Command Army Commands 1–7 Rear Echelons Commands POW Camps Office of Military History Military Justice Paramilitary Units Laudański Files (Teki Laudańskiego) Baczyński Files (Teki Baczyńskiego) Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories

Eastern Archive—KARTA (Warsaw), Digital Library Kamler Family collection National Library of Poland (Warsaw), Microfilm Department Memoirs, diaries, and document collections (including copies from the National Ossoliński Institute) National Ossoliński Institute (Wrocław), Manuscript Department Memoirs, diaries, and document collections (OSS mf. = microfilm consulted on site; BN mf. = microfilm consulted in the National Library of Poland, Warsaw) Polish State Archive (Katowice) RG 12/15/0 Polish Plebiscite Commissariat for Upper Silesia in Bytom, series 1 1.: Supreme People’s Council in Poznań, Bytom Branch Princes Czartoryski Library RG 11738–11740

Diary of Generał Antoni Listowski

Public Library (Warsaw), Manuscript Department Files of the Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories Silesian Digital Library (Katowice), Cieszyn Silesia RG: TR-015 and RG: TR-016 on alleged Czech atrocities in Cieszyn Silesia Warsaw University Library (Warsaw), Manuscript Department RG 1531 Memoirs of Stanisław Stempowski

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201

LITHUANIA Central State Archive (Vilnius) RG 13 Files of the Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories U N I T E D S TAT E S Hoover Institution Library and Archives (Stanford) James A. Stader papers Institute for Jewish Research—YIVO (New York) RG 28 Collection on Poland (Vilna Archives) 1850–1939 RG 116-Poland 1 Territorial Collection, Poland 1919–1939 Józef Piłsudski Institute of America (New York) General Adjutancy of the Supreme Commander Library of Congress (Washington, DC) Henry Morgenthau papers National Archives at College Park (Maryland) RG 256, mf. 224–228 Morgenthau Mission to Poland Files UNITED KINGDOM National Archives/Public Record Office (London) FO 608 Peace Conference, British Delegation WO 106 War Office: Directorate of Military Operations and Military Intelligence, and predecessors: Correspondence and Papers FRANCE Defence Historical Service RG Army General Staff, 5 N 190, 6 N 212, 7 N 618, 7 N 619, 7 N 620

Files on the Formation of the Polish Army in France

GERMANY Herder Institute (Marburg), Collection of Documents RG 120 BR/BLW 021 Diary of Alfred Jaskowski

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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/10/18, SPi

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Travelogue A new book project resembles in more than one way an excursion into uncharted territory. My journey into the early days of Polish independence is no exception. When I look back, it all began with my job interview as research assistant at the Imre Kertész Kolleg of Friedrich Schiller’s place of work, the University of Jena, in May 2010, when the German director, Joachim von Puttkamer, advised me well to look out for topics beyond my old domain of World War II, and when after some brainstorming the idea of writing on a World War I related topic emerged, the Polish director, Włodzimierz Borodziej, hinted at the enormous potential of the period following the armistices. Both became my well-intentioned mentors, and more than once saved me from going astray. Starting my research on post-1918 violence in Central Europe I got more and more confused: Whenever I wanted to close the chapter, a new conflict emerged from the book pages I turned. Then it dawned on me that I was up to something: What had been treated so far rather as a series of bilateral conflicts, in sum made up an encompassing Central European struggle between the heirs of the fallen empires, accompanied by forms of paramilitary ­violence characteristic of civil war. What I needed was more expertise on the subject in a European context. So in March 2011 I flew to Dublin, where, as I had found out, the impertinently young and congenial Robert Gerwarth, director of the Centre for War Studies and editor of Oxford University Press’s “The Greater War” series this book is a part of, together with the sophisticated elder statesman of World War I studies John Horne, was heading a whole research team working on paramilitary violence in the wake of the Great War on a global scale. As Central Europe was still a blind spot, I was welcomed with open arms, plus offered the opportunity to make my first attempts to fly on the pages of the Journal of Contemporary History. Although thanks to the great assistance of Mandy Barke (Herder Institute Marburg), Izabella Janas, and Artur Koczara (German Historical Institute in Warsaw) plus an indefatigable students’ team (Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena) and Brewster Kahle’s San Francisco based Internet Archive (https://archive.org) I was able to order books by a mouse-click, this was still a blind flight. Monographs related to my topic, be it in English or any language of the countries I was studying, all seemed to miss the point. Practically all of them concentrated on the big lines of political, military, and international history, but did not illuminate Central Europe as a realm of experience. I had no evidence from the archives yet on what it meant to live in the contested space that embattled Poland was between 1918 and 1921. To close this gap, I had to track down files which had become the object of the vagaries of Polish history themselves. Warsaw was a good place to start, first and foremost because Joanna and Bogdan Kazimierski, my wonderful parents-in-law, live there, always joyfully looking forward to the next invasion of our little family. Apart from that, the most important record collections in our context are to be found there. Half of the records of the Polish Civil Administration which Józef Piłsudski—head of state and Commander in Chief— installed in 1919–20 in the Eastern Territories had been evacuated to Warsaw by deputy commissioner Jerzy Osmołowski when the Red Army occupied these areas. Prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, he signed them over to the city’s Public Library on Koszykowa Street. Surprisingly Joanna Gierowska-Kałłaur from Warsaw University so far is the only scholar who has worked extensively with these files, which feature among others hundreds of detailed reports on the everyday situation in the towns, cities, and districts of

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232 Travelogue a multi-ethnic area under Polish rule during the Polish–Soviet War. After a hard two years’ struggle with the then library director Michał Strąk, and thanks to Włodzimierz Borodziej’s and Władysław Bartoszewski’s (†) committed intervention, I was at last allowed to take pictures of these invaluable records from the screen of a dusty microfilm reader in the twilight of the premises of the collection of old prints and manuscripts, where time seemed to have come to a standstill half a century before. Tragically, an application for the digitization of the moldering files had been turned down by the National Program for the Development of the Humanities (Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki) in late 2015. Without a shadow of a doubt they belong to the Polish cultural heritage. It is of small comfort that their complementary half—which stayed in the area after the Bolshevik retreat in 1920—is much better preserved and easily accessible in Lithuania’s State Archive in Vilnius. Luckily, the somewhat unpleasant headwind I faced in Koszykowa Street was soon replaced by the gentle breeze caressing Manhattan’s West 16th Street where the small, enchanting Yivo Institute for Jewish Research is placed. Although all prior arrangements seemed to have dematerialized the morning I entered the building, in the course of a single day a nonchalant Leo Greenbaum handed me all the files on anti-Jewish violence in smaller communities of eastern Poland from the Vilnius Archive’s collection on Poland (1850–1939) I needed to see, meticulously prepared by his colleague Gunnar Berg. The private and ­official papers of the first US ambassador to Poland, Hugh Gibson, mirror an outsider’s view on these and other events related to everyday Polish politics between 1919 and 1921, an outstanding source whose value has now been realized by Vivian Reed, who is editing them in Polish and English at the time I am writing these lines and thus will make them available also to people outside the Hoover Institute in Stanford. She showed such generosity to let me co-edit the manuscript before publishing. On the other hand, alas!, she thus deprived me of the opportunity to catch some Californian sun on the way . . . These civil records are complemented by tons of informative files left by the Polish Army—especially military courts—and Andrzej Wesołowski from the Military Archive in Warsaw-Rembertów went beyond his brief to haul them out for me from the depths of the crumbling pre-World War I facility which had not changed much since the days when a young Charles de Gaulle taught classes of military history to the cadets of the young Polish forces in 1919. Returning in 2017, I hardly recognized the completely renovated and extended complex. Two other impressive archive buildings house the files of the French and British military missions operating in Poland from 1918 to 1921: the Château de Vincennes, a medieval fortress on the outskirts of Paris, and the twenty-first-century glass-and-concrete building of the National Archives in London’s suburbs, the fastest and most advanced research facility I’ve ever seen. A comparable architectonical contrast program awaits scholars tracing Henry Morgenthau and his commission which was sent to Poland in 1919 to investigate soldiers’ pogroms against Jews: Morgenthau’s personal diaries and correspondence were presented to me in a box by the distinguished Frederick Augustyn in the classicist ambience of the Library of Congress on Washington DC’s Capitol Hill. From there, a free shuttle bus chauffeured me through the rolling hills of Maryland to something which ­probably most closely resembles the mountain retreat of a James Bond villain, security precautions included. It took me a while to understand that all these busy ants rushing through its floors, equipped with laptops and pocket-size cameras, were not special agents in the service of evil, but historians in the pursuit of documents, taking advantage of the US National Archives’ extremely user-friendly open access policy to their holdings. I joined them joyfully and thus within a day captured the proceedings of the Morgenthau Commission on a flash drive. For military and official state documents on the period 1918–21 stored in the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America in New York (www.pilsudski.org)—founded in 1943 to

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rescue documents on Polish history from Nazi-occupied Poland—the researcher does not even necessarily have to leave their armchair: an impressive amount of them are accessible online. Documents, diaries, and memoirs left by contemporaries from the eastern Polish territories round up the picture, and a vast amount of them was stored before the Second World War in the manuscript department of the Ossolineum in Lviv. After war’s end, Poland had lost Lviv to Soviet Ukraine and inherited Wrocław (previously known as Breslau) from Nazi Germany, to where the Ossolineum was transferred in 1947. Most of the documents relevant to this book can conveniently be studied on microfilm either in the premises of the Ossolineum or of the National Library in Warsaw, and I enjoyed the hospitality of both institutions. The memoirs of civil commissioner Michał Kossakowski on eastern Poland and of the sociologist Stanisław Stempowski on Ukraine can be found only a stone’s throw from each other, the first in the Archives of the Polish Academy of Science, and the other in the manuscript department of the Warsaw University Library. I recommend work on topics related to their holdings: the obliging staff makes the sojourn at both sites a most pleasant experience. The same goes for the Princes Czartoryski Library in Cracow, but World War I amateurs can skip the war diary of General Antoni Listowski, who noted laconically on the period 1914 to 1918 “I went off to war . . . to command a regiment. I’ve described everything in my letters to little Anatol.” So in the summer of 2016, I met Katarzyna Morstin-Surzycka—a distant relative of Listowski—and her husband Marcin where the Polish–German frontier of 1920 once met the Baltic Sea, to find out if the general’s son Anatol had left any more personal papers. Despite our best efforts, we did not succeed in procuring the letters, but our nice acquaintence outlasted its academic cause. While I was gathering material all over the world, I had the opportunity to test my theses with knowledgeable and discerning colleagues such as Winson Chu, Kathryn Ciancia, Paul Hanebrink, James Mace Ward, and the students of the Jena University in the course of ­several seminars. I recovered from the skirmishes in the company of my always supportive friends Daniela Gruber, Diana Joseph, Immo Rebitschek, and Raphael Utz either on the fourteenth floor of Jena’s tallest tower with a marvelous view of the Thuringian hills, or in the Griesbach Garden House in the nearby park, both constituting the site of my job refuge since 2010, the Imre Kertész Kolleg. Reinvigorated, I went out again to present my preliminary findings on several occasions, such as three international conferences at the Universities of Oxford (Faculty of History, October 2013) and Cambridge (Faculty of History, September 2014) and the Historisches Kolleg in Munich (January 2017), at a colloquium of the Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena (June 2015), and at the 47th and 50th Annual Conventions of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (November 2015 in Philadelphia and December 2018 in Boston). Furthermore, many colleagues helped me to organize academic events related to my research, such as Rudolf Kucera and Ota Konrad from the Czech Academy of Science in Prague with a conference “Beyond Defeat and Victory: Physical Violence and the Reconstitution of East-Central Europe, 1914–1923” (September 2015) and Jean-François Nerard from Sorbonne University in Paris with a workshop on “The Ukrainian Experiment: State-Building in Practices (1917–1922)” (December 2017). During my time as Invited Professor at the Paris-based Laboratory of Excellence (LabEx) “Writing a New History of Europe,” research strand 5: “The Europe of Wars and the Traces of War” (September– December 2017), I had the pleasure of enjoying the gentle guidance of Corine Defrance, the diligent a­ssistance of Simon Perego, and the hospitality of the staff of the German Historical Institute. Here, I wrote most of the manuscript, taking extended longboard rides before dawn along the river Seine to my office, thus concluding my seven years’ journey with style.

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234 Travelogue Although thus exiled in Paris, I received enormous help during the writing process by friends and colleagues who critically read parts of the manuscript: Tomas Balkelis, Grzegorz Bębnik, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Jens Boysen, Benjamin Conrad, Grzegorz Gąsior, Robert Gerwarth, Jesse Kaufmann, Andreas Kossert, Stefan Lehnstädt, Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk, Wojciech Pieniazek, Joachim von Puttkamer, Raphael Utz, Theodoer R. Weeks, Arndt Weinrich Stephen Velychenko, and Serhy Yekelchyk. When I despaired over passages in my Polish sources illegible to me, I could always count on my Polish expert team (Polska Załoga), comprised of Marcin Barcz, Grzegorz Bębnik, Łukasz Kamiński, Artur Koczara, Maciej Kordelaśiński, Paweł Kośiński, Dariusz Libionka, Paweł Machcewicz, Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk, Mikołaj Ochmański, Piotr Pązik, Adam Puławski, and Rafał Wnuk. When I urgently needed a break from writing all around the clock, I hopped onto a train and visited my beloved parents Marga and Alois Böhler in Trier, enjoying for a couple of days the atmosphere of their suburban paradise. All along, Robert Gerwarth has watched my feverish mission with angelic patience and an ironic smile which only partially concealed the editor’s growing anxiety. It is only owing to his and the Oxford University Press team’s—Robert Faber, Andrew Hawkey, Stephanie Ireland, Monica Kendall, Kavya Ramu, Isabel Lopez Ruiz, Cathryn Steele, and the anonymous reader—benevolence and perfect performance that all my findings finally found their way between the two covers of this book and even face a Polish edition now, made possible by Natalia Gwaron and all the others of the ZNAK publishing house’s history team headed by Maciej Gablankowski in Cracow, translated by Robert Sudoł. Several co-edited volumes are complementing the picture of Central and Eastern Europe at war’s end (some of them to be found in my Works Cited), and they have all been prepared during the last years in the calm of the Imre Kertész Kolleg and under the protection, direction, and active participation of Joachim von Puttkamer, Włodzimierz Borodziej, and Michal Kopeček. It was—and is—a pleasure and a great experience to work with them on these projects. I for my part will settle down for a while. During my frequent mental and ­physical absences, my wife and sons—supported by an army of grannies and nannies—showed more endurance than many a veteran of the First World War. Dedicating this book to them is hardly compensation. I am deeply indebted to them, as I am to my fellow travellers. Thank you all for being with me on this trip, from the bottom of my heart! Jochen Böhler

Jena/Warsaw, May 2018

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Glossary Ataman Armies—armed paramilitary formations which became major players in embattled Ukraine and in the Russian Civil War. They were commanded by charismatic leaders (called Ataman, the Cossack word for ‘commander’). Since the majority of their soldiers were peasants, they are often also referred to as Peasant Armies. Belweder camp—common designation for Józef Piłsudski and his followers after his nomination as head of state in November 1918, which made the Belweder Palace in Warsaw his permanent residence. Endecja—stands for National Democracy (derived from its abbreviation ND), the Polish right-wing movement led by Roman Dmowski. Fememorde—murders of political opponents and ‘traitors’ by the Freikorps in Upper Silesia. Freikorps (Free Corps)—Paramilitary units consisting mainly of war veterans and fanaticized youths which engaged in the post-1918 German border struggles in Greater Poland, Upper Silesia, and the Baltic. Entente—French word for ‘understanding’, synonym for the Western Allies, the coalition opposed to the Central Powers during the First World War. In a broader sense also summarily used for the ‘Big Four’, the major Western powers which, in war’s wake, negotiated the peace terms and the European postwar order in Paris: Great Britain, France, the United States, and Italy. Hetmanate—Cossack word for ‘military leadership’, here primarily indicating the government of Pavlo Skoropadskyi in Ukraine in 1918. Kresy—Polish word for ‘borderland’, identifying the former eastern borderlands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which in 1918 featured a mixed population of Lithuanians, Belarusians, Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, and others. Kulturkampf—German word which translates as ‘Culture Struggle’. Conflict between the German Empire under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck on the one side, and the Catholic Church and the Vatican on the other, in the 1870s and the first half of the 1880s. Ober Ost—German acronym for the ‘Supreme Command of All German Forces in the East’, the German occupation force in the northern Kresy from 1915 to 1918. Sejm—Polish parliament in the Second Polish Republic (as well as in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth). The word is probably derived from an old form of the Lithuanian word suėjimas for ‘gathering, meeting’. Tutejsi—Polish word for ‘locals’ (which exists as well in variations in the Lithuanian, Belarusian, Latvian, and Ukrainian languages), short for inhabitants of the Kresy. Uhlans—Polish light cavalry, whose tradition dates back to the seventeenth century. The word stems from the Tatar language and was brought to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by Tatars who settled down there in the fourteenth century.

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Index Since they are the topic of whole chapters or sub-chapters of the book, this index does not feature the Central European Civil War, the Polish–Soviet War, and Poland’s paramilitary conflicts with its Ukrainian, Lithuanian, German, and Czech neighbors. Due to its frequent occurrence, the Second Polish Republic appears mainly as geographical entity or political concept. When used as acronym of the Polish political or military leadership, it has (as have in this case ‘Poland’, ‘the Poles’, or ‘Warsaw’) been omitted. The other states involved in the Central European Civil War are treated analogously. Abraham, Roman  146, 166–70, 172, 186, 191 Albanians in Yugoslavia  27 Allied armed formations and military institutions Allied forces in Cieszyn Silesia  118 Allied forces in Upper Silesia  108–9, 111, 113 Allied intervention forces in Russia  61, 123, 124 Anderson, Benedict  23 Armenians in the Polish Legions  41 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  24 Armitage, David  62 Asia central Asia  46 Asia Minor  31 diseases in the wake of the First World War 30 Ataman Armies  9, 74–5, see also Russian armed formations and military institutions: Peasant Armies and Ukrainian armed formations and military institutions: Peasant Armies alienating the population in eastern Ukraine 75 in the Kresy 172 Austria armed formations and military institutions see Austrian armed formations and military institutions and ­Austro-Hungarian armed formations and military institutions First Austrian Republic  121, 160 Habsburg Empire  4, 17, 20, 42, 46, 48, 67–8, 115, 118, 138, 149, 195 Austria–Hungary see Austria: Habsburg Empire Austrian armed formations and military institutions paramilitaries in the First Austrian Republic 70 Austrians in the Habsburg Army  46, 48 in the Polish Army  54

Austro-Hungarian armed formations and military institutions garrison of Lviv  100 General Government of Lublin  25, 50, 53, 64, 138 Habsburg Army  39–40, 75, 139, 152 Habsburg Army (disintegration)  50, 69 Habsburg Army (ethnic composition)  46–7, 54 Habsburg Army (supply problems)  51 Austro-Prussian War (1866)  18 Babel, Isaac  136 Baczyński, Karol  78, 168–9 Balfour, Arthur James  150 Balkan armed formations and military institutions see also Yugoslav armed formations and military institutions Green Cadres  69–70, 159 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization 69–70 Balkan Wars (1912–13)  64 Balkans  17, 20, 30, 51, 66–70, 124 Bałos, Ludwik  vii Baltic  20, 51, 66, 69, 98, 122–5, 172 anti-Jewish violence  160 Bardauskas (Pol. Bardowski), Edmundas  90 Barth, Boris  104 Barysaw (Pol. Borysów) 153 Basques 96 Battle of Annaberg (1921)  109, 112 Battle of Grunwald (1410)  100 Battle of Langemarck (1914)  106 Battle of Warsaw (1920)  vii, 11, 53, 56, 90, 109, 120, 122–3, 128, 134–7, 143, 156, 181 Będzin district  163 Belarus  5, 24, 52, 86–7, 129, 154, 165, 174, 184 armed formations and military institutions see Belarusian armed formations and military institutions Belarusian People’s Republic  172 Belarusian Republic  174 nation state building  124, 128, 172, 174, 193 nationalists 61 peasants 21

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238 Index Belarusian armed formations and military institutions Self-Defense 85 Belarusians 30 in Lithuania  88 in Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  172 in the Kresy  29, 126, 129–30, 143, 153 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  24, 87 in the Russian Western Territory  21 in Vilnius  83–4, 87 Belgium atrocities of German soldiers  66, 190 Belweder camp see Poland: Belweder camp Benedict XV, Pope  180 Bergerhoff, Karl  109 Berlin  98, 102 Berżniki (Lit. Berznykas) 71 Bessarabia see Romania: Bessarabia Bienek, Horst  96 Bilczewski, Józef  79 Bismarck, Otto von  105 Bjork, James E.  109 Black Americans in North America  31, 161 Bobiaczyński, Major  86 Bobrujsk (Bel. Babruı ̆sk) 152–3 Bohemia see Czechoslovakia: Bohemia Bohumín (Pol. Bogumin) 117 Borkowska, Grażyna  154 Borodziej, Włodzimierz  2 Borzęcki, Jerzy  128, 181–2 Bosch, Hieronymus  151 Bosnia see Yugoslavia: Bosnia Bosniaks in Yugoslavia  27 Brest-Litovsk (Pol. Brześć Litewski) 153 Broniewski, Władysław  171 Brubaker, Rogers  191 Brzeżany (Ukr. Berezhany) 146 Buczacz (Ukr. Buchach) 154 Budyonny, Semyon  136 Bukovina see Romania: Bukovina Bułak-Bałachowicz, Stanisław  171–4, 186, 191, 193 Bulgaria Republic of Bulgaria  28, 67–9 Republic of Bulgaria (population)  28 Bulgarians in the Republic of Bulgaria  28 Caesar, Gaius Julius  63, 187 Caldron, Edward D.  157 Central and Eastern Europe between the World Wars  16, 195 casualties of the First World War  149 Central Powers’ rule in (1918)  43, 45, 50–1, 57, 73, 85, 101 de-colonization  62, 191

desertion  9, 48, 50, 190 diseases in the wake of the First World War 150 Eastern Front  45, 50–1, 57, 59, 64, 91, 163 First World War  14, 19 imperial rule in  15, 17–19, 51, 59, 190 large estate landholding  18 marauding soldiers  190 marauding soldiers and paramilitaries  8–9, 70 minorities  28, 32, 69 modernity  18, 22 nation state building  14–15, 17–19, 27, 29, 31, 57, 59–60, 124, 190, 195 nation states  16 nations 14 nineteenth century  14, 17–18 postwar conflicts  15, 59–60, 66, 68, 122, 164, 188–91, 195 property losses in the wake of the First World War  151 Second World War  195 socialism 18–19 wartime destruction  195 Central Europe  26 imperial rule in  16, 25, 26 minorities 61 nation state building  16, 24 nation states  7, 14–15, 17, 19 nationalists  14, 16 nations 16 nineteenth century  20 peasants  15, 24 Polish hegemony in  5, 26 postwar conflicts  60, 63, 65, 102, 148, 160, 177, 187 urban elites  24 Central Powers  4, 25, 41–4, 76–7, 85, 97, 100, 107, 124, 128, 138 Chełm province  76 Chernev, Borislav  128 Chernobyl (Ukr. Chornóbyl’ ) 172 Chicago 161 Chorzów (Germ. Königshütte) 95 Churchill, Winston  188 Chyrów (Ukr. Khyriv) 61 Ciancia, Kathryn  191 Cicero (M. Tullius Cicero)  1 Cieszyn (Czech Těšín)  115–18, 120, 141 Cieszyn Silesia see Poland: Cieszyn Silesia Congress of Vienna (1814–15)  16, 18, 20, 34–5 Corcyraeans in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bc) 63 Cossacks  73–5, 156 Don Republic  75 in Congress Poland  35 in Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  172 Cracow (Pol. Kraków, Germ. Krakau) 20, 40, 44, 87, 100, 123, 138–41, 144, 161, 180

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Index Cracow district  54, 142, 164, 166 Crimean War (1853–6)  18 Croatia see Yugoslavia: Croatia Croats in the eastern Adriatic  68 in the Habsburg Army  27 in Yugoslavia  27–8 Cyganówka (Ukr. Tsyganivka) 170 Czaczka-Ruciński, Wacław  117 Czarnecki, Stefan  162 Czarnyszewicz, Florian  152 Czartoryski, Witold  139 Czechoslovak armed formations and military institutions Chechoslovak Army  66, 117 Civic Guard  119 Czech High Command  117 Czechoslovak Army  118, 129 garrison of Bohumín  117 Gendarmerie 119 in Slovakia  66 paramilitaries in Cieszyn Silesia  119–20 Twenty-First Rifle Regiment  118–19 Czechoslovakia armed formations and military institutions see Czechoslovak armed formations and military institutions atrocities in the wake of the First World War 188 Bohemia  115–16, 121 casualties of the Polish–Czechoslovak conflict  117, 188–9 casualties of the postwar conflicts  188 First Czechoslovak Republic  28, 54, 60, 64, 66–9, 96, 116, 120, 195 First Czechoslovak Republic (population)  27–8, 31 Karviná coal mine district  117, 120 nation state building  28, 96, 116 National Committee for Silesia  116–17, 141 nationalists 119 Slovakia  66, 121 Czechs 2 Czech refugees  118 Czech soldiers and civilians interned by Polish authorities  118 in Cieszyn Silesia  115, 118 in the First Czechoslovak Republic  28 in the Habsburg Army  46, 48 in Yugoslavia  27 Częstochowa 160 D’Annunzio, Gabriele  69 Dąbrowska, Maria  2, 156 Dalmatia see Yugoslavia: Dalmatia Dalmatians in the Habsburg Army  46 Danes in the Imperial German Army  46

239

Danzig (Pol. Gdańsk) 54 Darwinism  3, 25 Daszyński, Ignacy  135 Daudenarde, Second Lieutenant  184 Daugavpils (Pol. Dyneburg) 153 Davies, Norman  126, 144, 188 Denikin, Anton  76 Diner, Dan  66 Djordjevic, Dimitrije  27 Długajczyk, Edward  120 Dmowski, Roman  3–4, 6, 25–7, 29–30, 35, 39, 42–3, 57, 71, 97, 100, 106, 114, 122, 131, 138, 140, 142–4, 160, 177, 179 Dowbor-Muśnicki, Józef  5, 43, 54, 56–7, 91, 102–3, 140, 142, 179–81 Duczański, Private  133 Dunin-Borkowska Hornowska, Łucja  47 East Prussia see Germany: East Prussia Eichenberg, Julia  49, 78, 158 Endecja see Poland: National Democracy (Endecja) Engels, Friedrich  124 England postwar conflicts  8 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland  8, 31, 124, 195 Enlightenment 15 Entente see Western Allies Estonia armed formations and military institutions see Estonian armed formations and military institutions nation state building  172 nationalists  61, 125 Republic of Estonia  28, 125, 172–3 Republic of Estonia (population)  28 Estonian armed formations and military institutions Estonian Army  122, 125 paramilitaries in the Republic of Estonia  70 Estonians in the Republic of Estonia  28 Europe diseases in the wake of the First World War 51 eighteenth century  2 imperial rule in  148 modernity 30 nation state building  15–16, 31, 148, 187 nineteenth century  3, 16 postwar conflicts  8, 12, 60 Faska, Jan  95, 111–12, 175–6 Finns in Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  172 Fiume 69 Fourteen Points (of US President Woodrow Wilson)  25, 61, 103

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240 Index France armed formations and military institutions see French armed formations and military institutions atrocities of German soldiers  66, 190 Foreign Ministry  142 French Republic  3, 31, 36, 43–4, 51, 54, 80, 91, 95, 102, 108–9, 111, 118–19, 122, 124, 140, 142, 144, 154, 156–7, 179–80, 195 French Revolution (1789–99)  15 French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802)  62 Kingdom of France  15 French in the Polish Army  54 French armed formations and military institutions French Army  109 French military mission in Vilnius  92 Galicia (Austrian province) see Poland: Galicia (Austrian province) Galicia, eastern see Poland: eastern Galicia Gatrell, Peter  8, 60–1 German armed formations and military institutions Black Horde  109 Border Guard (in Upper Silesia)  102, 107–8 Border Guard (in the Rawicz district)  95 Freikorps  67, 96, 102, 104, 185–6, 192 Freikorps (in Greater Poland)  101–4, 175 Freikorps (in the Baltic)  103, 109, 122, 125, 172–3 Freikorps (in Upper Silesia)  107–11, 120, 175, 185 Freikorps Oberland  112 garrison of Warsaw  52 General Government of Warsaw  25, 50, 52–3, 64, 84, 138, 182 German Eastern Army (Ostheer)  51–2, 75, 85–6, 101, 125–6, 152, 153 German High Command  104, 112 Imperial German Army (disintegration)  50–1, 96, 137 Imperial German Army (distribution system) 46 Imperial German Army (ethnic composition)  47, 54 Imperial German Army (in Belgium and France)  66, 190 Imperial German Army (in Cameroon)  66 Imperial German Army (supply problems) 51 paramilitaries in the Weimar Republic  70 paramilitaries in Upper Silesia  95, 109–11 Prussian Fifth Army Corps  98 Reichswehr  100–1, 107–9, 182 Reichswehr (supporting German paramilitaries in Upper Silesia)  111 Shock Troops  109

Sicherheitspolizei 108–9 soldiers and paramilitaries in Greater Poland  122, 141 Special Police  109–10, 176 Supreme Army Command  101 Supreme Command of All German Forces in the East (Ober Ost)  25, 64–5, 84–5, 138, 182 Teutonic Order  100 Upper Silesian Self-Defense  109, 112 Wehrmacht  117, 186 Germans 2 anti-German violence by Nestor Makhno’s Peasant Army  161 defecting to the Polish side in Upper Silesia  95, 176 German Mennonites in Ukraine  76 German mine owners in Upper Silesia  106 German veterans of the First World War  96, 101, 109, 125 in Cieszyn Silesia  115 in Czechoslovakia  66 in Estonia  125 in Greater Poland  19, 34, 49, 99–100, 105, 107, 143, 176, 194 in Latvia  125 in the Baltic  125 in the First Czechoslovak Republic  28 in the German Empire  16 in the Habsburg Army  46 in the Habsburg Empire  16 in the Imperial German Army  50 in the Kingdom of Hungary (1920–46)  28 in the Kresy 126 in the Polish Army  54 in the Polish Legions  41 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  24 in the Russian Western Territory  21 in the Second Polish Republic  27 in Upper Silesia  96, 104, 143, 176, 194 in Yugoslavia  27 Germany armed formations and military institutions see German armed formations and military institutions atrocities in the wake of the First World War 188 casualties of the Polish–German conflict in Greater Poland  102, 113 casualties of the Polish–German conflict in Upper Silesia  110, 113 casualties of the Polish–German conflicts 189 Center Party  105 desertion  49, 98, 101 East Prussia  114 German Empire  4, 17, 20–1, 42, 47, 96, 106, 108, 112, 114, 138, 144, 154, 182, 195

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Index German People’s Councils  99, 107 League of Patriotic Upper Silesians  107 Mazuria 114 nation 102 nation state  17 nation state building  21, 56, 96, 99, 105–6 nationalists  105, 107, 110, 115 Silesia 115 socialists 98–9 terrorism by soldiers of the Freikorps  186 Third Reich  133, 186, 195 Warmia 114 Weimar Republic  54, 60, 66, 96, 98, 101, 106–7, 109–12, 114–15, 121, 124, 144, 160, 176, 186, 192 West Prussia  97–8, 103 workers  99, 101, 106 Gibson, Hugh  59, 161 Giedroyć, Jerzy  163 Głupek (militia commander in Upper Silesia) 112 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von  104 Goltz, Rüdiger von der  125 Goodhard, Artur Lehman  64, 147 Gosewinkel, Dieter  31 Grabski, Stanisław  121 Gratier, Jules  108 Greater Poland see Poland: Greater Poland Greece Ancient Greece  63 Hellenic Republic  8, 63, 68–9, 149 Peloponnesian War (431–404 bc) 62–3 postwar conflicts  8 Greeks Greek refugees  30 in the Republic of Turkey  30 Greek–Turkish War (1919–22)  30 Grodno (Bel. Hrodna) 153 Grużewski, Tadeusz  33 Grzechynia vii Gypsies in the Habsburg Army  46 in Yugoslavia  27 Habsburg Empire see Austria: Habsburg Empire Hagen, William  157, 178 Haller, Józef  5, 39, 44, 53–4, 56, 91, 132, 161–2, 164–5, 179–80 Handelsman, Marceli  71, 92 Hauenstein, Heinz Oskar  110, 176 Heine, Heinrich  187, 191 Henschel, Christhardt  194 Hetherington, Peter  36, 38 Holeček, Josef  66 Hoover, Herbert  65 Hórak, Jan  118 Hörsing, Otto  95, 108 Hrubieszów (Ukr. Hrubeshiv)  133, 136

241

Hulewicz, Bogdan  99 Hulewicz, Jerzy  143 Hülsen, Bernhard von  112 Hungarian armed formations and military institutions Hungarian Red Army  66 paramilitaries in the Hungarian Republic (1919–20) 70 paramilitaries in the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919)  70 White Guards  67 Hungarians in Czechoslovakia  66 in the Habsburg Army  46 in the Polish Army  54 in the Polish Legions  41 Hungary 67 armed formations and military institutions see Hungarian armed formations and military institutions and Austro–Hungarian armed formations and military institutions atrocities against the Romanian Moţi minority 68 First Hungarian Republic (1918–19)  67, 69 Hungarian Republic (1919–20)  66–7, 69, 160 Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919)  66–9, 120 Kingdom of Hungary (1920–46)  28 Kingdom of Hungary (1920–46) (population) 28 nation state building  67 Transdanubia 67 Huyn, Karl  139 Indians in North America  31 Ireland 96 Republic of Ireland  66, 110 Italian armed formations and military institutions Italian Army  68–9, 109 Italians in the eastern Adriatic  68 in Yugoslavia  68 Italy casualties of the Polish–German conflict in Upper Silesia  111 Free State of Fiume  69 Kingdom of Italy  31, 66, 68–9, 154, 160 Roman Civil Wars (133–30 bc)  62, 63 Roman Republic  63 Jabłonna 192 Jablunkov (Pol. Jabłunków) 117–18 Jadwin, Edgar  147 Jakubski, Antoni  169 Jaworski, Feliks  2, 170–2, 186, 191

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242 Index Jewish armed formations and military institutions Self-Defense (in Lviv)  77, 167 self-defense in the Kresy 160 Jews  2, 140, 159 allegedly shooting at Polish soldiers  160, 167, 177–8 allegedly siding with the Bolsheviks 177–80, 192 allegedly siding with the Ukrainians  168 anti-Jewish pogroms in Central and Eastern Europe 159 anti-Jewish violence in Austria  160 anti-Jewish violence in Central and Eastern Europe 159 anti-Jewish violence in Croatia  160 anti-Jewish violence in eastern and central Poland 10 anti-Jewish violence in Germany  160 anti-Jewish violence in Hungary  160 anti-Jewish violence in Italy  160 anti-Jewish violence in Poland  157, 160 anti-Jewish violence in Romania  160 anti-Jewish violence by Ataman Army soldiers in Ukraine  159 anti-Jewish violence by civilians in Wieluń 166 anti-Jewish violence by Green Cadres  159 anti-Jewish violence by members of the military police in Warsaw  178 anti-Jewish violence by Polish peasants  157 anti-Jewish violence by Polish soldiers  9, 10, 153, 159–65, 178, 180–1 anti-Jewish violence by Polish soldiers in Pinsk 180 anti-Jewish violence by Polish soldiers in the Kresy  126, 130, 163–4, 177–8 anti-Jewish violence by Polish soldiers in Upper Silesia  163 anti-Jewish violence by Polish soldiers and civilians  160, 162, 178 anti-Jewish violence by Polish soldiers and paramilitaries 183 anti-Jewish violence by Polish soldiers and peasants 189 anti-Jewish violence by Red Army soldiers 75 anti-Jewish violence by Red Army soldiers in the Kresy 126 anti-Jewish violence by Red Army soldiers in Ukraine 159 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of Feliks Jaworski’s mounted unit in Volhynia 171 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of Roman Abraham’s unit  166 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of Roman Abraham’s unit in Lviv  167 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  184

anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit in the Kresy 174 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of the Army of Greater Poland  179, 184 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of the Army of Greater Poland in Siedlce  183 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of the Army of Greater Poland in the Kresy 180, 181 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of the Haller Army  162, 179, 182 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of the Haller Army in Cracow  161, 180 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of the Haller Army in Olkusz  163 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of the Nineteenth Infantry Regiment for the Relief of Lviv in Ukraine  9 anti-Jewish violence by soldiers of the Sixteenth Cavalry Regiment from Greater Poland in Zawada  162 anti-Jewish violence by White Army soldiers in Ukraine  159 anti-Jewish violence, local police forces as protectors in Wieluń  166 anti-Jewish violence, Polish soldiers as protectors in Olkusz  163 anti-Jewish violence, Polish soldiers as protectors in Zawada  162 anti-Jewish violence, soldiers of the Army of Greater Poland as protectors in Włodawa 184 anti-Jewish violence, soldiers of the local garrison as protectors in Wieluń  166 anti-Jewish violence, soldiers of the Ninth Legions’ Infantry Regiment as protectors in Zawada  162 anti-Semitism in Germany  182 anti-Semitism in Poland  6, 130, 160–1, 163, 177–9, 182 anti-Semitism in Stanisław BułakBałachowicz’s unit  174 anti-Semitism in the Haller Army  182 anti-Semitism in the Polish Army  163, 179, 180–1, 184 casualties in pogroms in Ukraine  75, 189 casualties of the White Terror in Hungary (1919–20) 67 during the Second World War  156 Holocaust 164 in Congress Poland  34 in Cracow  180 in Czechoslovakia  66 in eastern Galicia  169 in Galicia (Austrian province)  22, 34 in Greater Poland  21, 99 in Lviv  77, 167, 168 in Minsk  147, 184 in Poland  6, 132, 154 in Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  172

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Index in the Habsburg Army  46 in the Hungarian Republic (1919–20)  67 in the Kresy  29, 126, 130, 143, 152–3, 182 in the Pale of Settlement  71 in the Polish Army  54, 192 in the Polish Legions  41, 192 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  24 in the Republic of Lithuania  28 in the Russian Western Territory  21, 34 in the Second Polish Republic  26–7, 35 in Ukraine  95 in Vilnius  83–4 in Wieluń  166 in Włodawa  184 Jewish refugees  31, 150, 165 Jewish soldiers interned by Polish authorities 192 Jewish veterans of the First World War (in Poland) 192 Jewish workers in Vilnius  84 National Club of Jewish Members of Parliament (in Warsaw)  162 pogrom in Częstochowa (1919)  160 pogrom in Kielce (1918)  160 pogrom in Lida (1919)  160 pogrom in Lviv (1918)  77, 89, 160, 167–8, 178 pogrom in Minsk (1919)  147, 184 pogrom in Pinsk (1919)  160, 180 pogrom in Vilnius (1919)  160 pogroms in Central and Eastern Europe  159, 164 pogroms in Poland  157, 160, 177–9, 189 pogroms in the Kresy 177 pogroms in Ukraine  75, 161, 177, 189 supporting the Polish Army  132 volunteering for service in the Polish Army 132 Kamianets-Podilskyi 81 Kamieński, Antoni  37 Kamler, Amelia  122 Kamler, Leopold  122 Kaprzycki, Tadeusz  40 Katowice (Germ. Kattowitz) 105 Kaunas (Pol. Kowno)  21, 85, 88–90, 92–4, 153 Kharkiv 75–6 Kielce (Russ. Kel’ce)  40, 47, 133, 160, 164, 183 Kielce district  132, 142, 164, 166 Kieniewicz, Stefan  23, 34 Kiev (Ukr. Kyїv, Pol. Kijów)  22, 73, 75–6, 82, 127, 129, 143 Kirkor-Kiedroniowa, Zofia  116 Koch, Hannsjoachim  176 Konarzewski, Daniel  147 Korfanty, Wojciech  96, 105–7, 109, 112, 141, 169, 194 Kościuszko, Tadeusz  187 Kosovo see Yugoslavia: Kosovo

243

Kossak-Szczucka, Zofia  156, 170, 171 Kozienice 134 Kozma, Miklós  67 Kresy see Poland: Kresy Kulczuga, Bolek  133 Kulturkampf 105 Kun, Béla  66–7 Laidoner, Johan  173 Lamezan-Salins, Robert  169 Łask district  14 Latinik, Franciszek  118 Latra, Private  135 Latvia (casualties of ) atrocities of the Freikorps  126 (casualties of ) atrocities of the German Freikorps 125–6 (casualties of ) atrocities of the Red Army 125–6 armed formations and military institutions see Latvian armed formations and military institutions Bolsheviks 125 nation state building  172 nationalists  61, 125 Republic of Latvia  28, 125 Republic of Latvia (population)  28 Latvian armed formations and military institutions Latvian Army  122, 125 paramilitaries in the Republic of Latvia  70 Latvians 2 in Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  172 in the Polish Legions  41 in the Republic of Latvia  28 in the Russian Western Territory  21 Laudański, Stanisław  178–9 Lausanne 26 Le Bon, Gustave  14 League of Nations  32, 150 Leipzig 111 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich  64, 124, 127 Leonas, Petras  85 Levene, Mark  160 Lichtenstaedter, Siegfried (alias Dr. Mehemed Emin Effendi)  30 Lida (Lit. Lyda) 160 Lis-Błoński, Stanisław  174 Listowski, Antoni  180 Lithuania  24, 52, 83, 86–9, 94, 96, 154 armed formations and military institutions see Lithuanian armed formations and military institutions as part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 86 atrocities in the wake of the First World War 188 casualties of the Polish–Lithuanian conflict  95, 188, 189 casualties of the postwar conflicts  188

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244 Index Lithuania (cont.) Council (later State Council) of Lithuania (1917–18) 85 Duchy of Lithuania  89 First World War  84 Great Diet of Vilnius  84 nation state building  86, 93, 172 nationalists  61, 86, 88, 125 peasants  21, 71, 87 Provisional Lithuanian Committee for Vilnius 89 Republic of Central Lithuania  92, 93 Republic of Lithuania  27, 28, 60, 85–6, 88, 93, 124–5, 165 Republic of Lithuania (population)  28 Social Democrats  84 socialists 84 Lithuanian armed formations and military institutions garrison of Sejny  90 Lithuanian Army  122, 125 Lithuanian Army (formation)  85 paramilitaries in the Republic of Lithuania 70 Self-Defense (in the Kresy) 85 Self-Defense (in Vilnius)  86 Lithuanians  2, 30, 86, 88, 94 in Lithuania  88 in partition times  92 in the Imperial Russian Army  85 in the Kresy  29, 126, 129, 143, 153 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  24, 87 in the Republic of Lithuania  28 in the Russian Western Territory  21 in Vilnius  83–4, 86–7 Lloyd George, David  188 Łódź  36, 57 Łódź district  164 Łomża 87 London  111, 155 Louis XIV, King of France  15 Lublin  139, 140, 162, 170 Lublin district  142, 164 Ludendorff, Erich  101 Lutsk (Pol. Łuck, Ukr. Luts’k) district 153 Luxemburg, Rosa  35 Lviv (Pol. Lwów, Ukr. L’viv)  vii, 10, 53, 70, 77–80, 82–3, 89, 100, 127, 129–30, 139–40, 146, 154, 158, 160, 165–9, 178, 183–4, 186 Lviv district  164 Macedonia see Yugoslavia: Macedonia Machnicki, Stanisław  112 Maciejewski, Jerzy Konrad  9, 146 Mackiewicz, Stanisław  27 Magdeburg  42–3, 52, 121, 140

Magyars in the Kingdom of Hungary (1920–46)  28 in the Kingdom of Romania  28 in Yugoslavia  27 Makhno, Nestor  161 Markusfeld, Jakób  162 Marx, Karl  124 Maryański, Walery  70 Mazovia see Poland: Mazovia Mazuria see Germany: Mazuria Mazurians 114 in the Imperial German Army  48 Mazurkiewicz 41 Mazyr (Pol. Mozyrz)  153, 174 Mick, Christoph  59, 79 Micka, M., Captain  117 Mickiewicz, Adam  87 Mieszkowski, Łukasz  150 Minority Treaties (1919)  31, 32 Minsk (Pol. Mińsk) 147 Molenda, Jan  34, 50, 58 Montenegrins in Yugoslavia  27 Morgenthau Commission  147, 161, 177 Morgenthau, Henry  177–8 Moscow 174 Murmansk 44 Mysłowice (Germ. Myslowitz) 108 Napoleon I, Emperor of the French  16, 20 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)  20, 36 Narutewicz, Gabriel  193 Newman, John Paul  67, 70 Nicholas, Grand Duke  42 Niedzielski, Jan  161 North America  31 American Relief Administration  65, 151 American Revolution (1763–76)  15 race riots in Washington and Chicago  161 United States of America  25, 31, 44, 51, 100, 161, 182, 195 North Americans in the Haller Army  182 in the Polish Army  54 Noske, Gustav  95 Obruchev, Nikolai  22 Oestreicher, Ludwig  112 Ogrodniki (Lit. Aradnykai) 71 Olkusz 163–4 Orava (Pol. Orawa)  118, 120 Osiński, Aleksander  158 Ossowski, Stanisław  34 Osterhammel, Jürgen  17 Ostrava (Pol. Ostrawa)  116, 118 Ostrowiec (Russ. Ostrovets) 133 Paderewski, Ignacy  99, 100, 114, 141–3, 179 Paluch, Mieczysław  99

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Index Paris  5–6, 26, 30–1, 43, 69, 87, 97, 100, 106, 120–1, 123, 138–2, 177, 179–80 Paris Peace Conference (1919)  26, 31, 101, 144 Payne, Stanley G.  60–1 Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (with Soviet Russia, 1918)  43–4, 57, 128 Peace Treaty of Riga (1920)  64, 125, 128, 174, 186 Peace Treaty of Tartu (1920)  125 Peace Treaty of Versailles (1919)  103, 104, 121 People’s Councils, German see Germany: German People’s Councils Perlik, Private  135 Petliura, Symon  74, 82, 126–7, 155, 172 Petrograd see St. Petersburg Petzel, Captain  95 Philipp II, King of Spain  15 Piasecki, Sergiusz  192 Pieniazek, Wojciech  110 Pietrzak, Henryk  71 Piłsudski, Józef  3–6, 24–7, 33, 35–6, 38–44, 52–3, 55–7, 64, 71, 78, 86–94, 97, 100, 107, 117, 121–2, 127–9, 131, 138–40, 142–4, 152, 155, 158, 165, 172–3, 178–81, 183–4, 193–4 Pinsk (Pol. Pińsk)  130, 153, 160, 180 Piotrowski, M. Z.  122 Pobóg-Malinowski, Władysław  130 Podlachia see Poland: Podlachia Podolia see Poland: Podolia Poland  2, 24, 57, 87, 156 armed formations and military institutions see Polish armed formations and military institutions atrocities in the wake of the First World War 188 atrocities of Polish soldiers and paramilitaries 183 atrocities of Red Army soldiers in the Kresy 171 atrocities of soldiers of Feliks Jaworski’s mounted unit in the Kresy 171 atrocities of soldiers of Roman Abraham’s unit in Lviv  167 atrocities of soldiers of Stanisław BułakBałachowicz’s unit in the Kresy 174 atrocities of the Czechoslovak Army in Cieszyn Silesia  118 atrocities of the Polish Army  126 atrocities of the Red Army  126 atrocities of the Russian Army in the Western Territory of Russia (1914–15)  49 atrocities of Ukrainian soldiers in Lviv  167 autonomy in Upper Silesia  115 Belweder camp  5, 6, 26, 29–30, 99–100, 106, 123, 131, 140–4, 154, 156–7, 183, 193, 194 between the World Wars  7 casualties of the First World War  46, 64–5

245 casualties of the Polish–Czechoslovak conflict  117, 188–9 casualties of the Polish–German conflict in Greater Poland  102, 113 casualties of the Polish–German conflict in Upper Silesia  110, 113 casualties of the Polish–German conflicts 189 casualties of the Polish–Lithuanian conflict  92, 189 casualties of the Polish–Ukrainian conflict  80–1, 95, 188–9 casualties of the postwar conflicts  188 Catholic Church  131, 133, 137 Central Citizen’s Committee  97–8 central Poland  26, 52, 127–8, 132, 140–2, 156, 159, 180, 183–4 Cieszyn Principality  115 Cieszyn Silesia  vii, 10, 53, 66, 96, 116–21, 129, 138, 140–1, 164, 184, 188–9, 192 Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories  29, 129–30, 152–4, 191 Civil Administration of the Volhynian Lands and the Podolian Front  154–5, 184 Committee for the Defense of the Eastern Borderlands 88 Congress Poland  3–4, 20, 23, 25, 35–8, 40–2, 46–7, 54–5, 93, 99, 138, 143–4, 161 conscription 53–4 Council of National Defense  130–1 Court of Appeal in Warsaw  178–9 Dąbrowski coal basin  163 desertion  10–11, 50, 159, 164, 167, 170–1 diseases in the wake of the First World War  64, 150–1, 157, 159, 189 Duchy of Warsaw  20 eastern Galicia  4, 53–4, 61, 76–7, 80–3, 94, 111, 122, 124, 127, 129, 132, 139, 146, 151, 154, 165–6, 182, 184, 188–9 ethnocentrist concept (of Dmowski’s Endecja)  25, 27, 29–30, 34–6, 39, 71, 89, 144, 177, 191, 194 famine in the wake of the First World War  65, 137, 150–1, 189 federal concept (of Piłsudski’s Belweder camp)  5, 26–7, 29, 71, 87–90, 93–4, 129–30, 144, 152, 191, 194 First World War  2–4, 19, 33, 43, 65, 97, 138, 144 Foreign Ministry  85, 117 Free City of Cracow  20 Galicia (Austrian province)  21–3, 33–4, 38–40, 44–5, 47, 50, 53, 55, 71–2, 74, 76, 100, 138–9 Government of National Defense  123, 143 Government of National Unity  142 Grand Duchy of Poznań  20

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246 Index Poland (cont.) Greater Poland  5, 21, 30, 47, 53–6, 65, 86, 96–7, 102, 104–7, 113, 122, 132, 141–4, 162, 175–6, 180, 182–4, 189 imperial rule in  3, 4, 7, 20, 21, 22, 35, 36, 40, 42, 84, 138, 154, 161, 187 Institute of Social Economy  156 Kingdom of Poland (1812–13)  20 Kingdom of Poland (1917–18)  25, 42–3 Kresy  2, 9, 21–2, 29, 52, 61, 65, 71, 77, 96, 103, 105, 123, 126, 128–30, 149, 151–4, 156–7, 159, 164–5, 170, 172, 174, 177, 180–1, 184, 191, 194 land reform  56, 131, 135 landowners  24, 131–2, 134 landowners in the Kresy  2, 21–2, 77, 88, 91, 105, 126, 130, 152, 156, 170 marauding Czech and Polish paramilitaries in Cieszyn Silesia  120 marauding German soldiers in Podlachia  52 marauding Polish paramilitaries  10 marauding Polish paramilitaries in Upper Silesia 112 marauding Polish soldiers  9–10, 145, 157–9, 164–5, 167, 178, 181 marauding Polish soldiers in eastern Galicia 146 marauding Polish soldiers in Lviv  167 marauding Polish soldiers in Minsk  147 marauding Polish soldiers in the Kresy  149, 164 marauding Polish soldiers in the northern Kresy 159 marauding Polish soldiers in Volhynia  155, 165 marauding Polish soldiers and civilians in Lviv 168 marauding Polish soldiers and paramilitaries 183 marauding Red Army soldiers in Volhynia 155 marauding soldiers  11, 184 marauding soldiers of Feliks Jaworski’s mounted unit in Volhynia  170–1 marauding soldiers of Józef Siła-Nowicki’s Volunteer Cavalry Division in the northern Kresy 171 marauding soldiers of Roman Abraham’s unit 166 marauding soldiers of Roman Abraham’s unit in eastern Galicia  146, 167, 169 marauding soldiers of Roman Abraham’s unit in Lviv  167 marauding soldiers of Stanisław BułakBałachowicz’s unit in the Baltic  173 marauding soldiers of Stanisław BułakBałachowicz’s unit in the Kresy 174 marauding soldiers of the Army of Greater Poland  179, 181

marauding soldiers of the Army of Greater Poland in Siedlce  183 marauding soldiers of the Army of Greater Poland in the Kresy 180 marauding soldiers of the Fifth Division of the Polish Army  184 marauding soldiers of the First Cadre Company 183 marauding soldiers of the German Border Guard in Upper Silesia  102 marauding soldiers of the Haller Army  162, 179, 181 marauding soldiers of the Haller Army in Cracow  161, 180 marauding soldiers of the Nineteenth Infantery Regiment for the Relief of Lviv in eastern Galicia  9 marauding soldiers of the Polish Legions  183 marauding soldiers of Ukrainian Peasant Armies in Volhynia  170 marauding soldiers, bandits, and civilians in Lviv 167 marauding Ukrainian soldiers and peasants in Volhynia 155–6 marauding Ukrainians in eastern Galicia  169 marauding White Army soldiers in Volhynia 155 May Coup d’État (1926)  6, 193–4 mayor’s office in Warsaw  179 Mazovia 123 middle class  64, 132–3, 137 nation  vii, 2–6, 8, 14, 22, 24, 26, 29, 33–6, 45, 55, 87, 97, 123, 130–1, 133, 137–8, 140, 192, 193–4 nation state  2–3, 6, 8, 9 nation state building  2–5, 7, 11–12, 19–25, 27, 29, 34, 36, 41, 44–5, 50–1, 57–8, 87, 89, 94, 97–8, 104–7, 116, 124, 129, 131, 137–8, 148, 154, 157, 160, 177, 188, 191–2, 194 National Committee (in Lviv)  79 National Council of the Cieszyn Principality  116–17, 140–1 National Democracy (Endecja)  3–6, 25–6, 29–30, 33, 35–6, 38–9, 42–4, 52, 56–7, 84, 88–9, 91, 97–100, 106–7, 121, 123, 130–1, 138–44, 154–5, 157, 160, 166, 179, 181, 191, 193–4 National Democratic Party  4, 25–6, 39, 56, 138, 193 National Democrats see Poland: National Democracy (Endecja) nationalists  4, 6, 22, 24, 34–5, 41, 45, 51, 61, 87, 97, 99, 105–8, 110, 115 nobility  19, 21, 24, 26, 131–2, 137, 154, 156, 166, 170 nobility in the Kresy 152 northern Kresy 159 partition times  2–3, 22, 24, 29, 34, 144, 187

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Index partitions of  3, 19, 22, 47, 57, 83, 100, 108 peasants during the First World War  34, 50–2, 58 peasants erecting the Republic of Tarnobrzeg 140 peasants in Congress Poland  23, 41 peasants in eastern Galicia  94 peasants in Galicia (Austrian province)  23, 34, 38 peasants in Greater Poland  56, 99 peasants in imperial armies  45, 50, 58 peasants in partition times  19, 23, 34, 123 peasants in the Army of Greater Poland  54 peasants in the Lithuanian–Belarusian Division 91 peasants in the Polish Army  55, 123, 132, 134–5, 136–7 peasants in the Polish Legions  40 peasants in the Polish Military Organization  41, 55 peasants in the Polish Second Republic  6, 14, 34, 55 peasants in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 24 peasants in the Second Polish Republic  55, 64–5, 100, 123, 130–5, 137, 151, 156–7, 165, 191 peasants in the Volunteer Army  132 peasants volunteering as ‘Scythemen’  134 plebiscite in East Prussia  114 plebiscite in Upper Silesia  107–11, 114–15, 163, 185 Podlachia 52 Podolia (Ukr. Podíllia)  127, 154, 170, 186 Polish Liquidation Commission  53, 82, 123, 138–40 Polish National Committee (in Paris)  6, 26, 29–30, 43, 100, 106, 121–3, 138–42, 179–80 Polish People’s Party (Piast)  58, 138, 140, 193 Polish People’s Republic  7, 133, 156 Polish Socialist Party (PPS)  4–5, 24, 35–6, 38–9, 56, 138 Polish veterans of the First World War  119, 193 Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  2–3, 19–20, 22, 24–6, 29, 36, 83, 87, 89, 100, 105, 108 Pomerania  138, 164 Provisional Council of State  76 Provisional Governing Committee in Lviv 140 Provisional People’s Government of the Republic of Poland  139–40 Regency Council  25, 43, 52, 73, 76, 100, 138–40 Regional Government of the Cieszyn Principality 141 Republic of Tarnobrzeg  140

247

rural elites  132 Second Polish Republic (at war)  7, 9, 60, 65, 80–2, 96, 165 Second Polish Republic (character)  27, 100, 114, 144, 156–7, 161, 192 Second Polish Republic (creation)  6, 11, 14, 22, 50, 52–3, 100, 131 Second Polish Republic (geographic)  14, 19, 44, 54, 65–6, 82, 86–7, 89, 90, 93, 97, 103, 113–14, 122, 126, 129, 144, 158, 160, 164, 180, 182 Second Polish Republic (history)  7 Second Polish Republic (minorities)  5, 16, 19, 27–30, 65, 143, 191, 193–4 Second Polish Republic (population)  6, 16, 28–31, 55, 83, 116, 122, 160 Second World War  7, 76, 133, 156, 186 Social Revolutionaries  137 socialism  34, 194 socialists  3–4, 25, 35–6, 39, 43, 57, 84, 135, 138–9 southern Galicia  118 students  132–5, 137 Supreme People’s Council  98–100, 107, 141–2 Suwałki  90–1, 158 Upper Silesia  10, 30, 65, 96–7, 99, 104–15, 118, 120, 125, 129, 138, 140–1, 164, 169, 175–6, 184–5, 189, 194 uprisings in Congress Poland  4, 19–21, 23, 35, 83, 99, 133, 161 urban elites  14, 21, 24, 35, 83, 88, 98, 131–3, 137, 166 Volhynia (Pol. Wołyń, Ukr. Volyn’ )  82, 127, 153–4, 156, 165–6, 171 wartime destruction  22, 31, 50, 53, 64–5, 137, 150–1, 156–7, 177, 182, 189 Western Territory (of Russia)  4, 17, 19–21, 25, 35, 49–50, 83–4, 124, 126, 150, 159 workers  19, 35, 37, 52, 55, 99–101, 105–8, 118, 130, 132, 135, 137 Poles  2, 57, 81, 106, 155 defecting to the German side in Upper Silesia  95, 176 during the First World War  33, 50, 57 from Greater Poland in the Imperial German Army 49 in central Poland  129–30 in Cieszyn Silesia  115–16, 118 in Congress Poland  20–2, 40–1, 47, 187 in eastern Galicia  81 in Galicia (Austrian province)  21–2, 47 in Greater Poland  21–2, 47, 49, 97, 99, 105, 176 in imperial armies  5, 46 in Lithuania  88 in Lviv  77, 79, 167 in partition times  4, 26, 34, 51, 138 in Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  172

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248 Index Poles (cont.) in the armies of the Central Powers  57 in the Habsburg Army  33, 42, 44–6, 48–50, 53, 56, 78, 139, 146, 166 in the Imperial German Army  33, 42, 44–50, 56, 97–9, 111, 138, 181 in the Imperial Russian Army  5, 33, 39, 44–6, 48–9, 50, 55–7, 170, 172 in the Kresy  126, 130, 152–5 in the Napoleonic Wars  36 in the Polish Army  53 in the Polish Legions  7, 41 in the Polish Second Republic  188 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  24, 87 in the Russian Western Territory  20–1 in the Second Polish Republic  6, 27, 28, 187 in the Western Territory (of Russia)  21, 49 in Upper Silesia  96, 104, 176 in Vilnius  83–5, 87 nation state building  45, 187 partition times  4 Polish deportees  64 Polish recruits from Congress Poland drafted into the Polish Army  53 Polish refugees  31, 49, 118, 150, 164–5, 169 Polish soldiers and civilians interned by Czechoslovak authorities  118 Polish soldiers and civilians interned by Ukrainian authorities  81 Polish soldiers interned by Russian authorities 189 Polish soldiers interned by the Central Powers 44 Polish veterans of the First World War  5, 7, 43, 71, 93, 130, 186, 192, 193 Polish veterans of the January Uprising in Congress Poland (1863)  161 serving in imperial armies  5 Polish armed formations and military institutions Army of Greater Poland  54, 56, 102–4, 140, 142–3, 157, 179–4, 191 Bartosz Brigade  38 Border Guard (in Słonim)  153 Border Guard (in the Kresy)  153, 191 Civil Commissar at the Mazovian Front  182 Civil Defense  98 Combat Organization  35–6, 38, 179 district command in Cieszyn  117 district company in Olkusz  163 Eleventh Infantry Division  182 Endecja paramilitaries in Congress Poland 36 Falcon movement  38–9, 42, 44–5, 98, 105 Feliks Jaworski’s mounted unit  1, 2, 156, 170–1, 184–5 field gendarmerie 158 Fifth Cavalry Regiment  77 Fifth Division of the Polish Army  184

Fifth Legions’ Infantry Regiment  71, 92–3 First Brigade of the Polish Legions  39, 44, 87 First Cadre Company  40, 183 First Lithuanian–Belarusian Infantry Division 91 First Polish Corps  43, 53–4, 57, 91 Fortieth Infantry Regiment  158 Forty-first Suwałki Infantry Regiment  91 Fourth Rifle Division (‘Wild Division’)  171 garrison of Cieszyn  120 garrison of Gniezno  164 garrison of Grudziądz  164 garrison of Łódź  164 garrison of Pińczów  164 garrison of Wieluń  166 gendarmerie in the Kresy 153 General District Command in Lviv  169 General Staff  55, 107, 117, 142, 169 Haller Army  37, 44, 53–4, 56, 77, 80, 86, 91, 111, 121–2, 140, 142, 157–8, 161–5, 179–84, 191 High Command of the Polish Forces in Lviv  167, 169 Inspectorate General of the Infantry  158, 192 insurgent army during the January Uprising in Congress Poland (1863)  133 Józef Siła-Nowicki’s Volunteer Cavalry Division 171 Lucjan Żeligowski’s unit  91–2, 186 Main Administration of the Polish Forces in Ukraine 77 military authorities addressing Polish soldiers’ acts of violence  10, 165, 178, 180 Military Command of the Polish Railway 162 Military Command of the railway station in Tarnów 162 military courts  149 Military Gendarmerie Command  162–4 Military Gendarmerie Division Command in Kielce 164 Military Gendarmerie Division Command no. 8  163, 164 Military Gendarmerie Headquarters in Warsaw 162 military gendarmerie in Lublin  162 Military Governor of Warsaw  158 military intelligence service  109 military police in Warsaw  178 Military-Political Committee  121 Nineteenth Infantry Regiment for the Relief of Lviv  9 Nineteenth Volhynian Cavalry Regiment 1–2 Office of Military History  7, 178 paramilitaries in Cieszyn Silesia  119–20 paramilitaries in Congress Poland  38, 42 paramilitaries in Galicia  100

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/10/18, SPi

Index paramilitaries in Galicia (Austrian province)  4, 33, 38–9, 41–2 paramilitaries in Greater Poland  100, 102, 175 paramilitaries in the Second Polish Republic (creation) 70 paramilitaries in Upper Silesia  95, 102, 108–11, 169, 175, 185 Polish Army (alienating the non-Polish population in the Kresy)  88, 130, 153–5 Polish Army (anti-Semitism) see Jews: anti-Semitism in the Polish Army Polish Army (as relief force for Poles in Vilnius)  85–6, 88, 90, 92 Polish Army (disciplinary problems)  135, 146, 158–9, 165–6 Polish Army (discord)  56, 181, 183, 193–4 Polish Army (ethnic composition)  54, 88, 192 Polish Army (formation)  5, 34, 36, 38, 43–4, 53–4, 56, 86, 93, 194 Polish Army (Kiev Offensive)  82, 127 Polish Army (mobilization against Soviet Russia)  131–2, 137 Polish Army (morale)  133–5, 137, 184 Polish Army (Ring of Zamość)  136 Polish Army (supply problems)  53–4, 109, 135, 137, 158–9, 183 Polish Army (supporting Polish paramilitaries in the Kresy) 170 Polish Army (supporting Polish paramilitaries in Upper Silesia)  111 Polish Auxiliary Corps  139 Polish High Command  118, 142, 158, 163, 166, 180–1 Polish Legions  3–4, 26, 36, 39–42, 44–5, 47, 53, 56–7, 72, 78, 118, 133, 157, 179, 181, 183 Polish Legions (in Napoleon’s army)  100 Polish Military Cadres  139, 166 Polish Military Force  43–4, 53 Polish Military Organization  41–3, 52–3, 55–6, 78, 85, 90, 93, 97, 99, 101, 107–8, 110–12, 120, 133, 139, 142, 157, 181 Polish Rifle Brigade  42–3, 91, 170 Polish Rifle Squad  38 Polish Striking Force  112 Polish units in imperial armies  44–5 Polish units in Russia  91 Polish units in the Habsburg Army  38–9, 42 Polish units in the Imperial Russian Army  4–5, 42, 44, 49, 77, 91 Puławy Legion  42 rifle clubs  39 riflemen in Galicia (Austrian province)  38–40, 45 Roman Abraham’s unit  146, 166–9, 171, 184–5 Scythemen 134

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Second Brigade of the Polish Legions  39, 44 Second Division of the Haller Army  184 Second Legions’ Infantry Division  135–6 Second Polish Corps  43–4, 53 Second Uhlan Regiment  122 Secret Military Organization  119 Self-Defense (in the Kresy) 85 Self-Defense (in Vilnius)  85–6 Silesian Confederation  119 Sixth Army Command  169 soldiers and paramilitaries in Greater Poland  86, 144 soldiers and paramilitaries in Lviv  10, 77–9, 139 soldiers from central Poland in Volhynia  171 Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s ‘National Volunteer Army’ (1940)  186 Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  173–4, 184–5 Third Army  174 Third Division of the Haller Army  184 Third Polish Corps  43, 53 Uhlans in the Polish Army  136 Union for Active Struggle  38–9 Union of the Veterans of National Uprisings 186 units of the Polish Army from eastern Galicia 146 Volunteer Army  53–4, 56, 123, 131–2, 157–8, 164 War Ministry  54–5, 119, 169, 174, 179, 192 Polish–German armed formations and military institutions Plebiscite Police  109 Pomerania see Poland: Pomerania Porter, Brian  191 Potulicki-Skórzewski, Jerzy  147 Povorsk (Ukr. Povor’sk, Pol. Powórsk) 151 Poznań (Germ. Posen)  49, 53, 97–100, 103, 106–7, 123, 140–4, 157, 181 Poznań district  164 Poznań province  97–8, 100–2, 104, 138, 141, 183 Prague 117 Protectorate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (with Ukraine, 1918)  44, 57, 73, 76 Prudnik (Germ. Neustadt O.S.) 111 Prusin, Alexander Victor  190 Prystor, Aleksander  88 Przybylski, Adam  166 Pskov (Est. Opskova) 172–3 Punin, Leonid  172 Puttkamer, Joachim von  60 Pytel, Private  134–6, 146–7 Rathenau, Walther  186 Rawicz district  95 Reder, Eva  178

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/10/18, SPi

250 Index Renan, Ernest  1 Reymont, Władysław  23 Riga  64, 125–6, 128, 186 Roja, Bolesław  78 Rolf, Malte  36 Romania Bessarabia 68 Bukovina  68, 78 Kingdom of Romania  28, 67–8, 160 Kingdom of Romania (population)  28, 31, 67–8 nation state building  68 Transylvania 68 Romanians in the Kingdom of Romania  28 in Yugoslavia  27 Römer, Michał (Lit. Römeris, Mykolas) 59, 87–9, 91, 94, 154 Rothschild, Joseph  193 Russia anti-German encroachments in the Western Territory 159 anti-Jewish pogroms  19 anti-Jewish violence in the Western Territory (1914–15) 159 anti-Polish encroachments in the Western Territory (1914–15)  159 armed formations and military institutions see Russian armed formations and military institutions atrocities of Red Army soldiers  75 Bolsheviks  1, 51, 61, 76, 81, 125–8, 130, 134, 136, 152, 172 casualties of the Polish–Soviet War  188 casualties of the postwar conflicts  188 desertion  50, 136 diseases in the wake of the First World War 150 famine in the wake of the First World War 150 February Revolution (1917)  43, 72, 73 modernity 124 nation state building  20–1, 83 October Revolution (1917)  19, 43, 57, 59–60, 73, 124, 172 Pale of Settlement  21, 71 peasants  49, 124 Provisional Government  72–3 Revolution of 1905  4, 19, 35–6, 38, 44, 57, 84 Russian Civil War (1917–22)  31, 43–5, 51, 59–62, 65, 74, 76–7, 122–4 Russian Empire  4, 19–20, 25, 35–6, 38–9, 42–3, 46–7, 83, 129, 138, 144, 191, 195 Russian Political Committee in Warsaw  174 Siberia 46 southern Russia  75 Soviet Russia  7, 19, 43, 60, 66, 68, 73, 75–6, 92, 124–5, 129–30, 144, 153, 160, 172, 174, 186, 195

Vistula Lands see Poland: Congress Poland Whites  51, 61, 76, 81 Russian armed formations and military institutions border patrol (in the Kresy) 191 Imperial Russian Army  36, 41–2, 64, 152 Imperial Russian Army (alienating the non-Russian population of the Western Territory)  50, 150, 159 Imperial Russian Army (disciplinary problems) 50 Imperial Russian Army (disintegration)  50, 72, 170 Imperial Russian Army (ethnic composition)  47, 54 Imperial Russian Army (supply problems)  49 Peasant Armies  61 Red Army  153 Red Army (alienating the population in eastern Ukraine)  75 Red Army (capture of Warsaw in 1945)  156 Red Army (fighting the White Army)  51, 74 Red Army (in the Baltic)  122, 125 Red Army (in Vilnius)  86, 90, 92, 124 Red Army (supply problems)  128 Red Cavalry  127, 133, 136 Second Cavalry Division  172 Soviet High Command  128 Third Army  50 Volunteer Army (White)  75, 82 White Army  51, 74, 85, 124, 172 White Army (alienating the population in eastern Ukraine)  75 Russians in Congress Poland  19–20, 34 in Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  172 in the Imperial Russian Army  72 in the Kresy 152–3 in the Polish Army  54 in the Republic of Estonia  28 in the Republic of Latvia  28 in the Russian Empire  16 in the Russian Western Territory  21 in Vilnius  83–4 Red Army soldiers  136 Red Army soldiers captured by Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  174 Red Army soldiers interned by Polish authorities 189 Russian refugees  31, 150, 165 Russo–Japanese War (1904–5)  18 Salomon, Ernst von  111 Sanborn, Joshua  62, 190 Satelli, Commander  111 Schiller, Friedrich  16 Schlichte, Klaus  185 Schlieffen Plan  46 Schwarzenberg-Czerny, Jerzy  169 Serbia see Yugoslavia: Serbia

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/10/18, SPi

Index Serbs in the armies of the Entente  27 in Yugoslavia  27–8, 68 Sheptyts’ky, Andrey  79 Siberia see Russia: Siberia Siedlce 183 Sikora, Major  117 Sikorski, Walerjan 169 Sikorski, Władysław  92 Siła-Nowicki, Józef  171 Silesia see Germany: Silesia Skaradziński, Bohdan  132 Skoczów (Czech Skočov)  vii, 129 Skoropadskyi, Pavlo  73–4 Slavs 88 fighting each other in the wake of the First World War  vii in Greater Poland  99, 104 in Yugoslavia  68 Russian Bolsheviks seen as  136 Sławek, Walery  88 Slovakia see Czechoslovakia: Slovakia Slovaks in Czechoslovakia  66 in the First Czechoslovak Republic  28 in the Habsburg Army  46 in Yugoslavia  27–8 Slovak refugees  118 Slovak soldiers and civilians interned by Polish authorities  118 Slovenes in the eastern Adriatic  68 in Yugoslavia  27 Słowikowski, Michał  133–7, 147 Smele, Jonathan D.  59 Śmigły-Rydz, Edward  165 Šnejdárek, Josef  118 Snyder, Timothy  24, 57, 95, 194 Sosnkowski, Kazimierz  192 Sosnowiec 163 Sosnowiec (Germ. Sosnowitz) 112 Southeastern Europe between the World Wars  16 casualties of the First World War  149 diseases in the wake of the First World War 150 Eastern Front  51 marauding soldiers and paramilitaries  70 minorities  28, 32 nation state building  27, 31, 60 nation states  16 postwar conflicts  60, 66 Spain Spanish Netherlands  16 spin-off groups  185–6, 190–1 Spiš (Pol. Spisz)  118, 120 St. Petersburg (Russ. Petrograd )  20, 48, 72–3, 87, 173 Stach, Stephan  194 Stachiewicz, Julian  142

251

Stauter-Halsted, Keely  23 Stempowski, Hubert  170 Stempowski, Paweł  156 Stempowski, Stanisław  154–6, 170 Stonava (Pol. Stonawa) 119 Struve, Kai  23 Strzelce Opolskie (Germ. Groß Strehlitz) 111–12 Sulejów 193 Suwałki see Poland: Suwałki Switzerland Swiss Confederation  154 Szczypiorno 121 Szpikołosy (Ukr. Shpykolosy) 136 Tarnopol (Ukr. Ternopil’ ) 184 Tarnów 162 Tartu  125, 154 Tatars in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  24 Terezín 46 Thaer, Albrecht von  101 Ther, Philipp  30 Thirty Years War (1618–48)  62 Thucydides 63 Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz, Michał  158, 171, 192 Toruń 143 Transdanubia see Hungary: Transdanubia Transylvania see Romania: Transylvania Traverso, Enzo  60 Treaty of Lausanne (1923)  30 Treaty of Rapallo (1922)  69 Trotsky, Leon  127 Turkey postwar conflicts  8 Republic of Turkey  8 Turks in the Hellenic Republic  30 in the Republic of Bulgaria  28 in Yugoslavia  27 Turkish refugees  30 Tutejsi  83, 136 Ukraine  9, 11, 24, 52, 66, 73–5, 96, 123, 155, 161, 172, 182, 184, 189 All-Ukrainian National Congress  76 anti-Jewish pogroms  95, 159 armed formations and military institutions see Ukrainian armed formations and military institutions atrocities in the wake of the First World War 188 Bolsheviks 75–6 casualties of the Polish–Ukrainian conflict  80–1, 95, 188, 189 casualties of the postwar conflicts  188 Central Council  73–4 central Ukraine  43 desertion  80, 154 Directorate 74

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/10/18, SPi

252 Index Ukraine (cont.) diseases in the wake of the First World War  81–2, 150, 189 eastern Ukraine  73–7, 80 famine in the wake of the First World War 189 Hetmanate  73–4, 76 minorities 76–7 nation 72 nation state building  72–6, 94, 127–8 nationalists  61, 72, 75, 127 peasants  2, 72–5, 77, 80, 94, 105, 127, 136, 146, 152, 155–6 south-eastern Ukraine  74 Soviet Ukraine  82, 126–7 Ukrainian National Republic  44, 73–7, 81–2, 126–7, 155 Ukrainian National Republic (population) 83 Ukrainian Soviet Republic  75 Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic  27 Union for the Liberation of Ukraine  72 wartime destruction  189 West Ukrainian National Republic  60, 77–82, 127, 129, 139, 154–5 West Ukrainian Republic  127 Western Ukraine  74, 76–7 Ukrainian armed formations and military institutions Army of the Hetmanate  73–4 First Ukrainian Rifle-Cossack Division  73 First Ukrainian Soldiers’ Congress  73 materializing in 1917  72 military elite  72 Nestor Makhno’s Peasant Army  161 paramilitaries in the West Ukrainian National Republic 70 Peasant Armies  74, 161, 170 Sich Riflemen  72, 74, 78, 156 soldiers and paramilitaries in Lviv  10, 77–9, 100, 139, 167–9 soldiers and paramilitaries in Volhynia  155 Ukrainian Army (formation)  73 Ukrainian Army (under the Command of Symon Petliura)  74, 81–2, 127 Ukrainian Galician Army  80–1, 103, 127, 154 Ukrainian Galician Army (disintegration)  80, 82 Ukrainian Galician Army (formation)  80 Ukrainian Galician Army (struck by typhus) 82 Ukrainian units in the Habsburg Army  73–4, 77 War Ministry (of the Ukrainian National Republic) 127 Zaporizhian Cossacks  74 Ukrainians  2, 30, 75, 82, 189 in eastern Galicia  77, 80–1, 169

in Galicia (Austrian province)  22, 34–5, 72 in Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz’s unit  172 in the Habsburg Army  72, 78, 80 in the Imperial Russian Army  72–3 in the Kresy  29, 126, 129–30, 136, 143, 154, 156, 184 in the Polish Legions  41 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  24 in the Russian Empire  16, 72 in the Russian Western Territory  21, 35 in the Second Polish Republic  27–8 Ukrainian refugees  31, 150, 165 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians interned by Polish authorities  81, 146, 189 Ukrainian soldiers interned by the Central Powers 72 Ukrainian veterans of the First World War in Poland 192 volunteering for the Ukrainian Galician Army 154 Ulitzka, Carl  105 Upper Silesia see Poland: Upper Silesia Upper Silesians  96, 104–5, 107, 114–15 in the Imperial German Army  48, 106 in the Polish Army  163 in the Reichswehr  106 Vatican  133, 180 Velychenko, Stephen  81 Vienna (Pol. Wiedeń, Ukr. Viden’, Germ. Wien)  16, 85 Vilnius (Pol. Wilno)  21–2, 26, 53, 65, 83–94, 124, 128–30, 160, 172, 177, 186, 188–9, 193 Vinnytsia (Pol. Winnica)  154, 156, 170 Vlachs in Yugoslavia  27 Vogt, Dietrich  95 Volhynia see Poland: Volhynia Warmia see Germany: Warmia Warmia, people from  114 Warsaw (Pol. Warszawa)  3, 5–6, 26, 35, 43, 46, 52, 57, 87–9, 97, 99–100, 107, 112, 117, 122–3, 127, 129, 133–6, 138–44, 147, 154–6, 158, 161–2, 169, 174, 178–80, 183, 186, 192, 194 Warsaw district  142, 164 Warsaw Uprising (1944)  156 Washington, DC  161 Wasilewski, Leon  86 Weeks, Theodore R.  84, 88 Weitz, Eric D.  147 Wendland, Weronika  87 West Prussia see Germany: West Prussia Western Allies  25, 28, 30–2, 43, 51, 54, 69, 82, 85, 90, 96, 100–1, 104, 110, 118–19, 121, 124–5, 138, 140–2, 160, 177

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/10/18, SPi

Index Western Europe  25, 44 postwar conflicts  11 Western Front  26, 43, 45–6, 51, 57, 59, 85, 128 Western Territory (of Russia) see Poland: Western Territory (of Russia) Western Ukraine see Ukraine: Western Ukraine Wieluń 166 Wilhelm von Habsburg  74, 78 Wilson, Woodrow  25, 61, 103, 195 Winniski, Kazik  70 Witos, Wincenty  58, 135, 139, 143 Włodawa 184 Wojciechowski, Stanisław  194 world revolution  124, 128 Worwan-Nawrocki, Konrad de  165 Wróbel, Piotr  190 Wybicki, Józef  100 Yekelchyk, Serhy  74, 81, 127 Yudenich, Nikolai  172 Yugoslav armed formations and military institutions see also Balkan armed formations and military institutions paramilitaries in Macedonia  70 police units in Macedonia  70 Serbian Army  70 Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001)  28

253

Yugoslavia armed formations and military institutions see Yugoslav armed formations and military institutions Bosnia 70 Croatia  69, 160 Dalmatia 70 desertion 69 diseases in the wake of the First World War 150 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 67–70 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (population)  27–8, 31 Kosovo  68, 191 Macedonia 68–9 nation state building  70 National Council of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 69–70 Serbia 150 Zabrze (Germ. Hindenburg O.S.) 109 Zamość 136 Zamoyski, Adam  56 Zawada 162 Zbaraż (Ukr. Zbarazh) 184 Żeligowski, Lucjan  91–3, 128, 186 Zolochiv (Pol. Złoczów) 155 Żurawno (Ukr. Zhuravno)  167, 169 Zychowicz, Piotr  171