The People of Poland at War: 1914-1918

Geschichte – Erinnerung – Politik Studies in History, Memory and Politics

Edited by Barbara Klich-Kluczewska

Volume 55

Contents

1. Foreword

2. Introduction

3. Glossary of terms and abbreviations

4. Chapter 1. Prelude

   1. 1. Impending war

   2. 2. Mobilization

   3. 3. To the front

5. Chapter 2. Military operations

   1. 1. Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes

   2. 2. Kraśnik and Komarów

   3. 3. Lwów and Lwów again

   4. 4. The Warsaw-Dęblin and Łódź operations

   5. 5. Kraków and Limanowa

   6. 6. Przemyśl: “Pure Hell”.

   7. 7. The Carpathian winter war

   8. 8. Gorlice

   9. 9. Sochaczew: the Ypres of the East

   10. 10. The aftermath of Gorlice

6. Chapter 3. The army takes over

   1. 1. The last days of peace and the first days of war

   2. 2. Gossip

   3. 3. Spies

7. Chapter 4. The Prussian Partition

   1. 1. Berlin and the Poles

   2. 2. The war economy

   3. 3. Russian troops in East Prussia

8. Chapter 5. Russian Galicia

   1. 1. The capture of Galicia

   2. 2. The new order

   3. 3. The getaway

9. Chapter 6. Austrian Galicia

   1. 1. Treachery

   2. 2. Evacuation

   3. 3. Winning back Galicia

   4. 4. The Poles sidelined

   5. 5. Demolition and restoration

   6. 6. Civic Galicia

   7. 7. Polish politics, Ukrainian politics

   8. 8. Fighting for Poland

10. Chapter 7. The Russian Kingdom of Poland

    1. 1. Poles and Russians

    2. 2. Citizens’ Committees

    3. 3. The scorched earth policy

    4. 4. Enforced migration

11. Chapter 8. The Kingdom of Poland under German and Austrian rule

    1. 1. Occupation

    2. 2. Domestic and foreign relief organizations

    3. 3. The Church

    4. 4. German and Austrian administration

    5. 5. The Polonization of symbolic space

    6. 6. Polish attitudes to occupation

    7. 7. The Act of the Fifth of November

    8. 8. The Provisional Council of State, the Regency Council, and the Council of Ministers

    9. 9. Homecomings

    10. 10. The economy

12. Chapter 9. On the way to final outcomes

    1. 1. Ober-Ost

    2. 2. Brest-Litovsk

    3. 3. Pogroms in the Borderlands

    4. 4. Poles in Russia. The Polish Corps in the East

    5. 5. Resistance

    6. 6. The Polish Question

    7. 7. Haller’s Army

13. Chapter 10. Everyday life

    1. 1. Population change

    2. 2. Health and hygiene

    3. 3. The wartime menu

    4. 4. Heating and lighting

    5. 5. The black market

    6. 6. Wartime demoralization

    7. 7. Transport and communication

    8. 8. Women’s activation

14. Conclusion. The Polish Finale

15. Bibliography

16. Index of Names

Foreword

1795 marks the most dramatic event in Polish history. The dismemberment of Poland-Lithuania, which had existed since 1569 as a federation with a mixed system incorporating a monarchical and a republican component, and with a history of statehood going back to the 10^th century, was a shock to the people of Poland and an unprecedented event in modern Europe. I would go as far as to say that the Poles have never gotten over the trauma. The endeavor to launch a reform program undertaken by the Great Sejm of 1788-1792 which materialized in the Third of May Constitution (1791) – Europe’s first modern, written constitution, second only to that of the United States – cost the country a war against Russia in defense of its Constitution (1792), which it lost along with its statehood. The military intervention spawned by the Russian Empire and the fall of the Kościuszko Insurrection effected the ultimate dismemberment of the entire territory of a once mighty state, apportioning it to three neighboring powers. The other two “Trustees” to the partitioning – apart from the pioneering Russian Empire – were Prussia and Habsburg Austria. Poland was off the maps for the next 123 years. It was a spectacular demise for a country that once spanned the lands from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

In the early 17^th century, when Poland–Lithuania was at its peak in terms of territory, its eastern border encompassed Smolensk, lapping the foreground of Moscow. In 1610-1612 a Polish garrison was stationed in the Kremlin, and Poland–Lithuania was the only state which managed to hold large stretches of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy (as of 1721 the Russian Empire) for any length of time, assisted by the Tsar’s subjects. The policies Poland–Lithuania pursued in the 15^th and 16^th centuries to build up its power, were the outcome of the republican tradition of its “Noblemen’s Democracy” grounded on a compromise solution to government. Poland–Lithuania provided a safe haven for diverse minorities, including its Jewish communities, whom other European countries had spurned. At a time when Western Europe was fraught by religious wars and absolutism was on the rise, leaving no room for dissidence from the opinion espoused by the monarch, Poland–Lithuania offered toleration and a freedom-loving lifestyle. Jewish communities fleeing pogroms sought refuge under the auspices of the king of Poland. The republican setup in the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania offered a home for a diversity of peoples speaking many tongues – Polish, Lithuanian, Ruthenian (which developed into modern Belarusian and Ukrainian), German, and practicing many religions – Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, several Protestant Churches, Judaism, and Islam. Politically, Poland–Lithuania was an idiosyncratic phenomenon, and expanding by means of voluntary accession of new lands that wanted to join, not by military aggression. It could do this because its republican administration was based on a large enfranchised segment of society, the nobility and gentry, which made up about 10% of its population. The Noble Estate was under the predominant influence of Polish culture but open to newcomers. It attracted and welcomed in the leaders of other ethnic communities, who soon adopted the culture and manners of the Polish nobility, their love of and commitment to their civil rights.

Yet having achieved success, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth stopped in its tracks and ceased to keep up with the times. Its ruling class became self-satisfied and failed to notice its shortcomings and faults, which was the cause of its downfall. A sluggish development of the cities and towns, the predominance of agriculture over all other branches of the economy, failure to grant political rights to the other social estates, which triggered discontent and rebellion, the demise of the moderately well-to-do gentry and the inordinate rise of the top echelons of the wealthiest lords, a retreat from its earlier acceptance of all religions, worldviews, and ethnicities – these were just some of the factors that led to the disaster. In addition, there were wars with the country’s neighbors, including the Swedish invasion in the mid-17^th century, which spelled the end of prosperity for Poland–Lithuania and started its gradual slide downhill.

Poland was extinguished at the worst possible time – just as the world was taking its biggest leap into 19^th-century industrialization and laying the foundations for its modern political, material, and technological realities. Deprived of a state of their own, the people of Poland were left behind. The Powers which partitioned Poland conducted anti-Polish policies for the whole of the 19^th century, though at different intensities in different times. They blocked the economic development of regions with a Polish population. They located important investments in areas they considered their native domains and discriminated against their Polish acquisitions. All this incited the Poles to rise up against their oppressors, but all the insurrections that erupted frequently throughout the century ended in failure.

History offered the Poles a new opportunity when the Imperial Powers of the 19^th century collapsed in outcome of the First World War. Specially significant were the changes in the Russian Empire, which was overwhelmed by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917–1918 and fixed its attention on its own domestic affairs. The multinational, multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated, splitting up into numerous states, and the Kingdom of Prussia was defeated.

The people of Poland decided to recover their independence. The leaders of their political parties focused all their efforts on the supreme value – independence. On November 11, 1918, their joint endeavor led to the restitution of the Polish State, which within the next two years fought and won two wars: against Ukraine for the historical lands of Red Ruthenia, and against Bolshevik Russia, which invaded Poland in 1920 but was forced to retreat in the Battle of Warsaw, which the British diplomat Lord D’Abernon considered the world’s eighteenth decisive battle.

However, history is made by more than just great battles and memorable peace conferences, but also by the lives of ordinary people. And that is what this book by Andrzej Chwalba is about. Professor Chwalba is not preoccupied with the familiar military or political issues. He looks at the story of the man in the street and his everyday life, carefully reconstructing the atmosphere in the diverse parts of Poland during the Great War that started in 1914. He writes about the things that made up people’s everyday lives – gossip, spymania, the collapse of representative organizations, the restrictions put on the work of social organizations, material losses, the loyalty of the Poles to the monarch of their respective Partitioning Power, and to the Polish cause. He is interested in what the papers and the chronicles said, what the diary entries recorded, and what the eyewitnesses of the events reported. He examines interpersonal relations, the way people conducted their commercial affairs, and the atmosphere on the streets.

Today people in Poland are not very aware of the vast losses sustained by the Polish territories and of the tremendous sacrifices their inhabitants made during the First World War. These facts have been eclipsed by the tragic events of the Second World War, which are still impacting on Poland and the lives of its people. Nonetheless, during the First World War most of the battles on the Eastern Front were fought in the Polish territories. Now at each other’s throats, the Partitioners treated the Polish territories as a sparring ground. Many of the atrocities committed during the next World War were tested in 1914–1918. A notorious example were the anti-Semitic pogroms and oppressive measures against the Jewish inhabitants of Galicia by the Russian forces invading the region in August 1914. Their aim was to degrade the status of the local Jewish communities and bring them down to the position Jews had in the Russian Empire, where they were subject to discrimination.

Theft and looting, the impoverishment of the inhabitants caused by confiscations, robberies, raids, and devastation in the aftermath of the fighting, the belligerents willfully stirring up conflicts between the diverse ethnic communities and the deportations – for the people of Poland all of this made everyday life hell on earth. The scorched earth tactics employed by the retreating Russian army fleeing the Central Powers’ offensive in the summer of 1915 was especially devastating. Farms, homesteads, and towns were set on fire and the local people were driven out and hustled east by the retreating soldiery. As a rule, when an enemy power seized a given area, he would impose a policy of Russification or Germanization (depending on which Partitioner it was) on the terrorized inhabitants. During the First World War the Polish territories sustained an enormous amount of wartime devastation, largely due to the policy of overexploitation pursued by Germany and Russia. The Great War utterly degraded Polish industry, especially the industrialized region of Łódź, diminishing the country’s potential for economic development in the postwar period. In 1913 the Polish territories were the tenth most advanced region in the world economy, with a GDP that put them just after France, Japan, and Italy.¹ The Polish GDP per capita was US $1,739 (in 1990 values); as compared to $2,564 for Italy; $1,387 for Japan; $1,488 for Russia; and $3,485 for France. The Poles themselves are not fully aware of the scale of this devastation, chiefly because of the nightmare of the Second World War, which eclipsed the earlier ruination and is still a powerful force in the national memory. The lands of the restored Polish State did not manage to achieve the level of their industrial production prior to the First World War until a year before the outbreak of the next World War.²

As the First World War drew to an end, Polish political parties and organizations coordinated all their efforts for independence as never before. Andrzej Chwalba gives a detailed account of the situation in each of the partitional zones, showing what action was taken by the various groups, whether National Democrats, Conservatives, or Socialists. He describes the work of the social organizations, the scouts, the Sokół gymnastics associations, and the patriotic paramilitary groups. He shows how Józef Piłsudski put his vision of the Polish Legions into practice, triggering a chain reaction of socio-political developments which eventually led to the creation of the Polish Army and accelerated the work for the Polish cause by military means. All these endeavors came together to bring the ultimate success, the restoration of an independent Republic of Poland.

This book, which approaches the subject from the perspective of historical anthropology, will help readers and scholars worldwide understand the events that happened on the territory of Poland during the First World War and encourage more people to join in the discussion on the history of the region. The broad spectrum of facts and topics it addresses has met the principles governing the award of the Janusz Kurtyka Prize, which is the main project conducted by the Janusz Kurtyka Foundation. The aim of the Prize, awarded annually since 2017, is to promote Polish history and historiography abroad by making prizewinning books available in translation to readers worldwide. Professor Chwalba’s book was the winner of the 2018 competition entitled “Within the Span of Polish Independence.” We hope that the book’s English translation will serve as a guide to the history of our region of Europe – a history which is still having an effect on us today.

Paweł Kurtyka President of the Janusz Kurtyka Foundation

Introduction

“A historian who assumes the task of giving an account of what the people of Poland thought and did during the War will have a fair deal of trouble,” Ignacy Daszyński wrote to Władysław Leopold Jaworski on June 2, 1916. And indeed, for nearly a hundred years historians have not had it easy, because the Polish territories at the time of the First World War have turned out to be an extremely complex subject to study. This is one of the reasons why there have been so few attempts to take a comprehensive approach to the question. The only books which present an overview history of Poland during the First World War are university and school textbooks, but most of these are, by their very nature, too general and too much of an overview, generally limited to the political and military issues.

The centenary of the emergence of a new Republic of Poland has encouraged me to write this book, which will present a comprehensive picture of the lives of the millions of people, Poles and members of other ethnic communities, who inhabited the lands of the old Polish Republic in 1914–1918. This book could not have done without a series of in-depth accounts of what happened to the three partitional zones and the three occupied regions, of the activities of the principal Polish politicians and military commanders, but also the plight of the nameless witnesses and contributors to the events of history, whose lives were shattered by the Great War. Another important point was to identify those practices which the occupying forces would repeat, on a bigger scale and in a more brutal déjà-vu, during the Second World War. They treated the territories of Poland as an experimental test site for the management of human resources, the economy, and supplies. The People of Poland at War: 1914–1918 could not overlook the Polish political and military effort which led to the Polish November of 1918; nor could it skip the military operations of the three Powers that had partitioned the old Polish State, because – first of all – they fought in Polish territories, second – they had a fundamental impact on the everyday lives of thousands of people and the work of the administrative authorities, and third – Polish officers and men participated in them. But I am going to give the military history just the amount of space needed to present the full historical context necessary to make the story of the War relatively easy to understand.