Poland Rises in the East I BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1921 Part 2 of 2 - YouTube (1)

On September 1st 1939

Poland will become the first country attacked by Nazi Germany

and this will cause many wars around the world to explode into a new world war,

but what was so special about Poland that it was worth another global war ?

Perhaps we can find a hint in the events of 1921,

when Poland achieves more or less the borders that it will have until that fateful day

18 years later.

Welcome to between two wars a chronological summary of the interwar years, covering all facets of life :

the uncertainty, Hedonism and euphoria

and ultimately humanity's descent into the darkness of the Second World War ; I'm Indy Neidell.

As we saw previously the new post-world War nations in Eastern Europe

have been desperately battling the Bolshevik Russian attempt

to put the broken Russian Empire back together in a new form.

By the end of 1920 Ukraine and Belarus have, only months after their creation, fallen to the Bolsheviks,

but Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have defended their independence.

The outcome has been very uncertain especially for Poland and Lithuania.

They were in fact at war with each other, while they also fought the Bolsheviks.

The 1920 Versailles Treaty added substantial land dependencies to the small,

landlocked polish Republic that had been proclaimed in 1918 : parts of west Prussia

and all of Posen are now parts of Poland.

The northern expanse of west Prussia is divided from East prussia

to create the Polish corridor, giving Poland access to the Baltic Sea

and establishing the autonomous but a joined seaport at the now free city of Danzig.

On the 11th of July 1920,

the rest of East Prussia around Königsberg is allowed to decide by plebiscite where to go.

A majority of 97% vote to stay in Germany, and East Prussia is now a German island squeezed

in between Poland in the West and Lithuania in the East.

A sliver of the region on the northern side of the Memel River remains under the administration of the League of Nations,

awaiting a decision if it will go to Lithuania or stay in Germany.

By 1923, the decision still will not have been made and Lithuania decides to just take it.

On the south-western Polish-Czechoslovakian-German border,

Upper Silesia is partly ceded to Czechoslovakia

And the rest is also to decide by plebiscite where to belong.

Problem is, there's no clear sign which way the population there wants to go.

But before we get there, we have to backtrack a bit okay ?

If you watch the first episode of this series, Rise of the Nations,

we explained how the idea of national identity is, it's a very new concept here in the early 20th century.

We also explain how history was adapted to a nationalist narrative,

creating some very confusing historical discrepancies : the Poland of 1921

is a perfect example of how this now causes problems that already lead to war and will be a

central factor in the conflict that erupts in 1939 in this very place.

Now although Poland is only three years old in 1921,

it has existed in the past, at least in name.

For hundreds of years the region had been the dependencies of the Polish crown.

Now we should be careful of mixing that up with the idea of Poland as a nation state,

for the Poland of the past was nothing like the Poland of the present.

But there was something very special about that region that was remarkably modern already in the 14th century

Formerly, the region was called the crown of the kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania

colloquially the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.

By 1619, this was one of the largest monarchies of Europe with an area of more than a million square kilometres and a population of

twelve million people, roughly 15% of Europe's population.

The language mix of this population was extremely diverse with an estimated

38% speaking some variety of Polish and more than 15% speaking some kind of German out of which a third were Yiddish speaking Jews.

Remember that for future episodes, it'll turn out to be very important.

But this in itself wasn't modern, diversity was the norm at that time.

The Commonwealth was special because it actually had the seeds

of constitutionalism and parliamentarianism at its heart

The monarch had only limited powers, which were checked by a bicameral legislature

the same which was elected by the nobility : szlachta.

Now at this time, other monarchies like England or Sweden

were drifting in this direction, but in the Commonwealth this was already a functioning system.

Starting with the 30 Years War,

the Commonwealth came under increasing pressure :

the Habsburgs, the Holy Roman imperial family, the Romanovs, the Russian imperial family

and two families with strong ties to the Commonwealth : the Vasas and the Hohenzollerns vied for control.

In fact, one of the bosses Sigismund III sat on the thrones of Poland, Lithuania and Sweden

simultaneously and the Hohenzollerns were part of the Commonwealth through their dependency Prussia.

When the Commonwealth reaches its greatest extent 1619,

these families start tearing the Commonwealth apart

through a long series of bloody wars and diplomatic shenanigans.

And by 1795, it is no more.

By then divided between the Habsburgs, the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs.

By the end of the 19th century, this means that the region is part of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany

and in 1914, it becomes the northern part of the Eastern Front.

But before that war broke out, there was a growing movement for a new independent Poland.

A movement that gained significant traction towards the end of the 19th century.

By the turn of the 20th century, one man has emerged as the leader of that movement : Joseph Piłsudski.

He's a multilingual Russian citizen of Polish ethnicity with a vision of a resurrected Commonwealth

stretching from the Oder to the Baltic Highlands and from the Baltic Sea to Crimea.

It's important to know that Piłsudski's dream is not based on identity politics, rather,

he wants to resurrect a modernized, democratic version of the multi-ethnic Commonwealth.

He's opposed by the nationalists who envisioned a smaller but more ethnically pure Poland.

Piłsudski has begun raising a private Polish militia already before the World War.

And when it comes, he puts his forces at the disposal of the central powers, hoping that a defeat of Russia

will enable him to carve out a new nation and use the instability in Russia to expand it eastward.

When the Russian Revolution starts in 1917, he demands and gets a Polish nation.

Well, on paper.

It's not truly autonomous, not really even close

and he refuses to cooperate with the Germans and is imprisoned.

Days before the war ends, the Germans sent Piłsudski to Warsaw

in the hope that he will craft a friendly nation that will serve as a bulwark against bolshevik Russia.

This enables him to proclaim a new nation.

The name he chooses, the Second Republic of Poland is a historical reference :

the Polish name of the Commonwealth is more correctly translated as : the Republic.

So basically he's very clever, and cements the idea that Poland is ancient already in the name

and therefore creates a direct link to the Commonwealth.

Soon Piłsudski sets out on his adventure to recreate the Commonwealth,

launching a war against the also recently proclaimed Independent Nations of Lithuania,

Western Ukraine and the Ukrainian National Republic to forcibly incorporate them all into his new Republic.

What happens with the ukrainian adventure you can see in our episodes

covering the Russian Civil War and the Polish-Soviet war.

The Polish Lithuanian war turns out to be a rather messy affair as well, but has a somewhat more even outcome.

Just like Ukraine had, the Lithuanian faced several enemies at the same time :

in the east, the Bolsheviks are trying to force them into the Lithuanian Bielorussian Soviet republic,

in the West, while there's a confusing situation,

a certain Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, a German backed cossack warlord, yep,

has started an independent private war, but against who ?

Funny thing is, this is still an issue of debate in 2018,

did he want to help the Lithuanian against the Poles and the Bolsheviks ?

Expand Germany ? Or maybe even create a kingdom for himself ?

In any case, he's defeated and disappears into the backwaters of history.

But before that, he does distract the Lithuanians enough, to the Poles to use that confusion to incite insurgencies

against the Lithuanian government.

In 1919, as the Red Army advances into Belarus,

Poland steps in with support for the private militias that are popping up all over the place.

What follows is a long series of back-and-forth with confusing alliances,

uprisings, counter-uprisings and minor battles with unclear outcomes.

The major battles are actually between Poland and the Bolsheviks, but the Lithuanians constantly get caught in the crossfire.

What's actually going on is so confusing and so subjective, that, and this is serious,

if you compare Polish and Lithuanian history books,

the same battle is still today likely to be attributed to completely different wars.

And Polish and Lithuanian historiography doesn't even agree on the timeframe of all of this.

In the end, the chaos is to a certain degree helpful in keeping the Bolsheviks out.

And when the Polish army is in retreat in early 1920,

the Lithuanians take the opportunity to make peace with the Russians.

The Lithuanians secure their territory from the retreating Polish army in the summer of 1920

but when the Polish strike back after the Battle of Warsaw in September,

they claim that Lithuania is a Russian ally and attack the red army and the

Lithuanians at the same time, and defeat both at the Battle of Niemen River.

Lithuania is now open to invasion, but the League of Nations forces through the Suwałki agreement,

where the Poles agree to Lithuanian independence.

The agreement is not clear about the demarcation line in the Vilnius area though

and Pilsudski orders his army to take the city

under the guise of protecting the independence of ethnic poles in Vilnius.

So the capital of Lithuania is now in Poland.

The Lithuanian government will be set up in Kaunas instead,

and the Poles and Lithuanians will not have diplomatic relations until shortly before WWII.

Instead of becoming a Commonwealth, the two new nations have now become bitter enemies.

But Poland is not only facing problems in the East.

While the Paris Peace Conference gets underway,

ethnic poles in Posen, still in Germany, rise up against the Germans but are violently crushed.

This contributes to the incorporation of Posen into Poland under the Treaty of Versailles.

But the treaty doesn't finally decide the fate of neighboring Upper Silesia.

This region has a larger ethnic diversity with like 53% Polish speakers and 40% German speakers.

And the population is pretty much divided down the middle about where to go.

In early 1920, ethnic German militias, the SiPo, start a campaign to

violently dissuade the Polish speaking up for silesians from joining Poland.

The militias harassed Polish language newspapers and activists for Polish annexation.

The Polish population answers with demands to dissolve the SiPo.

On May 3rd, on the anniversary of the Polish Constitution,

the SiPo attack at Polish celebrations all over the region.

On June, July and August, tensions continue to rise.

On August 17, three days after the Polish Army's victory over the Bolsheviks at the miracle at the Vistula,

German newspapers spread the fake news that Warsaw has in fact fallen to the Soviets.

The SiPo uses the news to again attack what they now call Polish insurgents,

but the Polish strike back and in late August some 2,000 Polish militia

successively take control of one town after the other.

This is the first step in a concerted effort to take the whole region and force the disbanding of the SiPo.

On September 27th 1920, the actual second Silesian uprising begins : first, the Poles call a general strike.