History of Poland (1918–1939): Difference between revisions

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The History of interwar Poland starts with the recreation of independent Poland in 1918, and ends with the conquest of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, starting the Second World War.

The final borders of the Second Polish Republic were not established until 1922. Between 1921 and 1939, Poland achieved significant economic growth. The Polish political scene remained chaotic and shifting, however, especially after the death of Józef Piłsudski in 1935.

Formative Years, (1918-1921)

From its inception, the Second Polish Republic struggled to secure and maintain its existence in difficult circumstances. Much of the territories Polish leaders of that period wanted to regain, lost by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century in the Partitions, were also coveted by others, from younger nations struggling for independence or by more imperialist-minded neighbours, like the Soviet Union which also desired those territories, which the Russian Empire had recovered from Poland-Lithuania which conquered these territories in the 14th century.^[1] However, opinions varied among Polish politicians as to how much of the territories the new Poland should regain, with Józef Piłsudski advocating a concept of Międzymorze, a democractic, Polish-led federation of independent states, and Roman Dmowski of endecja faction, who set his goal as a more compact Poland composed of ethnic Polish or 'polonizable' territories.

To the southwest, Poland encountered boundary disputes with Czechoslovakia over Austrian Silesia. More ominously, an embittered Germany begrudged any territorial loss to its new eastern neighbor. The December 27 1918 Great Poland Uprising liberated Greater Poland. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles settled the German-Polish borders in the Baltic region. The port city of Gdańsk, a city with close ties to both Poland and Germans, and then with a significant German majority but as economically vital to Poland as it had been in the sixteenth century, was declared a free city. Allied arbitration divided the ethnically mixed and highly coveted industrial and mining district of Silesia between Germany and Poland, with Poland receiving the more industrialized eastern section in 1922, after series of three Silesian Uprisings.

The German-Polish borders were so complicated that only close collaboration between the two countries could let the situation persist (1930 km., compared to the 430 km. of the present-day Oder-Neisse line). The unification of the former Prussian provinces lasted for many years. Until 1923, these provinces were ruled by a separate administration.

Military conflict proved the determinant of Poland's frontiers in the east, a theater rendered chaotic by the repercussions of the Russian revolutions and civil war. Piłsudski envisioned creating a federation with the rest of Ukraine (led by the Polish-friendly government in Kiev he was to help to install) and Lithuania, thus forming a Central and East European federation called "Międzymorze". Lenin, leader of the new communist government of Russia, saw Poland as the bridge over which communism would pass into the labor class of a disorganized postwar Germany.^[2] And the issue was further complicated as some of the disputed regions had assumed various economic and political identities since the partition in the late 18th century while some didn't posses ethnically Polish majority in the first place they were still viewed by Poles as their historic regions, since they envisioned Poland as a multiethnic state.^[1] In the end, the negotiations broke down, sinking Piłsudski's idea of Międzymorze federation, instead, wars like the Polish-Lithuanian War or the Polish-Ukrainian War decided the borders of the region for the next two decades

The Polish-Soviet war, the most important of those regional wars, and one of the most important conflicts of the interwar period^[3], begun in 1919, but it was not until 1920 that its two participants realized they were facing more than a local border dispute. Piłsudski first carried out a major military thrust into Ukraine in 1920 and in May Polish-Ukrainian forces reached Kiev. Only few weeks later, however, the Polish offensive was met with Soviet counteroffensive, and Polish progress east was changed into a retreat by a Red Army, which drove the Polish forces out of the disputed Ukraine, back into the Polish heartland, with the decisive battle of the war taking place near the Polish capital of Warsaw^[3]. Although many observers at the time marked Poland for extinction and Bolshevization,^{[citation needed]} Piłsudski halted the Soviet advance and resumed the offensive, pushing Soviet forces east. Eventually both sides, exhausted, signed a compromise peace treaty at Riga in early 1921 that divided the disputed territories of Belarus and Ukraine between the two combatants^[1]. These acquisitions were recognized by the international agreement with Entente. In regards to Galicia the condition was that of granting of local autonomy to Ukrainians, which Polish government was reluctant to give .^[4] In 1922, in the aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War and Polish-Lithuanian War, Poland also officially annexed Central Lithuania after forged elections. Lithuania never recognized that election, and the relations between those two countries would remain cool for many years.

The Riga arrangement influended the fate of the entire region for the years to come. Ukrainians and Belarusians found themselves without a state of their own, and some Poles also found themselves within the borders of the Soviet Union. The Second Polish Republic, one third of whose citizens were non-ethnic Poles, was far from friendly towards minorities. Its policies, often dictated by the nationalist endecja faction, increasingly alienated those miniorities from the Polish state whose subjects they have become. Under the guise of combating communism, most Belorussian schools were closed, and publications in the Belorussian language were banned. The government encouraged ethnic Poles (see Glossary) to settle in the Belorussian region, but at the same time it neglected the overall economic development of the area. The Belorussian region became an agricultural appendage to a more industrialized Poland, and unemployment and land hunger were widespread. Between 1925 and 1938, some 78,000 people emigrated from this part of Poland in search of work, mainly to France and Latin America. In 1935 Poland declared that it would no longer be bound by the League of Nations treaty on ethnic minorities, arguing that its own laws were adequate. That same year, many Belorussians in Poland who opposed the government's policies were placed in a concentration camp at Byaroza-Kartuzski (Bereza Kartuska, in Polish). The Belorussians lost their last seat in the Polish Sejm in the general elections of 1935, and the legislation that guaranteed the right of minority communities to have their own schools was repealed in November 1938. The state then involved itself more deeply in religion by attempting to Polonize the Orthodox Church and subordinate it to the government. [1]

From Democracy to Authoritarian government

Reborn Poland faced a host of daunting challenges: extensive war damage, a ravaged economy, a population one-third composed of wary national minorities, an economy largely under control of German Industrial interests and a need to reintegrate the three zones kept forcibly apart during the era of partition. Under these trying conditions, the experiment with democracy faltered. Formal political life began in 1921 with adoption of a constitution that designed Poland as a republic modeled after the French example, vesting most authority in the legislature. The postwar parliamentary system proved unstable and erratic, much like that of the Third Republic itself. In 1922 disputes with political foes caused Piłsudski to resign his posts as chief of state and commander of the armed forces, but in 1926 he assumed power in a May coup that followed four years of ineffectual government. For the next decade, Piłsudski dominated Polish affairs as strongman of a generally popular centrist regime. Military in character, the government of Piłsudski mixed democratic and dictatorial elements while pursuing sanacja, or national cleansing. In 1935 a new Polish Constitution was passed, but soon afterwards Piłsudski died and his protégé successors drifted toward open authoritarianism.

In many respects, the Second Republic fell short of the high expectations of 1918. As happened elsewhere in Central Europe, with exception of Czechoslovakia, the attempt to implant democracy did not succeed. Governments polarised between right and left wing factions, neither of which was prepared to honour the actions taken by the other. Typical of these concerns was the issue of the Nationalisation of foreign owned, particularly German and Jewish assets in Poland. Minority peoples became increasingly alienated, due in part to the failure of the Polish government to fulfill treaty obligations of minority autonomy. Anti-semitism rose palpably in the general population. Much of the Jewish population was pauperized due to large-scale boycotts. Nevertheless, interwar Poland could justifiably claim some noteworthy accomplishments: economic advances, the revival of Polish education and culture after decades of official curbs, and, above all, reaffirmation of the Polish nationhood that had been disputed so long.

Despite its defects, the Second Republic retained a strong hold on later generations of Poles as a genuinely independent and authentic expression of Polish national aspirations.

Poland's International Situation

In foreign policy, the republic allied itself with France (February 1921) as a defence against both Germany and Soviet Russia, but in January 1934 concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany's new Nazi government, subsequently rejecting (September 27) French proposals for an Eastern European security pact directed against Germany, partly because the proposed treaty involved no guarantee of Poland's eastern frontier with the Soviet Union.

By far the gravest menace to Poland's longevity came from abroad, not from internal weaknesses.^{[citation needed]} The center of Poland's postwar foreign policy was a political and military alliance with France, which guaranteed Poland's independence and territorial integrity. Although Poland attempted to join the Little Entente, the French-sponsored alliance of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, Czechoslovak suspicions of Polish territorial ambitions prevented Polish membership. Beginning in 1926, Piłsudski's main foreign policy aim was balancing Poland's still powerful neighbors, the Soviet Union and Germany. Piłsudski assumed that both powers wished to regain the Polish territory lost in World War I. Therefore, his approach was to avoid Polish dependence on either power. Above all, Piłsudski sought to avoid taking positions that might cause the two countries to take concerted action against Poland. Accordingly, Poland signed nonaggression pacts with both countries in the early 1930s. After Piłsudski's death, his foreign minister Józef Beck continued this policy.

The failure to establish planned alliances in Eastern Europe meant great reliance on the French, whose enthusiasm for intervention in the region waned markedly after World War I. The Locarno Pact, signed in 1926 by the major West European powers with the aim of guaranteeing peace in the region, contained no guarantee of Poland's western border. Over the next ten years, substantial friction arose between Poland and France over the Polish refusal to compromise with the Germans. The Polish nonaggression treaties with Germany and the Soviet Union resulted from this bilateral deterioration of confidence.^{[citation needed]}

The Polish predicament worsened in the 1930s with the advent of Hitler's openly expansionist Nazi regime in Germany and the obvious waning of France's desire to resist Germany's expansion, as long as it was eastward and not westward.^{[citation needed]} Piłsudski retained the French connection but had progressively less faith in its usefulness. As the decade drew to an end, Poland's policy of equilibrium between potential enemies was failing. As Poland's international position was rapidly deteriorating, the Polish regime began to act somewhat incoherently, attempting to shore up its domestic position with a series of diplomatic actions aimed at smaller neighbouring countries. In March, 1938, after a border incident, it presented an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding that the previously undefined border with Poland be marked and opened, and that diplomatic relations be established [2]. Faced with a threat of war, the Lithuanian government accepted the Polish demands. In October, 1938, after the Munich Agreement, which ensured British and French approval, allowed Germany the right to take over areas of Czechoslovakia with a significant German minority, the so-called Sudetenland, Poland similarly demanded that Czechoslovakia give up the Cieszyn area, inhabited by a significant Polish minority. Faced with an ultimatum, Czechoslovakia gave up the area (about 1% of its territory), which was taken over by Polish authorities and annexed by Poland on October 2, 1938.

Shortly thereafter, the Nazis proceeded to invade the rest of Czechoslovakia which in March 1939, then ceased to exist. This aggression did little to repair the tensions between Poland and Germany. Earlier, Germany had proposed that Poland join the Anti-Comintern Pact and previous attempts were made by Germany to create an extraterritorial highway connecting Germany proper with Danzig and then East Prussia. Germany also pressed for the incorporation of the Danzig, separated from Germany in 1920 and functioning as a Free City in a customs union with Poland ever since. However, Germany offered compensation for Poland's concessions by promising territory in Lithuania and Ukraine.

A final offer was prepared on the eve of hostilities where elections would be held to determine the ownership of the "Polish corridor". Only those living in the corridor prior to 1918 would be allowed to vote. The proposal called for a subsequent population exchange that would move all Germans in current Poland out of the final region declared to be "Poland". The same would occur for all Poles living in what was declared, after the vote, to be "Germany". Danzig was to become part of Germany regardless of the vote, but if Germany lost, it was still guaranteed access to East Prussia through an authobahn system that it would administer, stretching from Germany proper to Danzig to East Prussia. If Poland lost the vote, the corridor would go to Germany and the seaport of Gdynia would become a Polish exclave with a route connecting Poland with Gdynia.

In the Polish corridor, the overall population worked slightly in Poland's favor, but it is unknown as to what effect the addition of pre-1918 residents would have on the vote. Despite this last minute offer, Germany had already arranged for its attack on Poland. Poland was rushed into signing, which it refused to do. With Poland already isolated on three sides, Hitler's next move was obvious. Germany invaded on September 1, 1939 after a spurious border "incident".

See also

• Prometheism.

Reference

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  - Poland.