- 1 - Lecture 13 The First World War and the Emergence of an Independent Polish State 1. Poland at the Outbreak of the War When the great powers of Europe put their alliance systems to the test in 1914 they unwittingly submitted to the arbitrament of war questions which had lain dormant for centuries. With the advent of the Ottoman empire to the war on the side of the Central Powers, the Turkish domination of the Arab world could no longer be taken for granted. The Battle of the White Mountain of 1620, which seemed to have imposed upon the Czechs permanent subjection to, or at the best association with Austria, no longer possessed a final validity. The lands of the Crown of St Stephen, which the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum of 23 July 1914 sought to protect, were now open to partition in the event of an unsuccessful war. Equally Poland, partitioned in the eighteenth century, might in the twentieth once again have an independent existence. The Poles entered the war with some advantages. Their national culture had not been undermined by foreign rule. Their historical sense was strong. They nevertheless suffered from grave handicaps. Separate political existences within three empires had destroyed their own political unity. Among the contending great powers France and Britain had no fundamental interest in promoting the Polish cause. A solution of the Polish Question was not obligatory upon Germany, Austria-Hungary or Russia. Poland was not a European question, nor could its manipulation yield any of the powers particular advantage. The decision to create a - 2 - Czech state in 1918, and therefore to destroy the political unity of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was made because of its obvious utility in the midst of a bitter struggle. The creation of a new Poland would mean merely the loss of frontier provinces by three states, but did not threaten them with destruction. The Polish Question must be seen in its proper perspective. It was one which existed only for the Poles themselves. The only interest which the partitioning powers had in the Poles was the conscription of 1,500,000 of them to serve in their armies, together with the civilian labour which could be employed in their factories and peasants who tilled the soil to provide food. It is therefore understandable that in the first instance the Poles could not respond to the war as a nation. The war was an opportunity. The problem before the Poles was how to use it. The Poles can therefore be excused for inexperience. The Russian state, which embraced most of the territories to which the Poles would lay claim, took some time to define its attitude. On 14 August 1914 the Russian commander-in-chief, the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievich, issued a manifesto declaring that it was Russian policy to join Poland together as a state within the Russian system. This statement was in its very essence equivocal. A commander-in-chief had no authority to make such a declaration on policy and could easily be disavowed. A promise as important as this ought to have been issued in the name of the tsar himself. The terms of the manifesto were, moreover, vague in the extreme, offering freedom of religion, the use of the Polish language and local self-government. This proposal fell far short of the independence which remained the ultimate aspiration of most Poles. Nevertheless, the propertied class had already declared their allegiance to Russia. In the Duma the National Democrat, Wiktor Jaroński, a landowner from Kielce, pledged Polish support in the name - 3 - of the Polish Circle for a War of the Slavs against their eternal enemy, the Germans. In their support for the war the pro-Russian party had the adherence of the clergy in the Kingdom of Poland. The clergy in Poznania and the leading Christian Democrat in Silesia, Adam Napieralski, for their part urged Poles to show their loyalty to the Prussian state and even to say daily prayers to the Lord of Hosts for a German victory. In Galicia most politicians pronounced in favour of Austria On 16 August 1914 he Polish Club in the Austrian Parliament set up the Supreme National Committee (Naczelny Komitet Narodowy) in Kraków, which declared its faith in a victorious war to liberate Poland from the domination of the tsar. Piłsudski, whose plans for an invasion of the Kingdom of Poland received approval from the Austrian military authorities on 26 July I914, sent a small body of some 200 men, drawn from the rifle clubs, into the gubernia of Kielce to disrupt Russian mobilization. On 27 July an announcement was made in Kraków that a ‘National Government’ had been established in Warsaw and that Piłsudski had been appointed commander-in-chief. In that capacity Piłsudski declared that units of the Polish army had entered the Kingdom of Poland and that all Poles had the duty to support it. This initiative failed as the Poles in Kielce, the first town the soldiers entered were clearly hostile and demonstrated their support for the Tsarist government. On 21 November 1914, Roman Dmowski at the head of the National Democrats, together with adherents of the Party of Realpolitik, founded the Polish National Committee (Komitet Narodowy Polski) in Warsaw in order to promote the cause of Poland in association with Russia. The response of the parties to the war was predictable. The upper classes turned to the states under whose rule they lived. The major working-class parties like the SDKPiL and the PPS-Left condemned the imperialist war - 4 - and strove to achieve the social revolution. The war which was to present the Poles with a chance to win their independence found them in disarray. Four years were to elapse before a satisfactory solution could be found. The multiplicity of political parties and their splinter groups reveals the nature of the Polish problem. While all Poles longed for independence they were not likely to be of one mind when they achieved it. As far as the socialists were concerned the struggle for economic and social justice would continue. Independence would not immediately dispose of the question of land hunger for the peasants. The upper classes who feared for supremacy before 1914 might contemplate the future with misgiving. The fight for national self-determination was accompanied, as it had been before in Polish history, by a contest to determine who should rule at home when independence had been won. 2. The First Year of the War The war began in 19I4 with German expectation of a quick victory in the west at least. In fact, the stabilization of the front in France after the Battle of the Marne revealed that the struggle would be a long one. The powers which had partitioned Poland now turned to the question of enlisting Polish support in the conflict which was to extend until 1918. None of the powers had clearly defined aims for Poland at the beginning of the war. The clearest objectives were those of Austria-Hungary, where there was widespread support for the incorporation of the Kingdom of Poland into the Habsburg empire and its union with Galicia as a third constituent portion of the monarchy. The Austrians, however, hesitated to make this aim public. The attempt of the Pole, Leon Biliński, the - 5 - Austro-Hungarian minister of finance, to persuade the emperor Franz Joseph to issue a declaration in favour of the ‘Austro-Polish solution’ was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, on 12 August Berchtold, the Austrian Foreign minister, received a general promise from Germany that an Austro-Polish settlement would be looked upon with favour, a promise repeated, though in vague terms, at a conference between Austrian and German representatives at Poznan in January 1915 . The Germans were on this occasion more interested in the division of the spoils in the Dąbrowa basin which had fallen into the hands of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary). The Hungarians objected to the concept. The plan put forward by the Austrian prime minister, Karl Sturgkh, in 1915 proposed only that the new Polish territories within the monarchy should enjoy the same autonomy as Galicia. Eastern Galicia with its predominantly Ukrainian population was to be made into a separate province. As far as the Germans were concerned, they were committed to an Austro-Polish solution, but as early as 31 July Kaiser William II had told Bogdan Hutten-Czapski, a leading pro-German figure among the Polish aristocracy in Prussian Poland, that, if Germany were victorious, he would establish an independent Polish state ‘linked with us’. The annexationist programme set out in September 1914 by the German chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, also aflfirmed that among the states participating in the ‘Central European economic association’ would be Poland. A number of factors determined German policy in addition to support of Austria-Hungary. The belief was strong in the German Foreign Office that no decisive actions should be taken on the Polish Question lest it undermine the prospects of a separate peace with Russian or affect the loyalties of Poles in Prussia. The makers of German policy, in particular the military, were - 6 - increasingly concerned to acquire territory at the expense of the Kingdom of Poland, partly for economic reasons, but also to establish an area for German colonization stretching from East Prussia to Upper Silesia to act as a cordon between the Poles in Prussia and the remainder of the Polish nation. The Russian manifesto issued by the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievich on 14 August 1914 encountered strong opposition in reactionary circles in Russia, especially among those who hoped to reach a separate peace with Germany.