Polish Independence and the Polish-Soviet War
Poland reappeared as a state in November 1918 after 123 years, because all three of the powers that had partitioned it lost the war. That is a coincidence without parallel in European history. Russia collapsed in 1917, Austria-Hungary dissolved in October 1918, and Germany asked for an armistice in November, and the country they had divided in 1795 was left with no one occupying it. Józef Piłsudski was released from a German prison at Magdeburg on 8 November and reached Warsaw on the 10th, and the regency council handed him military authority the following day. He had spent the war commanding Polish legions on the Austrian side against Russia, on the calculation that Russia was the greater enemy, and had been imprisoned in 1917 for refusing to swear loyalty to the Central Powers. Dmowski, his rival, had spent it in the west arguing the Polish case to the Allies, on the opposite calculation. Both were necessary, and they detested each other. The state that emerged had to be assembled out of three legal systems, three railway gauges, six currencies and territory claimed by every neighbour, and it fought six border wars in three years — against Ukrainians, Germans, Czechs, Lithuanians and finally the Red Army, which was stopped outside Warsaw in August 1920. The frontiers were not settled until 1923. 11 November is the national holiday. Piłsudski's own comparison was that Poland was like a doughnut, valuable at the edges and empty in the middle, meaning that the borderlands would have to be fought for. He spent the rest of his life doing it.
- Year: 1918 CE
- Category: Political
