History of Poland (1918–1939)

Encyclopedia : H : HI : HIS : History of Poland (1918–1939)

History of Poland

Chronology

Until 966 966–1385 1385–1569 1569–1795 1795–1918 1918–1939 1939–1945 1945–1989 1989–present

Topics

Monarchs Presidents Wars Demographics Jews

The History of interwar Poland starts with the recreation of independent Poland in 1918, and ends with the conquest of Poland by Nazi Germany, 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)

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 force proved the determinant of Poland's frontiers in the east (see also Polish-Soviet war), 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.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} 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 under Pilsudski as their historic regions, since they envisioned an multiethnic state.

When, Piłsudski carried out a military thrust into Ukraine in 1920 and in May Polish-Ukrainian forces reached and occupied Kiev. Soon the Polish invasion was reversed into a retreat by a Red Army counterattack that drove the Polish forces back into the Polish territory, almost to Warsaw. Although many observers at the time marked Poland for extinction and Bolshevization,^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} Piłsudski halted the Soviet advance before Warsaw and resumed the offensive. The Poles, eventually signed a compromise peace treaty at Riga in early 1921 that expanded the Polish frontiers far into the territories disputed with Soviets in Belarus and Ukraine with Soviet Russia getting the rest. The treaty avoided ceding historically Polish territory back to the Russians, and granted Poland significant portions of western Ukraine and Belarus. These acquisitions were recognized by the international agreement with Entente. In regards to Galicia the condition was granting of local autonomy to Ukrainians, which Polish government was reluctant to give ."Poland['s] one third of population consisted of non-Poles, many of whom felt bitterly alienated from a state that had forcibly incorporated them into itself... [T]he Polish government felt it had little reason to negotiate terms of autonomy with minorities upon which it had already imposed its rule."
In 1922 Poland also officially annexed Central Lithuania after elections won by the Polish majority.

The final arrangement largely sealed the fate of many non-Poles for the years to come, as they found themselves a one third of an entire population of the Second Polish Republic whose forcible absorption of their ethnic territories as well as the nationalist inter-war policies have deeply alienated them from the Polish state whose subject they have become. The condition of Ukrainians left under Bolshevik rule as a result of the Treaty was on the other hand marked by Soviet terror, exiles to Siberia, religious persecution and Holodomor a massive famine, believed by many to be artificially made by Soviet government in which milions of Ukrainians perished, in what is alledged to be a genocide.

From Democracy to Authoritarian government

Poland in the interbellum

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, 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

By far the gravest menace to Poland's longevity came from abroad, not from internal weaknesses. 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 Polish refusal to compromise with the Germans and French refusal to resist Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the early 1930s. The Polish nonaggression treaties with Germany and the Soviet Union resulted from this bilateral deterioration of confidence.

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 resolve to defend its East European allies. 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. Complete Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in early 1939 encircled Poland on three sides (East Prussia to the northeast had remained German). Hitler's next move was obvious. By 1939 Hitler had shattered the continental balance of power by a concerted campaign of armed diplomatic extortion that brought most of Central Europe into his grasp.

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 [link]. 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, taken from Poland in 1920 and 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.

As western appeasement of Germany culminating in the German takeover of neighbouring Czechoslovakia (March 1939) left Poland increasingly vulnerable, the Nazi regime proposed Poland to join the Axis Powers. Immediate measures were for territorial concessions to join East Prussia to the rest of Germany, demanding an extraterritorial highway through the middle of Polish territory, but also the return of Danzig, separated from Germany in 1920 as a Free City in a customs union with Poland. However, all concession had to be paid back in conquered terriotories of Lithuania and Ukraine.

After Polish refusal to cede the territories demanded, Germany invaded on September 1, 1939.

See also

• Prometheism.

Reference

- [Poland].