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

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

Formative years (1918-1921)

From its inception, the Second Polish Republic struggled to secure and maintain its existence in difficult circumstances. Most Polish leaders of that period wanted to regain territories lost by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century (result of the Partitions of Poland). The same territories were coveted by others — from aspiring separatist regions struggling to secede (such as the Ukraine, White Russia, and the Baltics), to more powerful neighbours minded neighbours like the Soviet Union — desiring lands previously controlled by the Russian Empire. The new Polish borders were perceived in relation to those of the Commonwealth which in turn established them in the 14th century. 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 democratic, Polish-led federation of independent states — and Roman Dmowski of Endecja faction, who set his mind on a more compact Poland composed of ethnic Polish or 'polonizable' territories.

To the southwest, Poland encountered boundary disputes with Czechoslovakia over Austrian Silesia (see: Zaolzie). 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 smaller in size, but 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" (literally "between seas"). 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. 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 have an 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. 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, began in 1919, was the most important of the regional wars, and one of the most important conflicts of the interwar period. However, 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 the Ukraine in 1920 and in May Polish-Ukrainian forces reached Kiev. Just a few weeks later, however, the Polish offensive was met with a Soviet counter-offensive, and Polish forces were forced into a retreat by the Red Army. Poland was driven out of Ukraine and back into the Polish heartland, with the decisive battle of the war taking place near the Polish capital of Warsaw. Although many observers at the time marked Poland for extinction and Bolshevization, 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. These acquisitions were recognized by the international agreement with the Entente. Poland reluctantly granted local autonomy to the Ukranian population of Galicia, many of whom were embittered by their incorporation into a Polish state. In 1922, in the aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War and Polish-Lithuanian War, Poland also officially annexed Central Lithuania following a plebiscite, which was never recognised by Lithuania.

The Riga arrangement influenced the fate of the entire region for the years to come. Ukrainians and Belarusians found themselves without a province of their own, and some Poles also found themselves within the borders of the Soviet Union. The condition of those left under Bolshevik rule as a result of the Treaty was would be later marked by forced collectivistion, state terror, purges, labor camps and famine. The newly-formed Second Polish Republic, one third of whose citizens were non-ethnic Poles, engaged in promoting Polish identity, culture and language at the expense of the country's ethnic minorities who felt alienated by the process.

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 that had been forcibly kept apart during the era of partition.

Under these trying conditions, the experiment with democracy faltered. Poland's formal political life began in 1921 with adoption of a constitution that designed Poland as a republic modeled after the French Third Republic, vesting most authority in the legislature. The postwar Polish parliamentary system proved unstable and erratic, much like that of the French Third Republic.

In 1922 disputes with political foes caused Piłsudski to resign his posts as Chief of State and commander-in-chief of the armed forces; but in 1926, after four subsequent years of ineffectual government, he assumed power in the May 1926 Coup d'État. For the next decade, Piłsudski dominated Polish affairs as strongman of a generally popular centrist regime. Military in character, Piłsudski's government mixed democratic and dictatorial elements while pursuing national Sanation ("healing"). In 1935 a new Polish Constitution was adopted, but Piłsudski soon 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 the exception of Czechoslovakia, the attempt to implant democracy did not succeed. Governments polarized between right- and left-wing factions, neither of which was prepared to honor the actions taken by the other.

Typical of these concerns was the issue of the nationalization, in Poland, of foreign-owned, particularly German and Jewish, assets. Poland's minorities became increasingly alienated, due in part to the government's failure to honour treaty obligations concerning minority autonomy, as neither nor Germany nor Soviet Union were Poles lived, had signed such treaties. Antisemitism rose steadily as the Depression gained momentum in the 1930s, despite the fact that Poland was home to over 3 millon Jews (mostly ethnic Polish), the largest Jewish population in Europe at the time and 10% of Poland's population. Much of the Jewish population was pauperized by recurrent boycotts.

Nevertheless, interbellum 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 so long been disputed. 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.

International relations

In foreign policy, Poland allied itself with France (February 1921) as a defence against both Germany and Soviet Russia. In 1932 it signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviets, and in January 1934 it concluded another pact, with Germany's new Nazi government, subsequently rejecting (September 27) French proposals for an Eastern European security pact directed against Germany, as it involved no guarantee of Poland's eastern frontier with the Soviet Union.

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 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 submit towards German demands.

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. Piłsudski retained the French connection but had progressively less faith in its usefulness. Following a border incident in March, 1938, Poland presented an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the diplomatic relations between Poland and Lithuania to be re-established and the previously closed border with Poland to be opened . 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. Due to those events Poland demanded that Czechoslovakia give up the Zaolzie, where Poles made a majority of inhabitants. 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. Germany offered compensation for Poland's concessions by promising territory in Lithuania and Ukraine, but the Poles refused all offers.

A final German demand was prepared on the eve of hostilities where a plebiscite 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 autobahn 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. 421,029 Germans consisted 42,5% of the population in 1910.

Despite this last minute demands, 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 Gleiwitz incident.

See also

• Prometheism

References

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  - Poland.

Notes

1. ^ "Polish nationalism claimed independence not only for the Polish-speaking districts of Russia, Austria and Prussia, but for all the land within the historic frontiers of their medieval empire, including Lithuania and White Russia. The Poland which Polish politicians sought and won from the Peace Converence following the World War I was a resurrection of the supranational seventeenth-century Polish Commonwealth. The conference originally laid down a provisional frontier between Poland and Russia known as the Curzom line which was in general accord with the ethnographic situation. However, in January 1920, the Red Army began concentrating a 700,000-strong force near the Berezina River and in Belarus. In response, the Poles together with their Ukrainian allies, began an offensive against Bolshevik forces of Russia. In May they succeeded in capturing Kiev. In March 1921, the Peace of Riga concluded between Bolshevik Russia and Poland gave Poland an eastern boundary which, except for the territory that had become the new Republic of Lithuania, and the vast areas around Minsk and Zytomierz, corresponded roughly with the one she had just before the partition of 1795."
   Sandra Halperin, In the Mirror of the Third World: Capitalist Development in Modern Europe, Chapter "Europe's Colonial Past and "Artificially" constructed States", pp. 40, 41, Cornell University Press, 1996, ISBN 0801482909
2. THE REBIRTH OF POLAND. University of Kansas, lecture notes by professor Anna M. Cienciala, 2004. Last accessed on 2 June 2006.
3. ^ Edgar Vincent D'Abernon, The Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World: Warsaw, 1920, Hyperion Press, 1977, ISBN 0-88355-429-1
4. "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... The Polish government felt it had little reason to negotiate terms of autonomy with minorities upon which it had already imposed its rule."
   Roshwald, Aviel (2001). Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia, 1914-1923. Routledge (UK). ISBN 0415242290. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

External links

• Commonwealth of Diverse Cultures: Poland's Heritage
• Old maps of Poland from Hipkiss' Scanned Old Maps

• History of Poland (1918–1939)
• National unifications