Epilogue

At the outset of this book, I asked the question “Who is a Pole?,” and the reader might have noticed with growing irritation that throughout its pages I have not really answered it. Frankly, I think that from an academic perspective, this is impossible to do. In my personal view, a Pole is somebody who identifies as a Pole, usually has been born in Poland or brought up by people who were, and has developed a strong feeling towards this country. It does not necessarily have to be love, but for sure it is neither hate nor indifference, it is a feeling which makes one care for the country’s history and fate. I am convinced that nobody else can tell this person that she or he is not a Pole, producing “evidence” such as following the “wrong” religion, political conviction, worldview, or lifestyle, or featuring the “wrong mixture” of blood and genes. I regard such lines of argument as an absurd form of modern paganism....

Violence and Crimes Beyond the Battlefields

Chapter 4 reminds the reader that the described conflicts were fought out on territories which had been already heavily affected by the casualties and destructions of the Great War. Postwar Central Europe witnessed epidemics, famine, and a massive refugee crisis. Between 1918 and 1921, Poland’s population was fighting for mere survival. In the meantime, it was menaced by the very men who were meant to protect it: its soldiers. The Polish Army was built from scratch. Desertion, insubordination, and rebellion of whole units was the order of the day. Bands of marauding soldiers harassed the civil population, killing hundreds of Jews. While the border conflicts were state policy put into practice, this wave of paramilitary violence beyond the battlefields was a mixture of cynical pragmatism (shortage of supply), opportunity (possession of arms), and mentality (a sense of superiority of “elite” units towards “ethnic aliens” in general, and Jews in particular).

Introduction

In Central Europe, 1918 marked not only the demise of the German, Austrian, and Russian Empires, but also the rise of a multitude of nation states. Poland, re-erected after 123 years of partition, was at the center of events, independence having been the dream of its elites since the nineteenth century. But the formation of the Polish Second Republic was not the result of a united effort of the whole Polish nation, its political leaders, and military units—first and foremost the legendary “Legions”—during and after the Great War. In reality, in late 1918, there was no united Polish nation, leadership, or army to speak of. The rural masses did not take up the call to arms, the political factions were at war with one another, and the country was on the brink of a domestic war, while marauding soldiers killed Jews and harassed the whole civilian population.

How to Mobilize the Polish Nation

Chapter 2 highlights the fragmentation within Polish society in partition times, during the Great War, and in its after-battles. While the political left prior to 1914 prepared for armed struggle, the right preferred a tactic of “organic change.” During the Great War, genuine Polish military formations became the incarnation of Polish independence. But they formed on opposing sides of the frontline, and were, in terms of numbers, insignificant, while most Polish soldiers served as cannon fodder in the ranks of the imperial armies. Following independence in late 1918, most peasants—80 percent of the Polish-speaking population in Central Europe—mistrusted the “national project” and did not follow the call to arms voluntarily. The Polish Army from the start had to struggle with a serious shortage of soldiers, armament, and provisions. A functioning united national army and chain of command needed years to materialize.

The Central European Civil War

Between 1918 and 1921, Central Europe witnessed several military conflicts which in the past were regarded as rather isolated. Chapter 3 argues that we learn much more about their nature if we underline their similarities rather than their differences. Actually, they can be interpreted as part of a Central European Civil War, which served the new nation states to secure their share of the imperial heritage. Civil war is thus defined as a common experience of fratricidal war in postwar Central Europe. Subsequently, the conflicts at Poland’s borders from the northeast to the southwest are described with an emphasis on their paramilitary character and the way they affected the civil population which was caught in their crossfire. Simultaneously, inner conflict threatened the state’s existence: its leadership prepared for a domestic war, and even the Soviet invasion of 1920 did not motivate Polish peasants to join the colors.

Conclusion

The Conclusion sums up the major arguments of the book and gives an outlook on the decade following the postwar struggles. Polish nationalism had not managed to incite the masses in 1918. Until 1921, the state frontiers in Central Europe were fixed, but they ran through ethnically mixed borderlands. All Central European nation states had ethnic minorities living within and co-nationals living beyond their respective borders. As a result of the enmities brought by the Central European Civil War, a collective postwar security system failed to materialize. Internal and external conflicts were simmering on. Even the fight of the Polish Second Republic for its survival did not unite the nation. Following the border struggles, the political elites were more estranged than ever. Their feud resulted in the assassination of the Prime Minister by a right-wing extremist in 1922 and a left-dominated coup d’état in 1926, which established an authoritarian regime.

Nations, States, and Conflict in Central Europe

Chapter 1 describes the rise of nations in Central Europe, with an emphasis on developments in the tripartite Polish lands under German, Austrian, and Russian rule. Following a recent trend in historiography, it questions the nationalistic master narrative of “oppressive empires” in decline and “democratic nation states” on the rise. With the notable exception of armed insurrections and revolutions, in the long run their relation was one of negotiation rather than of antagonism. Between the Congress of Vienna and the outbreak of the Great War, the area witnessed a century of relative calm. Nevertheless, ethnic nationalism challenged the multinational imperial order. With the empires gone, from 1918 onwards, the new nation states of Central and Southeastern Europe divided their respective populations into titular nations versus minorities, thus defining who was part of the “national project,” and who was not. This exclusive nationalism led to ethnic conflict and war.