Germany’s campaign of subversion in Poland could build on a living tradition of national rising which had manifested themselves in a series of rebellions in the nineteenth century, and more recently in the unrest accompanying the revolution of 1905-6. Bismarck’s idea that in the event of a German Russian war Russian Poland should be incited to rise and should be reinstated as an independent state, was a two-edged sword for Prussia’s Ostmark policy, for the appearance of a new Polish state could not but have its effect on the millions of Poles in the eastern provinces of Prussia. The situation in Austria was rather different >here the Crown land of Galicia presented an analogous problem. The Poles of Galicia, however, unlike the Poles of Prussia or Russia, enjoyed cultural and political security and had a big voice in the government ad parliament of their state. Vienna was therefore readier to consider promoting revolution in Russian Poland, the more so since it could hope to bring the areas detached from Russia into the framework of the dual Monarchy. This situation explains why it was only with half a heart that Berlin embarked on the revolutionizing of Congress Poland . . .
2 On this see also Oncken, Preussen und Polen im XIX Jahrhundert, pp. 224 ff.
Even before the final breach with Russia in July, 1914, Germany had decided that, if war broke out, Congress Poland must be incited to revolt and be reinstated as a state. The evidence now available.
forces us to give more credence tan was previously customary to Hutten-Czapski’s assertion that on July 31, 1914, not only the Emperor (this is admitted) but also the Imperial Chancellor promised him that Poland should be restored after a German victory.1 Germany’s intention of promoting revolution in congress Poland is confirmed by the fact (already mentioned) that with the approval of the German government agreements along these lines were concluded between the German and Austro-Hungarian general staffs at the end of July, 1914.2
On August 5 the Foreign Ministry decided to secure the consent of the Holy See for the Polish clergy to use their influence on the population of Congress Poland. The Prussian minister to the Vatican, von Mühlberg, was instructed to secure the co-operation of the Vatican in the sense that the Holy See should make it clear to the Poles ‘that the Allied armies were working for the liberation of Poland and must therefore be supported by all Poles, including the Polish clergy’, since Catholic Austria-Hungary was fighting also against ‘the Orthodox Church, which was violating the rights of the Catholic Church in Poland’. In order to mobilize further religious emotions in the service of the German cause, Erzberger had thousands of leaflets distributed in Congress Poland bearing a coloured print of the Emperor Wilhelm II and Pope Benedict XV side by side ; also a grandiose picture of German troops driving Russians back, while the Polish people surges forward in brightly-clad messes, bearing church banners blessed by the Madonna.3 The appeal to the Polish clergy proved, however, ineffectual. The overwhelming majority of the Poles, including their clergy, remained partisans of the Entente, and in some frontier districts whence the Russian officials had fled in panic, Polish priests themselves took charge of the mobilization of the men called up for service.4 Furthermore, the presence of Russian troops, at first 400,000 of them later a million, put any idea of a rising out of court. The Germans deceived themselves in supposing that the Poles were longing to be liberated by Germany. In reality the no-Slav movement, with its doctrine of pan-Slav solidarity, had weakened the traditional hostility between Russian and Pole. The
industrialization of Congress Poland was having the same effect, since the interests of influential Polish economic circles, especially those of the textile industry, were now bound up with the great Russian market. The dominant political tendency among the Poles, represented by the National Democrats, was oriented towards democratic western Europe, and was therefore pro-Entente. Finally, Prussia’s Ostmark policy had done its bit towards filling the Poles with mistrust of Germany.
1 Cf. Hutten-Czapski, Vol. II, pp. 145 and 295, with his letter of November 5, 1916, to the Emperor, reminding him of his assurance of July 31, 1914.
2 Westarp, Konservative Politik, Vol. II, p.1 ; ‘I knew that revolution would break out today among the Poles of Russia.’
3 Reichenau reported from Stockholm on October 31, 1914, that Russian papers showed a tendency to suggest that the Emperor’s reason was affected. They based this on his alleged dream that the Holy Virgin had appeared to him in a vision and charged him to liberate her home in Czenstochau {Czestochowa}.
4 Friedrich Schinkel, Polen, Preussen und Deutschland, (Breslau, 19310, p. 225.
All these reasons make it understandable that the rousing proclamation issued on august 17, 1914, by he Russian Commander in Chief, the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievitch should have made a considerable impression on wide Polish circles. The Proclamation promised the Poles the unification of all Polish-inhabited territories, including Prussian Poland and Austrian Galicia, under the Russian scepter, but with far-reaching autonomy.1 Against this, the central Powers had no more to offer than, at the most, the resurrection of Congress Poland.
In Galicia there had been enough anti-Russian feeling to admit the formation of Pilsudski’s famous Polish Legion. Since, however, the Legion, in collaboration with an underground Polish ‘National Government’ in Warsaw, put forward far-reaching political demands for a future Polish state, it was incorporated in the Austro-Hungarian army and so gagged politically.2 It is less well known that in the first weeks of the war an attempt was made to raise a Polish Legion in Germany, but the negotiations, which were carried on between representatives of the Polish ‘Sharp-shooters’ {Strzelcy}’ organizations on the one hand, and on the other hand the Reserve General Staff in Berlin and Hindenburg’s IX Corps in Posen, led to no result. The Central German authorities concerned, which included the War Office and the Reich Interior Office, were prepared to allow the Polish organizations to enlist voluntary recruits, but not to conscript them, since this would have been tantamount to conceding them sovereign rights. Even at this stage Delbrück raised political objections. . . . the Sharp-shooters had been criticizing Germany over the Kalisch incident (Kalisch
. . . was destroyed by German troops in the first days of war), while Austria had meanwhile protested in Berlin against the activities and agitation of the Polish Legion. At the beginning of November the few, half-trained formation of the German Polish Legion were taken to Cracow and there put under Austro-Hungarian military command. All further agitation in the Polish territories occupied by German troops was forbidden and the agreement between the Sharp-shooeters and the military authorities was again cancelled.
1 Schulthess, Geschichtskalender, Jg. 1914, p, 848.
2 The latest comprehensive account of Pilsudski’s mission in 1914, Conze, Polnische Nation und deutsche Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne, 1958), pp. 53 f.
By the beginning of December, 1914, Germany’s brief flirtation with Polish revolutionary and democratic nationalism was already over. . . .
( pages 138 – 141 )
As early as the summer of 1916 the German government had, under the direction of Helfferich who had just been appointed Secretary of State for the Interior, addressed itself to the question of a constitution for Poland to be framed by Germany, and by the middle
of August very detailed discussions were going on in Warsaw on drafts of a military convention, a customs treaty and agreements on railways and inland waterways, and on posts and telegraphs. In the course of these preparations von Kries, head of the administration in the Government-General, worked out a ‘draft fundamental law for the kingdom of Poland’. On November 15, ten days after the proclamation of the kingdom by the two Empires on November 5, and six days after the issue (against Austria’s wish) of the appeal for recruits for a Polish volunteer army, Bethmann Hollweg sent Kries’s draft to the ministries for their comments. . . . . .
Helfferich approved Kries’s suggestions, but wished that they had included drafts of the inter-state treaties. . . . .
The German government . . . hoped that the Poles would be satisfied with the appointment of a Provisional Polish council of state, a kind of advisory body which was to have only very limited powers, while its compositions was manipulated to consist of conservative and pro-German elements ; and Ludendorff anticipated that this institution would . . . help to provide the soldiers which his own appeal ha failed to produced. {Conze}.
The outbreak of the February revolution in Russia and the issue by the Russians of a manifesto promising the Poles an independent state including West Galicia and the Polish parts of Prussia — it was to be required to conclude a military union with Russia — put the Polish Council in a difficult position. Eventually, on April 13, it announced that it accepted the Proclamation of November 5 and refused to fight against the Central Powers. On Beseler’s advice the administration of education and justice was handed over to the Council on the
same day. But its powers were too limited to satisfy it, and the next stage was — largely owing to the rivalry between Germany ad Austria-Hungary — slow in following, while the Russian revolution stirred up further excitement. On May I, two days before Poland’s national day, the Council of State called for the appointment of a government and a regent (the Archduke Karl Stefan was suggested) who should appoint a cabinet and then convoke a Polish parliament ; only if these conditions were fulfilled would the Council be able to work with the Central Powers. Its demands were not accepted, and it accordingly suspended all activities on May 15, thus making clear to the whole world the fiasco of the Central Powers’ Polish policy. A wave of anti-German feeling swept over the country, the Warsaw students struck at the beginning of May with the consequence that the university was closed on June 22. Although the winds of democracy and socialism blowing from Russia were forcing the church and the conservative aristocracy to declare for co-operation with monarchist, aristocratic Germany, German policy had not succeeded in getting broad popular support.
Meanwhile the Kreuznach agreement of May 17-18 had assigned Poland to Germany in exchange for the surrender of Rumania to Austria. Four weeks later the secret so-called ‘Monarchs’ Agreement’ revealed the hard core of Germany’s aims. While the administrative partition between Warsaw and Dublin was retained, Austria-Hungary conceded to Germany control over the entire future army of Poland, which was to come under German leadership for organization and training and to continue under German command after the end of the war, irrespective of how Poland’s’ international status was settled. The compromise formula of the ‘Beseler-Kuk oath’ was accepted as the oath of loyalty to be administered to the Polish army.
It was the army policy that produced the great débâcle at the beginning of July. Pilsudski and the representatives of the left had protested and resigned from the Provisional Council of State, but the rest of the Council had, on July 3, accepted the Beseler-Kuk oath ; but nearly two-thirds of the Polish troops raised in the meantime refused to take it. At the same session the Council adopted two drafts of a provisional constitution, and these were discussed between German and Austrian representatives in Warsaw on July 28-30. It was decided to set up a Council of Regency, which should exercise the
functions of the Head of State of the future Monarchy ‘without prejudice to the international position of the Occupying Powers ; . . .
This ‘further step towards the creation of a Polish state’ was announced on September 12 in a proclamation by the two Emperors ; ‘a Polish King, wearer of the venerable and glorious Crown of the Piasts and Jagellons’ was to work together with ‘a popular representation built up on democratic principles’. The rights of the new Polish government were strictly limited. The legislative functions exercised by the Council of Regency — a triumvirate which was not appointed until October 27 — with the assistance of the Council of State were to extend at first only to those matters which had already been transferred to the Provisional Council of State, and the Governors’ General retained a veto. The occupying powers had the deciding voice in the choice both of the members of the Council of Regency and of the Prime Minister and Council of State.
Meanwhile the Reich Interior Office and the Prussian ministries had been pursuing their plans for taking over the Polish railways without regard to these high-level constitutional dispositions. . . .
At the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918 all the ministries and the civilian administration of the Government-General were further engaged in setting out Poland’s obligations in the form of a state treaty with an Austro-Poland, should it emerge. . . .
The struggle over the dimensions of he Frontier Strip and the safeguards for German interests in Poland reached a climax in Berlin in January, 1918. There were heated debates, and the Government-General sent in a series of memoranda, recapitulating its aims and demands : Poland must ‘look towards both Central Powers’, as envisaged in the Proclamation of November 5, . . .
( pages 450 - 456 )