Poland

Polish: Rzeczpospolita Polska

Latin: Polonia; English: Poland; French: Pologne; Yiddish: Polin

The name is derived from the Polans, a tribe consisting mainly of farmers (from the Slavic word ‘pole’, meaning ‘field’), who settled along the middle reaches ofthe Warta and the upper reaches ofthe Notec in the Early Middle Ages. In the second half of the 9th century, a hereditary princely power based on the vassalage system developed under the Piasts. Following the expansion of their territory into the river basins of the Oder (Odra) and Vistula (Wisła), their domain was first referred to as ‘Polonia’ in the 11th century.

The Republic of Poland lies between 54° 50’ and 49° north latitude and 14° 7’ and 24° 8’ east longitude, with a north-south extent of 649 km and a west-east extent of 689 km, covering an area of 312,679 km². Its neighbouring countries are the Russian Federation (Kaliningrad Oblast), Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany.

The Polish Lowlands cover the greater part of the country. It stretches from the southern and eastern Baltic coastal regions on the Baltic Sea in the north, through the young moraine region of the Baltic Ridge – with the lake districts of Pomerania to Masuria – and the old moraine region of Kuyavia, criss-crossed by glacial valleys, Greater Poland, Masovia and Podlasie, all the way to the Sudetes and Carpathians – which, like the Holy Cross Mountains (Góry Świętokrzyskie), run in an east-west direction – and their respective foothills in the south, on the border with the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic respectively.

Starting from the middle Vistula and upper Neisse, the Piasts expanded their domain in the 11th century eastwards as far as the Bug and the Dniester, westwards and southwards as far as Lusatia, Bohemia, Moravia and the territory of what would later become Slovakia, and northwards to the region of the Pomeranians between the Oder and Vistula. During the period of the partition of the realm from 1138 to 1314, Pomerania seceded from the ‘Polonia’ confederation in 1181. Following the reunification of the divided principalities, Poland expanded into Red Ruthenia; in 1386 it entered into a union with Lithuania, and in 1569 the two states were united under a single constitution. In 1466, Pomerelia, including Danzig/Gdańsk, and the Bishopric of Ermland were incorporated as ‘Royal Prussia’; the Duchy of Prussia was added as a fief in 1526, and Courland in 1561. In 1569, Poland conquered Podlasie, Volhynia, Podolia and the Kiev region; in 1619, Smolensk, Chernihiv and Severia, thereby reaching the extent of its greatest territorial expansion.

The First Northern War ended with territorial losses in the east: in 1656, Smolensk, Severia, Chernihiv and the Ukrainian territories east of the Dnieper, including Kyiv; and in 1672, Podolia (until 1699) and southern Ukraine. In 1772, 1793 and 1795, the Russian Empire, Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchy divided the territory of the Noble Republic amongst themselves. Following the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw (1806–1814), the borders between the partitioned territories were drawn at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and remained in place until the First World War.

As a result of the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, the new Polish state received Pomerelia, the greater part of the Province of Posen and eastern Upper Silesia from Germany. The Treaty of Riga with Soviet Russia, signed on 18 March 1921, established Poland’s eastern border approximately 250 km east of the line provisionally drawn by the British Foreign Secretary George Curzon (1859–1925) on 18 December 1919 (running from Dünaburg/Daugavpils via Wilna/Vilnius/Wilno and Grodno/Hrodna to Brest/Brest-Litovsk, and then southwards through Galicia via Rawa Ruska to Przemyśl ). The Inter-Allied Ambassadors’ Conference confirmed the incorporation of the Vilnius region on 24 March 1922 and the annexation of Eastern Galicia on 15 March 1923. Following the Munich Agreement, Poland occupied the Olsa region, including Teschen/Cieszyn/Český Těšín, on 1 October 1938.

Following the partition and occupation of Poland during the Second World War, Josef Stalin (1878–1953) secured the westward shift of Poland’s borders at Yalta from 4 to 11 February 1945. The Potsdam Conference in 1945 designated the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse as Poland’s western border, whilst the border treaty between Poland and the Soviet Union of 16 August 1945 established the eastern border roughly in accordance with Curzon’s proposal of 1919.

After settling in the 5th century, the Polans had expanded their territory to include the neighbouring regions of Kuyavia and Masovia by the 9th century and had consolidated their rule over the Greater Poland region.

Duke Mieszko I (960–992) was able to extend his territory to include Kuyavia, Masovia and the lands of Łęczyca and Sieradz, and formed an alliance with Duke Boleslav of Bohemia (915–972) against the East Saxon Margrave Gero. Upon marrying Gero’s daughter Doubravka (d. 977), he converted to Roman Catholicism in 966. In 968, the first missionary diocese was founded in Poznań; in 992, Mieszko placed his realm under the authority of the Holy See: the establishment of his own ecclesiastical province strengthened his territorial rule in the south as far as Kraków and in the west as far as the River Oder and Upper Lusatia.

Bolesław I Chrobry (the Brave, 992–1025) consolidated his territory around the centres of Poznań and Gniezno. In 997, he formed an alliance with the East Frankish Empire. In the ‘Act of Gniezno’ in the year 1000, Emperor Otto III (983–1002) recognised Poland as part of the Western Christian Empire. The establishment of the Archdiocese of Gniezno consolidated Bolesław’s territorial holdings. Mieszko II (1025–1034) faced resistance from the powerful nobility following his coronation. Kazimierz I Odnowiciel (the Restorer, 1034–1058) was driven from the country, but, drawing inspiration from the imperial model, he re-established princely power as Duke of Poland and, in 1040, moved the capital from Gniezno to Kraków. Bolesław II Śmiały (the Bold, 1058–1081) was forced to leave the country in 1079 following a conflict with the Church. Władysław Hermann (1081–1102) divided his principality amongst his sons during his lifetime, of whom Bolesław III Krzywousty (Crooked-Mouth, 1102–1138) succeeded in establishing himself as Duke of Poland.

In his will, Bolesław III divided the country amongst his four eldest sons, with the eldest, as the senior, to assume leadership. The result was ‘feudal fragmentation’ into six sub-principalities (Lesser Poland, Greater Poland, Pomerelia, Pomerania until its secession from the feudal confederation in 1181, Silesia and Masovia), which continued to develop economically and socially through the medieval expansion of the realm in accordance with German law.

Władysław I Łokietek (Ellenlang, 1305–1333) began the reunification of the Piast sub-duchies in 1305, a process symbolically concluded by his coronation as king in 1320. Until his death, he defended his territory against Bohemian claims. Kazimierz III Wielki (the Great, 1333–1370) secured, in the Treaty of Trentschin/Trenčin in 1335, the withdrawal of Bohemian claims to the Polish crown in exchange for the relinquishment of Silesia, and concluded a peace treaty with the German Order in Kalisch/Kalisz in 1343. Around 1350, he asserted his claim to Red Ruthenia, which was also claimed by Lithuania. He promoted the modernisation of the kingdom by founding towns and supported merchants through the granting of privileges. He confirmed the General Privilege for the Jews of 1264 and, in 1364, obtained the papal privilege for the foundation of the University of Kraków. He replaced the wooden border fortifications with stone castles.

Casimir III established Poland as the dominant power in Eastern Central Europe. When he died in 1370 without an heir to the throne, the succession passed to King Louis of Hungary of the House of Anjou (1370–1382), whose successor in Poland was his daughter Jadwiga/Hedwig (1384–1399), who was crowned queen at the age of thirteen.

The Treaty of Krewo in 1385 provided for the marriage of Grand Duke Jogaila/Jagiełło of Lithuania to Jadwiga and the union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with Poland. Following his baptism, he married Jadwiga in 1386 and was crowned King Władysław II Jagiełło (1386–1434): this marked the beginning of the Polish–Lithuanian Union, which lasted until 1795. Under the Union of Horodło in 1389, the Catholic nobles of Lithuania were granted the same rights as their counterparts in Poland; in 1434, the Orthodox boyars in Lithuania and Ruthenia were also granted these rights. In the conflict over Samogitia, the land bridge between Prussia and Livonia, the Polish–Lithuanian army dealt a decisive defeat to the army of the German Order at the Battle of Tannenberg/Grunwald in 1410.

In 1434, Władysław III succeeded to the throne as king for a ten-year reign; from 1439 he was also King of Hungary, but fell as early as 1444 at the Battle of Varna (Bulgaria) whilst fighting the Ottomans. Kazimierz IV Jagiellończyk (the Jagiellon, 1447–1492) incorporated the Order’s state in 1454 at the request of the ‘Prussian Confederation’ (which included the cities of Danzig, Elbing/Elbląg and Thorn/Toruń). The Thirteen Years’ War with the German Order forced him to make significant concessions to the nobility. Under the Second Peace of Toruń in 1466, Pomerelia, the Kulm region and the Bishopric of Ermland passed to Poland (Royal Prussia), whilst the Order retained eastern Prussia, including Königsberg/Kaliningrad, on a feudal basis. Kazimierz IV’s eldest son, Władysław, became King of Bohemia in 1471 and of Hungary in 1490. For a short time, the Jagiellonian realm stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean.

The Polish Crown’s external conflicts with the Grand Duchy of Moscow (in Lithuania), the German Order, the Ottoman Empire, as well as with Bohemia and Hungary, tied up considerable resources, forcing the kings to make concessions to the nobility: From 1454 onwards, the assemblies of the nobility (provincial diets, sejmiki) in the individual regions were involved in political decision-making; from 1493, the Sejm (Parliament), consisting of the high nobility (magnates), was expanded to include representatives from the provincial diets. The joint Sejm, comprising the Chamber of Provincial Deputies and the University Senate, which convened for the first time in 1493 in Petrikau/Piotrków on the border between Lesser Poland and Greater Poland, was able to pass resolutions binding on the king for Poland, whilst for Lithuania the Grand Duke retained far-reaching prerogatives.

From the mid-15th century onwards, the trading rights of towns were increasingly curtailed in favour of the nobility, whilst the townspeople, in turn, strengthened their position at the expense of Jewish trade and craftsmanship. The trend towards manorial rule worsened the legal and economic position of the peasants in the 16th century. When the threat to Lithuania posed by the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Tatar raids and the ‘Turkish threat’ forced the rulers to make concessions to the nobility, the Nihil novi Constitution of 1505 regulated the rights of the Sejm: the election of the king, legislation, the authorisation of taxes and the general mobilisation.

The reigns of the last two kings from the House of Jagiellon, Sigismund I Stary (the Old, 1506–1548) and Sigismund II Augustus (1548–1572), is regarded as the ‘Golden Age’ of Polish history: Literature, architecture and art flourished through the connection with Western European culture – and, following Sigismund I’s marriage to the Italian princess Bona Sforza (1494–1557), in 1518, which led to a flourishing of Italian Renaissance culture in particular; the capital, Kraków, and its university became a cultural centre.

Around 1520, engagement with the Lutheran Reformation began, finding resonance particularly amongst the German-speaking bourgeoisie in the towns of Royal Prussia, but also amongst the nobility of Greater Poland. After attempts to ban it, both rulers tolerated the Reformation. After 1540, Calvinism gained influence amongst the nobility; after 1548, exiled Bohemian Brethren were taken in by Greater Poland. Zygmunt II accepted the decrees of the Council of Trent (1563), but tolerated the Protestant confessions during the early stages of the Counter-Reformation.

At the Congress of Vienna, the Polish territories were redistributed: the Duchy of Warsaw was largely ceded to Russia as the ‘Kingdom of Poland’, whilst the territories acquired by Russia prior to 1795 became an integral part of the Russian Empire. The historically Lithuanian territories were integrated into the Russian provincial system. Western Kuyavia and western Greater Poland were ceded to Prussia as the ‘Grand Duchy of Posen’; like Austria, Prussia retained the territories it had acquired during the First Partition. Krakow initially became a ‘Free City’ under the protection of Austria and Russia, before becoming part of Galicia in 1846.

The three partitioning powers did not pursue a uniform policy towards their Polish subjects. In the Grand Duchy of Posen (from 1851: the Province of Posen), Prussian policy began with the integration of the local landed gentry and ended with national confrontation in the Kulturkampf and the Ostmark policy. In the Kingdom of Poland, a phase of diminishing liberalism following the November Uprising of 1830 was succeeded by a rollback of rights, and after the January Uprising of 1863 by the abolition of regional and national special rights, accompanied by repressive Russification, until the Russian Revolution of 1905/07 offered opportunities for political participation for the first time. In Galicia, the Austrian government in 1846 pitted the Ruthenian peasants against the Polish landowners, but from 1868 onwards granted the Polish elites extensive autonomy within the Crown Land.

In Prussia and Austria (following the Revolution of 1848) as well as in Russian Poland (after 1863), ‘organic work’ – a specific form of Polish national self-organisation – developed alongside social change. The Catholic Church, as well as the arts, literature and science, provided a basis for common ground across different regions.

During the First World War, the Kingdom of Poland and the Crown Land of Galicia were the theatre of war between the Central Powers and Russia. The Germans from eastern Congress Poland were forcibly resettled into the interior of Russia; some of the Germans from Galicia were evacuated to Austria, whilst others were deported to Russia. Germans, Poles and Ukrainians fought loyally against their compatriots in the three armies, including Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935), who had established Polish paramilitary units in Galicia prior to 1914 and fought with them on the Austro-Hungarian side.

Following the conquest of Russian Poland in the summer of 1915, it was divided into the General Government of Warsaw and the General Government of Lublin, under German and Austrian administration respectively. On 5 November 1916, despite differences over their objectives, the two emperors proclaimed a ‘Kingdom of Poland’ with a hereditary monarchy in close alliance with the Central Powers. In the dispute over the status of the ‘Polish Auxiliary Corps’, Piłsudski called for a refusal to take the oath and was placed under detention in Magdeburg until 8 November 1918.

On 15 August 1917, Roman Dmowski (1864–1939), together with other National Democrats, founded the ‘Polish National Committee’ ( ,Komitet Narodowy Polski), which, supported by the pianist Ignacy Paderewski (1860–1941), secured recognition from the Polish émigré community in the USA as the political representative of Poland alongside the Entente powers, and in March 1918 was placed under the command of the army formed from prisoners of war and émigrés fighting on the Entente side, led by General Józef Haller (1873–1960). Following Russia’s withdrawal from the coalition, US President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) set out, on 8 January 1918 in the 13th of his‘Fourteen Points’ , the establishment of a Polish state in the territories with an indisputably Polish population and its access to the sea as an Allied war aim.

In view of the signs of disintegration amongst the Central Powers’ troops, the Regency Council – which had still been formed by the occupying authorities – proclaimed Poland’s independence on 7 October 1918 and formed a government comprising National Democrats, but also with Piłsudski as a representative of the ‘Polish Socialist Party’ (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS). On 11 November 1918, Piłsudski also assumed supreme command of the Polish armed forces. The struggle over borders dominated politics until 1923, with Poland demanding the restoration of the 1772 borders, regardless of the competing claims of neighbouring peoples and the national structure, particularly in the eastern territories.

At the Paris Peace Conferences in 1919, the Allied Powers demarcated the ‘new states’ primarily on the basis of the ethnographic principle. Where the statistics for 1910 were inconclusive – as in West Prussia, southern East Prussia and Upper Silesia – plebiscites were to decide. The national minorities created by the drawing of borders had the right to opt for their ‘mother country’ (which entailed emigration). Members of minority groups who chose to remain were protected by the Minority Protection Treaty, which Poland’s representatives were required to sign on 28 June 1919 in the run-up to the peace treaties, but they were obliged to show loyalty to the state.

However, the provisions concerning the German-Polish border deviated in some places due to geopolitical considerations (railway lines, access to the sea via the ‘Polish Corridor’ – as it was already termed by the German side in 1921) or economic considerations (the Upper Silesian industrial region). Border skirmishes took place in the west of the Province of Posen following the Greater Poland (Posen) Uprising which began on 27 December 1918, in Upper Silesia during three Polish uprisings in the run-up to the plebiscite of 20 March 1921, and in Eastern Galicia.

As regards the eastern border, the British Foreign Secretary, George Curzon, had on 18 December 1919, a line east of the area with a predominantly Polish population, running from Dünaburg via Vilnius and Grodno to Brest, and then southwards through Galicia via Rawa Ruska and Przemyśl. Even before the end of the war, on the night of 1 November 1918, Ukrainian troops occupied the Galician capital of Lemberg/L’viv/Lwów; on 13 November 1918, the ‘West Ukrainian People’s Republic’ was proclaimed there. On 14 May 1919, the Polish counter-offensive began; on 18 June, the Allied ‘Supreme Council’ authorised Poland to occupy Eastern Galicia as far as the Zbrucz. Czech troops marched into Cieszyn Silesia on 23 January 1919; the Inter-Allied Council of Ambassadors divided Cieszyn Silesia along the Olsa River between Poland and Czechoslovakia. The Red Army captured the Polish-occupied Vilnius region and handed it over to Lithuania on 15 July 1920. Polish troops under General Lucjan Żeligowski (1865–1947) occupied Vilnius on 9 October 1920, established ‘Central Lithuania’ and incorporated it into Poland on 24 March 1922. Together with Symon Petliura’s (1879–1926) ‘Ukrainian People’s Republic of Przemyśl’, Polish troops advanced against Soviet Russia as far as Kyiv from 26 April 1920. In a counter-offensive, the Red Army advanced as far as the outskirts of Warsaw, where Polish troops, with French support, repelled them between 16 and 25 August 1920. Following the cessation of hostilities under the Preliminary Peace of Riga on 12 October 1920, the Treaty of Riga on 18 March 1921 established the new eastern border approximately 250 kilometres east of the Curzon Line. With the confirmation of the annexation of Eastern Galicia by the Allied Ambassadors’ Conference on 15 March 1923, the borders of the Second Polish Republic were recognised under international law.

Territorial disputes existed with Soviet Russia (the Soviet Union from 1922), Lithuania, the German Reich and Czechoslovakia. Within the 1923 borders, more than a third of the population belonged to national or religious minorities as defined by the Treaty on the Protection of Minorities: in 1931, of just under 32 million citizens, 5.1 million (16 per cent) were Ukrainians, 3.1 million were Jews (10 per cent). Just under 800,000 Germans (2.4 per cent), predominantly living as a border minority in the former Prussian territories, posed just as much of a political problem as two million Belarusians (6 per cent), 200,000 Lithuanians (0.6 per cent) or 30,000 Czechs (0.1 per cent).^[1] At the same time, approximately two million Poles lived outside the borders of the Republic. During the border disputes, the national minorities had been military and political adversaries; now, in the disputed border regions, they served as grounds for neighbouring states’ demands for territorial revision. The Ukrainian political movement, at times supported by the German Empire with the aim of weakening Poland, demanded its own state. The Jewish population of the western territories predominantly opted for Germany, whilst those who remained in Poland faced widespread, though not racist, anti-Semitism.

The economic and administrative integration of the constituent regions was the central challenge facing the new state. A common currency had to be established, laws had to be harmonised, and transport networks and markets had to be brought together. Added to this was the economic disparity between the former partitioned territories. Even more difficult was the integration of the Polish societies in these territories, with their differing social profiles, into the nation-state of the Second Republic – a task further complicated by inflation and the global economic crisis.

The constitution was adopted on 17 March 1921. Between 1918 and 1925, 14 successive governments failed to resolve the country’s political and economic problems. Although the currency reform of 1924 stabilised economic conditions, the teething problems of the democratic parliamentary system – which was further complicated by extreme party fragmentation – persisted. In terms of foreign policy, Poland had been linked to France and Romania through alliance treaties since 1921, but remained outside the French alliance system known as the ‘Little Entente’.

Piłsudski, Marshal of Poland, withdrew from public life in 1923, dissatisfied with political developments. On 12 May 1926, with the support of the political left and units loyal to him, he staged a coup d’état to ‘restructure’ (sanacja) the political system. Although he was the most important politician, Piłsudski contented himself with the posts of Minister of War and Inspector-General of the Army. The parliamentary system remained in place, but governments no longer depended on parliamentary majorities, but on the Marshal’s goodwill. He was opposed by the ‘young right’, which, on 4 December 1926, established a new organisational framework in the ‘Greater Poland Camp’ under the leadership of Roman Dmowski; in response, Piłsudski rallied his personal followers into the ‘Non-Partisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government’. In the face of resistance from the Left, Piłsudski moved towards an open presidential dictatorship in 1930. Ahead of new elections, he had around 70 opposition politicians arrested. On 23 March 1933, the Sejm, dominated by the government camp, authorised the President to issue decrees with the force of law. Despite the largely authoritarian system, the sciences and arts were able to flourish largely unhindered within the framework of the state.

Plans for a pre-emptive war against Nazi Germany were drawn up in 1933, but the policy of reconciliation offered by Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) in the autumn of 1933 led to the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 26 January 1934, which was limited to a term of ten years. Following Piłsudski’s death in 1935, the political course hardened under the colonels’ regime, with the opposition largely eliminated. In 1938, Poland benefited from the Munich Agreement: it gained Olsa Silesia, the Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia, but was soon afterwards confronted with German demands for the Free City of Danzig and the ‘Polish Corridor’. Following the German invasion of Czechoslovakia on 14–15 March 1939, Great Britain guaranteed Poland’s national integrity on 31 March 1939.

On 3 April 1939, Hitler gave the order to draw up military plans for an attack on Poland; on 28 April, he terminated the Non-Aggression Pact. In Poland, attacks on members of the German minority increased. On 19 May, a new military convention obliged France to attack Germany no later than the 15th day following Germany’s mobilisation.

Negotiations between the Western powers and Poland with the Soviet Union failed. On 22–23 August, Poland mobilised its troops along its western border. On 23 August 1939, the Foreign Ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) and Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986) signed a non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR in Moscow, in the ‘Secret Additional Protocol’ of which they stipulated in Point 2: ‘In the event of a territorial and political reorganisation of the territories belonging to the Polish State, the spheres of interest of Germany and the USSR shall be delimited approximately by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula and San.’ ^[2]

The Polish Government rejected the German Reich’sclaims to Danzig and Pomerelia (‘the Polish Corridor’), which had been put forward since early 1939, and did not yield to pressure to join the Anti-Comintern Pact directed against the Soviet Union. Consequently, following the occupation of Czechoslovakia by German troops on 14–15 March 1939 and Poland’s rapprochement with Great Britain (Declaration of Guarantee on 31 March), on 25 March he ordered preparations for an attack on Poland to commence on 1 September 1939. On 28 April, he denounced the 1934 Non-Aggression Pact. The preparations for war were accompanied by a propaganda campaign lasting several months, which culminated in August in reports of Polish plans for aggression and accounts of acts of violence against the German minority. At the same time, anti-German sentiment intensified in the Polish press; German organisations were banned, and there were attacks on Germans. Immediately before the outbreak of war, the Polish government interned leaders of the German minority and, at the start of the war, forced them to undertake deportation marches, which were in turn exploited in Germany as the ‘March of the Germans in Poland’, in line with the pre-war propaganda.

When, following the attack on 1 September 1939, German troops had encircled the main Polish forces near Kutno by 16 September, the Red Army began, from 17 September, to occupy the territories ceded to it in the ‘Secret Additional Protocol’, which it incorporated into the Byelorussian and Ukrainian Soviet Republics respectively. The Polish government fled into exile via Romania on 17 September. The government-in-exile in Paris (and, following the German occupation of France in 1940, in London) under General Władysław Sikorski (1881–1943) established Polish units in Western Europe that fought on the side of the Allies, and was involved in the negotiations on the post-war organisation of Eastern Central Europe.

With the border treaty of 28 September 1939, the USSR secured the extension of its sphere of influence to Lithuania in return for ceding territories west of the Bug River. Terror, particularly against the Polish upper classes, mass executions and deportations were intended to impose the Soviet model of society. In the spring of 1940, more than 14,000 Polish prisoners of war were murdered, particularly at Katyń.

The German-occupied territory was divided into the ‘incorporated eastern territories’, i.e. the Reichsgaue of Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland, and the‘General Government’, with its seat in Kraków. The Silesian Voivodeship (including Auschwitz/Oświęcim) was merged with parts of the Kielce Voivodeship to form the ‘Eastern Strip’ of the Province of Silesia, whilst a large part of north-eastern Poland became the ‘Zichenau Administrative District’ part of the Province of East Prussia, and both thus became part of the German Reich. The Polish population in the Reich districts was dispossessed and deprived of their rights, conscripted into forced labour and, for the most part, expelled to the General Government to make way for ‘ethnic German resettlers’ from the Baltic states, what had previously been eastern Poland and south-eastern Europe. The Jewish population was exploited through forced labour, confined to ghettos and finally systematically murdered in the German extermination camps. The indigenous and resettled German populations of the occupied territories were classified ‘racially’ and politically on the basis of the‘German People’s List’. Following the German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Eastern Galicia was placed under the authority of the General Government, whilst the remainder of eastern Poland came under the ‘Reichskommissariat Ukraine’. In the General Government, now also the target of Germanisation and settlement policies, the indigenous Polish population and those Poles who had been deported there were, as had previously been the case in the annexed territories, deprived of their rights and exploited, whilst the Jewish population was systematically exterminated.

The Second World War left the country in ruins; six million Polish citizens, half of whom were Jewish, had lost their lives. The new independence was achieved whilst the country remained heavily dependent on the USSR, whose troops remained stationed on Polish territory until 1993. The population felt betrayed by the Western powers; the elimination of the elites, the impoverishment caused by the occupation and the post-war period, and the population displacements had weakened society, which was, moreover, politically divided: For several more years, the Armia Krajowa continued to fight underground against the new communist government.

The westward shift was justified, through a combination of national-democratic historical distortion and communist historical policy, on the basis of the ‘Piast legacy’ and propagated as a gain of ‘old Polish territories’. Following evacuation, flight and ‘uncontrolled’ expulsions towards the end of the war, the decisions of the Potsdam Conference in August 1945 stipulated that three million Germans were to be ‘transferred’ from Poland ‘in an orderly and humane manner’ to the four German occupation zones. Above all, more than two million Poles from the eastern territories that had been Polish until 1939 were ‘resettled’ into the new ‘western territories’ of Poland, which were placed under ‘Polish administration’. In order to break the resistance along the new eastern border by underground groups of the ‘Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists’, Ukrainians were forcibly resettled from there to the new territories during ‘Akcja Wisła’ (Operation Vistula) from May to July 1947. ‘Ethnic Poland’ was thus an almost ‘pure’ nation state.

The first government was composed of representatives of the ‘Lublin Committee’ , and – until 1948 – the government-in-exile. Within the ‘Polish United Workers’ Party’ (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR), the central authority of the People’s Republic, the Moscow-based exile faction led by Bolesław Bierut (1892–1956) competed with domestic forces led by Władysław Gomułka (1905–1982). Bierut prevailed with Moscow’s support, whilst Gomułka was imprisoned in 1951. In 1949, Poland became a member of the ‘Council for Mutual Economic Assistance’. In 1950, the GDR recognised Poland’s western border in the Görlitz Agreement, whilst the Federal Republic of Germany maintained its reservation regarding the peace treaty until 1990. The ‘People’s Republic of Poland’ (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, known as the ‘Republic of Poland’ until 1952) joined the ‘Warsaw Pact’ military alliance in 1955. In June 1956, strikes and street fighting broke out in Poznań. The political struggle against the Catholic Church came to an end (7 December 1956: agreement between the state and the Church); Gomułka was rehabilitated and became First Secretary of the Party in October. In response to student demonstrations in March 1968, nationalist factions within the party exploited latent anti-Semitism to persecute ‘revisionists’ and ‘Zionists’. As a result, around 12,000 of the 25,000 Jews living in Poland once again left the country. In August 1968, Polish troops took part in the occupation of Czechoslovakia.

The hopes for a ‘Polish path to socialism’, which the population had harboured following Gomułka’s rehabilitation, were dashed despite the end of forced collectivisation in the countryside and greater concessions towards the Catholic Church. As a result of the ‘New Ostpolitik’ pursued by the social-liberal government of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1969 onwards, Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt (1913–1992) signed the Treaty on the ‘Normalisation of Mutual Relations’ in Warsaw on 7 December 1970, which signified the political recognition of Poland’s western border. Brandt’s act of kneeling before the memorial to the victims of the 1943 WarsawGhetto Uprising – which was received with great reserve in Poland – symbolised, in the eyes of the German and international public, the reorientation of the Federal Republic of Germany ’s policy towards Poland within the framework of the New Ostpolitik.

Price rises triggered bloody riots in Stettin/Szczecin and Gdańsk in December 1970. On 19 December 1971, Gomułka was replaced as party leader by Edward Gierek (1913–2001), the party secretary of Katowice. His government made economic concessions, improved relations with the churches and made it easier to travel abroad, as well as facilitating family reunification in the Federal Republic of Germany. Western loans improved living conditions, but soon led to repayment problems and supply shortages.

On 27 September 1976, opposition intellectuals founded the ‘Committee for the Defence of Workers’ Rights’ (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR), which combined economic and political demands. In their strike, which began on 14 August 1980, the workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańskalso demanded admission to free trade unions. On 31 August 1980, the government was forced to grant admission to the independent trade union Solidarność (Solidarity), led by Lech Wałęsa, which by autumn 1981 had ten million members and was calling for democratisation. The new Prime Minister, General Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014), who took office in February 1981, imposed a ‘state of war’ on Poland on 13 December 1981, which lasted until May 1983, following pressure from Moscow. The opposition leaders were arrested, but Solidarność, supported in part by the Polish Pope John Paul II (1920–2005, Pope from 1978), remained a key political force even whilst operating underground. Solidarność was one of the key pioneers of the upheaval in Eastern Europe in 1989.

In 1988, an economic crisis triggered a new wave of strikes, forcing the government to enter into talks with Solidarność. The ‘Round Table’ talks between the party, the government and the opposition led to the first ‘partially free’ elections in June 1989: On 13 September 1989, Tadeusz Mazowiecki (1927–2013) was elected as Poland’s first non-communist Prime Minister.

The first free elections on 27 October 1991 marked the political transition. However, the change of system and economic transformation posed significant challenges for society until signs of economic recovery began to emerge. The consistent Western orientation of foreign policy was confirmed by accession to NATO on 12 March 1999 and to the European Union (EU) on 1 May 2004. Poland, which sees itself as an advocate for its eastern neighbours, particularly Ukraine, relies heavily on the USA in this regard. Today, Poland is the sixth-largest EU Member State in terms of area and population (38.5 million).

In the German-Polish context, almost all topics relating to the history of bilateral relations – from the ‘Act of Gniezno’ through the partitions to the role of the German minority as a supposed ‘fifth column’ of German politics after 1920 and the occupation policy during the Second World War – have long been the subject of controversy. In the post-war period, the ‘transfer’ of the German population, the historical significance of the ‘regained’ western territories and the ‘lost’ eastern territories – which, until 1990, were claimed by the Federal Republic of Germany under international law with reference to the peace treaty reservation in the Potsdam Declaration – were, in particular, were the subject of controversy.

Within the regional association of Germans from Poland, there was a bitter dispute between Otto Heike (1901–1999) and Richard Breyer (1917–1999) as to whether the Germans in the Second Polish Republic had beena ‘minority’oran ‘ethnic group’– the latter being the view put forward by Breyer in the academic and journalistic tradition of the ‘Young German Party in Poland’.

Since 1972, the ‘German–Polish Textbook Commission’ has facilitated official academic dialogue between German and Polish historians. Since 1990, there have been numerous joint academic initiatives, including on controversial topics. Overseas historical institutes were established, namely the German Historical Institute in Warsaw (1993) and the Centre for Historical Research in Berlin of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2006). By contrast, historical-political initiatives introduced from outside, such as the ‘Centre against Expulsions’ promoted by the Federation of Expellees since 1999, have repeatedly led to public controversy.

The historical policy of the ‘Law and Justice’ (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) party, which has been in power in Poland since 2015, advocates a national-conservative view of history which, in the spirit of older nationalist historiography, emphasises the heroism and sacrifice of the Polish people. The Act on the Institute of National Remembrance (2018) makes ‘anti-Polish’ statements regarding the behaviour of Poles during the Second World War a criminal offence.

Regional Studies

• Dieter Bingen, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz (eds.): Country Report: Poland – History, Politics, Economy, Society, Culture. Frankfurt am Main, 2009.
• Friedhelm Pelzer: Poland. A Geographical Study of the Country. Darmstadt 1991 (Scientific Studies of Countries 36).

History

• Dieter Bingen, Peter Oliver Loew, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, Marek Zybura (eds.): A Mature Neighbourhood: German-Polish Relations 1991 to 2011. Wiesbaden 2011 (Publications of the German Institute for Polish Studies, Darmstadt 29).
• Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, Edmund Kizik: The Old Empire and the Old Republic. German-Polish Relations and Interconnections 1500–1806. Darmstadt 2014 (German-Polish History 2).
• Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg (ed.): Poland in European History. Volume 2: The Early Modern Period. 16th to 18th Centuries, Stuttgart 2017.
• Włodzimierz Borodziej: A History of Poland in the 20th Century. Munich 2010.
• Włodzimierz Borodziej, Klaus Ziemer (eds.): German–Polish Relations 1939–1945–1949. An Introduction. Osnabrück 2000 (Individual Publications of the German Historical Institute in Warsaw 5).
• Włodzimierz Borodziej, Hans Lemberg (eds.): ‘Our homeland has become a foreign land to us …’ The Germans east of the Oder and Neisse 1945–1950. Documents from Polish archives. 4 vols. Marburg 2000–2004 (Sources on the History and Regional Studies of East Central Europe 4).
• Andrzej Chwalba: A Brief History of the Third Republic. Poland 1989 to 2005. Wiesbaden 2010 (Publications of the German Institute for Polish Studies, Darmstadt 26).
• Stanisław Grodziski (ed.): Wielka historia Polski [The Grand History of Poland]. 10 vols., Kraków 1998–2001.
• Jörg Hackmann, Marta Kopij-Weiß: Nations in Contact and Conflict. German–Polish Relations and Interconnections 1806–1918. Darmstadt 2014 (German–Polish History 3)
• Frank Hadler, Matthias Middell (eds.): Handbook of a Transnational History of East-Central Europe. Volume I. From the Mid-19th Century to the First World War. Göttingen 2017.
• Hans Henning Hahn, Robert Traba (eds.): German–Polish Sites of Remembrance. 5 vols. Paderborn 2012–2015.
• Manfred Hellmann: Data on Polish History. Munich 1985.
• Jürgen Heyde: A History of Poland. Munich 2006.
• Rudolf Jaworski, Christian Lübke, Michael G. Müller: A Brief History of Poland. Frankfurt am Main 2000.
• Markus Krzoska: A Country in Transition. A Cultural History of Poland since 1945. Paderborn 2015.
• Michael G. Müller: The Partitions of Poland 1772, 1793, 1795. Munich 1984.

German Minority

• Winson Chu: The German Minority in Interwar Poland. Cambridge, Mass. 2012.
• Ingo Eser: ‘People, State, God!’ The German Minority in Poland and its School System 1918–1939. Wiesbaden 2010 (Publications of the Nordost-Institute 15).
• Dariusz Matelski: The Germans in Poland in the 20th Century. Warsaw 1999.
• Joachim Rogall (ed.): Land of the Great Rivers. From Poland to Lithuania. Berlin 1996 (German History in Eastern Europe 6).

Art

• Janusz Kęblowski, Ewa Mazur-Kęblowska: Poland. An Art and Travel Guide with Regional Studies. Stuttgart 1989.
• Stefan Muthesius: Art in Poland – Polish Art 966–1990. An Introduction. Königstein im Taunus 1994.

Music

• Thomas Adrian: Polish Music Since Szymanowski. Cambridge 2005.
• Grzegorz Michalski, Ewa Obniska, Henryk Swolkień, Jerzy Waldorff: History of Polish Music. Warsaw 1988.

Literature

• Karl Dedecius (ed.): Polish Library. 50 vols. Frankfurt am Main 1983–2000.
• Dietger Langer: An Outline of the History of Polish Literature. Darmstadt 1975 (Grundzüge 26).
• Czesław Miłosz: A History of Polish Literature. Tübingen 2013 [first German edition 1981].

Periodical bibliographies, yearbooks, journals

• Bibliografia Historii Polskiej [Bibliography of Polish History, covering the years 1935–1939]. Wrocław 1952 onwards.
• *Kwartalnik Historyczny* [Historical Quarterly]. Warsaw 1887 onwards.
• Journal of East Central European Studies. Marburg 1952 onwards.
• Jahrbuch Polen / German Institute for Polish Studies (ed.). Wiesbaden 1989 onwards.

• www.deutsches-polen-institut.de [German Institute for Polish Studies, Darmstadt].
• www.herder-institut.de [Herder Institute, Marburg].
• www.cbh.pan.pl [Historical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin].
• www.deutsche-polen.org [Commission for the History of Germans in Poland].

[1] Estimates by Jerzy Tomaszewski: Mniejszości narodowe w Polsce XX wieku [National Minorities in 20th-Century Poland]. Warsaw 1991. p. 23.

[2] Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945. Series D, Vol. 7, Baden-Baden 1956. pp. 206–207.

[3] For the figures, see Wolfgang Kessler: Hermann Rauschning and his era. In: Hermann Rauschning: The Exodus from West Prussia and Posen 1919–1929 [reprint of Rauschning: The De-Germanisation of West Prussia and Posen. Berlin 1930], Essen 1988. pp. VIII–IX.

[4] Figures for 2002 according to Peter Oliver Loew: National and Ethnic Minorities. In: Dieter Bingen, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz (eds.): Country Report: Poland. Frankfurt am Main 2009. pp. 360–372, here p. 362; for 2011, according to the German Bundestag / Scientific Service: Status Report. The German Minority in Poland. Berlin 2018 (WD 2 – 3000 – 022/18), p. 4. – The differing figure of approximately 300,000 ‘Germans’ in Poland, as found in academic literature and the press, is based on the inclusion of the group known as the ‘Silesians’ (Ślązacy), who, however, identify as a distinct nationality.

Wolfgang Kessler: Poland. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2019. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32631 (accessed 21 July 2020).