1919-1945 - Upper Silesia
From its inception, the Second Polish Republic struggled to secure and maintain its existence in difficult circumstances. The extraordinary complications of defining frontiers preoccupied the state in its infancy. To the southwest, Warsaw encountered boundary disputes with Czechoslovakia. More ominously, an embittered Germany begrudged any territorial loss to its new eastern neighbor. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles settled the German-Polish borders in the Baltic region. The port city of Danzig, a city predominantly German 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 more industrialized eastern section - Lower or Eastern Silesia. These terms would be a primary incentive to the German aggression that ignited World War II.
At the end of the Great War the Czechs demanded that Eastern Silesia, as far east as the Vistula, including the town of Teschen, the important double line of railway from Oderberg (Bohumin) to Jablunkau, and the rich coalfields of the Karwin area, be incorporated in the new Czecho-Slovak State. The Poles, on the other hand, claim that the farming population in that district and the mining towns of Karwin and Freistadt are, in the main, of Polish origin and descent.
It was in Upper Silesia and not in the Ruhr that Germany had her greatest coal reserves. If the Upper Silesian coal mines passed to Polish hands, the danger of a German attack would be enormously reduced. Poland with the Upper Silesian mines would be bound to become a highly industrialized state, the competitor of the German in the Russian markets, a field for French investment and exploitation. In peace, the presence of Polish garrisons within a hundred miles of Berlin would be bound to exercise a modifying influence upon German policy on the Rhine. In war, a million Polish troops ready to march at the close of the mobilization period would remove the weight from a German blow in the west, would make a new advance to the Marne unlikely, even if France in time evacuated the occupied areas and retired within the frontiers laid down at the Conference of Paris.
A majority of the population in the whole district of Upper Silesia was of the Polish nationality - rather more than 60 percent. Thus, at the Paris Conference it was at first proposed to give Upper Silesia to the Poles outright; and this arrangement was contained in the draft of the Treaty of Versailles which was presented to the Germans. In making this allotment the Allies set their seal of approval upon the Polish claim. But when the Germans presented their counter-claim, emphasis was laid by them upon the fact that the territory had not belonged to the Poles for six or seven centuries, that the population-although Polish by race -had become Germanized in part at least. Accordingly they demanded that Upper Silesia should be restored to them.
As a consequence the Allies compromised by proposing a plebiscite for the region, which was a fair-enough compromise. On March 20 the election was held and. as had been generally foreseen, the Germans carried the plebiscite territory by a decisive majority: 705,000 to 473,000. On the basis of these figures they at once set up a claim for the whole district. Upper Silesia was divided into twenty-one circles, or districts, which might be compared with our own counties. Of the twenty-one, the Germans carried, by decisive majorities, nine which are so situated as to constitute a solid block. All nine were outside of the mineral and industrial region. For the remaining twelve districts, or circles, the Poles submitted a blanket claim. Their majority in the whole area was 20,000. The total vote was: Poland, 382,000; Germany, 362,000.
The French accepted and endorsed the Polish claim. The British and the Italians rejected it. Eliminating the nine districts carried by the Germans and the three granted to the Poles, there remained nine districts, of which the Poles had carried four and the Germans five, and these are precisely the circles in which are the great industrial and mineral regions.
When the news of the proposed settlement reached the Poles of Silesia, their representative and leader, Korfanty, put himself at the head of the Polish majority in the south and proceeded rapidly to overrun all of the country and certain of the city districts, occupying most of the region on the Polish side of Korfanty's line, including all seven of the rural districts Poland had carried and several of the five circles, four city and one rural, which had gone German. Meantime the Germans took heart and German irregular troops began to flock into the Upper Silesian war zone and presently pitched battles were taking place along the Oder.
In her fight to retain the mining districts which voted for Poland, Germany used all her armory of propaganda. It was repeatedly asserted that without the mines of Upper Silesia Germany cannot pay her reparations bill and the Allies were called on to sacrifice Poland on the altar of their own financial interest.
The plebiscite in Upper Silesia was conducted peacefully, the majority of the votes in the rich mining districts favoring Poland. The Polish Government and people exhibited severe self-restraint following the plebiscite, in the face of the heavy German emigrant vote. In the plebiscite held in Upper Silesia on March 20th the voters in the ten richest mining districts, declared their preference for union with Poland. Large German majorities were piled up in the agricultural districts aided by the enormous influx of emigrant voters. The Allied Powers divided the territory guided by the vote by communes. Poland gained the real prize - the great coal and zinc mines of the region.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
