Three Insurrections: Upper Silesia 1919–21

Abstract

For the people of Poland, the Armistice of 11 November 1918 marked the demise of the three great European empires which had repeatedly partitioned their country, finally causing it to vanish from the map of Europe in 1795. As the war ended in Western Europe, Poles in the ex-Austrian and ex-Russian Polish territories were declaring an independent state and establishing a government in Warsaw. But, for the Polish people living in the area of the Prussian partition, and the Upper Silesians of Polish sentiment, continued recognition of German sovereignty over them in the Armistice terms appeared to place a barrier to any similar unilateral action.1 However, on Boxing Day 1918, a rebellion by Polish nationalists against the German authorities in Poznan escalated into full-scale guerilla-style warfare throughout the Poznan district. When the fighting broke out in Poznan, the German authorities, fearing that it would spread to their valuable industrial districts in Upper Silesia, clamped down on all Polish nationalist activities. With the area under relatively firm military control and Europe in desperate need of the coal it produced, the landowning industrialists, manufacturers and German administrators in Silesia began to hope that, despite Upper Silesia’s apparently overwhelming Polish population, the Peace Conference could be persuaded to leave this important industrial region in Germany’s hands.2