After 123 years of Partition and varying degrees of political and cultural repression by her neighbours, Poland had finally restored and secured her independence and rightful place on the map of Europe and the world.
Although the name “Republic” has been used for this Polish state in English, in Polish, it bore the same name as the Commonwealth – Rzeczpospolita – and was definitively framed by its leaders and people as the spiritual successor of the Polish state prior to the Partitions. As such, it has ever since been dubbed the “Druga Rzeczpospolita Polska” (IIRP) – “Second Polish Republic.”
From its outset, the Second Polish Republic was beset with the fundamental challenge of integrating the varying jurisdictions of the three Partitions into a coherent and functional state. Not only did the Poles of each Partition bring with them different mentalities to life, society, and government, as of 1918, Poland had no less than four legal systems, six currencies, and three railway systems, with economic infrastructure oriented towards now-obsolete markets in the former empires of Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary.
Poland was also behind the rest of Europe in terms of industrialization, especially in the former Austrian and Russian Partitions, which were still remarkably very rural. As Danzig was ultimately outside the Polish sphere, a port was built up on the Baltic Sea in nearby Gdynia in 1927 to act as Poland’s primary centre of marine commerce. Impressively, by 1939, Gdynia had eclipsed not only Danzig, but every other maritime city on the Baltic as the busiest port on the entire sea.
Much like in neighbouring Weimar Germany, Poland faced hyperinflation in the early 1920s, prompting a radical currency reform spearheaded by PM Władysław Grabski to replace the “Polish Mark” with the “Polish Złoty” in 1924. The Second Polish Republic also prioritized promoting literacy and education for the common person on a hitherto unprecedented scale in Polish history, having broad and often unseen impacts upon the entire society.
As of 1921, Poland was the sixth largest nation in Europe, boasting a population of 25 million and land mass of 400,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles). Although the ethnic Polish majority dominated national politics, a sizable 30% of the country consisted of national minorities. Most prominent among these were the Ukrainians (13%), mainly located regionally in East Galicia and Volhynia, and the Jews (10%), often concentrated in the Republic’s big cities, constituting as high as 25-45% of the populations of Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Lwów, and Wilno.
Although not as numerous (3%), the Germans were disproportionately wealthy in the regions of the former Prussian Partition. These ethnic Germans often resented having to now be ruled by a disorganized and sometimes chauvinistic Polish regime that they considered to be inferior to that of the Imperial Germany they had lived under prior to the Treaty of Versailles.
Also of note were the Belarusians, Lithuanians, and Czechs, though the former did not yet possess a strong national consciousness, while the latter two groups each constituted less than 1% of Poland’s population. In contrast to the relative harmony of the Commonwealth, ethnic tensions in the Republic would pervade the background of Polish politics for its entire lifespan, leading to dire consequences for Poles, Germans, Jews, and Ukrainians alike.
Despite the apparent anticlericalism of the Polish governments of the Second Republic, it was during this period that several notable Polish religious and spiritual figures were either born or came of age, many of whom have since been officially beatified or canonized by the Catholic Church. Among these was Sister Faustyna Kowalska, a nun and mystic who claimed to have had visions of Christ in 1931. Kowalska’s visions, recorded in her journal, later inspired the creation of a new painting-icon celebrating Christ’s “Divine Mercy” and a corresponding Catholic Feast Day now celebrated the Sunday after Easter.
The aforementioned painting would depict a glowing golden Jesus emitting rays of red and white light from his Sacred Heart, emblazoned with the Polish words “Jezu, Ufam Tobie” (Jesus, I Trust in You). This Divine Mercy icon-painting has since been embraced as a pre-eminent symbol of Polish Catholicism, second only to the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, and is today one of the most popular symbols of the universal Church, ubiquitous in Catholic churches worldwide. Saint Faustyna would be beatified in 1993, and later canonized in 2000, and is buried in the Basilica of the Divine Mercy in Kraków.
Another prominent Polish saint of the period was Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar active in promoting Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary in print and on the radio before travelling as a missionary to East Asia. While living in Japan, he would found a monastery at Nagasaki in 1931, which remarkably survived the later American atomic bombing of the city in 1945.
He would return to Poland full-time in 1936, residing in a monastery near Warsaw until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Refusing to claim “racial immunity” as a Volksdeutsch on account of his partial German ancestry, Kolbe would be sent to Auschwitz in 1941, where he was martyred by the Nazis after saving the life of a fellow inmate. He would later be beatified in 1971 and canonized in 1982 as one of the bravest and most iconic Polish and Catholic saints of the 20th century.
Also coming of age in this era was the later courageous Polish Primate (chief Catholic bishop) during Communism, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, and his more famous pupil, Karol Wojtyła, the man who would later be Pope John Paul II. Wyszyński was beatified in 2022, and is likely on the road to sainthood, while John Paul II was himself canonized in 2014, and was responsible for the canonization of both his aforementioned countrymen, Kowalska and Kolbe, during his Pontificate.
Coincidentally, Wojtyła was born just south of Kraków in 1920, months before Piłsudski’s famous victory over the Bolsheviks at the gates of Warsaw, and would himself play a pivotal role in both the fall of Communism in Poland and the collapse of the wider Soviet empire in 1989-91.
On 17 March 1921 – but a day before the signing of the Peace of Riga – a new Constitution would be ratified for the Second Polish Republic, on the model of that of the Third French Republic, Poland’s traditional ally and, at that time, the model secular republican state in Europe. On paper, Poland was to be a liberal democracy and secular state, with guarantees of civil liberties and equality before the law, as well as a bicameral legislature with a strong lower house (Sejm) and weak upper house (Senate), both elected by universal suffrage.
The Sejm and Senate were also responsible for electing an executive “President” for a seven-year term, although his powers were largely subordinate to that of the Sejm. Although not unusual in the Polish political tradition, it was ironic that many of the old problems of weak central authority and resulting factionalism that had precipitated the decline and fall of the Commonwealth in the 17th and 18th centuries would now echo once again in the early 20th century.
Although Piłsudski had served as Poland’s Chief of State since his declaration of Polish Independence on 11 November 1918, he declined to run for President under the terms of the new Constitution and would duly step down. Following the first Sejm and Senate elections in November, the upper and lower houses would elect Poland’s first ever President on 11 December 1922, in the man of Gabriel Narutowicz.
A man of the Left and a personal friend of Piłsudski, Narutowicz did not inspire confidence on the Right and would be tragically assassinated but five days into his Presidency by a mentally-ill avant-garde painter with right-wing sympathies.
His successor would be the elderly Stanisław Wojciechowski, formerly a founder of the PPS, but now committed to charting a relatively centrist, stabilizing course for the young Republic. Although he did his best in promoting competent Prime Ministers, such as Władysław Sikorski, Wincenty Witos, and Władysław Grabski, Wojciechowski was ultimately hamstrung by the system of proportional representation in the Sejm, which routinely shuffled the Cabinet and ruling government often every few months. As such, by 1926, political deadlock in Poland had reached a hopeless standstill.
In the aftermath of Poland’s successful victory over the Red Army in 1921, and in the midst of the circling of countless indecisive politicians in the years since, the only prestigious political institution in the Second Polish Republic to inspire near-universal respect was the Army. Although hated by many on the Right, Marshal Piłsudski likewise commanded significant respect among most of the population as a national hero who transcended partisan politics.
Upon the formation of a centre-right coalition government led by Prime Minister Wincenty Witos in May 1926, Piłsudski left his private estate just east of Warsaw at the head of a small force of loyal veterans and decided to finally intervene in Polish politics after several years of peaceful retirement.
The moment of decision would come on 12 May 1926, when Piłsudski would confront President Wojciechowski on the Poniatowski Bridge into the capital, at which point he demanded both the latter’s and Witos’ respective resignations. Wojciechowski bravely refused, leading to three days of fighting between Piłsudski’s insurrectionists and government forces.
Despite his origins on the Left, Piłsudski had officially abandoned the PPS for whom he had been a leader prior to the war, apocryphally quipping that he “took the red tram of Socialism to the stop of Independence, and got off there.” Nonetheless, his former allies in the PPS took the cue of his coup attempt to initiate a general strike in Warsaw, halting the trains, in particular, and allowing Piłsudski to reign victorious over government forces. Tragically, over 100 soldiers and 200 civilians died in the fighting, with hundreds more wounded, but Piłsudski was once more control of the reins of government, and would remain so until his death almost a decade later.
Following this “May Coup,” Wojciechowski and Witos were both ousted, never again to return to positions of power in the Polish government. Although he was offered the Presidency, Piłsudski refused, soon realizing that he could be far more influential as an éminence grise of the Polish state, operating behind the scenes of formal power while puppet politicians followed his command.
So it was that the President appointed by Piłsudski, a certain Ignacy Mościcki, would remain “in power” from 1926 until the outbreak of war in 1939. Meanwhile, although he would briefly serve twice as Prime Minister, Piłsudski would rarely hold an official title of office. Advocating for the need of Poland to “cleanse her body politic,” Piłsudski adopted the term Sanacja (Sanitation) to describe his aspirant broadly non-partisan, anti-corruption political movement.
In one of the more ironic and bizarre episodes in the history of Polish parliamentary democracy, Piłsudski’s supporters sponsored the formation of a “Non-partisan Bloc for Co-operation with the Government” (Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem – BBWR) to establish a united front in anticipation of the upcoming 1928 parliamentary elections. Although they would defeat Dmowski’s National Democrats, the BBWR still won no more than 30% of the vote, unable to form their own government.
Having now fully lost his faith in the democratic process, Piłsudski and his cohorts would now resort to more authoritarian measures to achieve their desired political outcomes. In anticipation of the next parliamentary election in 1930, Piłsudski and his supporters would resort to intimidation tactics, ballot rigging, and arresting several of their political opponents, such that BBWR won 47% of the popular vote and a majority of seats in the Sejm and Senate.
Prior to the next election in 1935, a new Constitution would be ratified, cutting the size of the Sejm in half (from 400 to 200 seats), after which point the BBWR/Sanacja would retain a parliamentary majority until 1939. Contrary to his apparent desire to eliminate corruption in the government of the Polish Republic, Piłsudski would consistently promote former Army men to positions of power on the basis of their personal loyalty to him, rather than their merit, such that his successors were mediocre statesmen ultimately lost without his leadership.
Nonetheless, when Marshal Piłsudski died on 12 May 1935, the entire nation joined to mourn the passing of one of the greatest heroes Poland had ever produced. Indeed, after all the wars and uprisings of the Partition century, Piłsudski had succeeded where so many others before him had failed. In the span of but a few years, Piłsudski dreamed into reality a Polish Army from almost nothing and forged it into a fighting force capable of standing on its own to defeat the fearsome Red Army and secure Poland’s Independence and standing among the postwar states of the new Europe.
Although he was perhaps a better revolutionary and warrior than he was a statesman, and his political intolerance towards his personal opponents may have handicapped Poland’s ruling class after his death, he has ever since been revered as the “Father of Modern Poland” and is buried in the crypt of the Wawel Castle Cathedral in Kraków, alongside King John III Sobieski, Tadeusz Kościuszko, and several of the other Kings and heroes of Poland’s long and storied past.
Despite having originally risen to power on the heels of an anti-rightist coup, the post-Piłsudski Sanacja “government of colonels” acted more on personal loyalty and favours than on any particular political programme, and has even been described as “right-wing authoritarian” by historians. Indeed, in the 1930 elections, their primary target of persecution would now be the centre-left.
Likewise, the opposition to Sanacja that would later coalesce around the figures of former PMs Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Władysław Sikorski were drawn from both the Left and Right, such that both the pro- and anti-Sanacja factions ironically were both broadly “centrist” or apolitical in ideological orientation.
Although no leader in the Sanacja regime was even remotely capable of filling Piłsudski’s shoes, his last “second in command,” Edward Rydz-Śmigły, would assume the late Marshal’s position as de facto Head of State from 1935 to 1939. Assisting him in a sort of “Triumvirate” were President Mościcki and Józef Beck, the latter of whom had served as Piłsudski’s Foreign Minister since 1932. Beck, in particular, was placed in the unenviable position of having to navigate an increasingly hostile and unstable international situation in which Poland was caught in the crossfire of her two oldest national enemies.
The founding myth of the Second Polish Republic was Poland’s stunning victory over the Soviet Red Army in 1920, and for the Republic’s entire history, Moscow was always viewed as the primary existential threat to Polish – and European – peace and security. Indeed, the Sanacja regime largely drew its legitimacy from the prestige and respect the young Polish Army had earned on the heels of its victories after the First World War.
Thus, it must have come as quite a shock when Poland’s other ancient rival, Germany, would suddenly and dramatically return to the centre of the stage of European politics under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party in 1933.
The primary founding myth of the Nazi regime was its promise to avenge the “humiliation” Germany had suffered from the Treaty of Versailles imposed by the Western Allies after the First World War. As Poland had been a primary territorial benefactor of the Treaty, having gained Posen (Wielkopolska) and sections of Silesia and Pomerania, the Second Polish Republic would soon be a bitter target of Nazi propaganda and political agitation.
Although Piłsudski had apparently considered and even suggested a joint Polish-French pre-emptive strike against Nazi Germany as early as 1934, there was little appetite from the French (or British) to do so, forcing him to sue for a 10-year “non-aggression” pact with Hitler later that year.
Coincidentally, Beck and Piłsudski had signed a similar treaty with Stalin’s USSR in 1932, such that Poland was in an apparent state of peace with both of her erstwhile hostile neighbours as late as 1939. However, after Piłsudski’s death, neither Hitler nor Stalin had comparable respect for his successors, and the Sanacja regime – which had an inflated sense of Poland’s diplomatic prestige and military capabilities – was soon left at the mercy of British and French geopolitical interests.
Under the logic of the Treaty of Versailles, ethnic groups were to ideally inhabit a nation-state with their co-ethnics, or to otherwise be granted legal protections by the state in which they now found themselves a non-ruling minority. However, because no ethnic border was perfectly clean in 1919, compromises had to be made in drawing new political borders, leaving many peoples stranded as national minorities under the rule of new states with whom they shared either an ambivalent or even hostile historical relationship.
Thus, many ethnic Germans who had been loyal subjects of the Hohenzollerns or Habsburgs for centuries were now suddenly citizens of the new national republics of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, or otherwise. Although German minorities of this era did face varying degrees of discrimination under non-German regimes, Hitler would now cynically use their grievances as a pretext to press irridentist territorial claims to these regions.
The first to fall was Austria, in which German armies marched unopposed in March 1938 before being duly incorporated into the Third Reich. Next was the mountainous Czech Sudetenland, which although predominantly ethnic German, was critical to Czechoslovakia’s western border defence. Infamously, the British and French would negotiate with Hitler to surrender Sudetenland to Germany at the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938, with the hopes of curbing further German territorial ambitions.
Now shocking in hindsight, Beck actually supported Hitler’s position at Munich and used the opportunity of the moment to press Polish claims to the disputed Zaolzie region of Cieszyn Silesia, which was majority Polish, but had been awarded to the Czechs twenty years prior. Although Poland would succeed in annexing this territory, Poland’s joining in the partition of Czechoslovakia would be later weaponized to impugn her “anti-fascist” credentials in the next war.
The following March, with the Czechs no longer possessing a defensible border with Germany, Hitler would invade and occupy the rest of the country, splitting it into two puppet states: the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” and the “Slovak Republic.” Not soon after, on 22 March 1939, Hitler would send an ultimatum to Poland demanding the German annexation of Danzig and the Polish Corridor.
Upon Poland’s refusal, Hitler would repudiate his prior non-aggression pact, and the British and French soon reached out to Beck and Rydz-Śmigły to offer alliances and guarantees of Polish independence and territorial integrity. After having already lost Czechoslovakia, it appeared that the Western Allies were finally prepared to fight Nazi Germany over the fate of Poland.
However, in the end, the wild card to break the uneasy 20-year equilibrium in Europe and the world would be Joseph Stalin. Despite Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union being ideological mortal enemies, neither trusted the West and both hated Poland, such that a pragmatic alliance now made sense between the erstwhile hostile regimes.
As such, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop would fly to Moscow in August 1939 to negotiate the terms of a new (and presumably) final Partition of Poland with his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov. Their infamous “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” would thus be signed on 23 August 1939, and now gave Hitler free rein to invade Poland with Soviet acquiescence.