Independence Regained and the Battle of Warsaw
Poland reappears after 123 years; in 1920 its army stops the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw in the "Miracle on the Vistula".
- White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20 — Norman Davies, Macdonald (1972)
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
- God's Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols, revised edition) — Norman Davies, Oxford University Press (2005)
The First World War destroyed all three partitioning empires at once. On 11 November 1918, the day of the armistice in the West, Józef Piłsudski took command of the army in Warsaw, and Poland was reborn. After 123 years it had to build a state from three different legal systems, currencies and railway networks.
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
- God's Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols, revised edition) — Norman Davies, Oxford University Press (2005)
Fighting for borders
Its borders were settled by war and plebiscite as much as by diplomacy: a rising in Greater Poland against Germany (1918–19), a war with the West Ukrainian People’s Republic over Lviv and eastern Galicia (1918–19), clashes with Czechoslovakia and Lithuania, and three Silesian uprisings. The largest war was with Soviet Russia.
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
- White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20 — Norman Davies, Macdonald (1972)
In April 1920 Piłsudski, allied with Symon Petliura’s Ukrainian forces, marched east and took Kyiv. A Soviet counter-offensive under Mikhail Tukhachevsky drove the Poles back to the outskirts of Warsaw by August. Lenin hoped to carry revolution across Poland into Germany: “over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to world conflagration,” Tukhachevsky told his troops.
- White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20 — Norman Davies, Macdonald (1972)
The Miracle on the Vistula
Between 13 and 25 August 1920, Polish forces held Warsaw while Piłsudski struck the Red Army’s exposed flank from the south. The Soviet armies collapsed. Polish codebreakers had been reading Red Army radio traffic. Political opponents of Piłsudski called the victory a “miracle” to deny him credit; the name stuck, and for many Catholics it came to mean a genuine miracle, since the decisive days fell around the feast of the Assumption on 15 August.
- White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20 — Norman Davies, Macdonald (1972)
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
The Peace of Riga in March 1921 gave Poland a long eastern border that took in much of today’s western Belarus and western Ukraine. Interwar Poland was about one-third non-Polish: Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians, Germans and others, a diversity that would bring both richness and conflict.
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
- The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 — Timothy Snyder, Yale University Press (2003)
Twenty years of freedom
The Second Republic lasted only two decades. It built the port of Gdynia, unified the economy and produced a flourishing culture, but it also suffered from poverty, political violence and, after Piłsudski’s coup in 1926, authoritarian rule. In the 1930s, discrimination against Ukrainians and Jews grew, including quotas and “ghetto benches” for Jewish students at some universities. For Poles who lived through what came next, though, the interwar years are remembered above all as a brief time when Poland was free.
- Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom — Brian Porter-Szűcs, Wiley-Blackwell (2014)
- POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews: 1000 Years of History — POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, POLIN Museum
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
A defensive war in which a reborn nation saved itself, and Europe, from the spread of Bolshevism; sometimes credited, in Catholic tradition, to the intervention of the Virgin Mary.
- White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20 — Norman Davies, Macdonald (1972)
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
Poland's invasion of Soviet Ukraine in 1920 was imperialist aggression by "White Poles". Russian nationalists today also point to the deaths of many thousands of Red Army prisoners in Polish camps after the war.
- White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20 — Norman Davies, Macdonald (1972)
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
Ukrainian forces under Petliura fought alongside Poland in 1920, but the Peace of Riga in 1921 left Ukraine divided between Poland and Soviet Russia, a betrayal many Ukrainians still remember.
- Riga, Peace Treaty of (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Bohdan Budurowicz and Andrzej Chojnowski (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (1993)
- Warsaw, Treaty of (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Andrzej Chojnowski (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (1993)
Why it matters today
11 November is Independence Day, and 15 August, the anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw, is also Armed Forces Day. The victory of 1920 is remembered as the moment Poland saved itself, and perhaps Europe, from Soviet communism, which shapes how many Poles see Russia today.