Polish Terrorism in Upper Silesia 1920

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michael mills
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Polish Terrorism in Upper Silesia 1920

#1

Post by michael mills » 02 Jan 2005, 05:40

The following material is from the book "National Identity and Weimar Germany: Upper Silesia and the Eastern Border 1918-1922", by T Hunt Tooley (University of Nebraska Press, 1997).

It decisively refutes the contention by purveyors of Polish nationalism that Polish insurgents did not use terrorist violence against ethnic German civilians in the Eastern Borderlands in the wake of the First World War in the context of the Polish attempt to seize those territories.

Relating to the second Polish uprising of Agust 1920 (p.189) [all emphases by me]:


Generally speaking, the [Plish] insurgents concentrated on removing the leading representatives of German authority, such as local officials, customs officers, and above all schoolteachers, who were apparently overrepresented in the groups imprisoned, aken as hostages to Poland, or murdered. The Verband heimattreuer Oberschlesier, the most visible and most blatantly anti-Polish plebiscite group, claimed that 150 of its members were murdered. Thoughthe German White Book on the uprising listed only 35 confirmed mrders, beatings and other mistreatement were common, the result of the rising level of violence on both sides and of the pent-up frustrations of the Poles. Soon German refugees began streaming from the insurgent areas, some expelled by Poles, some on their own.
Page 191
Certainly eastern Upper Silesia had gotten a taste of what might come in the way of recrimination against individuals voting for Germany, and many of the estimated ten thousand [German] refugees would not return to vote in any case.
Pp 228-229
The POW [= Polska Organizacja Wojskowa = Polish Military Organisation, the main Polish clandestine terrorist organisation] was in a particularly strong position for engaging in outright terrorism. As late as January 1921 the best information available to Percival and the British Foreign Office was that the Germans were, on the whole, disarmed, while the Poles ahd kept most of the weapons that they had used in August [1920, the Second Polish Uprising]. The most spectacular case of terrorism was the murder of Theophil Kupka, a Polish "renegade" journalist who professed himself sick of the corruption on the Polish side and left Korfanty's Plebiscite Commissariat to start an Upper Silesian Commissariat nominally neutral but in fact pro-German. With aid from Urbanek and Spiecker, Kupka founded a bilingual newspaper, Wola ludu / Der Wille des Volkes, which railed in sensational language against the corruption of Korfanty and the Warsaw "carperbaggers". Korfanty's equally strident denunciation of the "renegade" led to the general belief that it was on Korfanty's order that a Pole rang Kupka's doorbell on 20 November [1920] and pumped four shots into the journalist as his wife and children watched. The murderer was apprehended, but the commission postponed the trial, fearing the Polish demonstrations that would result. Apparently he was never brought to trial.
The German State terrorism against ethnic Poles between 1939 and 1944, much decried on this Forum, needs to be seen against the background of the preceding Polish chauvinist terror against ethnic German civilians in the period 1918-1921, of which the examples quoted were only part.

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#2

Post by David Thompson » 02 Jan 2005, 08:10

The German State terrorism against ethnic Poles between 1939 and 1944, much decried on this Forum, needs to be seen against the background of the preceding Polish chauvinist terror against ethnic German civilians in the period 1918-1921, of which the examples quoted were only part.
Michael -- Please re-read the forum fules on national insults and collective responsibility posts. I don't mind a discussion of specific examples of ethnic terrorism, but we don't permit barbarous notions here. The German treatment of the Poles in 1939-1944 was not restricted to arresting and putting on trial perpetrators of earlier ethnic cleansing offenses. It was directed against the entire population, which was a criminal policy. One crime doesn't justify another which is worse, particularly when the supposedly retributive crime isn't committed against the actual criminals, but just against the people who live in the neighborhood. Collective justice is no justice at all -- it doesn't even rise to the irrationality of a vendetta or blood feud between clans.

For interested readers, there are related discussions on these threads:

My comments on Polish atrocities against the Germans
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6551
How did that Polish-German atrocity discussion turn out?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6412
In the past, undeniable truth . . . and now?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=4495
Der Bromberger Blutsonntag
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=3697
Polish atrocities against Germans
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1960
1939 Polish-German atrocity
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1935
Polish brutality against ethnic German civilians in WWII
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=42829


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tom_deba
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#3

Post by tom_deba » 02 Jan 2005, 14:58

POW - a terrist organisation. 8O The most stupid idea I have found this year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please do not call "terrorism" Polish fights for independence.

/tom/

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Peter H
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#4

Post by Peter H » 03 Jan 2005, 09:40

Within the tangled conflict over Silesia both the POW and the Freikorps were not acting like boyscouts though.French intriguing didn't help either because the French troops there were more pro-Polish than neutral.

This article compares both the Ulster & Silesian conflicts of 1919-21,equating the latter as more brutual in ethnic hatred:

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jouhs/hilary2004/wilson01.pdf

My impression is that the German generals of 1939(including Halder) did hold a grudge against the Polish state,resulting from the conflicts over Posen and Silesia,plus the annexation of German lands....but there's a difference between a military based retribution and a latter ethnic cleasning of the extreme.

Does Tooley supply figures on both sides losses(including displaced refugees) in Silesia 1919-21?

Are any extremist German actions mentioned?

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#5

Post by michael mills » 03 Jan 2005, 14:20

Does Tooley supply figures on both sides losses(including displaced refugees) in Silesia 1919-21?

Are any extremist German actions mentioned?

Tooley does not mention any ethnic Polish refugees, so far as I can see.

That would not be surprising, since in the Second Polish Uprising, the Polish insurgent forces captured most of Upper Silesia, and were not opposed by the mainly French occupation forces (the smaller Italian force resisted and lost a number of men). Since the Polish insurgents were in control, there would be no reason for ethnic Poles to flee.

He does mention some incidents of mob violence by ethnic Germans, for example an attack on an office of the Polish Plebiscite Commission, leading to the deaths of some Polish officials.

According to Tooley, the German illegal forces such as the Freikorps did not have a strong presence in Upper Silesia before the Second Uprising of August 1920. German illegal armed forces were greatly outnumbered by the Polish underground paramilitary forces such as POW and Sokol. Furthermore, the Allied Occupation forces which controlled Upper Silesia in the run up to the plebiscite in March 1921 had disarmed all German forces, while turning a blind eye to the existence of secret Polish arms dumps.

Again according to Tooley, after the Second Polish Uprising, during which the Allied commander, the French general Le Rond, had conspicuously failed to protect the ethnic German population, the local German leaders (most of whom, as Tooley points out, had Polish surnames and were originally of ethnic Polish extraction) called on various Freikorps for protection, with the tacit support of the Reich Government (Josef Wirth).

It should be noted that at this time Upper Silesia was under the control of the Allied occupation forces, and legal German forces, eg the Reichswehr and the police, were forbidden to enter the territory.

It was the Freikorps which successfully opposed the Third Polish Uprising in May 1921, triggered by the Polish failure to win a majority in the plebiscite in March. They quickly defeated the POW and other Polish insurgent terrorist forces (Tooley himself uses the word "terrorist" in relation to those forces, as is shown in the excerpts quoted by me).

Tooley considers that the bloodcurdling tales told by former Freikorps members, particularly after 1933 when such tales conformed to the national ideology, were greatly exaggerated.

By the way, Peter H, I read the book by Tooley because you had recommended it in an earlier post of yours.

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#6

Post by Peter H » 03 Jan 2005, 14:57

Thanks Michael.

I scanned the book about 5 years ago(in the reading room of the National Library) and I definitely couldn't recall any so called German atrocities.My understanding is that the Polish minority that lived in German Silesia,post 1921,were never really subject to any victimisation either.The ethnic mix of German/Polish blood found in many people from the region had its part:the crucial role of Polish miners in the coalfields of Silesia,many who also moved west to the Ruhr to work(since the 1890s in fact),also was important:a shared Catholic heritage also existed.

Lloyd George was always hesitant about the French role in cripplying the future German potential in Europe.He feared a Germany subject to Bolshevism and wrote in 1919 that "Spartacism was then being fostered by the French".Freikorps members at the battle of Annaberg in 1921 also captured some French officers advising the POW if I remember correctly.

A previous post on Annaberg is also here:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=22447

I would equate the POW to be much similar with the IRA of the period:informers and the German police suffered greatly from violence while any of the general populace caught in the middle were deemed expendable.This period did cause bitterness in Germany.

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#7

Post by Obserwator » 03 Jan 2005, 15:24

I scanned the book about 5 years ago(in the reading room of the National Library) and I definitely couldn't recall any so called German atrocities
Forced Germanisation of the region began in the early XIX century, as to atrocites that sparked the uprising, there is the famous massacre made by Grenzschutz units in Mysłowica mine, where protesting Polish miners were murdered.Silesian miners had strike in August 1919 which reached number of 140.000 people protesting. They demanded that members of German militia and Grenzschutz wouldn't be appointed to work with them, rise of pay.
On 15 August 1919 in Myslowice mine, 3.000 miners gathered to collect pay along with their wifes and children, when the term of pay was moved to 13.00 and only 30 people were allowed in, the crowd stormed the gate, then Grenzschutz opened fire and killed 7 workers, 2 women, and one 13year old boy. This massacre radicalised the stance of polish population.

Also before this events the legal organisation that was representing Poles was disbanded by German authorities(on 14th of May 1919).Also during that time, polish newspapers, merchants and activists were terrorized by Grenzschutz.

Before the war, there were several polish protests against enforcing german language and germanisation-for example in Miodary peasants led a protest, there was Towarzystwo Literacko-Slowianskie made of Poles in Wroclaw University etc.

I scanned the book about 5 years ago(in the reading room of the National Library) and I definitely couldn't recall any so called German atrocities.My understanding is that the Polish minority that lived in German Silesia,post 1921,were never really subject to any victimisation either
On repression of Poles in Imperial Germany :
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=59413

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WalterS
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#8

Post by WalterS » 04 Jan 2005, 02:52

Michael Mills wrote:
The German State terrorism against ethnic Poles between 1939 and 1944, much decried on this Forum, needs to be seen against the background of the preceding Polish chauvinist terror against ethnic German civilians in the period 1918-1921, of which the examples quoted were only part.
"German State terrorism." What a lovely euphemism for mass murder.

I suppose we should be grateful that Mr Mills acknowledges that the Germans actually did something wrong during WWII. However, once again, Mr Mills seeks to place blame for that wrongdoing everywhere except on the Germans. Now he tells us that the Poles really brought it all upon themselves.


For those readers who are interested here are a few threads which show how Mr. Mills defiles and misrepresents the historical record.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 33&start=0
The Heydrich camps on the White Sea fantasy.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 00&start=0
Mr Mills paints Himmler as a champion of Polish civil rights and equates Nazi racial policy with US racial history.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 68&start=0
Mr. Mills reveals the true cause of the mass murders by the Einsatzgruppen in the Baltic States: it was those evil Lithuanians! Mr. Mills's attempt to blatantly misrepresent an essay by a Jewish professor is also exposed.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... sc&start=0

Mr. Mills tells us that Himmler just wanted to work Concentration camp inmates to death, not gas them.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 39&start=0

Mr. Mills tells us that the accelerated murdering of Jews was because the Germans were running short on food.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 047#585047

Mr Mills drops the bombshell that Eichmann, Himmler, Heydrich and company were actually “rescuers” of Jews.
Last edited by WalterS on 04 Jan 2005, 03:06, edited 1 time in total.

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#9

Post by Dan » 04 Jan 2005, 03:05

Walter, why can't you be like Peter? There is a place for objective thought, you know. Tell us how all those links had anything to do at all with the subject matter. Why don't you assume the average reader doesn't need your parenting?

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#10

Post by WalterS » 04 Jan 2005, 03:12

Tell us how all those links had anything to do at all with the subject matter.

The thread was initiated by Mr Mills. Therefore, in my view, his track record is fair game.

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Benoit Douville
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#11

Post by Benoit Douville » 04 Jan 2005, 03:14

Mr Mills seems to really hate the Poles that's for sure. He always blame them and I remember reading that he also blame the Poles for starting World War II...

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#12

Post by michael mills » 04 Jan 2005, 03:17

The events at Myslowitz were hardly a massacre, more the result of the forces of law and order suppressing a riot.

The use of the police against strikers in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s often resulted in similar casualty rates.

Here is what Tooley has to say on the events leading up to the first Plish Uprising in August 1917, at a time before the coming into force of the Versailles Treaty (10 January 1920), when Upper Silesia was still legally under the authority of the Governments of Prussia and of the German Reich.

Pages 77-78
The summer of 1919 ended in Upper Silesia with a grim reminder that administrative reform and propaganda money could carry a struggle only so far. On 17 August a Polsh uprising broke out in the southeastern Kreise of Pless and Rybnik, exactly as the Germans had feared and predicted for months. Erzberger [state secretary in the Reich Foreign Office, a leading member of the moderate wing of the Catholic Zentrum Party] had informed the Reich Cabinet on 30 April that an armed Polish action along Posen lines was being planned and suggested registering this inteligence with the Allies. Reports warning of a Polish move to cut off the industrial region continued to flow to Berlin through the summer. Conditions in the mining areas meanwhile approached the critical stage again. Polish workers, for their part, seemed increasingly amenable to national Polish agitation in the face of severe food shortages and repressive measures by the provincial government. At the same time, mining administrations found operation more and more difficult, many shutting down completely because of rising economic dislocations.

On 11 August representatives of the miners and metal workers from the Polish Party and the German parties of the left called a general strike, demanding the lifting of martial law, the opening of the border, the reinstatement of laid-off workers, and other labor concessions. One day later 60 percent of the coal industry and many other factories had stopped production. Minor concessions by Hörsing [chairman of the Central Workers' and Soldiers' Council of Upper Silesia, a Social Democrat and former official of the Metal Workers' Union] and union leaders were unavailing. Assured by the unions on the fifteenth that none of them had called the strike and that it was therefore "wild" or illegal, Hörsing once again initiated military measures to get the factories and mines back into operation. On Sunday, the sixteenth, he thought he had ended the wild strike and so reported to Berlin.

Meanwhile the underground POW had been torn internally over the timing of an armed revolt, but by the fifteenth the radical elements of both Polish national and communist persuasions - who were pushing for immediate revolt - seemed to be gaining the upper hand. At this moment word arrived that both Warsaw and the regional Polish authorities in Poznan disapproved of the planned revolt and denied it their support. German military police intercepted POW couriers with some of the resulting correspondence and arrested most of its staff of 16 August. The same day, military units engaged in strikebreaking at factories and mines met with heavy worker resistance in several instances. In the most serious of these, six of the two thousand workers storming a Myslowitz administrative building were killed.

The rising violence and the workers' animosity toward the miltary now enabled the lower echelons of the POW to give the signal for the uprising themselves. Early on the seventeenth, bands of armed Poles from both sides of the porous border attacked German arms depots in Pless and Rybnik. They planned evidently to secure large quantities of arms in the rural southern towns, then link up with the striking workers in the industrial region, fifteen miles to the north. This movement ground to a halt at the unexpectedly rapid deployment along hte border of German troops, most of them regulars, some of them short-term reenlisted Grenzschutz volunteers from the Upper Silesian Volunteer Corps, which had been disbanded only a month before. A second attempt in the industrial areas the next day was likewise contained by German detachments, though the insurgents remained in control of a strip of Upper Silesia on the east. A German counterattack on 20 August was successful, although it encountered heavy resistance along the border, particularly in the Kattowitz-Myslowitz sector. By the twenty-second, German units had reached the border. Several more brief actions against Polish irregulars from across the border and enclaves of insurgents were desultory: by 24 August the Germand regained full control, and most of the workers were back on the job.

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#13

Post by Obserwator » 04 Jan 2005, 03:22

Though his assesment misses the fact that women and children were murdered at Myslowice by Grenzschutz, the fragment does prove that it was the German repression against Poles that led to uprising.
The events at Myslowitz were hardly a massacre, more the result of the forces of law and order suppressing a riot
Indeed Mills, I am sure, just like Eichmann was saving Jews probably...
Assured by the unions on the fifteenth that none of them had called the strike and that it was therefore "wild" or illegal, Hörsing once again initiated military measures to get the factories and mines back into operation. On Sunday, the sixteenth, he thought he had ended the wild strike and so reported to Berlin
Indeed not surprising he was assured by them, as Polish legal Council was abolished by Germans in May...
by 24 August the Germand regained full control, and most of the workers were back on the job.
At the point of the gun of course.
The use of the police against strikers in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s often resulted in similar casualty rates.
Which of course misses the point. Because the operations in Silesia were result of ethnic repression aimed at population that was living under occupation, and where there ware specific laws making them a second-class citizens, forbiding the use of native language etc.

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#14

Post by David Thompson » 04 Jan 2005, 03:40

WalterS -- You said:
The thread was initiated by Mr Mills. Therefore, in my view, his track record is fair game
You've posted that list several times already. Please stay on topic in this thread, and discuss the historical issue, not Mr. Mills.

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#15

Post by michael mills » 04 Jan 2005, 12:28

The passage from Tooley shows that the incident at Myslowitz on 16 August 1919 did not cause the POW uprising on the following day, since the uprising was being planned by the more radical elements of POW before the Myslowitz incident.

In fact, there were a number of incidents on 16 August, involving fighting between rioting strikers and the German security forces, of which the incident at Myslowitz was the worst since some of the rioters were killed.

It may well be that the incidents on that day were all part of the planned lead-up to the attacks by the POW on the arms depots.

What is clear to me is that the analysis by Tooley is a balanced, impartial account that does favour one side or the other. It contrasts with the version presented by Obserwator, which appears to be a Polish nationalist version of events, and hence likely to be biassed in favour of one side in the conflict.

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