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Poland The Interwar Years
In 1918, after 123 years of partition, Poland regained
its
independence. The immediate military task was forming a
new
national army from soldiers and officers who had fought on
both
sides--although officers who had served on the side of the
Central Powers dominated the new army. In the territorial
uncertainty that followed the war, the Red Army pushed
westward,
aiming to use Poland as a bridge over which to spread
socialism
into postwar Germany. Pilsudski blocked this advance in
1919;
then in 1920 he advanced eastward with the goal of
including
Ukrainian and Belorussian territory in a new Slavic state.
Polish
forces were thrown back nearly to Warsaw, where Pilsudski
defeated the Soviets and began an effective counterattack
that
preserved Poland's independence from Soviet domination in
the
interwar period.
Pilsudski's military and political prominence ensured
that
the armed forces became an important national institution
in the
new government. Many Poles saw the army as both the symbol
and
the guarantor of their country's independence and unity.
In 1926,
after Poland had experienced several years of political
uncertainty and weak leadership, Pilsudski took over the
state in
a military coup, assuming the posts of minister of defense
and
general inspector of the army. In the interwar period,
military
officers held prominent positions in the national
government, and
their elevated status fostered intense political and
personal
rivalries as well as high-level corruption. After
Pilsudski's
death in 1935, Poland was ruled ineffectually by a group
of his
former subordinates, who remained in power until 1939.
After World War I, Polish national security rested on a
military alliance with France, which guaranteed Poland's
independence and territorial integrity. Poland was
unsuccessful
in joining the Little Entente, a French-sponsored alliance
of
Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, because
Czechoslovakia
suspected Polish territorial ambitions along their mutual
border.
In protecting its sovereignty during this period, Poland
had as
its primary concerns maintaining a balance between its two
powerful neighbors, Germany and the Soviet Union, and
avoiding a
situation where the two would take concerted action
against
Poland and divide it once again.
Data as of October 1992
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