This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "History of Poland during World War I" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(May 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Occupation of Poland during World War I

Part ofWorld War I
Duration	1914–1918
Motive	The expansionary policy of the occupying powers.
Participants	Russian Empire, German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire
Outcome	1,400,000 Poles conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army 1,200,000 Poles conscripted into the Russian army 700,000 Poles conscripted into the German army Collapse of all three occupying Empires Establishment of the Second Polish Republic.
Deaths	450,000–600,000 military deaths 1,128,000 deaths overall
Property damage	Destruction of over 1,800,000 buildings and half of the bridges Production output fell to 20% of its level before the war Polish industry suffered the loss of an estimated 73 billion French francs.
Displaced	800,000 deported by Russians to the east Hundreds of thousands taken to labor camps in Germany

WhilePoland did not exist as an independent state duringWorld War I, its geographical position between the fighting powers meant that much fighting and horrific human and material losses occurred on the Polish lands between 1914 and 1918.

At the start of World War I,Polish territory was divided between theRussian,German andAustro-Hungarian empires, and became the scene of many operations of theEastern Front of World War I.

In theaftermath of the war, following the collapse of the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, Poland becamean independent republic.

The war split the ranks of the three partitioning empires, pitting Russia as defender ofSerbia and ally ofBritain andFrance against the leading members of theCentral Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary.

This circumstance afforded the Poles political leverage as both sides offered pledges of concessions and future autonomy in exchange for Polish loyalty and army recruits.

The Austrians wanted to incorporate the Russian territory ofPrivislinsky Krai into their territory ofGalicia, so even before the war they allowed nationalist organizations to form there (for example,Związek Strzelecki).

In 1914, RussianGrand Duke Nicholas proclaimed an offer of self-government to the Poles in exchange for solidarity against Prussia. Some representatives of the Poles responded positively, saying that the "twoSlav peoples" are shedding blood "against the common enemy."^[1]

The Russians recognized the Polish right to autonomy and allowed formation of thePolish National Committee, which supported the Russian side. Russia's foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov proposed to create an autonomous Kingdom of Poland with its own internal administration, religious freedom and Polish language used in schools and administration.^[2] Poland would receive eastern area of Poznań region, southern Silesia and Western Galicia.^[3]

As the war settled into a long stalemate, the issue of Polish self-rule gained greater urgency.Roman Dmowski spent the war years inWestern Europe, hoping to persuade the Allies to unify the Polish lands under Russian rule as an initial step toward liberation.^[4]

In June 1914,Józef Piłsudski had correctly predicted that the war would ruin all three of the partitioners, a conclusion often considered unlikely before 1918.^[5] Piłsudski therefore formed thePolish Legions to assist the Central Powers in defeating Russia as the first step toward full independence for Poland. According to Prit Buttar, "At the Beginning of the war, Piłsudski committed his forces to support the Austro-Hungarian cause, believing that Poland's best chance for independence lay in a victory of theCentral Powers over Russia, followed by the defeat of the Central Powers by France and Britain. He had talks in secret with the Western Powers, assuring them that his men would never fight against them, only against the Russians."^{[6]: 400–401}

The encroaching German forces were met with hostility and distrust. Unlike the Napoleonic forces a century earlier, Poles didn't see them as liberators.

The Russians were bid farewell, often with sadness, grief and uncertainty. There was no harassment of retreating Russian soldiers, nor attacks on wounded. For many Poles, Russians at that time were seen as "ours," due to the process of liberalization that occurred in the Russian Empire after the1905 Revolution. This was in contrast to Germany which, through its actions of relentlessGermanization of Poles within its borders, theWrześnia school strike, persecution of Polish education in Pomerania and Poznań, and in 1914 theDestruction of Kalisz increased pro-Russian and anti-German feelings. This attitude distressed Austrian-orientated Piłsudski. Only in late summer of 1915 after harsh policy of Russian plunder of Polish lands did the sympathy of Poles for Russia wane.

According toPrit Buttar, following the first year of fighting in 1914, "The people who suffered the most were those who had no national army serving their cause: the Poles. Most of Poland west of Warsaw had been turned into a battlefield, and large areas were deliberately devastated by the Germans during their retreat from theVistula. Treated with disdain by Germans, Russians, and the Austro-Hungarians alike, the Poles could only endure through a cold winter in their shattered towns and villages, and hope for a better future."^[6]

In 1916, attempting to increase Polish support for the Central Powers and to raise a Polish army, the German and Austrian emperors declared that a new state called the Kingdom of Poland would be created. The new Kingdom in reality was to be apuppet regime under military, economical and political control by the German Reich. Its territory was to be created after the war of only a small part of the old Commonwealth, i.e. the territory ofKingdom of Poland (Privislinsky Krai), with around 30,000 square kilometers of its western areas to be annexed by Germany. Polish and Jewish population in those areas was to be expelled and replaced by German colonists. ARegency Council was established in preparation for this, forming a proto-Government, and issuing currency, called thePolish mark. German efforts to create an army serving the Central Powers however met with failure, as it lacked expected volunteers for the German cause.

After peace in the East was assured by theTreaty of Brest-Litovsk, Germany and Austria-Hungary started a policy of creating a "Mitteleuropa" ("Central Europe") and on November 5, 1917, declared that apuppet stateKingdom of Poland might be created.

Much of the heavy fighting on the war's Eastern Front took place on the territory of the former Polish state. In 1914 Russian forces advanced very close toKraków before being beaten back. The next spring, heavy fighting occurred aroundGorlice andPrzemyśl, to the east of Kraków in Galicia. In 1915 Polish territories were looted and abandoned by the retreatingImperial Russian army, trying to emulate thescorched earth policy of 1812;^[7][8] the Russians also evicted and deported hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants suspected of collaborating with the enemy.^[7][9][10] By the end of 1915, the Germans had occupied the entire Russian sector, includingWarsaw. In 1916another Russian offensive in Galicia exacerbated the already desperate situation of civilians in the war zone; about 1 million Polish refugees fled eastward behind Russian lines during the war. Although the Russian offensive of 1916 caught the Germans and Austrians by surprise, poor communications and logistics prevented the Russians from taking full advantage of their situation.

450,000 Poles died and around one million were wounded while fighting in theAustrian,Russian, andGerman armies, which by 1916 included close to 2 million Polish soldiers.^[11] Several hundred thousand Polish civilians were moved to labor camps in Germany,^[12] and 800,000 were deported by the Russians fromCongress Poland to the East.^[11] The scorched-earth retreat strategies of both sides left much of the war zone uninhabitable.Total deaths from 1914–18, military and civilian, within the 1919–1939 borders, were estimated at 1,128,000.^{[12][page needed]} Around 1,800,000 buildings and half of the bridges had been destroyed. Production output fell to 20% of its level before the war and Polish industry suffered the loss of an estimated 73 billionFrench francs.^[13] The British Director of Relief summarized the situation in Poland as following:^[14]

"The country...had undergone four or five occupations by different armies, each of which had combed the land for supplies. Most of the villages had been burnt down by the Russians and their retreat (of 1915); land had been uncultivated for four years and had been cleared of cattle, grain, horses and agricultural machinery by both Germans and Bolsheviks. The population here was living upon roots, grass, acorns and heather. The only bread obtainable was composed of those ingredients, with perhaps about 5 per cent of rye flour..."

The lack of food caused widespread malnutrition, which combined with disease often brought by soldiers returning from the front, drove up the mortality rate of the local population. Famine conditions affected a significant area of eastern Poland.^[14]

Units with a high number of Polish personnel in various armies

Germany	Austria-Hungary	France ("Blue Army")	Russia
			Polish I Corps	Polish II Corps
10th Division 35th Division 119th Division 121st Division 214th Division 235th Division 5th Reserve Division 46th Reserve Division 47th Reserve Division[15]	I Brigade II Brigade III Brigade 1st Uhlan Regiment 2nd Uhlan Regiment 3rd Uhlan Regiment 4th Uhlan Regiment 6th Uhlan Regiment 7th Uhlan Regiment 8th Uhlan Regiment 13th Uhlan Regiment[16]	1st Rifle Division 2nd Rifle Divisiona 3rd Rifle Divisiona 6th Rifle Divisiona 7th Rifle Divisiona ^a Formed after the Armistice.[17]	1st Rifle Division 2nd Rifle Division 3rd Rifle Division	4th Rifle Division 5th Rifle Division

In 1917 two separate events decisively changed the character of the war and set it on a course toward the rebirth of Poland. TheUnited States entered the conflict on the Allied side, while a process ofrevolutionary upheaval in Russia weakened it and then removed the Russians from the Eastern Front, finally bringing theBolsheviks to power in that country. After the last Russian advance into Galicia failed in mid-1917, the Germans went on the offensive again; the army of revolutionary Russia ceased to be a factor, and Russia was forced to sign theTreaty of Brest-Litovsk in which it ceded all formerly Polish lands to theCentral Powers.

The defection of Russia from the Allied coalition gave free rein to the calls ofWoodrow Wilson, the American president, to transform the war into a crusade to spread democracy and liberate the Poles and other peoples from the suzerainty of the Central Powers. The thirteenth of hisFourteen Points adopted the resurrection of Poland as one of the main aims ofWorld War I. Polish opinion crystallized in support of the Allied cause.

Józef Piłsudski became a popular hero whenBerlin jailed him for insubordination. The Allies broke the resistance of the Central Powers by autumn 1918, as theHabsburg monarchy disintegrated and the German imperial government collapsed. In October 1918, Polish authorities took overGalicia andCieszyn Silesia. In November 1918, Piłsudski was released from internment in Germany by the revolutionaries and returned to Warsaw. Upon his arrival, on November 11, 1918 theRegency Council of the Kingdom of Poland ceded all responsibilities to him and Piłsudski took control over the newly created state as its provisional Chief of State. Soon all the local governments that had been created in the last months of the war pledged allegiance to the central government in Warsaw. Independent Poland, which had been absent from the map of Europe for 123 years, was reborn.

The newly created state initially consisted of formerPrivislinsky Krai, westernGalicia (withLwówbesieged by theUkrainians) and part ofCieszyn Silesia.

• History of Poland (1795–1918)
• History of Poland (1918–1939)
• Diplomatic history of World War I
• Kingdom of Poland (1917–1918)

• Articles relating toPoland at the International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
• Szlanta, Piotr:Poland, in:1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
• Posters of the German Military Government in the Generalgouvernement Warshau (German occupied Poland) from World War I, 1915–1916 From the Collections at theLibrary of Congress

• Poland in World War I
• 1910s in Poland
• Wars involving Poland
• 20th-century military history of Poland
• Modern history of Poland
• Austria-Hungary in World War I
• German Empire in World War I
• Russian Empire in World War I
• History of Poland (1795–1918)

• CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list
• CS1 maint: location missing publisher
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from May 2012
• All articles needing additional references
• Pages using infobox mapframe with missing coordinates
• Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from August 2021