The eighteenth decisive battle of the world: Warsaw, 1920 (Russian studies)

Jan Peczkis|Friday, April 9, 2010

he 1920 War was not the first time that Poland had saved Europe. D'Abernon comments: "In 1684 the Ottoman invasion made its furthest advance west. The Battle of Vienna was one of the occasions when Europe owed safety to Polish valour. Already at Chocim in 1280 Polish arms attained an important victory over Asiatic assailants, but the danger was even more grave before the walls of Vienna, and John Sobieski earned the gratitude of all who value the maintenance of European civilisation." (p. 11).

   
       
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The irrationality of those who support Communism [even today] has long been known to D'Abernon, who wrote: "No one who has not been here can realize the extent to which sympathy with the Bolsheviks dominates the working-classes in Central Europe. This sympathy is almost more religious than political. It is unaffected by ordinary considerations of interest and survives the complete failure of Bolshevik economic administration--no less than their admitted brutality and cruelty." (pp. 48-49). Also: "Moscow propaganda had worked with persistence; large sections of the population were contaminated. Even among the classes hostile to fundamental change there was no adequate grasp of the appalling danger to civilization which threatened." (p. 13).

The author doesn't directly discuss the pogroms against Jews by the Polish Army, but does offer some clues as to their origins. Poles and Jews were deeply distrustful of each other. (p. 52). D'Abernon touches on the Zydkokomuna (Bolshevized Judaism), alluding to its preeminence in the invading Red Army: "On the way back I came across some Bolshevik prisoners who had just been taken...Jewish Commissaires did everything in their division--commandeered food--gave orders--explained objectives." (p. 76). Soviet POWs in Polish hands are described as follows: "The general impression conveyed was that the Jews and Jewish Commissaires were universally detested and the latter particularly feared." (p. 108). Ironically, the average Red Army soldier felt safer in Polish captivity because: "...there would be no Jewish Commissaires to shoot them if they ran away..." (p. 120). Also: "I perceived very little resentment against the ordinary [Soviet] prisoners on the part of the [Polish] villagers, although they would kill a Commissaire. They talked with the former quite affably and gave them a lift to prison camps on their carts, a common hatred of Jewish Commissaires and usurers making them wondrous kind." (pp. 120-121).

What about Polish conduct towards local Jews? The author assesses the infant Polish Army: "It was recruited in the main from disconnected and opposite elements, who had been fighting during the Great War, not together, but against one another...From such elements was it possible that a united or disciplined force could be improvised in the course of a few months?" (p. 24). Also: "Pilsudski, in taking command of the forces that eventually achieved a brilliant victory, declared that he had never seen such a parcel of ill-equipped ragamuffins--many of them indeed had not even boots." (p. 15). [The indiscipline, social unsophistication, and poverty in the Polish Army have elsewhere been cited as factors in the Polish pogroms.]

Finally, the very tactics of the Red Army emphasized fifth-column effects, and this tended to enhance the military significance of local Jewish-Communist collaboration, and Polish retaliation against it. D'Abernon writes: "The Soviet Army is filtering on through the country at a rapid rate. Frontal attacks are avoided everywhere. If a certain point is defended, Soviet troops and agents creep around it. The usual mode of approach to a town is to send a few skilful emissaries forward. These get in touch with the malcontents behind the Polish front, and so distrust and defeatism spread." (p. 49). Also: "Moscow disposed of a host of spies, propagandists, secret emissaries and secret friends, who penetrated into Polish territory and undermined the resistance of certain elements of the Polish population." (p. 28).

Had the Bolsheviks won over Poland, Germany would have been next. Secret German Communists were abuzz in every German city, ready to spring into action. (pp. 11-12).