Inter-allied government and plebiscite commission for Upper Silesia

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Seat of the commission in the building of the old government in Opole

The Inter-allied government and Plebiszitskommission for Upper Silesia ( IK ), French Commission Interalliée de Gouvernement et de plebiscite de Haute-Silésie (CIHS) was a control panel of the victors of the First World War , which the administration of the region of Upper Silesia , as well as conducting a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty . The commission was set up on February 11, 1920 after the first Polish uprising in Upper Silesia in August 1919 . The commission ended on July 10, 1922.

Contractual bases

The basis for the work of the commission was Article 88 of the Versailles Treaty. The duration of the activity was specified for the implementation of a referendum in Upper Silesia.

management

General Henri Le Rond , Chairman of the Commission

The commission was chaired by the French General Henri Le Rond , his deputies were the Italian General Alberto De Marinis and the British Colonel Sir Harold Percival , who was replaced by Harold Arthur Stuart on September 6, 1921 .

Structure of the Commission

The seat of the commission was in the Old Government in Opole , the former seat of the government of the Opole administrative district . In addition to the three victorious powers France, England and Italy, the Vatican was represented as a further foreign power with its own nuncio . The commission was empowered to enact its own laws and decrees. When the commission was set up in February 1920, Upper Silesia was both de jure and de jure separated from the German Empire .

Tasks of the Commission

The primary purpose of the commission was to hold a referendum in Upper Silesia. Within the commission, the French dominated both militarily and administratively and were anxious to support the Polish side. Against the background of the outbreak of the Polish-Soviet war and Poland's defeat in the vote in Allenstein and Marienwerder , the second Polish uprising took place in August 1920, which is why the date for the referendum had to be postponed to a more favorable time for Poland, which was hoped for to further minimize the administrative influence of Germans in administration and the police by the day of voting.

Referendum in Upper Silesia

March 20, 1921 was set as the date for the plebiscite . The vote of 59.6 percent in favor of Germany (707,000 votes) versus 40.4 percent for Poland (479,000 votes) was interpreted by both parties as a separate victory. The German side insisted on leaving the entire voting area with the German Reich , although Article 88 of the Versailles Treaty spoke against it , which explicitly did not provide for an overall view of the result, but an assessment based on the local distribution of the population's votes. Germany had the majority in 834 of 1510 municipalities, Poland in 674; There was a tie in two parishes. Poland demanded the incorporation of the areas up to the so-called Korfanty Line , an imaginary border that encompassed about 59 percent of the voting district and seventy percent of the total population.

Great Britain was initially inclined to leave the entire voting area with Germany because of the plebiscite, which in their eyes was clearly unusual. On the other hand, England agreed in the further course of the negotiations within the Commission to support an Italian compromise proposal which provided for the transfer of the Pleß and Rybnik districts and parts of the Tarnowitz district to Poland, but leaving the industrial area entirely with Germany. The President of the Commission Henri Le Rond insisted on a border line agreed with Paris, which deviated only insignificantly from the Korfanty line and above all assigned the industrial area to Poland.

The result was the third Polish uprising from May 3 to July 5, 1921, which, under pressure from the Commission, ended with an armistice agreement. However, the Allies could not agree on an amicable demarcation of the boundary in Upper Silesia. There was another proposed solution that the British and Italian commissioners had worked out: The Percival de Marinis line awarded Poland about a quarter of the voting district with 21 percent of the total population. The valuable industrial area with the German-dominated cities was to remain intact. Poland was to receive an area rich in natural resources, which, however, had to be developed for the most part. Both sides were to be assigned those districts of Upper Silesia in which the ethnic-national relationships were clearest. During the deliberations in the Council of Ambassadors in Paris, the Percival de Marinis line had little prospect of acceptance because it did not correspond to France's interests . At the French initiative, the matter was finally referred to the Paris Ambassadors Conference for decision.

The ambassadors conference in Paris decided on October 20, 1921 with the Sforza Line, an inner-Upper Silesian border line, which, although far removed from the original ideas of Korfanty and France, was a success of the French partition policy. Ultimately, the German Reich received an area of ​​7794 square kilometers (71 percent of the voting area) and a population of 1,116,500 people (54 percent). Poland was awarded the remainder with an area of ​​3214 square kilometers and 996 500 inhabitants. Although this gave it a smaller and less populous part of Upper Silesia, the demarcation was economically more favorable for Poland, which received more than two-thirds of all mines and industrial facilities and around three-quarters of the raw material deposits.

literature

  • Boris Barth : The Free Corps Battles in Poznan and Upper Silesia 1919–1921. A contribution to the German-Polish conflict after the First World War , in: Dietmar Neutatz / Volker Zimmermann (eds.): The Germans and Eastern Europe. Aspects of a diverse relationship history. Festschrift for Detlef Brandes on his 65th birthday , Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89861-629-0 , pp. 317–333.
  • Timothy Wilson: Frontiers of violence. Conflict and identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia 1918–1922 , Oxford University Press, Oxford [u. a.] 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-958371-3 .
  • Michael Salewski : Disarmament and Military Control in Germany 1919–1927. Oldenbourg, Munich 1966 ( publications of the research institute of the German Society for Foreign Policy 24, ISSN  0933-2294 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Arnulf Hein, Upper Silesia - Land under the Cross. A calendar of events from 1917 to 1922 (Polish: Górny Śląsk - kraina dotknięta krzyżem. Kalendarium wydarzeń lat 1917–1922, Narodowa Oficyna Śląska), Zabrze, 2006
  2. ↑ a b The plot of Upper Silesia . in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of May 21, 2011.
  3. ↑ Michael Opitz, Silesia remains ours. Germany's struggle for Upper Silesia 1919–1921 , Kiel 1985.
  4. ↑ Voting results on the website of Falter et al. 1986, p. 118.
  5. ^ A b c Norbert Conrads , German History in Eastern Europe. Silesia . Berlin, 1994
  6. ↑ Hans Roos: History of the Polish Nation 1918–1978. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-17-004932-1 .
  7. ^ Andreas Kiesewetter: Italy and Upper Silesia 1919–1922. Documents on Italian politics on the Upper Silesian question 1919–1921 , Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2001, pp. 41–90 .
  8. ↑ Dieter Lamping: About Limits , 2001, p. 58.
  9. ↑ Target in Palazzo Chigi . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1948 ( online ).