Polish-Lithuanian War

After the First World War and the withdrawal of the Red Army from Lithuania , an attack by Polish troops on Lithuania in October 1920 led to the Polish-Lithuanian War .

The Vilnius Land annexed by Poland (green) in 1921, another area disputed between Lithuania and Poland (hatched)

Polish cavalry parade , Sejny , 1920

Several demarcation lines between Lithuania and Poland from 1919 to 1939:

Entente proposals , June 18, 1918

Foch line , decided by the conference of ambassadors on July 27, 1919

Treaty of Suwałki , October 7, 1920

Polish occupation by General Żeligowski's troops , recognized by the League of Nations in 1923

Today's state borders

Railway lines

prehistory

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In the Suwałki Treaty of October 7, 1920, Poland officially renounced mixed-language areas around Vilnius .

Military conflict

Despite the Suwałki Treaty, Polish troops marched in under General Żeligowski two days after the contract was signed and occupied Vilnius in October 1920 . According to his own statements, Żeligowski's troops consisted of militants . Not only was Vilnius attacked in 1920 without a declaration of war, the Polish troops also annexed large parts of the newly founded state of Lithuania such as Ašmena (today: Aschmjany in Belarus ) and Švenčionys . The occupation of the Vilnius land was justified by Poland with the protection of the Polish minority in Lithuania, which represented the clear majority of the population in this area with 70.6%.

The soldiers deployed were mostly Polish volunteers from Lithuania and Belarus. The military coup was officially declared as an uprising by the local Polish population independent of the leadership of Poland. Żeligowski immediately proclaimed the formally independent puppet state Republic of Litwa Środkowa with the capital Vilnius and ruled the puppet state as a military dictator . Then he installed a "Central Lithuanian Parliament", which was the first official act on February 20, 1922, to "annex" Central Lithuania to Poland. Poland accepted this decision immediately, annexed the Lithuanian territory and incorporated it into the official state territory on April 20, 1922.

Under international law, the surprise Polish attack was a violation of the territorial integrity of Lithuania and a breach of the Suwałki Treaty.

See also

• Polish minority in Lithuania
• Józef Piłsudski
• History of Lithuania

literature

• Vilenas Vadapalas : Lietuvos Respublikos suverenitetas Vilniaus kraštui (The Lithuania's sovereignty to the Vilnius region) in Lietuvos rytai; straipsnių rinkinys (The east of Lithuania; the collection of articles) Vilnius 1993, ISBN 9986-09-002-4 , p. 142.
• Ferdinand Seibt: Handbuch der Europäische Geschichte , 1987, pp. 1072-1073, ISBN 3-12-907540-2 .
• Norman Davies : God's Playground, Columbia University Press. 2005, ISBN 0-231-12819-3 , digitized from Google Books .
• Arūnas Bubnys: The Lithuanian-Polish conflict 1919–1923 from an international law perspective. In: Erwin Oberländer (ed.): Poland after communism. Stuttgart 1993, pp. 106-114, ISBN 3-515-06213-0 .
• Piotr Łossowski: Conflict polsko-litewski 1918–1920. Warszawa 1996, ISBN 83-05-12769-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jörg Gägel, Reiner Steinweg: Discourses of the Past in the Baltic Sea Region: The View of War, Dictatorship, Genocide and Displacement in Russia, Poland and the Baltic States. Lit, Münster 2007, ISBN 3825802035 , p. 90.