Polish-Ukrainian War
| date | 1918 to 1919 |
|---|---|
| place | Galicia , Carpathian Ukraine , Volhynia , Bukovina |
| output | Victory of Poland |
| Parties to the conflict | |
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| Commander | |
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| losses | |
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more than 10,000 dead |
around 15,000 dead |
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The Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918 and 1919 was a conflict between the Second Polish Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic for control of Eastern Galicia after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary .
conflict
With the High Council of the Paris Peace Conference, there was no sufficiently strong supranational authority, nor was there any regulation proposed by Poland or the Ukraine to bring about a decision on the statehood of East Galicia on the basis of a referendum. The political and military forces of the not yet established Ukrainian republic occupied eastern Galicia in November 1918, following a decision by the last governor of Austria.
Although the majority of the population in eastern Galicia were Ukrainians, large parts of the territory claimed by Ukraine were considered Polish by Poles. The Polish residents of Lviv were outraged that they found themselves in a self-proclaimed Ukrainian state after the occupation of Eastern Galicia.
background
The origin of the conflict lies in the complex ethnic relationships in Galicia under the Habsburg Monarchy . The monarchy offered the opportunity for the development of Polish and Ukrainian national movements due to its less suppressive policies towards minorities. The more developed Polish politicians served as models for the Ukrainians. An incident occurred in 1897 when the Polish-dominated administration opposed the Ukrainians in the parliamentary elections. Another conflict developed in the years 1901–1908 around the University of Lviv , in which Ukrainian students demanded their own Ukrainian university, while Polish students and the faculty wanted to prevent this. The final turning point in the relationship between the two groups came in 1903 when both Poles and Ukrainians held their own meetings in Lviv (the Polish meeting was held in May, the Ukrainian meeting in August). Since then, the two national movements with incompatible goals have developed in opposite directions.
The ethnic composition of Galicia formed the basis of the conflict between the Poles and Ukrainians there. The Austro-Hungarian crown land of Galicia and Lodomeria consisted of areas that were ceded by Poland in the course of the first partition of Poland in 1772. The western part, which comprised central parts of the historical territory of Poland, including the former capital Krakow , had a predominantly Polish population, while the eastern part of Galicia, the historical heartland of Halych-Volhynia , had a Ukrainian majority. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ukrainians in Galicia aimed at a division into a western (Polish) and an eastern (Ukrainian) part. The Poles, who feared losing control of eastern Galicia, resisted these efforts. Although Eastern Galicia was mostly inhabited by Ukrainians, the most important city, Lviv, only had around 20 percent of the Ukrainian population (compared to around 50% of the Polish population) and was viewed by the Poles as a cultural center of Poland. From the point of view of many Poles, including those from Lviv, it was unthinkable that this city should not be under Polish control. In the end, however, the Austrians agreed to partition Galicia, but the outbreak of World War I prevented this project from being implemented. However, in October 1916, Charles I promised to take this step after the end of the war.
Course of war
Austria-Hungary collapsed at the end of October 1918, and the Ukrainian National Council, consisting of Ukrainian members of the Austrian Imperial Council and members of the Galician and Bukovinian state parliaments, as well as leaders of the Ukrainian parties, officially requested control of Eastern Galicia from the last Austrian governor of Galicia to transfer the Ukrainians. He complied with this requirement on October 31, 1918. During this time, the Ukrainian militia, the Sicher Riflemen under Dmytro Vitovskyi, marched into Lemberg to ensure that it would come under Ukrainian control. The West Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed on November 1, 1918 with Lviv as its capital. The proclamation of the republic, which claimed sovereignty for eastern Galicia including the Carpathian Mountains to Nowy Sącz in the west, as well as for Volhynia , Carpathian Ukraine and Bukovina , came as a great surprise to the Poles .
During their invasion of Lviv, the Ukrainian forces were successfully resisted by local (Polish) defenders, largely composed of WWI veterans, students and even youth and children. A great advantage for the Poles turned out to be the fact that their soldiers and other fighters were largely recruited from local Lembergers, while the Ukrainian army mostly served peasants who were not or only little familiar with the city and its circumstances. After two weeks in part of heavy fighting within the city broke a Entsatzoperation an armed unit of re-established Polish army under Lieutenant Colonel Michał Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz the Ukrainian siege and came into the city. On November 21, the fighting for the city in favor of the Poles was over after the Ukrainian high command, which was also confronted with desertions and supply problems in its army, decided to evacuate the city - for the time being, it was believed. Nonetheless, Ukrainian forces continued to control most of eastern Galicia at this point and were a threat to the city until May 1919. Soon after they were retaken in late November, the Poles took a number of Ukrainian activists to internment camps.
In December 1918 fighting began in Volhynia. Polish units were trying to gain control of the region, while at the same time the forces of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic under Symon Petljura were trying to expand the areas they controlled to the west, towards the city of Chełm . After two months of heavy fighting, the conflict was ended here in March 1919 with the entry of fresh and well-equipped Polish units under General Edward Rydz-Śmigły in favor of the Poles.
The Polish general offensive in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia began on May 14, 1919. It was carried out by the units of the Polish Army, supported by the recently arrived Blue Army of General Józef Haller von Hallenburg . This army was well equipped by the Western allies and partly manned by experienced French officers to fight against the Bolsheviks and not against the units of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic. Regardless of this, the Poles used Haller's army against the Ukrainians to win the stalemate in eastern Galicia. The Allies sent several telegrams to the Poles asking them to stop the offensive. However, this request was ignored. The Ukrainian lines were broken, mainly due to the withdrawal of the elite Sitch rifle unit . On May 27, the Polish forces reached the line Złota Lipa - Bereschany - Jezierna - Radziwiłłów . Due to the demands of the Entente , the Polish offensive was stopped and the troops under General Haller took up defensive positions. On June 8, 1919, the Ukrainian forces under the command of Oleksandr Hrekow (Олександр Греков), a former general of the Russian army , began a counter-offensive, which after three weeks reached the Gniła Lipa River and the upper Styr and came to a standstill there. The main reason for this was the lack of weapons: there were only 8 to 10 bullets per Ukrainian soldier. The government of the West Ukrainian People's Republic controlled the oil fields near Drohobych and planned to use the proceeds to buy weapons for the fight, but for political and diplomatic reasons weapons and ammunition could only get into Ukraine via Czechoslovakia . Although the Ukrainian forces managed to push the Poles back about 120 km, they were unable to secure the route to Czechoslovakia. That meant they couldn't replenish their stocks of weapons and ammunition. The resulting lack of supplies forced Hrekow to end his campaign.
Józef Piłsudski took command of the Polish forces on June 27 and started another offensive. The lack of ammunition and numerical inferiority forced the Ukrainians back to the line of the Sbruch River .
End of war
A ceasefire was initially agreed on July 17, 1919. The Ukrainian prisoners of war were held in former Austrian prisoner-of-war camps in Dąbie , Łańcut , Pikulice , Strzałków and Wadowice .
On November 21, 1919, the High Council of the Paris Peace Conference awarded Eastern Galicia to Poland for a period of 25 years, after which a referendum was to be held in the area . On April 21, 1920, Józef Piłsudski and Symon Petljura signed a Polish-Ukrainian alliance in which Poland promised the West Ukrainian People's Republic military support in the offensive against the Red Army . In return, Ukraine accepted the course of the Polish-Ukrainian border along the Sbrutsch.
War crimes
National Polish and Ukrainian historical constructions like to emphasize that the Polish-Ukrainian war was carried out by mostly disciplined forces on both sides, which is why, in contrast to the brutality in the fighting in the former parts of the Russian Empire, there were relatively few civilian deaths and destruction . However, practice and the course of the war have shown that such claims are hardly true. Both sides went into the war with a corresponding "national charge", and attacks on prisoners and civilians of the opposing side occurred on both sides, which were mostly relativized and played down. A conscious attempt was also made on both sides to take public opinion in the Entente states for their own point of view.
In June 1919, for example, the Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andrej Scheptyzkyj complained in a letter to Józef Piłsudski about the mass internment of Ukrainians carried out by the Polish side with the aim of removing the Ukrainian intelligentsia and nationalist people. In this letter complaints were made about the flogging of Ukrainian peasants, the burning of their houses, the requisitioning of horses and cattle without compensation , the extortion of money and other valuables, and the robbery of churches by members of the Polish army.
The Jews living in western Ukraine were also targeted by Polish soldiers. When Lemberg, after some fierce fighting on 21/22 After being captured by Polish troops on November 22nd, 1918, a pogrom broke out on the town's Jewish community from November 22nd to 24th . Polish soldiers as well as militiamen and civilians killed a large number of Jews . According to the Morgenthau Report, 64 people died in the process, other figures vary between 73 and 150 Jewish victims. The Jews were accused of their neutral stance in the conflict between Poles and Ukrainians, which made it possible for the Ukrainians to take over political power in Lviv at the beginning of the war.
See also
literature
- Marek Figura: Conflict polsko-ukraiński w prasie Polski Zachodniej w latach 1918-1923 . Poznan 2001, ISBN 83-7177-013-8 .
- Karol Grünberg, Bolesław Sprengel: "Trudne sąsiedztwo. Stosunki polsko-ukraińskie w X-XX wieku" . Książka i Wiedza, Warsaw 2005, ISBN 83-05-13371-0 .
- William W. Hagen: The Moral Economy of Popular Violence The Pogrom in Lwow, November 1918 . In: Robert Blobaum: Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland . Cornell University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8014-8969-5 , pp. 124-147.
- Witold Hupert: Zajęcie Małopolski Wschodniej i Wołynia w roku 1919 . Książnica Atlas, Lviv - Warsaw 1928
- Władysław Pobóg-Malinowski: Najnowsza Historia Polityczna Polski, Tom 2, 1919-1939 . London 1956, ISBN 83-03-03164-3 .
- Paul Robert Magocsi: A History of Ukraine . University of Toronto Press: Toronto 1996, ISBN 0-8020-0830-5 .
- Władysław A. Serczyk: Historia Ukrainy . 3. Edition. Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Wroclaw 2001, ISBN 83-04-04530-3 .
- Orest Subtelny: Ukraine. A history. University of Toronto Press 2000, ISBN 0-8020-8390-0 .
- Torsten Wehrhahn: The West Ukrainian People's Republic. On Polish-Ukrainian relations and the problem of the Ukrainian statehood in the years 1918 to 1923 . Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-89998-045-5 ( reading sample ; PDF, 157 kB; accessed on January 27, 2012).
- Leonid Zaszkilniak: The origins of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in 1918-1919 . Lviv?