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Dear Kaz,
Im am afraid your knowledge of history of the area in question is sadly
below elementary.
Here are several pages from "White Eagle Red Star" by Norman Davis, a
renowned British historian and a professor at Berkley. It is a fragment of
history of those days on Kresy.
Since this is a Kresy (and not a holocaust ) group who are interested in
the land of their grandfathers' fatherland the pages should be of interest
to all members. I am therefore sending it to all members.
Edward Tarchalski

Pages 24 to 17 of the above book:

Page 24 WHITE EAGLE, RED STAR by Norman Davis

The American Relief Administration led by Herbert Hoover battled to keep
starvation and disease at bay. The political problems remained unsolved.
Caught between the twin miseries of Soviet Russia and Poland, the GERMAN
army of the OBER-OST occupied a difficult position of diminishing strategic
value.
In March 1918, when the German occupation was established, the Ober-Ost had
formed the eastern bastion of German-controlled Europe, guarded in the rear
by the German and Austrian zones of occupation in Poland and on its wings by
the pro-German regimes in Lithuania and the Ukraine. But the collapse of the
Austrians in October followed by the expulsion of German forces from central
Poland in November left the Ober-Ost dangling in space, severed from all
support except in the north. There remained only a grotesquely elongated
rump, over 1,000 miles long and in places only fifty miles wide. Its
headquarters, and its Chief of Staff, General Max Hoffman, were in
Konigsberg in East Prussia. Its two main sectors were the region controlled
by General von Falkenhayn's Tenth Army based at Grodno in the north, and the
Heeresgruppe Kiew in the south. Its main artery was the railway line
Bialystok-Brest- Litovsk-Kowel-Rowne. Its only links with Germany were the
single-track lines running into East Prussia from Grodno and Bialystok. Its
entire length was open to simultaneous attack from west and east. Sooner or
later the Ober-Ost would have to be evacuated. (See map, p. 28) The timing
of the evacuation, however, presented a difficult problem. The German army
in the east was still undefeated. It was the only disciplined force of any
consequence in the area. For the time being, there was no one able to
dislodge it. The Western Allies could not decide what to do. The relevant
article of the Armistice stated that German troops on former Russian soil
must return home Cas soon as the Allies shall think the moment suitable'.
The French wanted them to withdraw immediately as a preliminary step to the
disbandment of all German forces; the British and Americans thought that
they should stay where they were to prevent a Bolshevik advance into Europe.
As it happened, Germany in chaos was quite unable to conduct an adventurous
eastern policy. The abdication of the


Page 25

Kaiser and the terms of the Western Armistice put an end to political
enterprise. The mutiny in Kiel, the communist risings in Munich and Berlin,
the formation of Soldiers' councils in the German army, all made law and
order at home the first priority. Hoffman, the Chief of Staff of the
Ober-Ost, bowed to the wider requirements of his country. Discussions about
the evacaation began in November and the main withdrawal proceeded from
December onwards. The nature and details of German policy during the evacua-
tion of the Ober-Ost have only recently been clarifiedl. Unwilling to follow
an independent line of his own, Hoffman referred decisions to Berlin whence
they were forwarded to the Allied powers in Paris. He regarded Poles and
Bolsheviks with equal contempt. As the man who had dictated the terms of the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and as undefeated Governor of the East, he was
convinced that after his own departure the deluge was inevitable. His only
concern was for the safety of his men. His relations with the Poles were
particularly poor. He had been humiliated by the disarming of his troops in
Warsaw and embarrassed by their murderous reprisals on the civilian
population following an attempt to disarm them in the province of Podlasie.
Although a local agreement was signed on 24 November for the evacuation of
German positions on the River Bug, the more important negotiations, for
transporting the Heeresgruppe Kiew through Poland to Silesia failed.
Agreement was not reached until February, when develop- ments on the Soviet
side of the Ober-Ost, particularly in Wilno, forced both Germans and Poles
to settle their differences. In the first week of 1919, Wilno underwent two
revolutions. On New Year's Day a group of local Polish officers led by
Generals Wejtko and Mokrzycki staged a coup, establishing the 'Samoobrona'
or Government of Self-Defence. Their aim was to forestall the communist
'Workers' Council' which was planning to seize power when the Germans
withdrew and which had already issued a manifesto describing itself as the
provisional government. 2 They attacked the Communist Party House in the
city during the night. Some four people were killed, five committed suicide,
and seventy-six were arrested. Four days later, the Samoobrona itself was
overturned when the Soviet Western Army marched in from Smolensk to protect
the

Page 26

Workers' Council. This turn of events was equally unbearable for Pilsudski,
who was a native of Wilno, and for Hoffman, whose troops had been stampeded
into premature retreat. Polish and German representatives, enjoying the full
authority of their respective governments, met at Bialystok on 5 February
and signed an evacuation agreement. Article 5 stated that ten battalions of
Polish troops, some 10,000 men, were to pass through the German lines in the
area ofWolkowysk and occupy the Bolshevik front. Article 4 stated that the
Germans were to enjoy temporary control of the Suwalki region until their
evacuation was complete.3 Some commentators have charged Hoffman with
playing a double game, with leading the Bolsheviks into the Ober-Ost from
the east and the Poles from the west in the hope of exploit- ing the ensuing
conflict.4 This view is too subtle. By this time, Hoffman had little choice.
German sergeants were taking leave to instruct the local Red Guards. German
officers had long been in contact with the anti-Bolshevik elements. Once the
decision to evacuate was known, the Ober-Ost was bound to crumble. Polish
and Soviet apologists offer diametrically opposed explanations of the
evacuation of the Ober-Ost. Polish historians have talked of the Soviet
'invasion' of the Borderlands, as if the Borders formed an established part
of Poland. Soviet historians talk of 'Polish aggression', as if the Borders
were an established part of Soviet Russia. Neither view is valid. The
Borders 'belonged' to nobody in 1919, unless it was to the local population
whom neither Poles nor Soviets had any way of consulting. It is true that
the Soviet advance into the Ober-Ost began first, with the creation on 16
November 1918 of the Soviet Western Army, which had occupied Minsk and Wilno
before the Polish army made any move at all. s On 12 January 1919 the Soviet
Supreme Command ordered a 'reconnaissance in depth' as far as the rivers
Niemen and Szczara and on 12 February as far as the Bug.6 It is
problematical whether this operation, which bore the code name 'Target
Vistula' was intended to bring the Red Army as conquering heroes into
Warsaw. Its name suggests so. Yet the extremely tentative phrasing of its
directives and the extremely parlous state of the Western Army suggest
otherwise.7 'Target Vistula' was probably


Page 27

no more than a phrase inspired by revolutionary bravado. Although the
Soviets might well have continued their march into Poland ifunchecked, they
were obviously feeling their way rather than following any grand plan. The
Warsaw govern- ment regarded the code name as proof of intent, however, and
it was in this vein that Pilsudski wired Clemenceau on 28 December.8 Yet the
Poles had little grounds for self-righteous- ness. As Pilsudski would have
been the first to admit, he too would have sent his army into the Ober-Ost
in November or December had circumstances permitted. As it was, the
retirement of the German troops created a vacuum into which Polish and
Soviet units moved spon- taneously. Neither side needed encouragement. The
Poles set off on 9 February. A Northern Group moved up the main railway line
towards Baranowicze; a Southern Group pushed towards Pinsk. The Soviet
Western Army was already advanc- ing from its new bases in Minsk and Wilno.
The collision occurred at seven o'clock on the morning of 14 February, when
a Captain Mienicki of the Polish Wilno Detachment led fifty-seven men and
five officers into the township of Bereza Kartuska. He found it occupied by
the Bolsheviks. There was a short engagement in which eighty Red Army
soldiers were taken prisoner. The Polish-Soviet War had begun. Although the
evacuation of the Ober-Ost provided the immediate cause of the fighting,
deeper causes for conflict did indeed exist. Some sort of conflict between
Poland and Soviet Russia, though not necessarily military conflict, had been
very likely from the moment the new Poland was created. It is almost
impossible nowadays to conceive how dear the Eastern Borders were to Poles
of an earlier generation. When Adam Mickiewicz, the greatest poet in Polish
literature and Push kin's only rival for the laurels of Slavonic lyricism,
spoke of his homeland, he spoke not of Warsa\v or of Cracow, but of
Lithuania : Litwo, ojczyzna moja, ty jestes jak zdrowie ; lIe ci~ cenic
trzeba, ten tylko si~ dowie Kto ci~ stracil. {Lithuania, my fatherland, you
are like health; only he who has lost you can know how much you must be
valued). 10

page 29
When he sang the glories of nature, he was thinking of the great beauty of
the Borders. When he made his famous cri de coeur, 'Let us love one
another', it was a cry for harmony amongst the many races and classes of the
Borders. When Henryk Sienkiewicz set Poland alight with his tales of
chivalry, it was Cossack life in 17th-century Poland that stirred his
readers. Just as many great 'Englishmen' turn out to be Irishmen or Scots,
so many great 'Poles', like Mickiewicz, Slowacki, or Kosciuszko, turn out to
be Lithuanians. Historic Poland, from 1386 until it was dismantled in 1795,
was a united commonwealth, in which the Kingdom of Poland and the
Grand-Duchy of Lithuania were ruled by one king and later by one parliament,
as was the case with England and Scotland after 1603. It stretched from the
Baltic to the Black Sea, from the Oder to the Dnieper, inhabited by a dozen
nations enjoying greater liberty than any of their neighbours. It was the
outpost of Christendom, warring with the Turks and Tartars in defence of the
Faith, and with the Muscovites for the sway of the steppes. In 1918, when
the Poles regained their independence, it was Mickiewicz and Sienkiewicz
whom they read; the only Poland they knew was the historic one, with its
heart in the Borders. The Bolsheviks, too, had their reasons for caring.
Their love for the Borders was born not of nationalism or roman- ticism,
which were attitudes they despised, but of Marxist dogma. The Borders
constituted their land-link with Europe, the bridge over which the
Revolution would have to march if it was to spread and survive. According to
the prevailing theory, the Revolution in Russia would perish unless it could
be joined by revolution in Lithuania, Poland, and, most essent- ially, in
Germany. Many Bolsheviks knew the Borders intimately. Trotsky, Commissar for
War, was born inYanovka, near Kherson, Feliks Dzierzynski, founder of the
Cheka near Wilno, Karol Radek in Lwow. Polish plans for the Borders came in
two variants-'in- corporation' and 'federation'. 'Incorporation' was
advocated by Roman Dmowski, leader of the National Democratic Party, founder
of the Polish National Committee in Paris and chief Polish delegate to the
Peace Conference. It sought to include in Poland all lands within the
historical frontiers of 1772.

End of extract.