Poland (Fall Grün)
From Alternative History
| Rzeczpospolita Polska Republika Polska Republic of Poland | |
| 1918 – 1939 | |
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| Anthem Mazurek Dąbrowskiego | |
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| Capital | Warsaw |
| Official language | Polish |
| Government | Republic |
| Head of state - 1918-1922 - 1926-1935 - 1922 - 1922-1926 - 1926 – | Naczelnik państwa Józef Piłsudski De facto Dictator Józef Piłsudski President Gabriel Narutowicz S. Wojciechowski Ignacy Mościcki |
| Head of government - 1918 - 1926 - 1935 - 1936 – | Prime Minister Ignacy Daszyński Wincenty Witos Walery Sławek Felicjan Składkowski |
| Area - 1921 - 1931 - 1939 | 387,000 km² 388,634 km² 389,720 km² |
| Population | 34,849,000 (1938 est.) |
| Historical era - Independence - May Coup d'Etat | Interwar period November 11, 1918 12 May 1926 |
| Currency | Marka (until 1924) Złoty (after 1924) |
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland (Rzeczpospolita Polska or Republika Polska) was a sovereign state in Central Europe that existed between November 11, 1918 and the Second World War. This part of Poland's history is commonly known as the Second Polish Republic.
When the borders of the state were fixed in 1922 after several wars, the republic had borders with Czechoslovakia, Nazi Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and the Soviet Union. It it had an area of 388.6 thousand km² (sixth largest in Europe), and 27.2 million inhabitants according to the census of that year. In 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, it had an estimated 35.1 million inhabitants. A third of these were minorities (17% Ukrainians and Belarusians, 10% Jews, 5% Germans, and 1% percent Lithuanians, Russians and Czechs).
The Second Republic is often associated with times of great adversity, of troubles and of triumph. Having to deal with the economic difficulties and destruction of World War I, followed by the Soviet invasion during the Polish Soviet War, and then increasingly hostile neighbors such as Nazi Germany, the Republic managed not only to endure, but to expand. Lacking an overseas empire, Poland nevertheless maintained a level of economic development and prosperity comparable to that of the West. The cultural hubs of Warsaw, Kraków, Wilno and Lwów raised themselves to the level of major European cities. They were also the sites of internationally renowned universities and places of higher learning. By 1939 the Republic was becoming a major world player in politics and economics.
In 1938, it took advantage of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia by recapturing the Zaolzie territory. Following the annexation of the territory into Poland, the Polish goverment allowed Czech troops to withdraw into Poland following Czechoslovakia's defeat in March 1939.
Following the defeat of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, Poland shared borders with Nazi Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and the Soviet Union.
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[edit] History
[edit] Formative years (1918-1921)
Occupied by German and Austro-Hungarian armies in the summer of 1915, the formerly Russian-ruled part of what was considered Poland was proclaimed an independent kingdom by the occupying powers on November 5, 1916, with a governing Council of State and (from October 15, 1917) a Regency Council (Rada Regencyjna Królestwa Polskiego) to administer the country under German auspices pending the election of a king.
Shortly before the end of World War I, on October 7, 1918, the Regency Council dissolved the Council of State and announced its intention to restore Polish independence. With the notable exception of the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), most political parties supported this move. On October 23 the Council appointed a new government under Józef Swierzynski and began conscription into the Polish Army. On November 5, in Lublin, the first Soviet of Delegates was created. On November 6 the Communists announced the creation of a Republic of Tarnobrzeg. The same day, a Provisional People's Government of the Republic of Poland was created under the Socialist, Ignacy Daszynski.
On November 10, Józef Piłsudski, newly freed from imprisonment by the German authorities at Magdeburg, returned to Warsaw. Next day, due to his popularity and support from most political parties, the Regency Council appointed Piłsudski Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces. On November 14 the Council dissolved itself and transferred all its authority to Piłsudski as Chief of State (Naczelnik Państwa).
Centers of government that were created in Galicia (formerly Austrian-ruled southern Poland) included a National Council of the Principality of Cieszyn (created in November 1918) and a Polish Liquidation Committee (created on October 28). Soon afterward, conflict broke out in Lwow between forces of the Military Committee of Ukrainians and the Polish "Eagles" of Lwów.
After consultation with Pilsudski, Daszynski's government dissolved itself and a new government was created under Jedrzej Moraczewski.
Polish leaders of that period wanted to regain territories lost by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century (result of the Partitions of Poland). The same territories were coveted by others — from younger nations struggling for independence, to more imperialist-minded neighbours like the Soviet Union — desiring lands previously controlled by the Russian Empire. The new Polish borders were perceived in relation to those of the Commonwealth which in turn established them in the 14th century. However, opinions varied among Polish politicians as to how much of the territories the new Poland should regain, with Józef Piłsudski advocating a concept of Międzymorze — a democratic, Polish-led federation of independent states — and Roman Dmowski of Endecja faction, who set his mind on a more compact Poland composed of ethnic Polish or 'polonizable' territories.
To the southwest, Poland encountered boundary disputes with Czechoslovakia over Austrian Silesia. More ominously, an embittered Germany begrudged any territorial loss to its new eastern neighbor. The December 27, 1918 Great Poland Uprising liberated Greater Poland. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles settled the German-Polish borders in the Baltic region. The port city of Gdańsk, a city with close ties to both Poland and Germans, and then with a significant German majority but as economically vital to Poland as it had been in the sixteenth century, was declared a free city. Allied arbitration divided the ethnically mixed and highly coveted industrial and mining district of Silesia between Germany and Poland, with Poland receiving the more industrialized eastern section in 1922, after series of three Silesian Uprisings.
The German-Polish borders were so complicated that only close collaboration between the two countries could let the situation persist (1930 km., compared to the 430 km. of the present-day Oder-Neisse line). The unification of the former Prussian provinces lasted for many years. Until 1923, these provinces were ruled by a separate administration.
Military conflict proved the determinant of Poland's frontiers in the east, a theater rendered chaotic by the repercussions of the Russian revolutions and civil war. Piłsudski envisioned creating a federation with the rest of Ukraine (led by the Polish-friendly government in Kiev he was to help to install) and Lithuania, thus forming a Central and East European federation called "Międzymorze". Lenin, leader of the new communist government of Russia, saw Poland as the bridge over which communism would pass into the labor class of a disorganized postwar Germany. And the issue was further complicated as some of the disputed regions had assumed various economic and political identities since the partition in the late 18th century while some didn't posses ethnically Polish majority in the first place they were still viewed by Poles as their historic regions, since they envisioned Poland as a multiethnic state.[1] In the end, the negotiations broke down, sinking Piłsudski's idea of Międzymorze federation, instead, wars like the Polish-Lithuanian War or the Polish-Ukrainian War decided the borders of the region for the next two decades
The Polish-Soviet war, the most important of those regional wars, and one of the most important conflicts of the interwar period, begun in 1919, but it was not until 1920 that its two participants realized they were facing more than a local border dispute. Piłsudski first carried out a major military thrust into Ukraine in 1920 and in May Polish-Ukrainian forces reached Kiev. Only few weeks later, however, the Polish offensive was met with Soviet counteroffensive, and Polish progress east was changed into a retreat by a Red Army, which drove the Polish forces out of the disputed Ukraine, back into the Polish heartland, with the decisive battle of the war taking place near the Polish capital of Warsaw. Although many observers at the time marked Poland for extinction and Bolshevization,[citation needed] Piłsudski halted the Soviet advance and resumed the offensive, pushing Soviet forces east. Eventually both sides, exhausted, signed a compromise peace treaty at Riga in early 1921 that divided the disputed territories of Belarus and Ukraine between the two combatants. These acquisitions were recognized by the international agreement with Entente. In regards to Galicia the condition was that of granting of local autonomy to Ukrainians, which Polish government was reluctant to give . In 1922, in the aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War and Polish-Lithuanian War, Poland also officially annexed Central Lithuania after elections, which were never recognised by Lithuania. Relations between those two countries would remain cold for many years.
The Riga arrangement influended the fate of the entire region for the years to come. Ukrainians and Belarusians found themselves without a state of their own, and some Poles also found themselves within the borders of the Soviet Union. The condition of those left under Bolshevik rule as a result of the Treaty was on the other hand marked by Sovietization, Soviet terror, communism, exiles to Siberia, religious persecution and most infamous, the Holodomor, a massive famine, believed by many to be artificially made by Soviet government in which millions of Ukrainians perished, in what is alleged to be a genocide. Second Polish Republic, one third of whose citizens were non-ethnic Poles, had engaged in promoting Polish identity, culture and language at the cost of other national identities. Such policies alienated those miniorities from the Polish state whose subjects they have become.
[edit] From democracy to authoritarian government
Reborn Poland faced a host of daunting challenges: extensive war damage, a ravaged economy, a population one-third composed of wary national minorities, an economy largely under control of German industrial interests, and a need to reintegrate the three zones that had been forcibly kept apart during the era of partition.
Under these trying conditions, the experiment with democracy faltered. Poland's formal political life began in 1921 with adoption of a constitution that designed Poland as a republic modeled after the French Third Republic, vesting most authority in the legislature. The postwar Polish parliamentary system proved unstable and erratic, much like that of the French Third Republic.
In 1922 disputes with political foes caused Piłsudski to resign his posts as Chief of State and commander-in-chief of the armed forces; but in 1926, after four subsequent years of ineffectual government, he assumed power in the May 1926 Coup d'État. For the next decade, Piłsudski dominated Polish affairs as strongman of a generally popular centrist regime. Military in character, Piłsudski's government mixed democratic and dictatorial elements while pursuing national Sanation ("healing"). In 1935 a new Polish Constitution was adopted, but Piłsudski soon died and his protégé successors drifted toward open authoritarianism.
In many respects, the Second Republic fell short of the high expectations of 1918. As happened elsewhere in Central Europe, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, the attempt to implant democracy did not succeed. Governments polarized between right- and left-wing factions, neither of which was prepared to honor the actions taken by the other.
Typical of these concerns was the issue of the nationalization, in Poland, of foreign-owned, particularly German and Jewish, assets. Poland's minorities became increasingly alienated, due in part to the government's failure to honor treaty obligations concerning minority autonomy, as neither nor Germany nor Soviet Union were Poles lived, had signed such treaties. Antisemitism rose palpably in the general population. Much of the Jewish population was pauperized by large-scale boycotts.
Nevertheless, interbellum Poland could justifiably claim some noteworthy accomplishments: economic advances, the revival of Polish education and culture after decades of official curbs, and, above all, reaffirmation of the Polish nationhood that had so long been disputed. Despite its defects, the Second Republic retained a strong hold on later generations of Poles as a genuinely independent and authentic expression of Polish national aspirations.
[edit] Timeline (1918-1939)
- Poland declared its independence on November 11, 1918.
- Elections to the Sejm: January 26, 1919.
- Treaty of Versailles (Articles 87-93) and Little Treaty of Versailles, June 28, 1919, establish Poland as a sovereign and independent state on the international arena.
- 1918-1919 - Uprisings in Wielkopolska and Silesia. Great Poland Uprising, Silesian Uprisings.
- 1918-1919 - The Polish-Ukrainian War.
- 1919–1921 - The Polish-Soviet War.
- The Polish-Lithuanian War.
- 1919 - Border conflicts between Poland and Czechoslovakia.
- July 15, 1920 - Agrarian Reform.
- March 17, 1921 - March Constitution.
- 1921 - alliances with France and Romania.
- November 5, 1922 - Elections to the Sejm.
- November 12, 1922 - Elections to the Senat.
- December 16, 1922 - President Gabriel Narutowicz is assassinated.
- 1924 - Wladyslaw Grabski Government. Bank Polski. Monetary reform 1924 in Poland.
- President Stanisław Wojciechowski - December 20, 1922, to Zamach majowy.
- May 12 - May 14, 1926 - Coup of May: Józef Piłsudski coup d'etat mark the beginning of Sanacja government.
- Roman Dmowski, Obóz Wielkiej Polski (4 December 1926), Endecja.
- 1928 - Piłsudski's Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem.
- November 16, 1930 - wybory brzeskie (elections).
- July 25, 1932 - non-aggression pact with Soviet Union
- January 26, 1934 - non-aggression pact with Germany
- April 23, 1935 - April Constitution introduces a presidential system with certain elements of authoritarianism.
- May 12, 1935 - Death of Józef Piłsudski
- Gdynia, Centralny Okreg Przemyslowy (1936), Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski
- February 2, 1937 - Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego.
- October 1938 - War with Czechoslovakia leads to the annexation of Zaolzie, Górna Orawa, Jaworzyna from Czechoslovakia.
- March 1939 - The Polish goverment allow Czech troops to evacuate into Poland.
[edit] Politics and government
[edit] Chief of State
- Józef Piłsudski – November 22, 1918 - December 9 1922
[edit] Presidents
- Gabriel Narutowicz – December 9, 1922 - December 16, 1922
- Stanisław Wojciechowski – December 20, 1922 - May 14, 1926
- Ignacy Mościcki – June 1, 1926 -
[edit] Prime ministers
- Jędrzej Moraczewski – November 18, 1918 - 16 January 16, 1919
- Ignacy Jan Paderewski – January 18, 1919 - November 27, 1919
- Leopold Skulski – December 13, 1919 - June 9, 1920
- Władysław Grabski – June 27, 1920 - July 24, 1920
- Wincenty Witos – July 24, 1920 - September 13, 1921
- Antoni Ponikowski – September 19, 1921 - March 5, 1922
- Antoni Ponikowski – March 10, 1922 - June 6, 1922
- Artur Śliwiński – June 28, 1922 - July 7, 1922
- Wojciech Korfanty – July 14, 1922 - July 31, 1922
- Julian Nowak – July 31, 1922 - December 14, 1922
- Władysław Sikorski – December 16, 1922 - May 26, 1923
- Wincenty Witos – May 28, 1923 - December 14, 1923
- Władysław Grabski – December 19, 1923 - November 14, 1925
- Aleksander Skrzyński – November 20, 1925 - May 5, 1926
- Wincenty Witos – May 10, 1926 - May 14, 1926
- Kazimierz Bartel – May 15, 1926 - June 4, 1926
- Kazimierz Bartel – June 8, 1926 - September 24, 1926
- Kazimierz Bartel – September 27, 1926 - September 30, 1926
- Józef Piłsudski – October 2, 1926 - June 27, 1928
- Kazimierz Bartel – June 27, 1928 - April 13, 1929
- Kazimierz Świtalski – April 14, 1929 - December 7, 1929
- Kazimierz Bartel – December 29, 1929 - March 15, 1930
- Walery Sławek – March 29, 1930 - August 23, 1930
- Józef Piłsudski – August 25, 1930 - December 4, 1930
- Walery Sławek – December 4, 1930 - May 26, 1931
- Aleksander Prystor – May 27, 1931 - May 9, 1933
- Janusz Jędrzejewicz – May 10, 1933 - May 13, 1934
- Leon Kozłowski – May 15, 1934 - March 28, 1935
- Walery Sławek – March 28, 1935 - October 12, 1935
- Marian Zyndram-Kościałkowski – October 13, 1935 - May 15, 1936
- Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski – May 15 1936 -
[edit] Economy
After regaining her independence Poland was faced with major economic difficulties. Within the borders of the Republic were the remnants of three different economic systems, with three different currencies and with little or no direct infrastructural links. The situation was so bad that neighboring industrial centers lacked direct railroad links because they had been parts of different occupying nations. On top of this was the massive destruction left after both World War I and the Polish Soviet War. There was also a great economic disparity between the eastern and western parts of the country, with the western half being much more developed and prosperous. Frequent border closures and tariff wars (especially with Nazi Germany) also had negative economic impacts on Poland.
Despite these problems Poland managed in the interwar period to achieve a state of economic prosperity on par with Western Europe. In 1924 economic minister Władysław Grabski introduced the złoty as a single common currency for Poland, which remained one of the most stable currencies of Central Europe. The currency helped Poland to bring under control the massive hyperinflation, the only country in Europe which was able to do this without foreign loans or aid.
The basis of Poland's relative prosperity were the economic development plans which oversaw the building of two key infrastructural elements. The first was the establishment of the Gdynia seaport, which allowed Poland to completely bypass Gdańsk (which was under heavy Nazi pressure to boycott Polish coal exports). The second was the creation of a central industrial district, named the 'COP' (Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy).
[edit] Demographics
Poland has traditionally been a nation of many nations, with large Jewish and Ukrainian minorities. This was especially true after she regained her independence in the wake of World War I, in 1918. The census of that year allocates 30.8% of the population in the minority. This was further exacerbated with the Polish victory in the Polish Soviet War, and the large territorial gains made by Poland as a consequence. In 1931 the census showed that 66% of the population was Polish, 15% were Ukrainians, 9% Jews, 5% Belarusians, and 2,5% Germans.
Poland was also a nation of many religions. In 1921 16,057,229 Poles (approx. 62.5%) were Roman (Latin) Catholics, 3,031,057 citizens of Poland (approx. 11.8%) were Eastern Rite Catholics (mostly Ukrainian Greek Catholics and Armenian Rite Catholics), 2,815,817 (approx. 10.95%) were Greek Orthodox, 2,771,949 (approx. 10.8%) were Jewish, and 940,232 (approx. 3.7%) were Protestants (mostly Lutheran Evangelical). By 1931 Poland had the second largest Jewish population in the world, with one-fifth of all the world's Jews residing within Poland's borders (approx. 3,136,000). Norman Davies gives the results of Polish 1931 national census as follows:
- Poles, 68.9% of the population
- Ukrainians, 13.9%
- Jews, 8.7%
- Belarusians, 3.1%
- Germans, 2.3%
[edit] International relations
In foreign policy, the republic allied itself with France (February 1921) as a defence against both Germany and Soviet Russia, and in January 1934 concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany's new Nazi government, subsequently rejecting (September 27) French proposals for an Eastern European security pact directed against Germany, as it involved no guarantee of Poland's eastern frontier with the Soviet Union.
The center of Poland's postwar foreign policy was a political and military alliance with France, which guaranteed Poland's independence and territorial integrity. Although Poland attempted to join the Little Entente, the French-sponsored alliance of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, Czechoslovak suspicions of Polish territorial ambitions prevented Polish membership. Beginning in 1926, Piłsudski's main foreign policy aim was balancing Poland's still powerful neighbors, the Soviet Union and Germany. Piłsudski assumed that both powers wished to regain the Polish territory lost in World War I. Therefore, his approach was to avoid Polish dependence on either power. Above all, Piłsudski sought to avoid taking positions that might cause the two countries to take concerted action against Poland. Accordingly, Poland signed nonaggression pacts with both countries in the early 1930s. After Piłsudski's death, his foreign minister Józef Beck continued this policy.
The failure to establish planned alliances in Eastern Europe meant great reliance on the French, whose enthusiasm for intervention in the region waned markedly after World War I. The Locarno Pact, signed in 1926 by the major Westen European powers with the aim of guaranteeing peace in the region, contained no guarantee of Poland's western border. Over the next ten years, substantial friction arose between Poland and France over the Polish refusal to submit towards German demands.
The Polish predicament worsened in the 1930s with the advent of Hitler's openly expansionist Nazi regime in Germany and the obvious waning of France's desire to resist Germany's expansion, as long as it was eastward and not westward. Piłsudski retained the French connection but had progressively less faith in its usefulness.
[edit] Relations with Germany
While Germany enveloping and swallowing Austria, and stepping up the war of nerves against Czechoslovakia, the foreign policies of Poland - like Czechoslovakia allied with France - remained hostile to the Czechs and essentially unchanged by the ominus march of events. The conceptual touchstone of Poland's policies continued to be "equilibrium" between her two big neighbours, as initially established by the non-agression pacts of 1932 with the Soviet Union and 1934 with Germany. To maintain the precarious balance, Poland eschewed participation in "blocs" such as the Little Entente or the Anti-Comintern powers - the first distasteful to Germany and the second to the Soviet Union - and restricted herself to the bilateral alliances with France and Romania for mutual protection against Germany and the Soviet Union respectively.
Even if the policy of "equilibrium" had been carried out with skill and integrity, it is hard to see how it would have protected Poland against Hitler's eastward expansionist policies. However that might have been, after the Rhineland remilitarisation the Polish scales tipped decisively westward, as Beck and his collaborators concluded that the Soviet Union was both the weaker and more hostile of the two powers, and that good relations with Germany were therefore both more valuable and more possible of achievement. Early in 1936, Juliusz Lukasiewicz, then the Ambassador to the Soviet Union, reported that the Soviet leader's attitude toward Poland remained hostile, and that "inview of the dangerous trend of Soviet policy it is absolutely necessare for use to continue our own policy of détente with Germany." A few months later Lukasiewicz, a close friend of Beck's, was transferred to Paris, but his successor in Moscow, Waclaw Grzybowski, was soon singing the same tune. In November 1936, reporting to Count Szembek, he described the "formidable dynamism" of the Soviet State and concluded that "despite their pretended desire for neighbourly relations with us, the Russians hate us deeply abd the Soviet drive is really directed against us."
Psychological factors played a large part in Poland's drift towards Germany. The authoritarian, quasi-anti-Semitic Polish government found nothing offensive in a dictatorial, anti-Semitic Third Reich. The politicians and the press of the two countries strove to outdo eachother in the violence of their denunications of communism. Hitler, and Göring especially, courted and flattered the Polish leaders, and Göring came to Warsaw in February of 1937 and again a year later, full of compliments of Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły and assurances that Poland had nothing to fear from Germany. Superficial as these gestures were, compared with the frigidity in Moscow the German capital had a much warmer tone.
For all of this inclination toward Berlin, there were serious problems in the relations between the two countries. These concerned primarily the Versailles-born "Free City of Danzig" and treatment of the national minorities on each side of the German-Polish borders. Danzig was a German city, and soon after the advent of Hitler the city government was taken over by local Nazis, who clamoured for reunion with the Reich and harassed the Polish officials and merchants in the exercise of their harbour and shipping rights. As for the minorities, there were three quarters of a million Germans in Polish Silesia and Pomerania, and almost twice as many Poles in Germany. There were repression and discrimination against these minorities on both sides of the frontier, which had been not much alleviated by the 1934 non-agression treaty, and a war of reciprocal denuniciation raged in the newspapers of both countries.
[edit] Tensions with Lithuania
During the night of March 10-11, 1938, a soldier of the Polish frontier guards who was about twenty yards on the Lithuanian side of the border was shot and killed by a Lithuanian guard. While border incidents usually are met with little fanfare, in the Trasninkai case, however, the Polish press claimed that the incident had been the result of Lithuanian provocation. The announcer of Warsaw radio spoke in excited tones. Demonstrations broke out in five Polish cities, including the capital. There are indications that both the army and the Camp of National Unity (Oboz Zjednoczenia Narodowego — OZN), led respectively by the Inspector General of the Polish Armed Forces Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz and General Stanislaw Skwarczynski, had a hand in the initial inflammatory news reports and demonstrations.9 Apparently their staged character was rather obvious since Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov felt that the demonstrations were "undoubtedly artificial and stimulated."10 The Poles chanted "Do Kovno, do Kovno!" — "On to Kaunas!" In addition, the crowds called for the punishment and occupation of all Lithuania. Anti-Jewish riots also broke out as a response to their alleged unpatriotic attitude.
Poland presented an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the diplomatic relations between Poland and Lithuania to be re-established and the previously closed border with Poland to be opened. If the Lithuanians did not abide by the ultimatum, Lithuania would be invaded by Poland.
The Lithuanians faced disadvantageous positions in terms of world and diplomatic opinion, and the military factors. These considerations prevailed despite the high morale and willingness to fight of the people and soldiery. The ultimatum had been delivered on Thursday March 17, six days after Trasninkai. Lithuania had only forty-eight hours to respond. Therefore, a meeting took place on the night of March 18-19 at the Presidential residence on the outskirts of Kaunas.5
President Antanas Smetona presided. In attendance were the Cabinet, under the leadership of Acting Prime Minister Jokūbas Stanišauskis, substituting for the ailing Prime Minister Juozas Tūbelis; the president of the Seimas, Konstantinas Šakenis; the Army Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Jonas Černius; and Commander-in-Chief General Raštikis. The meeting was tense and nervous.
Most of the participants took the sober attitude that while the honor of Lithuania may be soiled by the peaceful acceptance of the Polish demand, it was a more welcome prospect than occupation at the hands of the Polish military. However, the Minister of Agriculture, Stasys Putvinskis, was very agitated during the gathering. He angrily stated that the honor of the nation had been insulted and that it must now be "satisfied;" force must be met with force. Acting Prime Minister Stanišauskis was also agitated. However, neither he nor Putvinskis put forth any concrete proposals. Most probably, they had also conceded, at least to themselves, that Lithuania had no recourse other than acceptance.
After further lengthy discussions, it was decided to establish diplomatic relations with Poland. The government had no choice but to accept the ultimatum. It was overwhelmed militarily, did not have the support of foreign diplomats, had no forthcoming allies, was under pressure to "consolidate" the region, and was afraid of igniting a continental conflict, which could prove even more disastrous for the tiny, embattled country. Most importantly, independence was in a precarious balance. The government had also come to the conclusion that ties would not imply the renunciation of the claim to Vilnius.60
After the meeting, the foreign ministry contacted Dailidė in Tallinn and instructed him to commence the exchange of notes with Przesmycki.
An extraordinary session of the Seimas was ordered for Saturday, March 19 at 12:30 p.m. at which the acting Prime Minister solemnly read the Government's answer to the Polish ultimatum. The Seimas received the word of the Government with silence and then very briefly accepted it with only one addition: "that we accept because of force."
