Post by pieter on Jan 5, 2015 14:13:04 GMT -7
Piłsudski's colonels
Piłsudski on Warsaw's Poniatowski Bridge during the May 1926 Coup d'État. At right is General Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer.
Piłsudski's colonels, or the colonels' regime (in Polish called simply "the colonels"), dominated the government of the Second Polish Republic from 1926 to 1939. In some contexts, the term refers primarily to the final period, 1935–39, following the death of their mentor and patron, Józef Piłsudski.
History
Close allies of Józef Piłsudski, most of "the colonels" had been officers in the Polish Legions and Polish Military Organization (POW), and in the Polish Army (particularly from 1919–1920, during the Polish-Soviet War, prior to Piłsudski's 1923 resignation as Chief of the General Staff). They had held key, if not necessarily the highest, military ranks during Piłsudski's May 1926 Coup d'État.
Józef Piłsudski and other coup leaders on Poniatowski Bridge in Warsaw.
Later they became important figures in Piłsudski's Sanation movement and ministers in several governments. After the BBWR's 1930 electoral victory, Piłsudski left most internal matters in the hands of his "colonels", while himself concentrating on military and foreign affairs.
The "colonels" included Józef Beck, Janusz Jędrzejewicz, Wacław Jędrzejewicz, Adam Koc, Leon Kozłowski, Ignacy Matuszewski, Bogusław Miedziński, Bronisław Pieracki, Aleksander Prystor, Adam Skwarczyński, Walery Sławek, and Kazimierz Świtalski.
Józef Beck (help·info) (October 4, 1894 in Warsaw – June 5, 1944 in Stăneşti, Romania) served the Second Republic of Poland as diplomat and military officer, and close associate of Józef Piłsudski. He is most famous for being Polish foreign minister in the 1930s, when he largely set Polish foreign policy. He tried to fulfill Piłsudski's dream of making Poland the leader of a regional coalition. However, Beck was widely disliked and distrusted by other governments and they refused to cooperate with him. He was involved in territorial disputes with Lithuania and Czechoslovakia and pursued a policy of balance between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. After Nazi Germany invaded Poland and threatened to take over Warsaw, he together with rest of the government evacuated to Romania.
Janusz Jędrzejewicz (21 June 1885 – 16 March 1951) was a Polish politician and educator, a leader of the Sanacja political group, and Prime Minister of Poland from 1933 to 1934.
General Wacław Jędrzejewicz (29 January 1893 – 30 November 1993) was a Polish Army officer, diplomat, politician and historian, and subsequently an American college professor. He was co-founder, president, and long-time executive director of the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America.
Adam Ignacy Koc (31 August 1891 in Suwałki, Congress Poland – 3 February 1969 in New York City) was a Polish politician, soldier and journalist. Koc, who had several noms de guerre (Witold, Szlachetny, Adam Krajewski), fought in Polish units in the World War One, and in the Polish-Soviet War. In the Second Polish Republic, he was a politician, deputy to the Sejm, officer of the Polish Army, journalist and a member of the Grand Orient of Poland.
Leon Tadeusz Kozłowski (6 June 1892 – 11 May 1944) was a Polish archaeologist and politician who served as Prime Minister of Poland from 1934 to 1935.
Ignacy Hugo Matuszewski (born September 10, 1891 in Warsaw, died on August 3, 1946 in New York City) was a Polish politician, publicist, diplomat, Minister of Treasury of the Second Polish Republic, colonel, infantry officer and intelligence agent of the Polish Army, member of the International Olympic Committee.
He was a son of Ignacy Matuszewski, Sr., a well-known literary critic. A strong supporter of Józef Piłsudski, he was counted among the "Colonels" and co-founded the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America. He was also the godson of writer, Bolesław Prus.
Bogusław Miedziński (ur. 22 marca 1891 w Miastkowie Kościelnym, zm. 8 maja 1972 w Londynie)
Bronisław Wilhelm Pieracki (28 May 1895 in Gorlice - 15 June 1934 in Warsaw) was a Polish military officer and politician. As member of Polish Legions in World War I, Pieracki took part in the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918–1919) and he later supported the 1926 May Coup of Józef Piłsudski. Pieracki was a deputy to Polish Sejm from the Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government in 1928 and afterwards deputy of Chief of Staff.
He was a minister of internal affairs from 27 May 1931 to the time of his death in 1934 and posthumously awarded Poland's highest civilian and military decoration, the Order of the White Eagle.
On 15 June 1934, Pieracki was assassinated by a Ukrainian nationalist from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. His death gave the Sanacja government an excuse to the creation of the Bereza Kartuska Detention Camp, which was established only two days after Pieracki's assassination. The first detainees consisted of almost whole leadership of the Polish nationalist far-right National Radical Camp (ONR), arrested on 6–7 July 1934.
Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed were also sentenced to death for the assassination. Their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment but Lebed escaped when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939.
Aleksander Błażej Prystor (1874–1941) was a Polish politician, soldier and activist who served as Prime Minister of Poland from 1931 to 1933.
He was a member of the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party and in 1908 took part in the Bezdany raid.
Between 1912 and 1917 he spent in Russian prisons before being released in 1917. In March 1917 he joined Polish Military Organisation. After independce he became secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare. He fought as a volunteer in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920. He worked for few ministries (Labour, Industry and Commerce)
Between 1931 and 1933 he served as Prime Minister of Poland. After that he became the Marshal of the Polish Senate 1935-1938.
After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he fled to neutral Lithuania. After Lithuania was annexed by the USSR he was arrested in June 1940 by the NKVD; he died in 1941 (the date is not known) in the prison hospital of the Butyrka prison in Moscow.
Adam Skwarczyński, ps. Stary, Adam Śliwiński, Adam Płomieńczyk i in. (ur. 3 grudnia 1886 w Wierzchni Dolnej, zm. 2 kwietnia 1934 w Warszawie) – polski działacz niepodległościowy, polityk w okresie II Rzeczypospolitej, jeden z głównych ideologów obozu piłsudczykowskiego, wolnomularz, publicysta.
Walery Jan Sławek (2 November 1879 Strutynka – 3 April 1939 Warsaw) was a Polish politician, military officer and activist, who in the early 1930s served three times as Prime Minister of Poland. He was one of the closest aides of Polish leader, Józef Piłsudski.
Colonel Kazimierz Stanisław Świtalski (4 March 1886, Sanok – 28 December 1962, Warsaw, Poland). Polish officer, politician, and a Prime Minister of Poland (April to December 1929).
The colonels' regime may be divided into three periods: 1926-1929; 1930–1935; and 1935-1939.
During the first period, after the May 1926 Coup, the colonels (and Sanation generally) consolidated their control over the government.
The second period, following the 1930 "Brest elections", saw the colonels' regime under Piłsudski's guidance, with power exercised by his allies and friends such as Walery Slawek and Aleksander Prystor (both of whom had known Piłsudski since 1905 and had served in his paramilitary units before World War I).
Józef Piłsudski and Aleksander Prystor
After Piłsudski's death (1935), the hardliner "colonels", led by Walery Sławek, lost influence to the Castle faction of Ignacy Mościcki and Edward Rydz-Śmigły. Nevertheless, the "colonels' regime" and Sanation still dominated the Polish government in 1935–39 until the German invasion of Poland. Some scholars draw a distinction between the "Piłsudski period" (1926–35) and the "colonels' period, proper" (1935–39).
President Ignacy Mościcki and Marszałek Polski Edward Rydz Śmigły
From 1937 the colonels' new political front would be the Camp of National Unity (OZON). In that last period, the Polish government—a "dictatorship without a dictator"—in order to bolster its popular support, paradoxically adopted some of the nationalistic, anti-minority policies that had been opposed by Piłsudski and advocated by his most vocal adversaries, the National Democrats.
Roman Stanisław Dmowski (9 August 1864 – 2 January 1939) was a Polish politician, statesman, and co-founder and chief ideologue of the right-wing National Democracy ("ND": in Polish, "Endecja") political movement. He saw the aggressive Germanization of Polish territories controlled by the German Empire as the major threat to Polish culture and therefore advocated a degree of accommodation with another power that had partitioned Poland, the Russian Empire. He favored the re-establishment of Polish independence by nonviolent means, and supported policies favorable to the Polish middle class. During World War I, in Paris, through his Polish National Committee he was a prominent spokesman, to the Allies, for Polish aspirations. He was a principal figure instrumental in the postwar restoration of Poland's independent existence.
Dmowski never wielded official political power, except for a brief period in 1923 as minister of foreign affairs. Nevertheless, he was one of the most influential Polish ideologues and politicians of his time. A controversial personality all his life and since, Dmowski believed that only a Polish-speaking Roman Catholic could be a good Pole; his thinking marginalized other minorities [Germans, jews, gypsies, Ukrainians and Belarussians], and he was vocally anti-semitic. In 1926 he attempted to emulate Italian fascism. He remains the prototype of Polish right-wing nationalism and has been called "the father of Polish nationalism." Throughout most of his life, he was the chief opponent of the Polish military and political leader Józef Piłsudski and of the latter's vision of Poland as a multinational federation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Pi%C5%82sudski
Piłsudski on Warsaw's Poniatowski Bridge during the May 1926 Coup d'État. At right is General Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer.
Piłsudski's colonels, or the colonels' regime (in Polish called simply "the colonels"), dominated the government of the Second Polish Republic from 1926 to 1939. In some contexts, the term refers primarily to the final period, 1935–39, following the death of their mentor and patron, Józef Piłsudski.
History
Close allies of Józef Piłsudski, most of "the colonels" had been officers in the Polish Legions and Polish Military Organization (POW), and in the Polish Army (particularly from 1919–1920, during the Polish-Soviet War, prior to Piłsudski's 1923 resignation as Chief of the General Staff). They had held key, if not necessarily the highest, military ranks during Piłsudski's May 1926 Coup d'État.
Józef Piłsudski and other coup leaders on Poniatowski Bridge in Warsaw.
Later they became important figures in Piłsudski's Sanation movement and ministers in several governments. After the BBWR's 1930 electoral victory, Piłsudski left most internal matters in the hands of his "colonels", while himself concentrating on military and foreign affairs.
The "colonels" included Józef Beck, Janusz Jędrzejewicz, Wacław Jędrzejewicz, Adam Koc, Leon Kozłowski, Ignacy Matuszewski, Bogusław Miedziński, Bronisław Pieracki, Aleksander Prystor, Adam Skwarczyński, Walery Sławek, and Kazimierz Świtalski.
Józef Beck (help·info) (October 4, 1894 in Warsaw – June 5, 1944 in Stăneşti, Romania) served the Second Republic of Poland as diplomat and military officer, and close associate of Józef Piłsudski. He is most famous for being Polish foreign minister in the 1930s, when he largely set Polish foreign policy. He tried to fulfill Piłsudski's dream of making Poland the leader of a regional coalition. However, Beck was widely disliked and distrusted by other governments and they refused to cooperate with him. He was involved in territorial disputes with Lithuania and Czechoslovakia and pursued a policy of balance between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. After Nazi Germany invaded Poland and threatened to take over Warsaw, he together with rest of the government evacuated to Romania.
Janusz Jędrzejewicz (21 June 1885 – 16 March 1951) was a Polish politician and educator, a leader of the Sanacja political group, and Prime Minister of Poland from 1933 to 1934.
General Wacław Jędrzejewicz (29 January 1893 – 30 November 1993) was a Polish Army officer, diplomat, politician and historian, and subsequently an American college professor. He was co-founder, president, and long-time executive director of the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America.
Adam Ignacy Koc (31 August 1891 in Suwałki, Congress Poland – 3 February 1969 in New York City) was a Polish politician, soldier and journalist. Koc, who had several noms de guerre (Witold, Szlachetny, Adam Krajewski), fought in Polish units in the World War One, and in the Polish-Soviet War. In the Second Polish Republic, he was a politician, deputy to the Sejm, officer of the Polish Army, journalist and a member of the Grand Orient of Poland.
Leon Tadeusz Kozłowski (6 June 1892 – 11 May 1944) was a Polish archaeologist and politician who served as Prime Minister of Poland from 1934 to 1935.
Ignacy Hugo Matuszewski (born September 10, 1891 in Warsaw, died on August 3, 1946 in New York City) was a Polish politician, publicist, diplomat, Minister of Treasury of the Second Polish Republic, colonel, infantry officer and intelligence agent of the Polish Army, member of the International Olympic Committee.
He was a son of Ignacy Matuszewski, Sr., a well-known literary critic. A strong supporter of Józef Piłsudski, he was counted among the "Colonels" and co-founded the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America. He was also the godson of writer, Bolesław Prus.
Bogusław Miedziński (ur. 22 marca 1891 w Miastkowie Kościelnym, zm. 8 maja 1972 w Londynie)
Bronisław Wilhelm Pieracki (28 May 1895 in Gorlice - 15 June 1934 in Warsaw) was a Polish military officer and politician. As member of Polish Legions in World War I, Pieracki took part in the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918–1919) and he later supported the 1926 May Coup of Józef Piłsudski. Pieracki was a deputy to Polish Sejm from the Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government in 1928 and afterwards deputy of Chief of Staff.
He was a minister of internal affairs from 27 May 1931 to the time of his death in 1934 and posthumously awarded Poland's highest civilian and military decoration, the Order of the White Eagle.
On 15 June 1934, Pieracki was assassinated by a Ukrainian nationalist from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. His death gave the Sanacja government an excuse to the creation of the Bereza Kartuska Detention Camp, which was established only two days after Pieracki's assassination. The first detainees consisted of almost whole leadership of the Polish nationalist far-right National Radical Camp (ONR), arrested on 6–7 July 1934.
Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed were also sentenced to death for the assassination. Their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment but Lebed escaped when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939.
Aleksander Błażej Prystor (1874–1941) was a Polish politician, soldier and activist who served as Prime Minister of Poland from 1931 to 1933.
He was a member of the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party and in 1908 took part in the Bezdany raid.
Between 1912 and 1917 he spent in Russian prisons before being released in 1917. In March 1917 he joined Polish Military Organisation. After independce he became secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare. He fought as a volunteer in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920. He worked for few ministries (Labour, Industry and Commerce)
Between 1931 and 1933 he served as Prime Minister of Poland. After that he became the Marshal of the Polish Senate 1935-1938.
After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he fled to neutral Lithuania. After Lithuania was annexed by the USSR he was arrested in June 1940 by the NKVD; he died in 1941 (the date is not known) in the prison hospital of the Butyrka prison in Moscow.
Adam Skwarczyński, ps. Stary, Adam Śliwiński, Adam Płomieńczyk i in. (ur. 3 grudnia 1886 w Wierzchni Dolnej, zm. 2 kwietnia 1934 w Warszawie) – polski działacz niepodległościowy, polityk w okresie II Rzeczypospolitej, jeden z głównych ideologów obozu piłsudczykowskiego, wolnomularz, publicysta.
Walery Jan Sławek (2 November 1879 Strutynka – 3 April 1939 Warsaw) was a Polish politician, military officer and activist, who in the early 1930s served three times as Prime Minister of Poland. He was one of the closest aides of Polish leader, Józef Piłsudski.
Colonel Kazimierz Stanisław Świtalski (4 March 1886, Sanok – 28 December 1962, Warsaw, Poland). Polish officer, politician, and a Prime Minister of Poland (April to December 1929).
The colonels' regime may be divided into three periods: 1926-1929; 1930–1935; and 1935-1939.
During the first period, after the May 1926 Coup, the colonels (and Sanation generally) consolidated their control over the government.
The second period, following the 1930 "Brest elections", saw the colonels' regime under Piłsudski's guidance, with power exercised by his allies and friends such as Walery Slawek and Aleksander Prystor (both of whom had known Piłsudski since 1905 and had served in his paramilitary units before World War I).
Józef Piłsudski and Aleksander Prystor
After Piłsudski's death (1935), the hardliner "colonels", led by Walery Sławek, lost influence to the Castle faction of Ignacy Mościcki and Edward Rydz-Śmigły. Nevertheless, the "colonels' regime" and Sanation still dominated the Polish government in 1935–39 until the German invasion of Poland. Some scholars draw a distinction between the "Piłsudski period" (1926–35) and the "colonels' period, proper" (1935–39).
President Ignacy Mościcki and Marszałek Polski Edward Rydz Śmigły
From 1937 the colonels' new political front would be the Camp of National Unity (OZON). In that last period, the Polish government—a "dictatorship without a dictator"—in order to bolster its popular support, paradoxically adopted some of the nationalistic, anti-minority policies that had been opposed by Piłsudski and advocated by his most vocal adversaries, the National Democrats.
Roman Stanisław Dmowski (9 August 1864 – 2 January 1939) was a Polish politician, statesman, and co-founder and chief ideologue of the right-wing National Democracy ("ND": in Polish, "Endecja") political movement. He saw the aggressive Germanization of Polish territories controlled by the German Empire as the major threat to Polish culture and therefore advocated a degree of accommodation with another power that had partitioned Poland, the Russian Empire. He favored the re-establishment of Polish independence by nonviolent means, and supported policies favorable to the Polish middle class. During World War I, in Paris, through his Polish National Committee he was a prominent spokesman, to the Allies, for Polish aspirations. He was a principal figure instrumental in the postwar restoration of Poland's independent existence.
Dmowski never wielded official political power, except for a brief period in 1923 as minister of foreign affairs. Nevertheless, he was one of the most influential Polish ideologues and politicians of his time. A controversial personality all his life and since, Dmowski believed that only a Polish-speaking Roman Catholic could be a good Pole; his thinking marginalized other minorities [Germans, jews, gypsies, Ukrainians and Belarussians], and he was vocally anti-semitic. In 1926 he attempted to emulate Italian fascism. He remains the prototype of Polish right-wing nationalism and has been called "the father of Polish nationalism." Throughout most of his life, he was the chief opponent of the Polish military and political leader Józef Piłsudski and of the latter's vision of Poland as a multinational federation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Pi%C5%82sudski