Although it may seem to us that the western border was easy to establish, while the eastern border provoked—and continues to provoke—controversy, drawing the western border also caused many political problems.
We lost the Eastern Borderlands twice in total. The first time was as a result of the Treaty of Riga. Under its terms, the Second Polish Republic found itself more or less within the borders from before the Second Partition. However, it could have gained much more. The Soviet delegation was shocked by the Polish concessions. It is absurd that we handed over to the Soviets lands already occupied by Polish troops, such as Minsk. We also renounced territories farther to the east, even though the Bolsheviks were ready to make major concessions. At Riga, we failed to take the opportunity to obtain the borders from before the First Partition. The Polish delegation thus handed over to the Soviets 350,000 square kilometres of Polish territory, along with 18 million citizens. This had consequences later on.
The development of the western border of the Polish state after the Second World War is also interesting. Two facts were obvious. The eastern border was to run along the Bug River. At the beginning, the fate of Lviv remained unresolved. In the west, meanwhile, the lands of Lower Silesia were to constitute compensation for the territorial losses in the Eastern Borderlands. However, the discussion was only a general outline of the situation, and further decisions were to be made at subsequent conferences. The issue of Poland’s borders had already appeared at the Tehran Conference.
In October 1944, Stalin held the position that Poland should receive East Prussia and Silesia, and that the western border should run along the Oder and the Nysa rivers. Szczecin was also to lie on the Polish side.
As it turns out, however, this meant the Kłodzko Nysa, not the Lusatian Nysa. This lack of precision is often treated as an ordinary mistake. Some even claim that Stalin was not very familiar with geography and drew the border lines blindly. This is certainly not true. Let us remember that there is no room for chance in politics, let alone sentiment. It is true that Stalin had a general concept of Poland’s western border. The question of the Eastern Borderlands was lost, and neither Prime Minister Sikorski nor Mikołajczyk had any chance of securing concessions.
Originally, the border line, probably sketched by Stalin himself, was to run along the aforementioned Oder and Kłodzko Nysa. In that case, Wrocław would have become a divided border city, split between Poland and Germany. Wrocław’s Market Square would have been on the German side, while Ostrów Tumski would have been on the Polish side. All the other localities west of the Oder would have gone to Germany. Bolesławiec would still have borne its German name Bunzlau, Lubań—Lauban, and Nowogrodziec—Naumburg am Queis. Similarly, Wrocław would have been known, at least in part, as Breslau. The Soviet map showing Poland’s original western border is available at this link: https://faktopedia.pl/uimages/services/faktopedia/i18n/pl_PL/201408/1408643680_by_kprlsik_500.jpg?1408952760.
Meanwhile, the Kłodzko and Racibórz lands were to go to Czechoslovakia. The Czechs also laid claim to the Jelenia Góra Valley. The Kłodzko Land had once belonged to the Kingdom of Bohemia and later became part of the Austrian Empire. Had the arrangements remained at that stage, the western border with both Germany and Czechoslovakia would have looked entirely different. Most of Lower Silesia would have gone to defeated Germany, while the Czechs would have regained their historic territory.
Things turned out differently, however. Stalin changed the border line, and the Kłodzko region ultimately went to Poland. In June 1945, an armed conflict broke out with our southern neighbours. As Stanisław Piaskowski, the government plenipotentiary for Lower Silesia, wrote: “The Czech militia, taking advantage of the open border, entered the borders of Lower Silesia to a depth of 10–12 km, occupying the Lewin railway station in Kłodzko County on the line leading to Prague and the Mittelwalde railway station in Bystrzyca County (on the line to Vienna), as well as several neighbouring villages” [https://swiat.newsweek.pl/w-newsweeku-historii—wojna-polsko-czeska-1945-roku,105309,1,1.html].
The Czechs sent an armoured train towards Kłodzko, while in the Racibórz area Czechoslovak infantry occupied nearby localities. The Poles tried to negotiate. They were willing to make concessions, but the Czech demands were excessive, and the Soviet authorities intervened in the conflict. Our neighbours were de facto forced to sign an agreement with Poland and finally recognise the border. More on this subject can be found in the film “The Mystery of Poland’s Western Border—Stalin’s Game”:
One may ask why Stalin, having initially drawn the border line with Germany and Czechoslovakia, changed his mind at the last moment. Even at the Potsdam Conference, the Allies opposed a border along the Oder and Western Nysa (Lusatian Nysa). Both Churchill and Roosevelt had been opposed from the beginning to a border pushed so far west. This was primarily connected with the expulsion of the German population, which would have been transferred to the British occupation zone. This would have imposed costs on the British.
Moreover, our Western allies did not want Germany to be weakened excessively. Stalin, however, sought precisely that. Handing Szczecin, an important Baltic Sea port, to Poland was intended to weaken Germany. Comrade Stalin also wanted to set Poland against its neighbours as much as possible—through border disputes.
The only guarantor of the border along the Oder and Lusatian Nysa was the Soviet Union. The Allies were strongly sceptical, and no definitive decisions had been made. Officially, the Polish-German border issue had not been settled. It was only in December 1970 that Willy Brandt, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, signed an agreement under which the FRG recognised the border with Poland. This was a very important event, both from the perspective of Poland and of Lower Silesia. The signed document permanently closed the question of Lower Silesia and Pomerania’s belonging to the Polish state.
In short, if not for Stalin’s determination, perhaps the shape of post-war Poland would indeed have been completely different, although it is a pity to have lost the territories in the east, which Churchill described as worthless swamps. At first, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom insisted that Lviv should remain on the Polish side. He fully approved the so-called Curzon Line, but specifically together with Lviv. Unfortunately, the lack of approval from the United States led him at one point to state: “I have no intention of raising a great lament over Lviv” [Eugeniusz Duraczyński, Między Londynem a Warszawą, 1986, str. 89].
To properly understand the Allies’ approach to the Polish question, or more precisely, the British approach, we must go back about 25 years, to 1920. At that time, the borders of the Polish Republic were also taking shape. It was then that the so-called Curzon Line first appeared. This line was nothing other than the demarcation line between Polish and Bolshevik forces. During the Second World War, the Big Three referred to this concept again. In reality, it served merely as a “justification” for the USSR’s seizure of Poland’s Eastern Borderlands. This is how Lord Curzon drew Poland’s border:
[…] I asked her where the concept of Poland’s eastern border, known as the Curzon Line, had come from.“Ah, the ‘Curzon line’,” she said, laughing. “We call it the ‘luncheon line’. I was with Carr when the council met to draw Poland’s eastern border. No one knew what this Polish eastern border was, where Russia began or where Poland ended. The debates dragged on endlessly, lunchtime was approaching, everyone was hungry and, as they say, ‘annoyed’. You know what lunch means to an Englishman.
Meanwhile, the matter was not moving forward by an inch. Finally, Lord Curzon remembered that he had some old maps concerning ‘the second partition of Poland’. He disappeared into his office for a moment, then returned triumphantly with a map in his hand, on which the border was marked with a red line. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief; without further thought, they accepted it as Poland’s eastern border, and the entire group, congratulating Curzon, hurried off to a late dinner. One of the dignitaries, congratulating Curzon on cutting this Gordian knot, said: ‘Poles are troublemakers; they will not even let us eat lunch in peace.’ Hence we nicknamed this line the ‘luncheon line’. You see, Mac, that is how international affairs are handled here.”
Mieczysław Jałowiecki, On the Edge of the Empire and Other Memories, Warsaw 2013, pp. 613–614.
As can be seen, Poland’s affairs were always handled at the highest level. Although the Curzon Line did not play a significant role in 1920, since Polish troops had moved beyond the Bug anyway, occupying, among other places, Lviv, Vilnius and Minsk—the last of which we lost by our own choice under the Treaty of Riga—it became the reference point for the Polish question during the Second World War.
In conclusion, I want to state clearly that this line is really a “political whim” without any sound justification. Great Britain opposed the creation of an independent Polish state after the First World War. The British criticised the Polish Army’s seizure of Vilnius, and they were also hostile to the question of the Eastern Borderlands. I believe this had a decisive influence during the conferences in Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam. The English were also, in a sense, Stalin’s hostages. They depended on an alliance with the Soviets and sacrificed much to preserve it.
Paweł Skiersinis
The author is a blogger and a history enthusiast, particularly interested in the history of Lower Silesia and Poland. Why Lower Silesia? As he himself says: “Why not? The most interesting history is the history around us, concerning ourselves and our ancestors.”
He adds: “I try to present history from a different perspective, in an interesting way, not in the typical textbook style, full of dry dates and facts. My articles concern facts that cannot be found in textbooks and well-known publications. The history of Lower Silesia is undoubtedly interesting and fascinating, so it is worth devoting at least a brief moment to it from time to time.”