The date of November 11, 1918, was recognized as the beginning of Poland’s regaining independence. The Polish nation had waited 123 years for this event.
Three generations of Poles never came to terms with the loss of their own state, brutally partitioned by three occupying powers: Russia, Prussia and Austria. Five national liberation uprisings (the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794, the November Uprising of 1830–31, the Kraków Uprising of 1846, the Greater Poland Uprising of 1848 and the January Uprising of 1863) confirmed this.
A chance emerged at the end of the 19th century. For the first time, when Europe divided into two great blocs—the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente—and Russia found itself in the opposing bloc from Germany and Austria-Hungary.
It sounds paradoxical today, but in those years a popular church hymn was one with the words: “...We ask You, Lord, for a world war...” In a war, one side wins and the other loses. Which side should one support? Various political groups formed so-called orientations. National Democracy, led by Roman Dmowski, backed Russia as a Slavic state. Another political group, particularly the camp centered around Józef Piłsudski, backed Austria-Hungary and advocated active fighting alongside that state, creating the later Legions.
The turning point came in 1917. The United States’ entry into the war and the strengthening of the Entente powers—France and England—outlined the possibility of victory for this bloc.
Józef Piłsudski, together with his legions, refused to swear allegiance to the German and Austrian emperors, was arrested and imprisoned in Magdeburg.
National Democracy and Roman Dmowski abandoned their pro-Russian orientation after the revolution in that country. From then on, as head of the National Committee in Paris, he represented Polish interests to the Entente powers.
As the war drew to an end, Poles in the Polish lands themselves began laying the foundations of government in the individual partitioned territories. In the Austrian partition, Wincenty Witos headed the Liquidation Commission; in the Kingdom, the government of Ignacy Daszyński was established; in Greater Poland, the Supreme People’s Council.
On November 10, 1918, Józef Piłsudski returned from Magdeburg. Most of the newly established centers of power submitted to the founder of the legions and a man surrounded by the legend of many years of underground struggle. As head of state, Józef Piłsudski laid the foundations of the Second Polish Republic. But that was only the beginning. Borders had to be established. The Silesian and Greater Poland uprisings were still to come, as was the war with Russia in 1920.
November 11 nevertheless remained a historic date, and the later Sejm of the Second Polish Republic established this day as a national holiday.
Years later, we returned to this date as Poland’s Independence Day.