Edelweiss Division:
The Polish Legion, Part One
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
October 2023

Note: The Polish Legion appears in Infantry Attacks: Edelweiss Division, fighting in the Battle of Limanowa and other actions.

When Austria-Hungary declared full mobilization on the last day of July 1914, Polish nationalist Jozef Pilsudski immediately recognized his opportunity. Or over a decade, he had worked steadily to build an armed movement in the guise of sporting clubs and rifle associations, giving him the means to fight for an independent Poland.

Modern Poland’s independence spring from Pilsudski’s dreams, and he’s rightly credited as the driving force of Polish restoration. The one-time socialist was also a right-wing authoritarian who overthrew the elected government of post-war Poland (what he called a “monstrous, spitting dwarf”) and fostered a cult of personality. But the Polish Legion of the First World War, and the Polish army that grew out of it, existed thanks to one man’s drive and ambition.

Poland in 1914 had not known independence since 1795, other than the 31-year run of the Republic of Krakow. In 1914 it remained partitioned between Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Poles had political freedom under the Austrian monarchy and even formed part of the governing coalition. They had less freedom in Imperial Germany, which had little tolerance for minority cultures, and had lost what few rights they had once enjoyed in Tsarist Russia.

Polish soldiers, therefore, served in the armies of all three empires, though only Austria-Hungary had uniquely Polish formations. Industry and railroads had come to all three segments of Poland, which totaled about 15.5 million Polish speakers between them in 1914. Germany had pursued the most determined policies of assimilation, though both agriculture and mining in Imperial Germany depended heavily on Polish guest workers from the Russian side of the border. Russian policy simply repressed Polish culture. Austria-Hungary offered much more freedom, as the central government looked to Polish support to balance the disaffected Czechs.

In 1905, defeat in the Russo-Japanese War helped spark revolution in Russia, with strikes, demonstrations, and uprisings all across Poland. Pilsudski’s Combat Organization, the armed wing of the Polish Socialist Party, took the lead in violence against police, garrison troops and government officials. But through a combination of grudging concessions on the Polish language and harsh repression, the tsarist government had regained control by 1907.

Pilsudski (center) inspects Rifle Club members at the Zakopane ski resort, August 1913.

A year later, Pilsudski founded the Union of Active Struggle (ZWC from its Polish initials), a purely military organization. This would, he hoped, become the core of a future Polish army. In the meantime, it would cut through the political disagreements of various factions and concentrate on what seemed to be agreed: Poland would only become free through armed struggle.

In that same year, Pilsudski established what became a close relationship with Austro-Hungarian military intelligence. Pilsudski’s operation provided detailed information on Russian training, equipment, and deployments. And in turn the Austrians looked away as his Riflemen trained and organized on Austrian soil, and even set up their own clandestine officer training program. The Austrian, through Pilsudski’s handler Capt. Jozef Rybak, pushed the ZWC away from terrorism (such as the train robbery near Bezdany in September 1908 that took 200,000 gold rubles) and toward intelligence-gathering.

By 1914, the ZWC had 7,239 members, and Pilsudski traveled to France and Belgium to recruit among the Polish guest-workers laboring in factories, fields, and mines. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July, and Pilsudski mobilized the ZWC the next day. On the 30th, Russia declared full mobilization, and on the 31st Austria-Hungary did the same. Also on the 31st, the Polish Rifle Teams – a group of sport-shooting clubs serving as a cover for Polish military training – put themselves under Pilsudski’s command. Pilsudski in turn reported to Austrian military intelligence; for the moment, the Polish movement was still considered an operation to destabilize the Russian Kingdom of Poland rather than a military venture.

The Silesian Legion (2nd Regiment) marches out of Krakow. 21 September 1914.

On 3 August, the Poles – organizing themselves in Krakow in Austrian Galicia – invaded Russian Poland, with a company of 144 men drawn from the Rifle Clubs knocking down border markers and crossing into tsarist territory. Three days later, Pilsudski announced that a national government had been formed in Warsaw, with himself as commander-in-chief of its armed forces. No such government existed; Pilsudski hoped to spark an uprising within Russian Poland which failed utterly. The riflemen marched into Kielce, the nearest Russian-ruled town to Krakow, where residents locked their doors refused to join them

That caused the first in a series of crises between Pilsudski and Austrian army commanders. With no uprising in sight, the War Ministry ordered the Polish formations dissolved and their men conscripted into the Imperial and Royal Army. Pilsudski proclaimed that he would shoot himself in the head before he complied. Rybak and Pilsudski’s chief of staff, Kazimierz Sosnkowski, presented a compromise. The Polish fighters would be inducted into the Imperial and Royal Army as the Polish Legions, in their own units carrying their own flags, under the command of senior officers seconded from Austro-Hungarian service.

Archduke Friedrich, the titular commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian Army, issued the order establishing the Polish Legions on 27 August. There would be two brigade-sized formations, an Eastern Legion mustered in Lviv and a Western Legion formed in Krakow. They drew men from the ZWC, the rifle clubs and the sokols, supposed gymnastic clubs that also served as a front for paramilitary training.

The Polish Legion enters Kielce. 12 August 1914.

The Eastern Legion fell apart when the Russians captured Lviv in early September; many of its men left the Legion and enlisted in the regular army, while about 800 determined Poles led by Capt. Jozef Haller marched to Krakow to join the Western Legion. This now became the Polish Legion, a brigade of three regiments nominally commanded by Austro-Hungarian Maj. Gen. Rajmund Baczynski. Baczynski had retired from the regular army in 1911 due to poor health and also had responsibility for prisoner-of-war camps in the region; actual command remained in the hands of Pilsudski, now commanding the 1st Regiment. Rybak stayed on as liaison officer.

The Legion went to the front on 15 September, attached to Viktor Dankl’s First Army as an independent brigade (though at this time consisting of just one regiment of three battalions; the typical Austro-Hungarian brigade had two regiments each of four battalions). The 2nd and 3rd Regiments, considered less ready for front-line combat, went to northern Hungary to help contain a Cossack incursion.

Pilsudski quickly gained a reputation for free-lancing, treating orders as suggestions, and declaring martial law in occupied Polish towns without consulting higher authority. Through October they continued at the front, until the Russians defeated the Legion at Krivoplock. Pilsudski later called it “the Legion’s Thermopylae” and as president of Poland erected a monument on the site. Neither could erase the actual result: the legion retreated without orders, on Pilsudski’s initiative, and only the unit’s unique political value preserved its existence. A month later, when the high command needed scratch formations to defend Bukovina on the far eastern flank of the Austrian front, Dankl’s headquarters quickly donated the Polish Legion.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his Iron Dog, Leopold.

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