Czechoslovakia attacks Cieszyn Silesia

On 23 January 1919 Czechoslovak troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Josef Šnejdárek (PL) crossed the line drawn by the Polish and Czech national councils on 5 November 1918 and marched into the Polish part of Cieszyn Silesia. This began the Polish–Czechoslovak War, known in the Czech lands as the Seven-Day War. That same day the Czechs took the railway junction at Bohumín (PL) and moved on the coalfield around Karviná (PL). The weak Polish units could not stop them and began to fall back towards Cieszyn.

Coal, a railway and an election

The November agreement was meant to be provisional, but the Poles regarded it as the basis of the future border. The government in Prague never endorsed it, and on 12 January the Czech national committee for Silesia informed the National Council of the Duchy of Cieszyn that it considered the agreement void. The Czechs invoked the historic rights of the Bohemian Crown to the whole Duchy, the Poles the nationality of its inhabitants. According to the Austrian census of 1910, Poles made up almost 55 per cent of the population and Czechs about 27 per cent. But people were not the only issue. On the Polish side of the line lay some of the mines of the Karviná coalfield, the ironworks at Třinec (PL) and a section of the Košice–Bohumín Railway, the best link between the Czech lands and Slovakia, without which Prague could not move troops efficiently in the conflict with Hungary that it expected.

The election supplied the pretext. The Polish authorities called elections to the Legislative Sejm for 26 January in the Cieszyn region as well and began conscripting local men into the army. Prague saw this as an attempt to entrench Polish rule in disputed territory. According to the IPN historian Sebastian Pilarski, President Tomáš Masaryk took the decision to attack on 15 January, and on 17 January the government of Prime Minister Karel Kramář unanimously agreed to occupy the region by force. The order to attack was issued on 19 or 20 January (sources give different dates), and on 21 January the government approved a note meant to justify the move. According to some Polish accounts it was never delivered to Warsaw. The moment was well chosen: Poland was fighting the Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia, and in the Prussian partition the Greater Poland Uprising was under way.

Ultimatum in Cieszyn

Before noon on 23 January Šnejdárek appeared in Cieszyn before the commander of the Polish troops in Cieszyn Silesia, Colonel Franciszek Latinik. He was accompanied by officers in British, French, Italian and American uniforms, whose presence was meant to suggest that the demands came from the Entente. The Czechs demanded that the Poles withdraw behind the Biała river within two hours. The Polish side took this for a ruse, since the Powers had issued no such order, and refused. When the deadline ran out, at about one in the afternoon, the Czechs advanced on Bohumín and Karviná, while legionaries who had come from Italy attacked from the east. Bohumín fell at about four o’clock.

The forces were unequal. Latinik, sent to Cieszyn Silesia in November by the Polish Liquidation Commission, had about a thousand soldiers under his command at the beginning of January, backed by a local workers’ militia that at first lacked weapons. The core of the Czechoslovak force was made up of legionary battalions returning from France and Italy, with artillery and an armoured train. Polish estimates from the following days put the Czechoslovak troops at 7,000–16,000 and the Polish at 3,000–5,000.

Seven days

The next day the Czechs took Karviná and Jablunkov. On 26 January a company of the 12th Infantry Regiment from Wadowice fought near Stonava. According to Polish accounts, Czechoslovak soldiers killed a dozen or more, and according to some sources about twenty, Poles who had been taken prisoner. Czech historiography disputes some details of these accounts. That same day, near Zebrzydowice, Captain Cezary Haller, brother of General Józef Haller, was mortally wounded. Towards evening Latinik, threatened with encirclement, ordered Cieszyn abandoned and a retreat behind the Vistula, and on 27 January the Czechs entered the town without a fight. The advance was halted only by the Battle of Skoczów on 28–30 January, after which the fighting stopped under Entente pressure. According to figures cited in Czech literature, 44–53 Czechoslovak and 92 Polish soldiers were killed. On 3 February in Paris representatives of both states accepted a new demarcation line, more favourable to Czechoslovakia, and the dispute over Cieszyn Silesia passed into the hands of the peace conference.