Disbandment of the I Polish Corps

On the morning of 21 May 1918 in Minsk a German lieutenant, von Bredow, presented General Aleksander Karnicki (PL), deputy commander of the I Polish Corps, with conditions that amounted to an ultimatum. The corps was immediately to come under the orders of the German command in the east, and then to be disbanded completely. The Germans demanded an answer by 6 p.m. General Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, who had stayed in Bobruisk, concluded that there was no way out and ordered the agreement to be signed, with the reservation that it was a diktat. Karnicki signed on his behalf. So ended the military history of the corps, which had fought the Bolsheviks since January and had lived under German protection since February by virtue of the Bobruisk convention.

The road to the ultimatum

After the peace of Brest the Germans no longer needed a Polish army on the Berezina. According to Adam Miodowski, as early as 9 March Major von Wulffen, representative of the German command in the east, mentioned in a letter that the corps should return home in batches of about a thousand men a month. Talks in Bobruisk on 20 and 21 March produced no new agreement, only a protocol of disagreements, but the first thousand soldiers were demobilised in April. On 9 April at Brest, in the presence of envoys of the Regency Council, Dowbor recognised the supreme authority over the corps of the Governor-General of Warsaw, Hans von Beseler. On 8 May Beseler informed the regents that they would have no influence at all on the fate of the corps. On 10 May the Regency Council released the soldiers from their recently sworn oath and left further negotiations to the general. The next day a telegram arrived from the headquarters of Erich von Falkenhayn’s 10th Army summoning Dowbor to Minsk. For reasons of prestige the general sent Karnicki.

On the same day, 11 May, the Germans attacked the II Polish Corps at Kaniów. Dowbor’s men, meanwhile, were still repelling the Bolsheviks on the eastern edge of their area, on 9 May near Mogilev and on 18 May near Novy Bykhov. Sources differ on how many of them there were. According to a return of 10 May the corps numbered 23,661 men, including 14,117 front-line soldiers, and almost 10,000 horses. Rafał Sierchuła and Wojciech Jerzy Muszyński write that at the end of April it exceeded 29,000, its strength of December 1917.

The terms

The agreement provided that the corps would cease to exist. The Poles managed to have it written in that the soldiers would not become prisoners of war and would return freely to their homes. The Germans took over the weapons, equipment and horses, and the Regency Council was refused contact with the corps. Demobilisation began at once, following Falkenhayn’s directives, which Dowbor announced in an order of his own. The general later recalled that the soldiers “submitted to the demobilisation order, swearing revenge at the first opportunity”.

The night of the revolt and the departure

Not everyone was willing to give in. Late in the evening of 21 May conspirators from the Polish Military Organisation, among them Lieutenant Colonel Przemysław Barthel de Weydenthal (PL) “Barta” and Captain Leopold Lis-Kula, arrested the general. Barta proclaimed himself commander, but the officers and soldiers refused to carry out his orders, and on the morning of 22 May Dowbor was released from house arrest. According to Miodowski several hundred opponents of the capitulation then set off for Ukraine, the Kuban (PL) and Murmansk, to join smaller Polish units.

The rest left westwards by rail. Sierchuła and Muszyński write that the last transport left Bobruisk on 7 June, although smaller groups were still leaving later. According to other works the last soldiers left the town at the beginning of July, and the last transport departed on 8 July. In all about 23,500 men were taken away, including 1,800 officers. Most of them, unless they came from the Eastern Borderlands, returned to the Kingdom of Poland, without arms, but with military experience and a grudge against the Germans.