First fighting on the border of the Kingdom of Poland

With Germany’s declaration of war on Russia on the evening of 1 August 1914 the border between the two empires became a front line. It ran through the lands of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, separating the Prussian partition from the Kingdom of Poland, subject to Russia for 99 years. To the south the Kingdom bordered on Galicia, part of Austria-Hungary, which declared war on Russia a few days later. On the Eastern Front the war thus began on Polish soil.

The first shots

From the first days German propaganda presented the Russians as the aggressors. A German chronicle of the war published as early as 1914 claimed that already on the night of 1–2 August Russian detachments had had to be driven off German soil near Eichenried, on the Jarocin–Września railway line, that their raid on the station at Miłosław had been foiled, and that they had then crossed the border near Schwiddern. Such reports cannot be confirmed today and should be treated with caution, since both sides wanted at the time to present the enemy as the attacker. The first battle on the Eastern Front is generally considered to be the clash at Stallupönen in East Prussia only on 17 August. On the western border of the Kingdom there was no major fighting at all, because the Russians did not intend to defend it.

The Russians leave, the Germans march in

Russian war plans did not provide for the defence of the western part of the Kingdom of Poland, which jutted far out between Prussia and Austria-Hungary. For fear of encirclement and to shorten the front, the tsarist troops withdrew from the border strip adjoining Greater Poland and Silesia. The Germans, although they had few forces in the east, decided to enter the territory of the Kingdom and occupied the border towns almost without a fight.

In Kalisz, a provincial capital a few kilometres from the border, the Russian garrison on the morning of 2 August set fire to the military stores, the railway station and goods wagons, and then left the town. Power was taken over by a Citizens’ Committee headed by the mayor, Bronisław Bukowiński (PL). At about 2 p.m. the first German patrol appeared, and on the night of 2–3 August a company of the 155th Infantry Regiment from Ostrów Wielkopolski marched into the town, followed by the rest of the battalion of Major Hermann Preusker, who became the town commandant. On 3 August the first German soldiers entered Częstochowa.

Kalisz and Częstochowa

For Kalisz the arrival of the Germans proved tragic. On the evening of 3 August a single shot was fired, and during the night shooting broke out in which, according to historians, two groups of German soldiers fired on each other. Twenty-one civilians and six soldiers were killed. Preusker accused the inhabitants of treacherously firing on the troops, took hostages, demanded a contribution of 50,000 roubles, and on 4 August withdrew his troops from the town and had it shelled by artillery. The following days brought executions, the arrest of some 800 men, the burning of the town hall and, from 9 August, the systematic destruction of the town, which went on until 22 August. Almost the whole historic centre was destroyed, except for the churches, and many inhabitants fled. The destruction of Kalisz became one of the first and most shocking examples of violence against civilians in the Great War, and Russian propaganda turned it into proof of German barbarity.

Częstochowa came close to suffering the same fate. There too, after the Germans marched in, soldiers were fired upon, and the command blamed civilians. The town was not destroyed, but it had to pay a contribution of 200,000 roubles, and about a thousand inhabitants were deported to Germany for labour. Soldiers bivouacked for several days on the ramparts of Jasna Góra (PL), and false rumours spread through the country of a massacre of the inhabitants and of the desecration of the miraculous icon.

Poles on both sides

For the Poles the war had a particularly dramatic dimension. Inhabitants of the three partitions served in the armies of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and so on opposite sides of the front. At the same time the war between the partitioning powers gave hope of regaining independence. As early as 6 August the First Cadre Company, formed by Józef Piłsudski, set out from Kraków towards the Kingdom of Poland.