Polish Military Organisation

The Polish Military Organisation (POW) was the secret military organisation of Józef Piłsudski’s camp, active from 1914 to the end of 1918. It was founded in the Kingdom of Poland and later spread to Galicia and to Polish circles in Russia. It trained cadres for a future army and carried out intelligence and sabotage, and in the autumn of 1918 it became one of the forces that took power from the occupiers in the Polish lands.

Against Russia

The organisation grew out of the Warsaw cells of the Polish Rifle Squads and the Union of Active Struggle, which after the outbreak of war found themselves on the Russian side of the front, cut off from their commanders in Galicia. In August 1914 the two groups merged and recognised Piłsudski’s authority, and on 22 October his envoy Tadeusz Żuliński took command and gave the organisation its name. Its programme set it a single aim: independence won by force of arms. For the time being the enemy was Russia: members tracked the movements of its troops, and the Flying Detachment destroyed railway lines, bridges and telephone lines behind the Russian front.

Its strength was modest: according to its command, in June 1915 the POW had about 1,100 members. When the Germans took Warsaw that summer, the Warsaw Battalion of the POW marched off on 22 August 1915 to join the First Brigade of the Legions. There Piłsudski stopped. He halted further recruitment and kept the POW as an underground organisation, the cadre of a future army and a card in his game with the Central Powers.

Under the Central Powers’ occupation

In the lands taken by the Germans and Austrians the POW suspended sabotage but went on training and recruiting. It grew fast: according to the dzieje.pl portal it had about 7,000 members in November 1916 and about 15,000 in April 1917. On 16 January 1917 it placed itself under the Provisional Council of State and almost ceased to hide. The German authorities, however, refused to let it run recruitment for the new Polish army.

The turning point was the oath crisis. After Piłsudski’s arrest in July 1917 the Germans also imprisoned many POW members, and the organisation went deeper underground and turned against the occupiers. From then on it was led by Edward Rydz-Śmigły. Its command in Kyiv ran its work in the lands of the former Russian Empire, and in May 1918 conspirators from the POW tried to prevent the capitulation of the I Polish Corps.

November 1918

In October 1918 the POW had nearly 30,000 members, more than 20,000 of them in the Kingdom. Its units attacked German patrols and posts, and in the Austrian zone of occupation they seized weapons and money. As the Central Powers fell apart, POW members, together with soldiers and civilians, took over Kraków, protected the Lublin government, fought in Lviv and from 10 November disarmed the German garrison of Warsaw.

By Rydz-Śmigły’s order of 11 November the POW members in Galicia were taken into the Polish Army, and over the following weeks the same was done in the former German zone of occupation. According to Polish Radio the organisation was dissolved in December 1918. Its people, alongside former legionaries and officers of the partitioning powers’ armies, joined the cadre of the new army. A separate organisation in the Prussian partition, the Polish Military Organisation of the Prussian Partition, took part in the Greater Poland Uprising.