Haller becomes commander-in-chief

On 4 October 1918 the Polish National Committee in Paris appointed General Józef Haller commander-in-chief of the Polish Army. It was the first decision taken on the basis of the agreement of 28 September, under which France recognised the Committee as the supreme political authority of the Polish army, and the Committee received the right to appoint its commander in agreement with the French government. Haller was to command not only the Polish Army in France, but all Polish formations fighting on the side of the Entente, wherever they might be organised. For the first time since the beginning of the war, the Polish troops at the side of the Allies had been given a Polish commander rather than a French general.

The choice came as no surprise. From the moment Haller arrived in France in July with the legend of Rarańcza and Kaniów, the Committee’s leaders had seen him as the candidate for commander-in-chief. Roman Dmowski later wrote that the general had appeared at a moment “when we were looking for a soldier who could be appointed commander-in-chief of the Polish army”. According to some studies, Haller received together with his appointment the rank of lieutenant-general, corresponding to the later rank of divisional general. He also formally left the Committee in order to stand above party disputes as commander-in-chief, although he continued to direct its military affairs.

The new commander’s authority, however, had clear limits. The army then numbered just over 17,000 soldiers, mostly volunteers from the Polish community in America, and many command and staff posts were still held by Frenchmen. The units at the front were subordinate, like all Allied troops in France, to the French operational command. The Polish commander-in-chief was therefore responsible above all for the organisation, training and expansion of the army and for its national character.

On 6 October Haller took his oath on the Polish colours. In his “Memoirs” he wrote under that date that the ceremony took place at the front, before the ranks of the 1st Polish Rifle Division (PL): “Since this was at the fighting front, the ceremony of the oath was short. […] I took the oath. There followed a review of the division to the sound of the anthem ‘Poland Is Not Yet Lost’ and a march past of the whole division.” According to Dmowski, military representatives of France, the United States, Britain and Italy were present at the ceremony.

The appointment and the oath at once served the Committee’s diplomacy. The Committee’s representative in London informed the British government of the creation of a single Polish national army under Haller’s command and asked for it to be recognised as a co-belligerent army. Dmowski, who was then in the United States, set out the same facts in a letter to Secretary of State Robert Lansing. The soldiers, who wore French horizon-blue uniforms with Polish eagles on their rogatywka caps and helmets, came to be called Haller’s Army or the Blue Army. The army underwent its great expansion only after the armistice, and in the spring of 1919 it was transported to Poland.