Outbreak of the Third Silesian Uprising

On 2 May 1921 the mines and steelworks of Upper Silesia came to a standstill. A general strike, proclaimed by Wojciech Korfanty, took in almost every workplace. Late in the evening the first railway bridge near Opole was blown up, and on the night of 2–3 May several tens of thousands of members of the Polish military underground went into action. So began the third and largest of the Silesian Uprisings, which was to decide how the region would be divided.

Two lines

After the plebiscite of 20 March the border was for the Allies to decide, but there was no agreement in the Inter-Allied Commission in Opole. Its French chairman, General Henri Le Rond (PL), proposed a line close to the Korfanty Line (PL): Poland would receive the whole eastern part of the region with the industrial district. The British and Italian commissioners, Colonel Harold Percival and General Alberto De Marinis, wanted to give Poland only the districts of Pszczyna and Rybnik and scraps of the Katowice district. Britain and Italy held that the industrial district could not be divided and that Germany needed it to pay reparations. On 30 April the Silesian newspapers reported that the Commission had sent both plans to Paris, and the Poles were in uproar.

Plans for an uprising had been prepared since March. The Polish Military Organisation of Upper Silesia, officially dissolved after the second uprising, carried on as the Plebiscite Defence Command, with officers, weapons and training from Polish military intelligence. Korfanty had long opposed another rising. According to the IPN historian Mirosław Węcki, he agreed to an “armed demonstration” when he concluded that otherwise the British–Italian plan would win. On 28 April he met Le Rond and Poland’s representative to the Commission, Daniel Kęszycki (PL), at Czarny Las, and most probably warned the general of the plans. On 30 April a meeting of Polish leaders in Bytom issued the final orders.

A desperate necessity

On 2 May the commander of the insurgent forces, Lieutenant Colonel Maciej Mielżyński (PL) “Nowina-Doliwa”, informed Warsaw of the decision. The government of Wincenty Witos forbade Korfanty to take up arms, and after the outbreak declared the Republic’s neutrality and disowned the insurgents. Węcki sees this as part of a Polish diplomatic game: the authorities turned a blind eye to volunteers and weapons crossing the border. Mielżyński wrote to the Chief of the General Staff, Władysław Sikorski, that both he and Korfanty regarded the armed movement as “a desperate necessity”, and that further delay would demobilise the organisation, “whose zeal and courage are the first condition of victory”.

According to Mielżyński’s report he had 40,470 men under arms. Dzieje.pl states that they had 38,000 rifles, 540 machine guns and ammunition for two or three days of fighting. The forces of the German Selbstschutz (PL) are estimated at 20,000–30,000 men.

Operation “Bridges”

At about 11 p.m. the Wawelberg Group (PL), the sabotage unit of Captain Tadeusz Puszczyński (PL), went into action. The first bridge to be blown up was at Szczepanowice near Opole, followed by other bridges and viaducts over the Oder (PL) and its tributaries, near Krapkowice, Koźle and Racibórz. Telephone and telegraph lines were cut as well. Cut off from the Reich, the area of the fighting was to be safe from German reinforcements. Many of the saboteurs were afterwards unable to get back to their own side and were killed.

At 2–3 a.m. the insurgent units moved off, divided into three groups, “North”, “East” and “South”. At the head of the uprising stood Korfanty as dictator, directing the civilian Supreme Authority in Upper Silesia, based at Szopienice (PL). “We shall achieve victory at any price,” he wrote on 3 May in an appeal to his compatriots. Taken by surprise, the Germans offered effective resistance almost nowhere. By 4 May the insurgents held most of the industrial district, and by 10 May they had reached the Oder, the line Korfanty had demanded. The fighting went on for two more months.