Piłsudski returns to Warsaw

Early on the morning of Sunday 10 November 1918 a train from Berlin pulled into the Vienna Station (PL) in Warsaw. From it stepped Józef Piłsudski and his chief of staff from the days of the Legions, Kazimierz Sosnkowski, for more than a year prisoners of the Germans. According to the Kurier Warszawski the train arrived at 7.30, according to some studies at seven. Only a dozen or so people were waiting on the platform: the regent Zdzisław Lubomirski with his adjutant, the commandant of the Polish Military Organisation, Colonel Adam Koc, a few POW officers and the journalist Wacław Czarski, who described the welcome in the press. By evening all Warsaw knew of the Commandant’s arrival.

Free

Piłsudski had been arrested in July 1917. He spent most of his captivity in a wooden cottage in the Magdeburg citadel (PL), where Sosnkowski joined him in August 1918. Imprisonment only increased his popularity, and from the autumn all Polish circles pressed for his release. After its proclamation of 7 October the Regency Council wanted him as minister of war, and on 25 October the deputy Wojciech Korfanty demanded his release from the rostrum of the Reichstag. Berlin sent a diplomat, Count Harry Kessler, to Magdeburg, who tried to obtain from the prisoner an undertaking that once released he would not act against Germany. Piłsudski refused.

The matter was settled by the revolution that swept Germany at the beginning of November. On 8 November Kessler came to the fortress with no conditions at all and announced: “Gentlemen, you are free.” By his own account he feared that mutinous soldiers might at any moment attack the fortress and its garrison. The prisoners were given ten minutes to pack and left for Berlin that same day. According to many historians, the German command wanted a Polish state in the east as a barrier between the German and Bolshevik revolutions, and regarded Piłsudski as a man capable of keeping order there.

They spent the night in a Berlin hotel. The next day, 9 November, as the monarchy was collapsing in the streets of the capital, they ate with Kessler in a restaurant in the centre. The conversation turned on the future Polish–German border. In the evening the Poles were escorted to the station, from where they travelled by special train to Warsaw.

A quiet arrival

The German authorities in Warsaw kept the time of arrival secret, fearing demonstrations that might turn into bloody riots. The city expected Piłsudski around noon, and that morning several rallies of various parties were taking place. When the train arrived a few hours earlier, there were no crowds at the station. Lubomirski took Piłsudski and Koc to his residence, where they discussed the situation in the Polish lands. The Commandant then took up lodgings in a boarding house at 2 Moniuszki Street. The news spread quickly and a crowd gathered outside the house. Piłsudski spoke briefly from the balcony.

That day, or according to some accounts the next, socialists of the PPS wanted to present their former party comrade with the banner of their combat organisation. Piłsudski declined it, replying that he could not accept the emblem of one party, since it was his duty to act in the name of the whole nation.

First talks

At 4.30 p.m. in the archbishop’s palace (the Borch Palace (PL)) Piłsudski attended a meeting of the Regency Council. The regents, Archbishop Aleksander Kakowski, Lubomirski and Józef Ostrowski, knew that after Germany’s collapse they could not hold power on their own. The Commandant then met the presidium of the government and established telegraphic contact with the Lublin government, which did not recognise the regents but regarded Piłsudski as its own.

The most urgent matter, however, was the German garrison. Some 30,000 German soldiers were stationed in Warsaw, and in the whole German Government General, by Polish estimates, between 60,000 and 80,000. As everywhere in Germany, the soldiers here had elected a soldiers’ council (Soldatenrat), which constituted itself on the evening of 10 November in the former viceroy’s palace. They wanted only to go home. Still on 10 November, or according to some studies on the morning of 11 November, Piłsudski met its representatives. He promised them a safe return home if they handed over their weapons and offered no resistance.

The evening of 10 November

The disarming of the Germans began that same day, before any agreement had been reached. Members of the POW, soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces, scouts and ordinary Varsovians took rifles from soldiers in the streets and seized guard posts. Most Germans gave up their weapons without resistance, but in many places shots were fired. The heaviest clashes went on through the night for the Vienna Station and around the Citadel, which the Germans tried to defend. There were wounded and dead on both sides.

Piłsudski had returned to a city in which several Polish centres claimed power. In Warsaw sat the regents and their provisional government, in Lublin the people’s government, in Kraków the Polish Liquidation Commission, and for ten days fighting with the Ukrainians had been going on for Lviv. All of them looked to him. The next day, as the armistice was being signed in the west, the regents handed him command of the army.