Poland breaks off relations with Germany

On 15 December 1918 the Polish government broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. That day Count Harry Kessler, the first foreign diplomat accredited in reborn Poland, left Warsaw with the staff of the legation. His mission had lasted less than a month.

Germany was the only great power to respond quickly to the telegram of Józef Piłsudski of 16 November. The new revolutionary government in Berlin sent to Warsaw Kessler, who a few days earlier had brought Piłsudski his freedom from Magdeburg. He arrived on 20 November and the next day was received as envoy, which meant de facto recognition of the Polish state. The legation was housed in the Hotel Bristol. From the start it was the target of hostile demonstrations, and on one occasion a crowd broke into the building and searched the rooms, demanding the German’s expulsion. For the National Democracy movement, linked to the Polish National Committee in Paris, the presence of a German envoy in Warsaw compromised Poland in the eyes of the victorious Entente, and for many Poles Kessler was the representative of the former occupier.

Piłsudski and Jędrzej Moraczewski’s government, however, needed Kessler for one very urgent matter. East of Poland, in the territory of Ober Ost, in Belarus and in Ukraine, there were still hundreds of thousands of German soldiers, many of them in revolutionary ferment. On their way home they might pass through Polish lands. The talks were held in an increasingly tense atmosphere, and according to Kessler’s notes Piłsudski also demanded, among other things, recognition of Polish rights to the lands up to the Bug. In the first half of December it was agreed that the troops returning from the east would travel by rail through East Prussia, bypassing the former Kingdom of Poland. Moraczewski later recalled: “We concluded a very advantageous agreement with Kessler, namely that these masses would be directed to Grajewo and would not pour into Poland.” According to him the Poles also bought large quantities of German military equipment at that time for next to nothing.

Once the agreement had been concluded, the government no longer needed to take Kessler into account. Pressure for a break came from the National Democrats and from politicians of the Prussian partition. Envoys of the Supreme People’s Council from Poznań, where two weeks earlier the Provincial Diet had met, demanded that Warsaw take a firm stand towards Berlin, which was bringing volunteer units into Greater Poland. According to Kessler’s diary he received the first note breaking off relations as early as 13 December, but it was withdrawn the same day as an official’s mistake. After disputes within the government a second note came, this time final, and on 15 December the legation left Poland. The foreign minister at the time was Leon Wasilewski.

The break did not end contacts between the two states, because the evacuation of the troops required further talks. At the beginning of February 1919 an agreement was concluded at Białystok which allowed Polish units to pass through the German lines eastwards, to face the approaching Red Army. In the second half of February the Germans handed Białystok over to the Poles. Poland and Germany established full diplomatic relations only in 1920, after the Treaty of Versailles came into force. Kessler returned to Berlin, where revolutionary street fighting was beginning.