Poland signs the Treaty of Versailles

On 28 June 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles (PL), the victorious Powers and Germany signed the peace treaty. On behalf of Poland it was signed by the prime minister and foreign minister, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, and by the head of the delegation to the peace conference, Roman Dmowski. In Article 87 Germany recognised “the complete independence of Poland” and renounced in her favour most of the lands of the Prussian partition. The same day Poland signed a separate treaty with the Powers on the protection of minorities, known as the Little Treaty of Versailles (PL).

From Cambon to Lloyd George

The peace conference opened in Paris on 18 January 1919. On 29 January Dmowski set out the Polish claims to the Supreme Council in a speech lasting several hours, and later in notes on the western and eastern frontiers. He took as his starting point the frontiers before the First Partition, those of 1772, though he admitted that in the east the changes that had taken place since then had to be reckoned with. The Polish claims were examined by a commission chaired by the French diplomat Jules Cambon. Its report of 19 March awarded Poland the whole of Upper Silesia, Greater Poland, Gdańsk Pomerania with Danzig and four districts on the right bank of the Vistula, while a plebiscite was to decide the fate of Masuria.

The British prime minister, David Lloyd George, opposed this. He considered that the report ignored the expectations and arguments of the German side. Britain also did not wish to weaken Germany excessively, since it needed Germany as a trading partner and as a counterweight to France. Against Clemenceau’s not always firm opposition, and often with Wilson’s support, Lloyd George forced through changes to Poland’s disadvantage: Danzig was to become a Free City, and plebiscites were to decide Warmia, Masuria and Powiśle. The draft treaty presented to the Germans gave Poland Upper Silesia as well, without a vote. The plebiscite there was added only after German protests.

What Poland received

Poland received almost the whole Province of Posen, except for western fringes with Wschowa, Babimost, Międzyrzecz and Skwierzyna, and most of West Prussia, that is, Gdańsk Pomerania with narrow access to the sea. According to dzieje.pl this came to 45,463 km² with just over three million inhabitants. The gains of the Greater Poland insurgents, along whose front a demarcation line had run since the Armistice of Trier, passed to Poland together with Leszno, Rawicz and Bydgoszcz, which the insurgents had not taken. Danzig and its surroundings were to become a Free City under the protection of the League of Nations, within the Polish customs area. Plebiscites were to be held in Upper Silesia (Article 88), in the Allenstein district in Warmia and Masuria (Article 94) and in four districts of Powiśle on the right bank of the Vistula (Article 96). The Działdowo area, with the Warsaw–Danzig railway, went to Poland without a vote. The treaty did not fix Poland’s eastern frontiers. They were to be determined later by the Powers.

Poland also took on obligations. It had to guarantee free transit between East Prussia and the rest of Germany, allow coal from the Upper Silesian mines that might come to it to be exported to Germany for fifteen years, and take over part of the debt of Germany and Prussia. Debts incurred for German colonisation in Poland were excluded, and Poland received the estates of the former Kingdom of Poland free of charge. For the rest of the state property it took over, however, it had to pay, in all about 2.5 billion marks according to dzieje.pl.

The Little Treaty

Article 93 obliged Poland to accept a separate treaty on the protection of minorities. The Little Treaty of Versailles required equal rights for citizens regardless of nationality, language and religion, and the freedom to use their own language and to run schools and institutions, and minorities could complain to the Council of the League of Nations. Neither the Great Powers nor Germany accepted such obligations, so in Poland they were seen as a limit on sovereignty and a condition imposed from outside.

Dmowski later recalled that he had never felt so strongly “the historic gravity of the moment”: the Germans were returning to Poland “not, it is true, everything they had seized from her in the past, but almost everything they had failed to Germanise”. At the same time Poles were disappointed by the loss of Danzig and by the plebiscites, and German propaganda began to speak of a “corridor” separating East Prussia from the Reich. After a stormy debate the Legislative Sejm ratified both treaties on 31 July 1919. They came into force on 10 January 1920, and only then could Poland take over the lands awarded to it.