The war after the war, 1919–1923

In brief

In the east the Great War did not end with the armistice: on 14 February 1919 regular units of the Polish Army and the Red Army clashed for the first time. On 16 February 1919 at Trier the Allies ordered Germany to stop attacking the Poles in Posen, and on 28 June at Versailles Poland regained Greater Poland and Pomerania. On 17 July 1919 the fighting with the Ukrainians ceased, and the whole of Eastern Galicia was in Polish hands.

The war with the Bolsheviks was decided in 1920: after the Kiev offensive of 25 April, Tukhachevsky's front attacked on 4 July and forced the Poles to retreat, until on 16 August Piłsudski's strike group set off from the Wieprz into the rear of the Soviet armies attacking Warsaw. The peace signed at Riga on 18 March 1921 ended the war and fixed Poland's eastern border. Upper Silesia was decided by the plebiscite of 20 March 1921 and three uprisings, and on 20 October 1921 the Conference of Ambassadors gave Poland 29% of the area and most of the mines.

In Russia the Civil War ended in the Whites' defeat: on 7 February 1920 the Bolsheviks shot Admiral Kolchak, and on 14 November the last White ships left Sevastopol. On 6 December 1921 Ireland signed a treaty that made it a dominion, and on 9 September 1922 Turkish cavalry rode into Smyrna. The thread closes on 15 March 1923, when the Conference of Ambassadors recognised Poland's eastern borders with Russia and Lithuania and its sovereignty over Eastern Galicia and Vilna.