Upper Silesia plebiscite

On Sunday 20 March 1921 the inhabitants of Upper Silesia went to the polls to decide whether their region should belong to Poland or to Germany. The vote, provided for in the Treaty of Versailles, took place in surprising calm and with a turnout of about 97 per cent. The result was a disappointment for the Poles: 59.4 per cent of those voting chose Germany, 40.3 per cent Poland. The plebiscite did not, however, settle the border by itself. Its line was to be fixed by the Allies, taking into account the results in individual communes.

Why a plebiscite

At the peace conference the Polish delegation demanded that Upper Silesia be given to Poland without a vote, citing the Prussian census of 1910, according to which most inhabitants of the Opole regency (PL) spoke Polish. The Germans argued that without Silesian industry they could not pay reparations. France supported Poland; David Lloyd George’s Britain was opposed. In the end the plebiscite, proposed by the British, was written into the treaty that Poland signed on 28 June 1919. A similar vote had already been held in July 1920 in Warmia, Masuria and Powiśle and had ended in defeat for the Polish side.

From February 1920 the region was under the Inter-Allied Governing and Plebiscite Commission (PL) in Opole. The campaign was run by two commissariats: the Polish one in Bytom, led by Wojciech Korfanty, and the German one in Katowice, headed by Kurt Urbanek (PL). The campaign was fierce and often bloody. Polish propaganda recalled Germanisation and promised social justice and land for the peasants; German propaganda portrayed Poland as a poor “seasonal state”, at odds with all its neighbours. Poland’s position was strengthened by the victorious second uprising, which had removed the German Sipo police, and by the peace of Riga, signed two days before the vote.

Who could vote

The Commission announced the date of the plebiscite on 23 February 1921. The right to vote belonged to those aged 20 or over who had been born in the plebiscite area or had lived there for a long time. What proved decisive was that emigrants born in Silesia could also vote, even if they had lived elsewhere for years. The proposal had earlier been made by the Polish geographer Eugeniusz Romer (PL), who was counting on Polish emigrants. The Germans made better use of it: they organised rail transport from the Ruhr and other regions of the Reich for about 180,000–190,000 people, while Poland brought in about 10,000. Emigrants made up more than 19 per cent of those voting, and according to the Polish Wikipedia about 90 per cent of them voted for Germany.

At the polling station each voter received an envelope and two slips, “Polska – Polen” and “Deutschland – Niemcy”. He put one of them into the envelope and dropped it into the ballot box.

The result

According to figures cited by dzieje.pl, 707,605 votes were cast for Germany and 479,359 for Poland (other tallies give slightly different numbers). Almost all the towns voted for Germany, Katowice and Królewska Huta among them, but the countryside in the east of the plebiscite area, especially in the districts of Pszczyna, Rybnik and Katowice, came out for Poland. Germany’s lead was smaller by commune: Poland won in about 670 of more than 1,500 voting districts. Historians point out that the outcome was decided not only by declared Poles and Germans but also by hundreds of thousands of Upper Silesians without a clear national identity, whom Korfanty called “Polish Alsatians”. Some of them, although they spoke Polish, saw Poland as a poorer and less modern country than Prussia.

Berlin demanded the whole plebiscite area. Korfanty, however, proclaimed a Polish victory as early as 22 March, citing the results in the communes, and drew the so-called Korfanty Line (PL), under which Poland was to receive the whole eastern part of the region with the industrial district. Where the border would run was now for the Allies to decide.