The Dark Side of Independence: Paramilitary Violence in Ireland and Poland after the First World War

This article analyses excesses carried out against civilians in Ireland and Poland after the First World War. It shows how the absence of a centralised state authority with a monopoly on violence allowed for new, less inhibited paramilitary groups to operate in parts of Ireland and Poland. The article argues that certain forms of violence committed had a symbolic meaning and served as messages, further alienating the different ethnic and religious communities. By comparing the Irish and Polish case, the article also raises questions about the obvious differences in the excesses in Poland and Ireland, namely in terms of scale of the excesses and the number of victims and, central to the Polish case, the question of antisemitism. In the aftermath of the First World War, violence proliferated in many parts of Europe. The war ushered in a significant reshaping of the political landscape of Europe and the structure of its people and societies. Empires fell apart. New states emerged among the ruins. The experience of war altered the perception of the world and triggered changes regarding norms and values. Among the emerging states were Poland and the Irish Free State. The fundamental changes in the countries in question Centre for War Studies, Department of History, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland; [email protected]. The present article is based on research undertaken in the project ‘Paramilitary Violence after the First World War, 1918–1923’, funded by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Science (IRCHSS), and co-ordinated by John Horne (Trinity College Dublin) and Robert Gerwarth (University College Dublin). The author would like to express her gratitude for the intellectual input and criticism provided by discussions in the project and while presenting versions of this article in Dublin, at the European University Institute, Florence, and to the International Society for First World War Studies. The author would particularly like to thank John Horne and the anonymous readers for their input. All translations of quotations from untranslated sources are by the author. Contemporary European History, 19, 3 (2010), pp. 231–248 C © Cambridge University Press 2010 doi:10.1017/S0960777310000147 232 Contemporary European History were accompanied by outbursts of violence. This article argues that violence against civilians served as a central element in the establishment of social identities that came to define the Irish and Polish nations. Paramilitaries were the most prominent perpetrators and initiators of such violence in both countries. Ireland and Poland had both been an integral part of nineteenth-century European empires. Due to the nature of the respective empires,1 the history of both countries and the impact of the empires had differed, but they shared the common experience of being under foreign rule for a long period. Both Ireland and Poland became independent only after the First World War. The process of independence was different, but the trigger was the same: independence was made possible because the occupying empires had been shattered (as in the case of the Habsburg, the German, and the Russian empires) or shaken (as in the case of the United Kingdom) in the course of the war. In the transitional period after the First World War, the lack of state control in both countries facilitated the rise of violence under the veil of a national struggle for independence. Military and paramilitary formations alike engaged in violence, sometimes supported or cheered on by a civilian crowd. This was especially the case in times and places where state institutions were absent or weak and unable to monopolise force. In both countries a large number of assaults on civilians occurred in this period, the fighting being dominated by irregular warfare such as guerrilla and civil war. The history of the struggle for national independence in both countries has so far been written predominantly in military, political and institutional terms. However, the period was shaped precisely by the absence of functioning institutions, when power was seized by those who were able to do so. This article chooses to emphasise the cultural history of violence over political or military narrative history.2 Paramilitary combatants, prominent in regions of weak statehood after the First World War, embody the blurred distinction between ‘military’ and ‘civilian’ in the post-war period. Analysing assaults against civilians committed by these military, yet non-state-controlled, perpetrators adds to an understanding of violence arising in regions and times with no state monopoly of power. In particular, the article will aim to provide an insight into the emergence of violence against minorities during the wars of independence. This issue will be explored by discussing three forms of violence committed against civilians that were common in both Poland and Ireland: shootings, hair-shearing and arson. The point of the comparison is to identify common characteristics of the armed struggle for national independence as well as to distinguish national particularities. The article discusses the impact of the experience of the World War as well as that of the preceding occupation on the excesses against national and religious minorities in the context of a national struggle 1 See Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman, introduction to this issue, 183–94. 2 John Horne and Alan Kramer ‘War between Soldiers and Enemy Civilians, 1914–1915’, in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster, eds., Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 153–68, 161–2. Paramilitary Violence in Ireland and Poland after the First World War 233 for independence. It thus contributes to a discussion of the social roots of violence against civilians in Ireland and Poland, as have been analysed in other settings.3 The article focuses on physical violence. However, both case studies show a high frequency of psychological violence, imposed by threats, fear and suspicion, and its impact.4 Even physical violence contained psychological aspects in so far as the violence committed also transmitted a message to the broader community. The impact of violent outbursts on public discourse and its function as political and social messages are what I call the semiotics of violence.5 Central to the process of violent excesses and the building and consolidation of a nation were dichotomies such as male/female, Catholic/non-Catholic, soldier/civilian, nation/minority. By committing assaults against the civilian population, the paramilitaries aimed to establish and to reinforce these dichotomies as a foundation for the new national community. I shall first introduce the background of the Polish and Irish cases, then, second, present and discuss three typical forms of violence occurring in both countries before, third, discussing motivations and justifications for the violence committed in the context of nation-building in Ireland and Poland. Eastern Poland: the experience of war and the question of minorities Even though no accurate figures for the excesses seem to be available in either country,6 it is obvious that the scale of violence in eastern Poland far exceeded that 3 For military violence against civilians see ibid. For ethnically motivated (crowd) violence see, e.g., the works of Natalie Zemon Davis and Stanley Tambiah. Fruitful insight might be gained from a comparison of crowd violence in these regions and crowd excesses taking place about the same period in Ulster. They are not part of this article, however, which concentrates on the territory of the Irish Republic. For a comparison of violence in the Six Counties and Upper Silesia, see Timothy Wilson, ‘Ritual and Violence in Upper Silesia and Ulster, 1920’, Journal of the Oxford University History Society (Hilary, 2004), 1–24. See also Wilson, ‘Ghost Provinces, Mislaid Minorities: The Experience of Southern Ireland and Prussian Poland, 1918–1923’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 13 (2002), 61–86. Wilson’s comparison here is highly enlightening. However, Wilson focuses on the comparison of Ireland with Upper Silesia, leading him to stress a major difference in both cases to support his arguments on violence: while the distinction in Ireland was sectarian, the distinction in Poland/Upper Silesia was about language (‘Ghost Provinces’, 64), and draws his conclusion abut the difference in violence from this. This article regards eastern Poland as a more promising comparative study, as religious and sectarian differences are as crucial as in Ireland. 4 See Michael Geyer, ‘Some Hesitant Observations Concerning “Political Violence”‘, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4 (2003), 695–708, 696. 5 The term ‘semiotics of violence’ was first used by Kostas Retsikas, ‘The Semiotics of Violence: Ninja, Sorcerers, and State Terror in Post-Soeharto Indonesia’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde, 162 (2006), 56–94. However, the use of the concept ‘semiotics of violence’ in this article does not particularly follow Retsikas’s definition. 6 Statistics for the Irish war of independence suggest about 200 civilian casualties, 150 of them in 1921. Michael Hopkinson, The Irish War of Independence (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2002), 201–2. No figure exists for civilian deaths in the Irish civil war, but military casualties are estimated at about 800 (government figures for January 1922–April 1924). Hopkinson, Green against Green: The Irish Civil War, 2nd edn (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2004), 272–3. About 250 are supposed to have died in Dublin during the fights over the Four Courts. Bill Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2005), 78. In eastern Poland, any attempt to give an accurate account for assaults and deaths was 234 Contemporary European History in Ireland. For Poland, the First World War did not end on 11 November 1918.7 Violence dominated the following years. The Polish east in particular became a playground for a highly diverse accumulation of combatants who turned not only against neighbouring armies but also against civilians, mainly ‘suspect’ minorities. The border wars took place in territories of the former empires that had mixed populations – ‘shatter zones’ of empires8 – and entailed violence against civilian members of ethnic, national and religious minorities.9 Poles had experienced the First World War as civilian victims of occupation and destruction, but also as soldiers. Polish men – men living in the territory of the later Polish state – fought as conscripts and professional soldiers in the armies of the occupying states: Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. About 800,000 Poles served in the Russian army, 300,000 in the Habsburg army and another 300,000 in German ranks.10 Some, who had the liberty to do so, engaged as volunteers in the inhibited by the difficulties of reorganising local and state government control after the long period of territorial division. However, the casualties obviously exceed the Irish figures for military as well as civilian deaths. For some indications of the extent of violence see Piotr Wróbel, ‘The Seeds of Violence: The Brutalization of an East European Region, 1917–1922’, Journal of Modern European History, 1 (2003), 125–48, 138. For discussions on the scale of Jewish casualties see Andrzej Kapiszewski, ‘Controversial Reports on the Situation of Jews in Poland in the Aftermath of World War I: The Conflict between the US Ambassador in Warsaw Hugh Gibson and American Jewish Leaders’, Studia Judaica 7 (2004), 257–304. Several commissions were set up to investigate antisemitic violence in Poland and published their results in reports. Israel Cohen, special commissioner of the Zionist Organisation in London, was the first to start enquiries into the situation in Poland in December 1918. His report told of massive antisemitic pogroms and outrages, estimating the death toll of victims at about 800. Israel Cohen, A Report on the Pogroms in Poland (London: Zionist Organisation, 1919). See also Israel Cohen, ‘My Mission to Poland (1918–1919)’, Jewish Social Studies, 13, 2 (1951), 149–72. A following report provided by the US ambassador Hugh Gibson (appointed April 1919) on the specific orders of the Foreign Ministry acknowledged the incidents, but adopted Polish reproaches about Jewish disloyalty and denied the existence of pogroms. Eventually, the Morgenthau Commission was set up in mid-1919 to verify the accounts. His report was more balanced than the first two, stating ‘strong prejudices against Jews’ as well as supporting some of the Polish arguments. The death toll according to Morgenthau’s report was up to about 280 killed civilians (not including Ukrainians or Polish casualties). Kapiszewski, ‘Controversial Reports’, 293. Interestingly, a similar commission, the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, was set up to report on events and excesses by the British Forces in Ireland. They collected evidence and Irish witness statements in the United States. See Katherine Hughes, ed., English Atrocities in Ireland: A Compilation of Facts from Courts and Press Records (New York: Friends of Irish Freedom, 1921–2). 7 For the events of November 1918 and the shift from world war to independence to the following border wars in Poland see Piotr Łossowski, Zerwane Pęta. Usunięcie okupantów z ziem polskich w listopadzie 1918 roku (Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1986). 8 See Eichenberg and Newman, introduction; ‘Borderlands: Ethnicity, Identity, and Violence in the Shatter-Zone of Empires since 1848’ (2003–2007) at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, co-ordinated by Omer Bartov; Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide (Oxford University Press, 2009), 81 ff. 9 Jörg Baberowski: ‘Kriege in staatsfernen Räumen. Russland und die Sowjetunion 1905–1950’, in Dietrich Beyrau, Michael Hochgeschwender and Dieter Langewiesche, eds., Formen des Krieges (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), 291–309. 10 See Waldemar Rezmer, ‘Polacy w korpusie oficerskim armii niemieckiej w I wojnie światowej (1914–1918)’, in Mieczysław Wojciechowski, ed., Społeczenstwo polskie na ziemach pod panowaniem pruskim w okresie I wojny światowej (1914–1918): zbiór studiów (Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, 1996), 137–48; István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Paramilitary Violence in Ireland and Poland after the First World War 235 Polish struggle for independence, within the ranks of the Polish Legions along with the Central powers, with Haller’s Army (Błękitna Armia) in France, and the Polish Military Organization (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, POW). More than 450,000 Polish soldiers died in the First World War and many more were wounded.11 As Poles were to be found on either side at almost any front, battles – especially at the Eastern Front – sometimes turned out to be fratricidal. After the official end of the war on 11 November 1918 Poland regained its independence, but found no peace. The Polish state gradually emerged behind the lines of the withdrawing powers of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, but the consolidation of a central government and a state-controlled monopoly of the use of force took time. Poland’s independence in 1918 entailed further warfare: defending – and expanding – the new Polish borders. Official restructuring of the Polish forces to form the Polish army started even before the declaration of the Polish state (late October 1918), with Polish government calls for all former legionnaires and officers to be sworn in for the Polish army in Warsaw.12 Most formations retained their structure and command and changed only their names.13 Ranks were filled with volunteers, individual demobilised soldiers and those who had been too young to serve during the war. During most of the period 1918–20 there was no functioning chain of command from Józef Piłsudski as the new head of state and official commander of the Polish army to the troops wandering the country. Even though the Polish Army was proclaimed before the existence of the new independent Polish state, in October 1918, it is difficult to speak of a national Polish state army during the period in question. Only in March 1920 did the demobilisation of the older soldiers and of the foreign Polish volunteers lead to reorganisation.14 The situation was the same in the north-east, especially in the Vilna region.15 In the meantime, Polish formations fought what, only at first sight, looked like a traditional state war. The aim of the Polish border wars was to secure and to Corps, 1848–1918 (Oxford University Press, 1990). Jan Rydek, W służbie cesarza i króla. Generałowie i admirałowie narodowości polskiej w siłach zbrojnych Austro-Węgier w latach 1868–1918 (Cracow: Księgarnia Akademicka, 2001), 11 Norman Davies, Im Herzen Europas: Geschichte Polens (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2001), 103; Rezmer, ‘Polacy w korpusie oficerskim’, 140. 12 Ossolineum, Wrocław, 12925/III 1885–1939; Karol Baczyński, ‘Pamiętniki względnie Wspomnienia o ruchu I pracy niepodległościowej mojej I młodzieży polskej we Lwowie’ w latach od r. 1885 do 1914, o służbie w Legionach Polskich i wojsku polskim w latach 1914–1921 oraz pracy społecznej od r. 1924 do 1935, Mikrofilm 2429, Zeszyt 5: 18 Nov. 1915–14 Nov. 1918. 13 Rodowody i Symbolika Formacji Górnośląskich, 11 Pułk Piechoty, set up in November 1918 with former POW members, filled ranks with former legionnaires, Polish soldiers from the former 13 Austrian Schützenbataillon, and volunteers. Wojciech B. Moś, Wojsko Polskie i Organizacje paramilitarne (Katowice: Silesia, 1997), 25–6. 14 The 3 Pułk Strzelców Podhalańskich was set up late October 1919 on the basis of the 2 Pułk Instrukcyjny Grenadierów Woltyżerów of the Haller’s Army. The 4 Pułk Strzelców Podhalańskich was formed in May 1919 France from the 19 Pułku Strzelców Polskich (Haller’s army). In June 1919 it was transported to Poland and re-organised in September 1919 according to new Polish standards. Its new name was 143 Pułk Piechoty Strzelców Kresowych. From October 1919 it was employed against Ukrainians, then from March 1920 as 4 Pułk Strzelców Podhalańskich against Soviets. Ibid., 20–1, 24–5. 15 On 9 September, three months after the disarmament of Gen. Dowbór-Muśnicki’s corps, the Związek Wojskowych Polaków w Wilnie, was set up in Vilna, initiated by Maj. Bobiatynski,. They organised 236 Contemporary European History expand the territory of the new Polish state. But without a functioning chain of command, and engaging in excesses and banditry, it is more accurate to describe the Polish formations as paramilitaries, because although they were structured to become the core of a new army and had a military form, they were not yet state-controlled. Also their actions in the shatter zones and their participation in violence against civilians underlined their nature as paramilitary rather than military formations. Rather than preventing the excesses against minorities, the domestic population often supported the perpetrators. The pogroms in Lwów and Kielce in November 1918 are just two outstanding examples of a widespread phenomenon of nationalist antisemitism.16 Considering the harm done to Poland and its population by the war, this was also caused by the extent to which the experience of the First World War led to an intensification of conflicts between the national communities living in these areas.17 Southern Ireland: occupation and independence Violence in Ireland following the First World War far exceeded that experienced at home during the First World War. During the war only volunteers had joined the British army and they fought abroad; the Irish homeland had not been affected. Conscription was to have been introduced in 1918, but it was met with fierce objection, and eventually the British government rethought its plans: Irishmen were not conscripted into the British army. After the end of the Great War, however, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) challenged the British crown forces, starting a war of independence that eventually ended British hegemony over the twenty-six counties which were to become independent Ireland.18 The IRA was structured to become the core of a new army once an independent state was established. And, indeed, large parts of the IRA became part of the Irish National Army, the Free State Forces of the new independent Irish republic. During the war of independence, the IRA fought as a para-state army rather than as a paramilitary force:19 it fought in the belief that it represented the new national army while another governmental power was (still) in place. While the Polish paramilitaries, without any control or central command, fought for their newly independent state, the Irish paramilitaries were fighting against the state. First, the IRA fought for its independence from what was understood as British colonisation. After the conditional five artillery battalions and one battalion of Ulans. Among the new volunteers, officers of Dowbór formed the majority of the officer corps. Biblioteka Narodowa Zbiór Specjalny (BN Rękopisy), Rps BN akc 10312, Andrzej Brochocki: Wspomnienia wojenne z 13-go pułku ułanów Wileńskich. Okres walk od Samoobrony Wileńskiej w 1918 r. do zawarcia rozejmu z Litwinami w 1920 roku, 4B. 16 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Kriegsland im Osten. Eroberung, Kolonisierung und Militärherrschaft im Ersten Weltkrieg (Hamburg: Hamburger Ed., 2002), 432–6. 17 Frank M. Schuster, Zwischen allen Fronten. Osteuropäische Juden während des Ersten Weltkrieges (1914–1919) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), 172. 18 For details on the war of independence, see Hopkinson, War of Independence. 19 Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, ‘Introduction’, in Gerwarth and Horne, eds., Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, 1917–1923 (forthcoming). Paramilitary Violence in Ireland and Poland after the First World War 237 independence of the Irish Free State, as a self-governing British dominion, had been obtained, the IRA, opposed to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, fought the Free State Forces in the hope of gaining independence for all Irish territory. After the signing of the treaty the IRA was divided according to the new political cleavage lines: on the one side were the supporters of the Treaty, who regarded the decision of six counties of Ulster to remain in the United Kingdom as a bitter, but pragmatic, price to pay for state independence – and hoped eventually to regain them. On the other side were the republicans, who opposed the treaty as a betrayal of the Irish nation and continued to fight the new Free State Forces. The republican forces continued to call themselves the IRA, although they were already defined as the anti-treaty IRA. The civil war which followed led to a major split in Irish society and inhibited the development and consolidation of Irish governance. During the war of independence the IRA did not have the means to fight the British forces, a situation that was repeated in the subsequent war against the Free State Army. In both instances, guerrilla warfare was adopted. The tactics of the war of independence and the following civil war abolished the traditional distinction between civilian and soldier, between wartime and private life. In clear distinction from what soldiers might have experienced during the First World War, there was no leave from guerrilla warfare. Likewise, the war was fought not only against the officials, but also against anyone connected to them: wives and families became the objects of threats and attacks. People were often suspected of treason, of passing on information, of betraying their home country just as it was finally about to become independent. The anger also turned against the Irish Protestants as representatives of a despised British colonialism. While the ‘enemy from the outside’ was identified as members of the British military forces, ethnicity and religion now defined the new ‘enemy within’.20 Many assaults and excesses were committed in Ireland by the British Forces, especially the Black and Tans and the auxiliary forces during the war of independence. The First World War did not affect Irish territory, but the Anglo-Irish war of independence introduced violence to the Irish homeland.21 The experience of the war of independence and of British violence shaped the violence of the IRA against civilians both during the Anglo-Irish war and especially during the civil war. Acknowledging that the violence against civilians was two-sided, this article deals only with that committed by the IRA and not that of the British Forces. The semiotics of violence