Miracle at the Vistula
August 10, 2020 11:52 AM   Subscribe

100 years ago this week, the Battle of Warsaw raged. Two years after the War to End All Wars, the just-established Soviet Union was invading Poland, hoping to stir revolution in central Europe. Polish forces were falling back and defeat looked likely, until a surprise attack yielded a stunning victory.

One English-language account from a Polish site. Another.

Notes from Polish radio intelligence.

An American military monograph.

Photos from Radio Free Europe. About one Polish film. Maps.

Previously.
posted by doctornemo (34 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
excellent post. The bibliography on the Monograph is great. Merian Cooper, member of Kościuszko's Squadron made 'King Kong'.

...the end of the summer of 1919 the Soviets had taken over most of Ukraine, driving the Ukrainian Directorate from Kiev. In February 1919 they also set up a Lithuanian–Belorussian Republic (Litbel). This government was very unpopular due to terror and the collection of food and goods for the army.

Officially, however, the Soviet Government denied charges of trying to invade Europe."
of course.
a mention of Jan Kowalewski should be noted for his work on cryptology.

"Though Kowalewski's contribution to Polish victory in the Polish-Soviet War remained a secret for over 70 years, he was awarded Poland's highest military decoration, the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari."
ibid.
posted by clavdivs at 12:37 PM on August 10, 2020 [5 favorites]


Excellent post and comment, thank you on both counts.
posted by y2karl at 12:45 PM on August 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


I would be tickled to see a video of a bunch of bookies/oddsmakers without much knowledge of military history being asked to give odds on famous historical routs and fiascos given a short brief on armies and generals. The capture of Valdivia comes to mind as one that would've looked like poor odds to bet on Cochrane.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:20 PM on August 10, 2020 [2 favorites]


This government was very unpopular due to terror and the collection of food and goods for the army.

Yeah, the reason I have the "American" part of my Lithuanian-American heritage is because the Russian/Soviet army showed up to my great-grandfather's village and immediately everyone who could afford to was on the next ship of out of the country. My family could only afford to send my 14 year great-grandfather, by himself, to the States. His uncle's family got on a ship to Uruguay because by that point, one America as good as any other. There are actually lots and lots of tall, blond hair, blue eye Uruguayans these days because lots of other Lithuanians also felt that they needed to just leave and where they ended up didn't matter.

Things were so bad with the Russians/Soviets that the Nazis were welcomed as liberators during WWII, although that was pretty short lived, and everyone had to get right back to the resistance fighin'.
posted by sideshow at 1:35 PM on August 10, 2020 [24 favorites]


Nice post.
posted by dazed_one at 3:39 PM on August 10, 2020 [2 favorites]


Worth mentioning that this battle only resulted because Poland decided to start the war by invading Ukraine, which Russia repulsed on the way to their defeat at Warsaw. So the result of the entire war was more or less a draw.

I wonder how the Russian/Soviet side views/viewed this battle; they probably don't call it the "Miracle at the Vistula."
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 5:06 PM on August 10, 2020 [3 favorites]


Worth mentioning that this battle only resulted because Poland decided to start the war by invading Ukraine, which Russia repulsed on the way to their defeat at Warsaw. So the result of the entire war was more or less a draw.

It's a pity they didn't succeed. If Poland had succeeded in their ventures there probably wouldn't have been a cold war. The Soviets would be a third rate failing state with no access to warm water ports. Communism would have been contained by the Polish sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, and millions would have avoided being behind the Iron Curtain.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:20 PM on August 10, 2020 [5 favorites]


...presumably the Soviets viewed their Vistula disaster as having been not quite as bad as it could have been, inasmuch as the diplomatic solution meant they didn't have to release their grip on Ukraine even though it was a setback for their western ambitions (recall that the slogan at the outset of their earlier successful counterattack was "Through the corpse of the White Poland lies the way to World Inferno").
posted by aramaic at 5:23 PM on August 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


"Through the corpse of the White Poland lies the way to World Inferno"

People really get behind shitty slogans at times. "Make America Great Again" being a second example.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:48 PM on August 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


If Poland had succeeded in their ventures there probably wouldn't have been a cold war. The Soviets would be a third rate failing state with no access to warm water ports.

And how would World War II have worked out?
posted by gwint at 5:58 PM on August 10, 2020 [10 favorites]


I just listened to an "On the Media" segment that has only added to my caution when taking in history.
posted by Pembquist at 6:16 PM on August 10, 2020


It's a pity they didn't succeed. If Poland had succeeded in their ventures there probably wouldn't have been a cold war.

That's a hell of a counterfactual, given there were around thirty very tumultuous years in Eastern Europe between the Polish-Soviet war and the start of the Cold War. Having a successfully revanchist Polish state cripple the future USSR at its birth would change a lot of variables such that I'm not even sure we could even expect a Cold War to result (or even WWII to play out in the same way, for that matter).

With regard to the international rivalry between capitalism and really-existing-socialism that the Cold War denotes, keep in mind that plenty of states were already interfering in the Russian Civil War at this time, with the intent to strangle the socialist experiment in its infancy. The Americans, to mention just one example, landed a force in Northern Russia to try and assist the counterrevolutionary armies. The post-WWII Cold War was a continuation of capitalist powers' anti-socialist policies in a different form.

Lastly, we're simply going to have to differ in our normative evaluation of the Battle of Warsaw. The counterfactual I would think would have been most beneficial is if the Soviets had won. "Through the corpse of the White Poland lies the way to World Inferno" -- I presume the "White" here refers to the anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian Civil War, of which the Polish-Soviet War was only a part. Had the Soviets been able to turn Poland socialist, they would then be knocking on the door of Germany, which was undergoing sporadic revolutionary uprisings in that era. Germany, of course, was the real goal, being the most industrialized country in Continental Europe at the time, and long conceptualized to be key to the socialist revolution in Marxist thought. Worldwide, or at least Europe-wide socialism then would have become an immanent possibility.

But instead, the Bolsheviks lost, and Poland soon lapsed into dictatorship. And of course the story in Eastern Europe only gets more tragic from that point forward. I wonder if all of this could have been avoided if the Red Army had triumphed at Warsaw. Who knows.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 6:19 PM on August 10, 2020 [10 favorites]


It's all awful in the histories of 20th century Eastern Europe. Armies go back and forth. Stalin starves peasants. Youth put on Waffen coats.
posted by ovvl at 7:08 PM on August 10, 2020 [3 favorites]


what we call the first world war wasn’t a world war. it was just a pointless slaughter wherein the elite classes of europe sent everyone else off to die in ditches for no damn reason.

the wave of insurrections that followed what we call world war 1, now that actually was a no-foolin’ world war — and the wrong side won pretty much everywhere.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 7:21 PM on August 10, 2020 [4 favorites]


One of the more interesting aspects of 1930s Poland were the internationalists, who lost out to the isolationists of Pilsudski's faction.

Essentially, Poland was too little too late in consolidating allies in the 1938-39 period, getting guarantees from France and the UK.

But had they acted earlier, there could have been a 'Little Entente' proposed by the French Popular Front. There has an older Romanian-Polish alliance- but the Little Entente would have comprised Yugoslavia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France as an alliance to deter German, Soviet, and Hungarian aggression.

Also, there was the idea of the Miedzymorze- a Baltic Alliance of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Latvia, aimed at mutual defense against communist aggression.

But the international fatigue with treaty alliances after World War 1 led to a failure of multilateral deterrence organizations, and WW2 was the consequence.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 7:52 PM on August 10, 2020 [4 favorites]


the elite classes of europe sent everyone else off to die in ditches for no damn reason.

I don't know where you get that idea. The sons of the upper classes and aristocracy were among the first to volunteer in all countries, and died in droves. Ancient families were wiped out.

Why go? Noblesse Oblige, White Feather and all that. A different age.
posted by BWA at 7:56 PM on August 10, 2020 [4 favorites]


And how would World War II have worked out?

I'm not convinced it would end up being particularly different, except in the details. People seem to forget how methodically Stalin destroyed the Red Army (or, at least, anyone who exhibited capabilities). So Stalin murders his best leaders, or maybe Stalin murders his best leaders? Hmm, what to do, what to do...

Let's not forget, Stalin was literally part of the problem in this phase of the conflict (hey, let's waste time at Lwów because it'll serve my personal goals! Yay, people are dying!); his personal quest for glory meant the Russian forces in the broader conflict were fucked. They may have still ended up being fucked regardless, but his decisions certainly sped matters toward their conclusion.

...not the first, and certainly not the last, time he was responsible for that particular outcome. So maybe a not-rump-state-with-poor-leadership ends up defeating the Germans by virtue of strategic depth, or instead of that a rump-state-with-poor-leadership ends up defeating the Germans by virtue of strategic depth. Kinda boils down to whether we propose that Zhukov dies, or not, because Stalin is still gonna murder everyone else with talent, one way or another, the survivors will likely survive in either case, and everyone east of the conflict line will still get tossed aboard trains to go die fighting Germans.

Barring the total destruction of the Soviet state as an organized entity, I'm not sure the outcome of WW2 changes (yes, that's just how terrible Hitler was as a military decision-maker, and yes I'm eliding people like Molotov).
posted by aramaic at 10:03 PM on August 10, 2020 [4 favorites]


"the intent to strangle the socialist experiment in its infancy. The Americans, to mention just one example, landed a force in Northern Russia to try and assist the"

Interesting.
The Americans landing part is true but what about this is concerning the AEF.

"They had three objectives: they hoped to prevent the Allied war materiel stockpiles in Arkhangelsk from falling into German or Bolshevik hands; to mount an offensive to rescue the Czechoslovak Legion, which was stranded along the Trans-Siberian Railroad and resurrect the Eastern Front; and by defeating the Bolshevik army with the assistance of the Czechoslovak Legion, to expand anti-communist forces drawn from the local citizenry.

Severely short of troops to spare, the British and French requested that US President Woodrow Wilson provide U.S. troops for what was to be called the North Russia Campaign, or the Allied Intervention in North Russia. In July 1918, against the advice of the US War Department, Wilson agreed to a limited participation in the campaign by a contingent of U.S. Army soldiers of the 339th Infantry Regiment, that was hastily organized into the American North Russia Expeditionary Force, which came to be nicknamed the Polar Bear Expedition. Under his Aide Memoire, Wilson set the guidelines for American intervention by saying the purpose of American troops in Russia was "to guard military stores which may subsequently be needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self-defense."

That is problematic. Sure, communism was a concern in 1916 but the allies really felt betrayed by pulling out the war. (can't blame them, slaughter and all) The Japanese lost alot of troops.

Stalin's paranoia was partly from the fraternization with German troops when Stalin let the Nazis train in Russia.
The SD just slowly leakef false information on the Russian officer corp.

I kinda liked Molotov. But Stalin fucked up by killing Kirov.
posted by clavdivs at 11:31 PM on August 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


Worldwide, or at least Europe-wide socialism then would have become an immanent possibility

exactly the thing Lenin and even Stalin did not want to happen, even in " what is to be done" the accuity of even sporadic violence and terrorism is termed as factionalism that undermines the revolutions intent. No ' stimulants'... I must remember. the socialist stage.
posted by clavdivs at 12:10 AM on August 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


The post-WWII Cold War was a continuation of capitalist powers' anti-socialist policies in a different form.

I'm not sure what you mean by post WWII cold war, if by aspects of the expanding coldwar starting in 1946, no, the continuation of checking Soviet aggression is quite well documented.
The cold war started at Potsdam. Its second act was to vaporize Japanese.
posted by clavdivs at 1:09 AM on August 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


exactly the thing Lenin and even Stalin did not want to happen

Huh? It seems pretty clear that at this point the Bolsheviks were sincerely trying to precipitate world revolution, both by their attempts to spread it by force (as in their invasion of Poland) and their creation of an international organization to try and achieve that exact purpose. Events had progressed quite a long way for the Social-Democrats (as they were called then) under Tsarist oppression that Lenin had addressed in WITBD (which, I should note, is a badly misunderstood pamphlet -- see this book for more). Both Lenin and Stalin supported the advance towards Warsaw (although, as someone noted upthread, Stalin did play a role in bungling it.)

Speaking of Poland, here was what the Second Comintern Congress (written at the time of the counterattack into Poland) wrote about the situation:
What a savage irony of history is there in the facts that the restoration of Poland – which was part of the programme of revolutionary democracy and which led to the first manifestations of the international proletariat – has been achieved by imperialism with the object of counteracting the revolution; and that ‘democratic’ Poland, whose warrior-pioneers died on all of Europe’s barricades, is today playing the role of a foul and bloody tool in the thievish hands of Anglo-French gangsters – against the first workers’ republic in the world!
The cold war started at Potsdam.

Ok, regardless of when you think the Cold War started in earnest, it's pretty clear that it represented a resumption of US-USSR hostility that was briefly interrupted by their cooperation during WWII.

(FWIW, I think the Cold War began with the US reneging on the issue of reparations to the USSR at Yalta, but that's a different conversation.)
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:26 AM on August 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


Huh? It seems pretty clear that at this point the Bolsheviks were sincerely trying to precipitate world revolution.

huh?
Depending on the type of government, socialism can be used as an intermediate stage to Communism.

Ok, regardless of when you think the Cold War started in earnest

what I think is ancillary. I suggest Charles Mee, jr. article 'The cold war'
also 'Sabotage' Elizabeth Hurley Flynn, IWW publishing bureau, Oct. 1916. it's an amazing document.
posted by clavdivs at 8:32 AM on August 11, 2020


>how would World War II have worked out?

Counterfactuals are hard, but Hitler's rise to power would have been much less likely without the Soviet bogeyman. If he did somehow rise to power and attacked an even slightly stronger Poland or without Soviet help, there's a decent chance Poland would have won.
posted by Easy problem of consciousness at 3:15 PM on August 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


the continuation of checking Soviet aggression is quite well documented

The Soviet threat was a myth
The cold war began because of Russia's reluctance to allow independence to Poland. Stalin was held to have reneged on promises at Yalta. Roosevelt and Churchill had demanded that Poland be allowed a government that would be "free" and also "friendly to Russia". It was a dishonest formula. As recently as 1920, the two countries had been at war. No freely elected Polish government would be friendly to the USSR. Furthermore, as Stalin pointed out at Yalta, Russia had been twice invaded through Poland by Germany in 26 years, with devastating consequences. The invasion of 1941 had led to the deaths of 20 million Russians. Any postwar Russian government - communist, tsarist or social democratic - would have insisted on effective control at least of Poland, if not of larger areas of eastern Europe, as a buffer zone against future attacks.
...
The west made virtually no moves to allay these fears, but adopted a belligerent attitude to an imaginary military and political threat from an economically devastated and war-weary Russia. The fact that the cold war continued after Stalin's death does not, as some claim, prove the Soviets' unchanging global ambitions. The invasions of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968 were brutal acts, but were aimed at protecting Moscow's buffer zone. The same may be said of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 (as a result of which, with the help of the CIA, the Taliban came into existence). In none of these cases was there a territorial threat to the west.
The Red Army took over Eastern Europe during World War II because the Eastern European countries were either occupied by or allied with Nazi Germany. When the war ended they either stayed or set up puppet governments as a buffer zone.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:11 PM on August 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin also agreedat the Fourth Moscow Conference in October 1944 to divide Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, with Churchill agreeing that the Soviet Union's share was 50-100% control of Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:23 PM on August 11, 2020


forgive for dismissing the guardian piece, I don't do history from a guardian link, esp. Alexander who I don't agree with as he "was denounced in the House of Commons by the Labour MP Dennis Canavan as "that prizewinning cynical jackass"

ah, Percentages agreement. I can imagine
Molotov with his stubby pencil, sneaking an eraser on the percentages.
posted by clavdivs at 6:47 PM on August 11, 2020


"The Red Army took over Eastern Europe during World War II because the Eastern European countries were either occupied by or the Soviet Union was allied with Nazi Germany."
posted by romanb at 7:46 PM on August 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


That's...yeah. I was thinking of good way to state the occupied countries as Soviet spheres of influence as it makes old boundaries the old boundaries problem, again. like 6 minutes ago. I'm biased, a step parents family, who remained, was almost wiped out by the Nazis and the Soviets tried to strangle a great country. So any hypothetical argument from Soviet advancement is bullshit and kinda gro... disrespectful.
posted by clavdivs at 8:40 PM on August 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


I have to think the "needed a defensive buffer zone" argument is right up there with "We had to destroy the village in order to save it" in truthyness.

Note that after Hiroshima the idea of "buffer zones" was irrelevant. Also note that the USSR held a death grip on its colonies for decades after the development of ballistic missiles made the notion of a land invasion laughable.

The Eastern block was an Imperialist endeavor, pure and Simple--Russia got an empire, and maintained a choke hold on it as long as it could.

Seriously, this is starting to remind me of the conversation I had with the Tankie who insisted that Chernobyl was all CIA propaganda. Not just the film, the actual nuclear accident.
posted by happyroach at 9:04 PM on August 11, 2020 [5 favorites]


Chernobyl was the first wall to fall. Amazing, the CIA. In the wiki on Chernobyl, the old tactic of Whataboutism in dealing with the fallout literally and literally is of note.

"Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument."

A tactic very much alive and a tough tactic to defeat as it takes time to counter.
The CIA used a variant of the Mole and Beam, another tactic effective for it's more simplistic approach.
posted by clavdivs at 9:34 PM on August 11, 2020


The argument that "The Soviet threat was a myth" even though it "would have insisted on effective control at least of Poland, if not of larger areas of eastern Europe" appears to come from a unique understanding of the word threat.
posted by romanb at 9:51 PM on August 11, 2020 [4 favorites]


whish, that's mote and the beam.
posted by clavdivs at 12:28 PM on August 12, 2020


> One of the more interesting aspects of 1930s Poland were the internationalists, who lost out to the isolationists of Pilsudski's faction.

Badass of the Week: Jozef Pilsudski (via)
... you should know that on August 15, 1920, the battered, war-torn country of Poland defended their capital against the onslaught of Leninist Soviet Russia, halting the progress of Communism across post-World War I Europe despite being outnumbered, outgunned, and almost completely surrounded by hardcore enemy soldiers wanting nothing more than to stomp Polish faces into proletariat borscht with the bootheels of militant Bolshevism. With their own capital city at their backs, the Poles utterly demolished the entire might of the Soviet army during the “Miracle on the Vistula”, and they did it in the most badass way imaginable – by straight-on bayonet charging a superior force in the hopes of breaking their morale with one ultra-brave display of the Polish military’s giant kielbasa dongs.

In their desperate attack, sweeping through the demoralized conscript forces of the Red Army and rolling up their flank, the Poles were led by the greatest military commander in modern Polish History – Marshal Jozel Pilsudski. Take a look at that dude for a second. Honestly, his amazing moustache and badass manly 1900s crew cut alone should convince you of his crippling badassitude, but this guy was a revolutionary, bank robber, guerilla, underground writer, General, and political activist who shanked faces with a razor-sharp saber and survived hardcore imprisonments in everything from Siberian gulags and St. Petersburg Mental Institutions to Polish castles and inescapable German mountain fortresses...
posted by kliuless at 10:59 PM on August 14, 2020 [4 favorites]


What is it about Russian train robbery, 1907-1908 by Revolutionary men with badass facial hair.
posted by clavdivs at 10:38 AM on August 15, 2020


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