A Man in No Man's Land

Won't deny that WW1 was a bloodbath, especially since the people from my homeland had to fight against themselves - German emperors from the Hohenzollern Dynasty and Austro-Hungarian Emperor-Kings* from the Habsburg dynasty forced Poles from the Prussian and Austrian partitions to fight their brothers, who had the misfortune to live under Romanov's yokel between 1795 and 1918.

But at least the 11th November 1918 also brought my homeland back to existence after the 123 years of partitions; the Fins, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks**, Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians, Bosnians, and Macedonians*** also regained their independence that day. Despite all those people had to pay in blood dearly for their lands, they did achieve success, which is a good reason to celebrate.


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*The monarchs from the Habsburg Dynasty titled themselves "Der Kaiser und der Koenig" = "the emperor (of Austrian Empire) and the king (of the Hungarian Kingdom)", which was their official title.
**as Czechoslovakia.
***The Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians, and Slovenians, developed into Yugoslavia ("The Southern Slavic Land").

Damn so in a way the First World War was kind like a semi civil war for the Polish. I feel like for Poland itself it was a tough road ahead. With it being conquered by the Nazis for six years then the Communist for almost 50, it seems like it had to deal with a lot before truly becoming independent. Not to mention for the last few groups were part of Yugoslavia which that is a whole can of worms (American idiom for really messed up situations) there.

As for the US, THe first World War really isn't talked much here since it was rather overshadowed by it's bigger sequel. Not to mentioned some Americans wondered was it really worth getting involved in the First World War. 

It surely was a tough road - apart from the frontline issues, our political leaders from the early 20th century were divided in their beliefs:

- Józef Piłsudski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Pi%C5%82sudski labeled himself as a "socialist" as an opponent of imperialism in any form (he wasn't opposing private property) - today he'd belong to a political center;

- Roman Dmowski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Dmowski had rather far-right-wing beliefs (heritage of living under the Russian partition), had he lived nowadays you could call him "an extremist" and it would haven't been an exaggeration;

- Ignacy Jan Paderewski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_Jan_Paderewski did the most effort in the foreign policy to have my homeland reborn, including his influence on Woodrow Wilson;

- Ignacy Daszyński https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_Daszy%C5%84ski - despite having leftist beliefs, he did much to organize roots for our government in the wake of our independence; when the World War 1 ended, we already had a functioning administration in the Polish land, despite the partition heritage;

- Wincenty Witos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wincenty_Witos formed the Polish People's Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_People%27s_Party - the first political party here, which has been remaining active till nowadays (since 1903) ; the merit is that he gave our farmers a representation in the parliament (originally Austro-Hungarian, then in the Polish one), so they could feel like a part of the society.

Despite such differences in views, all those statesmen somehow managed to set the disputes aside and make my homeland reborn.


The irony is that both the US involvement in WW1 and my homeland being reborn were caused by Wilhelm II Hohenzollern's policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II,_German_Emperor :

- the Kaiser did nothing to calm down the RMS Lusitania sinking incident - instead of punishing the submarine captain responsible for the attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Schwieger, he kept renewing him for his actions;
- his policy towards the Poles from the Prussian partition only deepened the mutual mistrust - after numerous attempts of weeding out the Polish spirit (including harassment of children done by German teachers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrze%C5%9Bnia_children_strike), Willie never understood why the victims of forced Germanization weren't willing to die for him against Russians and the Western Allies.


Conflicts like the Great War should be a lesson for mankind to build societies on cooperation, not on conquest and terror. Wish the people (as a whole) had more mind to develop the proper conclusions from such experiences.