Chapter II: The First Year of the German Occupation

Germany seems to have realised from the first that the management of the occupied territory of the Kingdom of Poland would present difficulties, and, apart from its systematic starvation, necessitated by the needs of her armies, and her desire for industrial emigration into Germany, she adopted a wiser policy than she did, for instance, in Belgium. Warsaw was taken on August 5, 1915, and schools were reopened there by August 25th, and both in primary and secondary classes Germany allowed Polish to be taught. German and Polish in fact were compulsory languages in schools, and German was taught by Poles. Russian, however, was completely prohibited, and no books or papers other than those that had passed a German censorship were allowed to be introduced into the territory at all. Similarly as an anti-Russian measure she permitted the Byzantine ritual for Greek Catholics, which Russia had prohibited. Now Germany had barred the teaching of Polish in schools in the Duchy of Posen and Prussian Poland, but then she had definitely annexed them and incorporated them into the German Empire, and any attempt at conciliation there was mere weakness. But she was still doubtful whether this fresh conquest was ripe for a similar coercion, and in the interval she tried with an amazingly small degree of success to establish friendly relations with the inhabitants.

Russia, moreover, in this summer of 1915, was far from disabled, and there might still be severe fighting on the Eastern frontiers of Poland. It was wise therefore, firstly, so long as no sacrifice was entailed, to seem to adopt a more liberal policy of government than Poland had previously enjoyed, in order, if possible, to make the inhabitants of the occupied territories better content with her rule than that of Russia. Just as in 1914 the motive of the Grand Duke’s proclamation was to avoid having a disloyal and discontented population in the rear of the Russian armies, so in 1915 such indulgences as were given to the Poles were granted by Germany for precisely the same reason as they had been dangled in front of them before by the Russians. Secondly, a fresh invasion of the occupied territory from the East was still to be reckoned with, and her armies might be pushed back. In that case she would have secured, once more in the rear of the enemy’s line, a population that found it had fared better under her temporary rule than under that of the power which had laid their country waste. A third alternative was that she would remain permanently in possession of Poland, and so she proceeded apace with her usual penetrative work, on which we will touch presently.

But what chiefly occupied her with regard to Poland was the determination of what she wanted to do with it. Given that Poland was not going to be reconquered by Russia, there were the proposals of her Austrian Allies, who were meditating a programme far more attractive to the Poles than was any arrangement which Germany had the slightest intention of proposing, to be digested and disposed of. In brief, this “Austrian solution” was as follows the Kingdom of Poland, hitherto Russian, should be joined to Galicia, ceded by Austria, to form a self-governing state under a Habsburg prince, who, being Catholic, would be acceptable to the nation. This scheme obtained some adherents among the Poles, especially the Poles of Galicia of the class whose interests were bound up with the Austrian government, for during the last fifty years they had received far better treatment at the hands of Austria than either Russia or Germany had granted to the provinces that fell to them through the partions. Hatred of Russia combined with hatred of Germany, who made no corresponding proposal about the cession of the Duchy of Posen, inclined many of the more moderate Polish groups, such as the League of the Polish State, to welcome some such Austrian solution as the best that they were likely to secure, and almost immediately after the German occupation of Warsaw the Austrian government published the manifesto of the Galician Supreme National Council, which set forth the general terms of the proposed arrangement. Germany strongly objected to this as inopportune in its appearance, the inopportunity chiefly consisting in the fact that she had not sanctioned it, and did not mean to. In consequence, a similar resolution of the Polish Parliamentary Club in Vienna was only privately circulated. Simultaneously Count Julius Audrassy announced that the Central Powers were agreed that Poland should never go back to Russia, that a new partion would be dangerous, and that she should form a political body with assured individuality as a state with a Polish government. This was confirmed in December, 1915, by a joint declaration of Baron Burian and Bethmann-Hollweg. As we shall see, the consideration of the Austrian solution, and the discussion over it between the two Central Empires lasted more than a year before Germany finally vetoed it, declaring on November 5, 1916, to the Poles of the Kingdom of Poland, the establishment of a State of their own. From the first she viewed this Austrian solution with distrust, as checking her own development Eastwards, for it was a very different matter from creating a state which she herself could penetrate, easily riddling it in an economical and political, and, in spite of the fiasco she was about to experience with regard to recruiting, in a military sense. But it was objectionable to contemplate a new Kingdom of Poland, subject to a Habsburg prince, interposed in the eastward march of German influence. Much might be gained, no doubt, by the withdrawal of Polish representatives from the Reichsrat who would henceforth sit in the Diet of the new state, thus increasing German preponderance in the Reichsrat. Indeed, since the occupation of part of Russian Poland by Austria, many high Polish officials in Vienna had been drafted into the Administration of Poland, and their places had been taken by Germans, but Germany was uneasy about it all. Possibly Austria, with this fresh accession of territory, and the chance of raising an army where Germany had failed, might assert an inconvenient independence of Berlin, whereas at present she was bound to her. For the dependence of Austria on Germany, her indissoluble Alliance, which amounts to exactly the same thing as her complete subjugation, was a thing not lightly to be risked.

But though the solution of the Polish question might wait, there was no reason why a revised system of taxes should do so, and by March, 1916, Germany was in receipt of a very handsome revenue from her occupied territory. The chief of these taxes were as follows:

(i.) She levied an annual contribution of about 50,000 roubles on
many towns, as she had done in Belgium.

(ii.) She passed a regulation that every Pole over 15 years of age
must take out an annual passport. For this various sums were
charged up to five roubles a head, and this tax probably produced
about 1,000,000 roubles.

(iii.) She levied a land-tax, a personal property tax, and an
“ordinary” tax, producing 34,000,000 roubles. (What the “ordinary”
tax was, does not appear. Probably it was a tax on the right of
individual existence.)

(iv.) She instituted additional taxes, i.e., stamp tax, dog tax,
fire-arm tax, producing about 8,000,000 roubles.

(v.) She levied certain permanent monthly taxes on imports, etc.

(vi.) She insisted that sums due to Russian custom authorities from
merchants in the occupied territory should be paid to her,
otherwise the goods for which these duties were liable would be
confiscated.

In fine, it was close on a year and a half after the occupation of Warsaw by the Germans that any sort of announcement was made by the Central Empires with regard to the constitution of Poland, and even when that came, as we shall see, the proposed national constitution was nothing more than an impotent conjugation of irreconcilable units who, incapable of legislation, could only quarrel among themselves. Here and there small local governments had been formed, as for instance at Lodz, where Hindenburg, in July, 1916, instituted the following:

(i.) A municipal board of ten members, two of whom were Poles, the
rest Jews or Germans.

(ii.) A municipal council of thirty-six, of whom twelve were Poles,
twelve Jews, and twelve Germans.

Such a body, it will be agreed, did not do much for local Polish autonomy, since the Jews in Poland were notoriously pro-German. But then Germany was not “out” for doing much for Polish autonomy. Her main object during the first year of her occupation was to mark time and to await the developments of her military and other operations in Russia. She wanted to avoid trouble with the Poles, to avoid any measures that should conceivably weaken her grip and strengthen that of Austria, and, perhaps above all, to avoid anything that should tend to throw the Poles back into sympathy with Russia, as her forcible annexation of the country, or her partitioning it again between herself and Austria would have done. Probably (for Russia at that date was a long way from being beaten) she thought she would be best employed in peaceful penetration, which facilitated business between the two countries.

She started a German Chamber of Commerce with its head-quarters at Warsaw, in order to encourage trade between Poland and Germany in a manner most profitable to the latter. Poles who wished to become members of it had first to give a guarantee of their German proclivities by subscribing to the War-Loan, or contracting for the German army; they then on payment of an annual subscription of 100 marks, could put their wares on the German market. That encouraged Poles to enter into relations with Germany, and Germany, entering into similar relations with Poland, flooded the country with hardware and other goods. She Germanized Warsaw, and a letter from a German resident there in 1916 proudly describes how every week it became more like a garrison town of the Fatherland. There was a government band which played in public, there were tennis clubs started, the population was vaccinated, a more sanitary drainage system was introduced, and many new German newspapers appeared. Vaccination and sporting clubs and drainage were, of course, amply looked after in Warsaw before, and this account is but part of Germany’s “make-up” as the deliverer of unhappy Poland from the barbarous conditions in which she had lived under Russian rule. Elsewhere, as at Bialystok, propagandist newspapers were printed in Polish, German and Yiddish[15] the latter for the sake of the large Jewish population there. There was a lack of bullion in Poland, for the Russians had broken into banks both there and in Galicia on their retreat, and had carried off what they could find, and so Germany introduced a worthless iron coinage, which obtained currency in a land wholly hemmed in by the armies of her and her allies. In order to confirm her grip she took over the administration of many Polish organizations, and closed others in order to withdraw the executive from native hands. This was not always a success, for, when in January, 1916, she closed the “Central Citizen Committee” in Warsaw, which regulated provisions, civic guard, Bureau for refugees, etc., the most abysmal confusion resulted, and she was forced to re-establish it again. But this time she put it in the hands of Count Ronikier, one of her most reliable partisans.

Altogether there was plenty to do in the way of organization, in opening High Schools, in establishing banks, in bringing in notaries and lawyers from Germany, in abolishing Polish juries, in furthering propagandist campaigns, and though once or twice she had to instruct her police to watch Polish students at Warsaw, who might be dangerous, and send some to other educational establishments in Galicia, in Silesia and occasionally to prison, while as a further Germanizing measure she imported into the University German students, she did not bring any intolerable hand of oppression on the peoples of the occupied territories, and the instances of her introducing forced labour where her schemes for voluntary labour had failed, are the exception rather than the rule.[16] But, while the future was still so uncertain, and the difficulties of any solution of the Polish question so immense, she delayed any decision on that point until she could give it exhaustive consideration. In the interval she let her fresh provinces enjoy such liberty as was not dangerous to her own grip, and considerably relaxed the rigour of her early days of occupation, for she did not want a rebellious population in the rear of her Eastern armies.

Lithuania, meantime, which the German armies had likewise overrun, was suffering under a far more rigid and tyrannical rule, for Germany had no notion when first she invaded it, that she would be able to retain it, but expected eventually to give it back to Russia; Poland, on the other hand, forming as it does a huge salient in the Eastern frontier of Germany, she and Austria alike were determined, if possible, never to allow to pass back under Russian rule. In the interval therefore, while Lithuania was in her hands, she determined to get as much out of it as she possibly could, and return it to Russia in a completely impoverished and disorganized condition. She had woods felled everywhere to supply her with timber, and compelled the peasants to give up to feed her armies the wheat which they had stored for the spring sowing. The army of occupation was entirely supported by the starving country; all schools were closed except for the teaching of German, and the whole province was divided up into small districts, and the inhabitants forbidden to pass from one into another. Wholesale deportations were made for forced labour, and the peasants were sent to dig trenches in the firing line. All men in the government of Vilna, between the ages of 17 and 60, were called on to report themselves and be examined as to their fitness for work. It was possible for the more well-to-do to get exemption for six months, on payment of £30, which, it was announced, would be spent in procuring warm clothes for the workers and maintenance for their families. Similarly, with a view of getting all that could be squeezed out of the country, Germany raised money there directly, and we find the Governor of Vilna issuing a proclamation for a loan of a million roubles. It was to carry interest at the rate of 5 per cent., and to be paid off at par five years after the end of the war. Should this loan not be subscribed, the naive prospectus briefly announced that any deficiency would be made good by compulsion, and the money seized would neither carry interest nor be repaid at all. With the same end in view, namely, that of giving back Lithuania in as troublous a condition as possible, she encouraged quarrels between the Bieloruski (White Russian) Committee, who demanded autonomy and separation from Russia, and the Union of Peasants, which demanded that the country should form part of Russia.

Equally marked and equally significant was her treatment of Lithuanian Jews. Whereas in Poland, which she hoped to retain, she removed the disabilities under which they had lived, and recognised their importance to herself as Germanizing agents, knowing how powerful and numerous they were (for they form 14½ per cent. of the entire population of the Kingdom of Poland, and the large majority of Polish trade passes through their hands) here in Lithuania, which at first she did not dream of being able to retain, she had no use for them except to get as much as she possibly could out of them. The most of the cash in the country was in their hands, and she resorted to a hundred tricks for getting hold of it, such as printing innumerable regulations about the tenure and lighting of houses, etc., in German only, and then fining the Jews, who could not read German, for breaking them. In the same way, when volunteers for labour in Germany did not readily come forward, since labour in Germany meant working in munition factories, which was unlawful for Russian subjects, she invented out of those who did not offer themselves, a class of “suspicious persons,” whom she forcibly expatriated. The hours of work were twelve per diem, with an elaborate system of fines and imprisonment for unpunctuality. Wages were 200 marks a month, which proved to be not so liberal since 100 marks per month were automatically deducted for board and lodging, by which was meant six feet of floor space in a barrack, and a small allowance for potatoes. Out of the remaining hundred marks, the workmen had to pay both German and Lithuanian taxes, which latter the Germans were kind enough to collect. What remained was then paid, not to the workman, but to his “community” in Lithuania, and was, on arrival there, confiscated by the military authorities. Thus Germany got her munition work done for the cost of board and lodging.

But as the months went on, and Russia showed no sign of a returning vigour that might snatch Lithuania again out of German hands, Germany began to consider what she would do with it in case she could retain it. In this connection an inspired utterance of that very astute politician, Herr Gothein, published in the autumn of 1916, shortly before a constitution--of a kind--was granted to Poland, is of interest. After giving figures that show the increase of Poles in Prussian Poland, he says “If Poland should become an independent state, it would be desirable to assign her a special sphere for internal colonization, and for this purpose Lithuania and Courland would come under discussion.”

Now, this has a two-fold significance. On the one hand it was put forth as a bait to Poland, for it hinted at the possibility of Lithuania being added to a Polish state (thus gratifying Polish Imperialistic ambitions), and on the other it shews that the creation of a large “independent” Poland formed at the expense of Russia, and in reality dependent on Germany was already under consideration in anticipation, it would seem, of the event that has since occurred, namely, the total collapse of Russia, Mittel-Europa, in fact, was broad awake, and its sagacity proved to be justified by what subsequently happened. For the collapse of Russia brought with it conditions more favourable than Germany could then have anticipated, for she never guessed how complete the collapse would be, and these conditions bear directly on her plans for Lithuania, which at the present time (April, 1918) she certainly wants to retain under her direct control. There are two reasons for this, the first that the Ukraine is (in spite of its independence) in her hands, and Lithuania forms a convenient bridge to link it up with her. It was not therefore surprising to find the _Lokal-Anzeiger_ inspired to say (March 9th) that Lithuania was not ripe for independence, since if left to herself, she would become dependent on Poland.

The second reason is that Lithuania forms a bridge to Courland, the Landesrat of which sent the following almost unanimous resolution to Berlin in March, 1918:--

(i.) It asks the German Emperor to accept the Ducal Crown of
Courland.

(ii.) It wishes to connect Courland as closely as possible with
Germany by conventions covering affairs of army, customs, trade,
railway, coinage, and law.

(iii.) It expresses a hope that all the Baltic country will be
united politically with Germany.

On this the _Lokal Anzeiger_ frankly says that if Courland wants to become part of Germany by expressed self-determination, Lithuania must necessarily become German too. The Emperor, in reply to the Courland resolution, expressed his liveliest gratification at these flattering remarks, but with an unusual modesty did not actually accept either the Ducal Crown or the allegiance of Courland, though recognizing the re-created Dukedom of Courland, as a free and independent Dukedom, and assuring it of the protection of the German Empire. In other words, it looks as if what Germany is now contemplating is that her sphere of influence should embrace Courland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine. In this case, Austria would probably be given the greater part of the Kingdom of Poland, to unite with Galicia, while the rest would go to Germany. There are, at any rate, indications that this programme is favoured by Germany.