Back in 1883, thirty years before World War II, Otto von Bismarck told Prince Hohenlohe that a war between Russia and Germany would inevitably lead to the creation of an independent Poland.
Given these views, is it any wonder that Germany never even tried to present any preferences to the Poles. On the contrary, the Germans, the Germans, and even the Bavarians or Saxons, which is not important in this context, they always and whenever possible led an active Germanization of Poznan and West Prussia.
And not only. We'd better keep silent about Silesia, Pomerania and a few other regions. But only for now. In this study, concerning the almost exclusive "Russian answer to the Polish question", it is no longer so important that Bismarck, by the way, who worked for many years as an ambassador to Russia, preferred to call all these processes nothing more than "depolonization."
Everything Polish in Germany, as soon as it united at the very least, tried not only to restrict, but to alter it in the German way. If the population of the Poznan Duchy wanted to rely on something, then only through "Germanization", that is, the trivial "Germanization".
However, in doing so, the Hohenzollerns still had to take into account the powerful influence that the Catholic Church had among the Poles. As you know, the Vatican actually lost most of the possessions and at least some kind of power in Germany after 1806, when Napoleon liquidated the Holy Roman Empire and forced the Habsburgs to confine themselves to Austria.
With the creation of the new German Empire - the Second Reich, the papacy pinned great hopes. But for this, the preponderance of the Catholic population in the new Germany was urgently needed, which was hindered by the leadership of Protestant Prussia and its Lutheran allies, confirmed by "fire and sword".
On the other hand, the Poles in this respect were a very staunch and united nation in their faith. In Berlin, they were not going to "go to bed", and there it was no accident that they dreamed of Mitteleurope (Central Europe). And accordingly, they consistently adhered to the rigid line of settling the "Polish lands" by Protestant, mainly Prussian colonists.
Not too well known is the characteristic statement of Wilhelm II about the Poles, which he made in March 1903 under the influence of reports of unrest on the territory of the Polish provinces of Prussia. Talking to a Russian military agent, Colonel Shebeko, the Kaiser admitted: "This is an extremely dangerous people. There can be no other way to treat them but to keep them constantly crushed under your feet!"
With these words, the interlocutor of the crown-bearer noted, "the emperor's mobile face took on a harsh expression, his eyes glittered with an unkind fire, and the determination to bring these feelings into actual fulfillment was obvious." This, in the opinion of the Russian attache, meant "considerable troubles and difficulties" for Germany (1).
It is characteristic that in the Duchy of Poznan, the rapidly growing wealthy Polish landowners were completely loyal subjects of the Prussian king, and there was no question of national uprisings, which were in the Russian part of Poland. When, in the seventies, Bismarck carried out a system of protectionism and Germany introduced duties on bread, as a result of which prices increased and the landlord's rent increased, the Polish landowners again solidified themselves with the Prussian cadets. But, despite the complete loyalty of the Polish landowners, Bismarck considers them a stronghold of Polish nationalism and "enemies of the German state" (2).
“Beat the Poles so that they lose faith in life; I fully sympathize with their situation, but if we want to exist, we have no choice but to exterminate them; the wolf is not to blame for the fact that God created him as he is, but they kill him for this, if they can. So back in 1861, Otto von Bismarck, then the head of the Prussian government, wrote to his sister Malvina.
Even in the 21st century, after Nazism, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such zoological argumentation is frankly frightening. This is not hatred, hatred presupposes some kind of hint of equality, this is something worse, none of Russian politicians dared to do such a thing. “Our geographical position and the mixture of both nationalities in the eastern provinces, including Silesia, makes us, as far as possible, postpone the emergence of the Polish question” - this is from the much later Bismarck (3), when he writes his memoirs, balanced and without emotion. In addition, "Memories" are compiled, as you know, for posterity.
And yet for the first time to seriously draw attention to themselves the Poles actually forced Bismarck themselves - in 1863, when the "Rebellion" threatened to spread to the Prussian duchy of Posen. Despite the fact that the majority of the population there were Poles, let us repeat, quite loyal to Berlin, no one tried to pursue a policy of "Prussification" there.
Therefore, the aspiring chancellor opposed the rebels solely to restore ties with Russia, undermined after the Crimean War. Petersburg had already experienced the tragedy of Sevastopol and looked at France with sympathy, but the pro-Polish sentiments among the French, be they republicans or clericals, somewhat complicated the prospect of an alliance.
Bismarck decided to play on this by concluding the Alvensleben Convention, which provided for the cooperation of the Prussian and Russian troops in suppressing the uprising. As soon as the Russian command recognized the possibility of a retreat, the chancellor publicly announced that in this case the Prussian troops would move forward and form a personal union of Prussia-Poland.
To the warning of the British envoy in Berlin that "Europe will not tolerate such an aggressive policy," Bismarck replied with the famous question: "Who is Europe?" In the end, Napoleon III had to come up with an anti-Polish demarche, but the Prussian chancellor actually received a new headache in response - the "Polish question". But the alliance between Russia and France was delayed by almost twenty years.
In Bismarck's view, the restoration of Poland (and the rebels demanded the borders of 1772, before the first partition, no more, no less) would cut "the most important tendons of Prussia." The Chancellor understood that in this case Posen (present-day Poznan with its surroundings), West Prussia with Danzig and partly East Prussia (Ermland) would become Polish.
On February 7, 1863, the head of the Prussian Cabinet of Ministers gave the following order to the envoy in London: “The creation of an independent Polish state between Silesia and East Prussia, subject to persistent claims to Posen and the mouth of the Vistula, would create a permanent threat to Prussia, and would also neutralize a part of the Prussian army equal to the largest military contingent that the new Poland would be able to deploy. We would never have been able to satisfy at our expense the claims made by this new neighbor. Then, apart from Posen and Danzig, they would have made claims to Silesia and East Prussia, and on maps reflecting the dreams of the Polish rebels, Pomerania would be called a Polish province up to the Oder."
Since that time, the German Chancellor regards it is Poland, and not the western provinces of the country, as a threat to the foundations of the Prussian state. And this despite the fact that in 1866 it was in the West of Germany that Austria-Hungary found allies in the battle with Prussia. However, it looked like their "German" dispute, which can be resolved, forgetting for a while about the "Slavs".
Bismarck, not without reason, feared socialists or religious fanatics, but he could not imagine how much power nationalism would gain in the 20th century. Not only among monarchs, but also among such eminent politicians as Metternich, and after him among the "iron chancellors" Bismarck and Gorchakov, the great powers of the 19th century were in no way associated with national movements.
Incidentally, such views were not refuted by the experience of revolutionary France or Italy. There, the changes, national in essence, turned into a recreation of, one might say, "old" royalist states, albeit in a slightly different - "bourgeois" guise. The Marxists were the closest to understanding the role of the popular masses, but they also evaluated the potential of the class movement much higher than the strength of nationalism.
And the old chancellor always thought in terms of the "European concert", in which only a supporting role was assigned to the national movements. Hence the arrogant attitude towards the Poles, a kind of contempt for small and even medium-sized states - these same and their rather large state have not been able to defend.
Left with nothing, the Poles, both in Russia and in Austria, posed, however, a constant threat to the interests of Prussia. That is why the Bismarckian heritage was so unambiguous anti-Polish in nature. The imperialist circles of Germany invariably built their aggressive plans on the use of national conflicts within the tsarist monarchy, flirting through Austria with the Polish and Ukrainian separatists, and through Turkey with the Muslim ones.
The Russian Revolution of 1905, when anti-Russian sentiments rose sharply on the outskirts, gave an additional impetus to the self-confidence of the German Kaiser and his entourage. What the nationalist demands of the outskirts turned into the two revolutions of 1917 - this is already the topic of our next essays.
1. RGVIA. Fund 2000, op. 1, file 564, sheet 19-19ob., Shebeko - to the General Staff, Berlin, March 14, 1903
2. Markhlevsky Yu. From the history of Poland, Moscow, 1925, pp. 44-45.
3. Gedanken und Erinerungen, chap. XV, op. Quoted from: O. von Bismarck, "Memories, memoirs", vol. 1, p. 431-432, Moscow-Minsk, 2002
