History
The Corps was formed at the initiative of the Chief Polish Military Committee (Naczelny Polski Komitet Wojskowy), a Polish faction in the revolutionary and split Russian Empire military. It was formed on 21 December 1917 in Soroca (now in Moldavia), then a Bessarabian region disputed by revolutionary Ukraine and Romania. The corps was formed primarily from Poles serving in the former Imperial Russian Army. It was a counterpart to the Polish I Corps in Russia formed in the north, in Belarus and the Polish III Corps in Russia in central Ukraine.
It was commanded initially by General Sylwester Stankiewicz (some sources also indicate it was briefly commanded by General Władysław Glass). In February 1918 the corps merged with the Brigade II of the Polish Legions and by late March Stankiewicz (and/or Glass) was replaced by the brigade commander, General Józef Haller.
The Corps avoided major engagements, and concentrated on protecting the Polish inhabitants of the region.
In March 1918 the corps had about 8,000 soldiers, and was equipped with weapons passed down from the Russian 29th Corps. At that time, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed between Russia and the Central Powers. The Germans demanded that the Polish forces surrender.
Read more about this topic: Polish II Corps In Russia
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“I assure you that in our next class we will concern ourselves solely with the history of Egypt, and not with the more lurid and non-curricular subject of living mummies.”
—Griffin Jay, and Reginald LeBorg. Prof. Norman (Frank Reicher)