The Plebiscite
The Paris Peace Settlement at the end of World War I placed much formerly German territory in neighboring countries, some of which had not existed at the beginning of the war. In the case of the new Polish state, the Treaty of Versailles detached some 54,000 square kilometers of territory which had formerly been part of the German Empire in order to revive the state of Poland which had disappeared as a result of the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. Many of these areas were ethnically mixed, including a considerable number of ethnic Germans. In three of these ethnically mixed areas on the new German-Polish border, however, the Allied leaders provided for border plebiscites or referenda. The areas would be occupied by Allied forces, governed in some degree by Allied commissions, and made safe for a fair vote. The most discussed of these three plebiscites in the German East was the one in Upper Silesia, since the region was one of Germany's principal industrial centers. The most important economic asset was the enormous coal-mining industry and its ancillary businesses, but the area yielded iron, zinc, and lead as well. The "Industrial Triangle" on the eastern side of the plebiscite zone—between the cities then called Beuthen, Kattowitz, and Gleiwitz—was the heart of this large industrial complex. The Upper Silesia plebiscite was therefore a plebiscite for self-determination of Upper Silesia required by the Treaty of Versailles. Both Germany and Poland valued this region not only for reasons of national feeling, but for its economic importance as well.
The area was occupied by British, French, and Italian forces, and an Interallied Committee headed by a French general, Henri Le Rond. Eventually, the plebiscite was set for 20 March 1921. Both the Poles and the Germans were allowed to organize campaign organizations. Both sides engaged also in widespread material support as a sign of the good will of the one side or the other. Hence, Polish money helped set up banks which loaned Polish farmers money on easy terms; the German government favored the region with shipments of food and other needed supplies. Each side developed secret paramilitary forces—both financed from the opposing metropoles, Warsaw or Berlin. The outstanding figure of the campaign was, in many ways, Wojciech Korfanty, a Polish politician of the national democratic direction. Korfanty was adept at carrying out an exciting political campaign, based on a populist program consisting of Polish nationalism and cultural Roman Catholicism.
The Polish side carried out two uprisings during the campaign, in August 1919 and August 1920. In the heavily Polish areas of the "Industrial Triangle" in particular, ethnic Germans were threatened, driven out, and in some cases killed. The Allies restored order in each case, but eventually these uprisings drew German "volunteers," the notorious Freikorps groups, who thrived on the violent atmosphere, though there is evidence that their post facto accounts may have been exaggerated.
An outstanding feature of the plebiscite campaign was the emergence of a strong autonomist movement, the most visible branch of which was the Bund der Oberschlesier—Związek Górnoślązaków. This organization attempted to gain either promises of autonomy from both states and eventually even independence.
There were 1,186,758 votes cast in an area inhabited by 2,073,663 persons. It resulted in 717,122 votes being cast for Germany and 483,514 for Poland. The towns and most of the villages in the plebiscite territory gave German majorities. However, the districts of Pless (Pszczyna) and Rybnik in the southeast, as well as Tarnowitz (Tarnowskie Góry) in the east and Tost-Gleiwitz (Gliwice) in the interior showed considerable Polish majorities, while in Lublinitz (Lubliniec) and Groß Strehlitz (Strzelce Opolskie) the votes cast on either side were practically equal. All the districts of the industrial zone in a narrower sense - Beuthen (Bytom), Hindenburg (Zabrze), Kattowitz (Katowice), and Königshütte (Chorzów) - had slight German majorities, though in Beuthen and Kattowitz this was due entirely to the town vote (four fifth in Kattowitz compared to an overall 60%). Many country communes of Upper Silesia had given Polish majorities. Overall, however, the Germans won the vote by a measure of 60% to 40%. This meant that a large percentage of persons of Polish heritage or ethnicity voted for Germany. The Interallied Commission deliberated, but the British proposed a more easterly border than the French, which would have given much less of the Industrial Triangle to Poland.
In late April 1921, when pro-Polish forces began to fear that the region would be partitioned according to the British plan, elements on the Polish side announced a popular uprising. Korfanty was the leading figure of the uprising, but he had much support in Upper Silesia as well as support from the Polish government in Warsaw. Korfanty called for a popular armed uprising whose aim was to maximize the territory Poland would receive in the partition. German volunteers rushed to meet this uprising, and fighting on a large scale took place in the late spring and early summer of 1921. Germanophone spokesmen and German officials complained that the French units of the Upper Silesian army of occupation were favoring the insurrection by refusing to put down their violent activities or restore order.
Twelve days after the start of the Uprising Wojciech Korfanty offered to take his Upper Silesian forces behind a line of demarcation, on condition that the released territory would not be occupied by German forces, but by Allied troops. On July 1, 1921, British troops returned to Upper Silesia to help French forces occupy this area. Simultaneously with these events, the Interallied Commission pronounced a general amnesty for the illegal actions committed during the recent violence, with the exception of acts of revenge and cruelty. The German defense force was finally withdrawn.
Because the Allied Supreme Council was unable to come to an agreement on the partition of the Upper Silesian territory on the basis of the confusing plebiscite results, a solution was found by turning the question over to the Council of the League of Nations. Agreements between the Germans and Poles in Upper Silesia and appeals issued by both sides, as well as the dispatch of six battalions of Allied troops and the disbandment of the local guards, contributed markedly to the pacification of the district. On the basis of the reports of a League commission and those of its experts, the Council awarded the greater part of the Upper Silesian industrial district to Poland. Poland obtained almost exactly half of the 1,950,000 inhabitants, viz., 965,000, but not quite a third of the territory, i.e., only 3,214.26 km² (1,255 mi²) out of 10,950.89 km² (4,265 mi²) but more than 80% of the heavy industry of the region.
The German and Polish governments, under a League of Nations recommendation, agreed to enforce protections of minority interests that would last for 15 years. Special measures were threatened in case either of the two states should refuse to participate in the drawing up of such regulations, or to accept them subsequently. In the event, the German minority remaining on the Polish side of the border suffered considerable discrimination in the subsequent decades.
The Polish Government, convinced by the economic and political power of the region and by the autonomist movement of the plebiscite campaign, decided to give Upper Silesia considerable autonomy with a Silesian Parliament as a constituency and the Silesian Voivodship Council as the executive body. On the German side the new Prussian province of Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien) with regional government in Oppeln was formed, likewise with special autonomy.
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