Hot answers tagged poland
21
The pre WWII border between Poland and Germany was defined in the Treaty of Versailles, more specifically Part II, Article 27, point 7:
From the point defined above to a point to be fixed on the ground
about 2 kilometres east of Lorzendorf: the frontier as it will be
fixed in accordance with Article 88 of the present Treaty; thence in a
northerly ...
16
I wouldn't characterize post-Magna Carta England as having a weak central government. Compared to the Holy Roman Empire it had a very efficient central government, in which the parliament played an important role alongeside the king.
The early English Parliament already had a House of Commons. Hence not only the nobility was given rights but the common ...
11
You may want to read this answer while listening to a poetic song by Andrzej Sikorowski and Grzegorz Turnau, called "Nie przenoście nam stolicy do Krakowa", what means "Please don't move the capital back to Kraków", written in the 90's, after the end of communist era in Eastern Europe, when some politics started to express such ideas.
Digressions
I've ...
10
The answer is apparently: this border isn't defined anywhere. As you correctly noted, the result of the Potsdam Conference was the Oder-Neiße-line as Poland's western border, without any exception for Stettin. The sources that I looked at agree that the Soviet Union violated that agreement and gave the area around Stettin to Poland in July 1945. It is ...
9
The political reasons of both France and Britain are well explained in other answers, so I just stick to the legal matter.
France was not legally obliged by any pact to attack Soviet Union or to send troops to Poland to help. The 1921 Franco-Polish treaty specified the extent of help, which amounted to keeping the communication lines free between France and ...
8
Personally I suspect this is mostly an American (USA) steriotype, and cheifly originates from a couple of factors:
We had a couple of large waves of eastern european immigration in the Ninteeth and early Twentieth Centuries which brought large numbers of Poles who knew little or no English. We as human beings tend to percieve those who have trouble ...
8
In addition to what you list, the organizational structure, bookkeeping of the monarchs, and relative literacy levels (albeit not high levels absolutely) helped enable a democratic system to emerge.
Townhalls and church organizations allowed for some census and accountability to emerge.
The later monarchs kept relatively accurate and complete tax records ...
8
The wings varied greatly among each other, a.o. because of the production reasons, as there were no armor factories like recently. Also some hussars wore only one wing at the middle of the back.
Also there are two ways to settle the wings - in the times of Sigismund III Vasa they were sticked mainly to the saddle, while under the rules of his son ...
6
Unfortunately I don't have a resource that would have lat/long for the Polish borders pre-wwii, but I did find a detailed map that shows multiple towns that could help map to their present day locations. It's for Poland and the Baltics, but it does seem to have decent detail along the Polish/German border. Let me know if this helps at all.
6
I've finally found the exact sentences, so I'm putting here a new answer instead of the yesterday's one.
As it's written in official materials of Copernikus' Museum in Frombork, Poland, such corrections were done simply by striking out some parts of the text and it happened only with something like 8% books that survived until recent times. It was their ...
5
There was a medieval saying, "Stadluft macht Frei." (City air makes one free.)
One important aspect of England (and Greece and Rome before it) was the relative urbanization of its time. The most "progressive" and democratic elements of society tend to concentrate in cities, whereas the most conservative and pro monarchic influences are generally found in ...
5
How would Eastern European emigres have traveled across Eastern Europe to Warsaw in the early 20thC?
Warsaw is not a port. It is in the middle of the "country" (the earlier version of Poland, not today's), which is why it was chosen as the capital.
Warsaw was also something of a rail hub, as far as was the case in Eastern Europe in those days. The easiest way to get to a port such as Gdansk, on the Baltic, was by rail from Warsaw. A few other cities in ...
5
If Germany decided to invade Poland to get back East Prussia that it lost to Poland after WWII - would it be a war of independence?
One needs a lot of fantasy to call the Polish–Soviet War (this seems to be the official name of the conflict) a war of independence. In 1919 Poland was already independent - it gained its independence with the Treaty of ...
5
Interwar borders of Poland can be found on wikipedia:
The map in canadiancreed's answer is a map of Poland between Brest-Litovsk and Versalles treaties in 1918 (treaties ending WWI) and treaty of Riga in 1920 (treaty after the war between Soviet Russia nad Poland). Poles managed to defeat soviets in 1920 (see Warsaw battle, or miracle at Vistula), and ...
5
Only one person can be involved in a personal union (hence the name). The trouble with being in a personal union – that is, sharing your monarch with a different country – is that your singular monarch might make choices that serve the other country's interests at the expense of your own.
Mary held the Hungarian crown after her father's death – her sister ...
5
Poland had many foreign kings and in my opinion it does make sense to include them all into this discussion, even though only a few of them were ruling another country at the time when they accepted Polish crown. The sheer fact that they were foreigners heavily influenced their politics. In one extreme case it even resulted in moving the capital of Poland ...
4
You have to take into account the source. The quote that makes this claim was from the memoirs of a USA diplomat to Russia. While this may have been his view of things, he can't possibly have been privy to every secret communication that went back and forth between English and Polish intelligence. He was also spending his time in an environment (Russia) ...
4
This is a great question! :) Basically speaking, Poland was in state of some kind personal unions for most time from 1370 (death of last Piast king) up to Poland's collapse in 1795.
Louis's rule, as Jake Jay mentioned, was somewhat uneventful, the King resided in Hungary, and reigned Poland through regents (also, worth mentioning, he took Red Ruthenia from ...
4
The equivalent English term is robber baron for which Wiktionary provides the following definitions:
(historical) In Europe, an aristocrat who charged exorbitant fees or otherwise exacted money from people who journeyed across land or waterways which he controlled.
(chiefly US, idiomatic, usually derogatory) Especially in the 19th-century and early ...
4
Here is the map: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grosser_Nordischer_Krieg_Phase1.png
Most important Swedish allies became the Ukrainians under Mazepa. Initially, Charles XII was going south to conquer them, but until he got there they decided to join forces against Russia. Mazepa had been promised an independent Ukraine.
...
4
In addition to the points already made, I would say that religion might have played a major role in how England turned out. The English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, both of which severely damaged the power of the monarch (the former completely destroying it for a while) were partly because of religion.
Structures like the English Parliament were ...
4
I've just received a confirmation from Warsaw, that as it's written in the book "Encyklopedia Warszawy" (PWN, 1994), by that time, until January Uprising, it was just a marshal prison for criminals, which was transferred there from Baszta Mostowa (Bridge Tower). The linked source says it used to be "Więzienie Inkwizycyjne", which means prisoners temporary ...
4
"It is chivalry that has no equal in the world;
without seeing it with your own eyes,
its vigor and splendor is impossible to imagine." (Cosimo Brunetti, 1676)
The answer is both "yes", as it's completely different kind of hussars that the one mentioned in the question about effectiveness of Cossack cavalry, and "no", as there were around 20000 horses in ...
4
I cannot offer definite proof right now, but I'm almost certain (von) Mises was an Austrian citizen at least sometimes before his forced emigration to Switzerland. Consider e.g. this:
He was working for the national chamber of commerce and consulting for the Austrian government. Such roles are usually filled by citizens even today.
Lots of people kept ...
3
In order to understand the pre-war Polish-German boundary, it is worth noting that six (or five and a half) provinces were taken from Germany and given to Poland after the war.
These provinces included Silesia, Opole, Lower Silesia, and Lubuscz in the west. That is, their EASTERN boundaries had formed the German-Polish boundary before the war (as part of ...
3
A further look at the map that kubanczyk posted indicates another part of the story: the original campaign objective was indeed Moscow. However, Charles had to halt at about Smolensk (the last major stop on the eastbound route to Moscow) and to give up the idea of marching on to Moscow because his supply train (led by General Levenhaupt) couldn't make the ...
3
The Polish-Bolshevik war (as it is known in Poland, I believe rest of the world use term Polish-Soviet war) is not known as the war for independence. After all, Poland re-gained independence on November 11, 1918 - when I World War ended (which was later confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles).
In this light, things like Greater Poland Uprising, Silesian ...
3
How would Eastern European emigres have traveled across Eastern Europe to Warsaw in the early 20thC?
During Partitions of Poland, Zbaraz was a part of Austro-Hungarian Empire and there weren't good railway connections between Galician towns and those at Russian side, also because of different breadth of rails.
This way I believe your grandmother could use the railway connection between Tarnopol and Krakow, which was part of Galician Railway of Archduke ...
3
Here's what I've collected from various sources up to this time:
Hungarian Holy Lance
Historians agree that one of them belonged to Saint Stephen, first king of Hungary. Otto III took a crown for Stephen I to Gniezno and it was sent from there to Hungary, but no sources I could find clarify if the spear came to Hungary the same way. This "Polish route" is ...
3
Derogatory racial (for lack of a better word) stereotypes tell much about the people who spread them.
For instance, in my field - software development, you are not likely to come across "Polish jokes", because some of the best developers in top tech firms are Polish and Polish universities regularly outperform US teams in international programming contests. ...
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