Which battles won Polish independence?
The Battle of Warsaw in August 1920 tops our ranking: it saved the reborn state from Soviet conquest. Next come the Greater Poland Uprising of 1918 to 1919, the defense of Lwów in 1918, the Third Silesian Uprising of 1921 and the Battle of the Niemen in 1920, which led to the armistice.
Poland regained its independence in November 1918, after more than a century of partition, but its frontiers were fought for on almost every side until 1921. These thirteen battles, offensives and uprisings run from the Legions at Kostiuchnówka in 1916 to the Niemen in 1920 and the Third Silesian Uprising of 1921. They are ranked by score, with most weight on how well known each one is and on what it did for the state and its borders; see how we chose them. Each entry also gives the other side its due: Ukrainians, Germans, Lithuanians and the Soviet side had aims of their own, and Ukrainians fought both against Poland and beside it.1
1 Battle of Warsaw, 1920
- Where
- Approaches to Warsaw, from the Wkra to the Wieprz, Poland
- War
- Polish-Soviet War
- Sides
- Poland (Józef Piłsudski) vs Soviet Russia (Mikhail Tukhachevsky's Western Front)
- Strength
- About 120,000 Polish vs about 114,000 Soviet troops around Warsaw, by one Polish estimate; counts vary
- Result
- Decisive Polish victory; 60,000 to 66,000 Soviet prisoners
In July 1920 Tukhachevsky's Western Front drove on Warsaw under his order that the road to a world conflagration ran “over the corpse of White Poland”. The plan, worked out by Tadeusz Rozwadowski's General Staff from Piłsudski's concept, was to hold the bridgehead east of the capital while a strike group gathered on the Wieprz to hit the Soviet flank through a weakly held gap. By one Polish estimate about 120,000 Polish soldiers faced about 114,000 Red Army troops around the city; other counts differ.2
From 13 August the Red Army stormed the bridgehead. Radzymin, 25 km from the city center, changed hands for three days, and at Ossów on 14 August the volunteers' chaplain, Father Ignacy Skorupka, was killed in the attack. On 16 August Piłsudski's group struck north from the Wieprz, and within ten days the Soviet armies were broken. The IPN gives 25,000 Soviet dead, 66,000 prisoners and almost 50,000 men who fled into East Prussia; the Museum of Polish History, which calls the Soviet figures estimates, gives 60,000 prisoners and about 4,500 Polish dead. Myth and fact: “Miracle on the Vistula” began as a phrase of Stanisław Stroński, a right-wing journalist and declared opponent of Piłsudski, who wrote of a “miracle of the Vistula” in Rzeczpospolita on 14 August 1920; the historian Mariusz Wołos calls it almost pure propaganda.3
Why it ranks here: The battle that saved the state scores full marks on recognition, contribution, consequence and memory, with 15 August still Armed Forces Day, and drops one point only on certainty, as Soviet figures vary; 49 of 50 makes it No. 1.4
2 Greater Poland Uprising, 1918 to 1919
- Where
- Province of Posen (Greater Poland), then part of Germany
- War
- Greater Poland Uprising
- Sides
- Polish insurgents, later the Greater Poland Army, vs German troops and the Grenzschutz
- Strength
- About 15,000 insurgents at first, about 70,000 in the Greater Poland Army within weeks; German strength not reliably counted
- Result
- Insurgent victory; almost the whole province held, line fixed at Trier on 16 February 1919
In the Prussian partition the armistice of November 1918 changed nothing at first: Poznań was still under German rule. Crowds cheered Ignacy Jan Paderewski there on 26 December, and on 27 December shooting broke out. By the evening of 28 December almost all of Poznań was in Polish hands. Command passed to Major Stanisław Taczak and then to General Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, who called up three more age groups; the historian Marek Rezler puts the insurgents at about 15,000 at first and the new army at over 70,000 men fit for the front.5
The fighting spread to Zbąszyń, Rawicz, Inowrocław and hundreds of other places, and the insurgents freed almost all of Greater Poland. On 16 February 1919, at Marshal Foch's demand, the extension of the Allied armistice signed at Trier ordered Germany to stop all offensive action against the Poles and drew a demarcation line around their gains; it set no start date, so German units fought on for a time. When the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919, Greater Poland had long been Polish. Older estimates count almost 2,500 Polish dead and 6,000 wounded; the newest name-by-name research gives 2,261 dead. Myth and fact: it is often called the only Polish uprising that won, but the IPN counts four, with 1806, Sejny in 1919 and the Second Silesian Uprising.6
Why it ranks here: It won a whole province outright and has been marked by a state holiday on 27 December since 2021, so it scores full marks on contribution, consequence and memory; recognition of 4, as it is far less known abroad than Warsaw, and certainty of 4 hold it to 46.7
3 Defence of Lwów, 1918
- Where
- Lwów, Eastern Galicia (today Lviv, Ukraine)
- War
- Polish-Ukrainian War
- Sides
- Polish volunteers, then a relief column from Przemyśl, vs the forces of the West Ukrainian state
- Strength
- About 6,000 Poles took part; 60 Ukrainian officers and 1,200 men at the start, later reinforced
- Result
- City held by Poland; Ukrainian forces withdrew on the night of 21 to 22 November
Before dawn on 1 November 1918 Ukrainian soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian garrison, led by Dmytro Vitovsky, took Lwów's public buildings without bloodshed for the new Ukrainian state; the Encyclopedia of Ukraine puts their force at 60 officers and 1,200 men. For the Ukrainian movement the city belonged to Eastern Galicia, a predominantly Ukrainian land; inside it, in 1910, Poles made up 51 percent of the population, Jews 28 and Ukrainians 19.8
Polish residents rose the same day under Captain Czesław Mączyński and held the western districts, from the Sienkiewicz School to the main station. Of 6,022 Polish defenders, 427 were women and 1,422 were under 17: the Lwów Eaglets. A relief column under Lieutenant Colonel Michał Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz arrived on 20 November, and on 22 November the Ukrainians withdrew; the city stayed under siege until spring 1919.9
From 22 to 24 November the victory was followed by a pogrom in the Jewish quarter: killing, looting and arson by criminals in uniform, local mobs and soldiers of both the defense and the relief force. The counts differ: the Lwów police listed 44 dead, 11 of them Christians; Judge Zygmunt Rymowicz's government commission spoke of about 50 Jews killed, the Jewish Rescue Committee of at least 73, and a report by Polish Foreign Ministry delegates of at least 150.10
Why it ranks here: The Eaglets and their cemetery keep memory at 5, but the city stayed besieged and the province was decided only in 1919, so contribution and consequence are 4; it ties the Third Silesian Uprising on 42, on recognition and on consequence, and goes above it as the older battle.11
4 Third Silesian Uprising, 1921
- Where
- Upper Silesian plebiscite area, between Opole and Katowice
- War
- Silesian Uprisings
- Sides
- Polish insurgents under Wojciech Korfanty vs German Selbstschutz and Freikorps units
- Strength
- About 60,000 Polish insurgents; German strength not reliably counted
- Result
- Military stalemate; the partition of 20 October 1921 gave Poland most of the industrial district
The Treaty of Versailles left Upper Silesia to a plebiscite. On 20 March 1921, 59.4 percent voted for Germany and 40.3 percent for Poland, 707,605 votes against 479,359. Germany brought in over 180,000 emigrants born in the region and Poland about 10,000; emigrants made up over 19 percent of voters, while most communes in the east voted for Poland.12
Fearing an unjust division, the Poles rose on the night of 2 to 3 May 1921, with Korfanty as dictator; the Polish Senate's 2020 resolution notes that Poland backed it with men and arms. About 60,000 Poles took part and 1,218 were killed, according to a PAP account. The heaviest fighting came at Kędzierzyn and Góra Świętej Anny (Annaberg), where German Freikorps stormed the insurgents' strongest position on 23 May; by 5 July the fighting had ended without a military decision. On 20 October 1921, following a League of Nations recommendation, the Allies divided the region: Poland received 29 percent of the plebiscite area and 46 percent of its people, and with them, by PAP's count, 53 of 67 mines, 22 of 37 blast furnaces and 9 of 14 steelworks. Myth and fact: Poland did not win most of Upper Silesia; it won under a third of the land but most of the industry, a split the German museum portal LeMO calls contrary to the population's wishes, which caused outrage in Germany.13
Why it ranks here: It won Poland the core of its heavy industry, so contribution is 5, but it ended in stalemate and the Allies drew the border, so consequence is 4, like recognition and memory; it ties the defense of Lwów on 42, on recognition and on consequence, and sits just below it as the later of the two.
5 Battle of the Niemen, 1920
- Where
- Middle Niemen and Szczara, around Grodno and Lida (today Belarus and Lithuania)
- War
- Polish-Soviet War
- Sides
- Poland (2nd and 4th Armies under Józef Piłsudski) vs Soviet Russia (Tukhachevsky's Western Front)
- Strength
- 67,000 to 130,000 Polish vs 114,000 to 145,000 Soviet troops (estimates differ widely)
- Result
- Decisive Polish victory; about 40,000 prisoners; armistice in force on 18 October 1920
A month after Warsaw Tukhachevsky had rebuilt his front behind the Niemen and was planning a new offensive; according to the historian Michał Szukała his divisions held almost 114,000 men at the start of September, nearly as many as before Warsaw. The PAP account gives the two attacking Polish armies 67,000 combat troops and 30,000 in reserve, while the Lithuanian encyclopedia VLE counts 130,000 Polish and 145,000 Soviet soldiers. Both armies were worn out, and, as the IPN notes, much depended on who struck first.14
On 20 September Edward Rydz-Śmigły's 2nd Army attacked at Grodno; Tukhachevsky threw his reserves there, and villages around the city changed hands several times. The real blow came from the north. A strike group hidden in the forests of the Suwałki region crossed Lithuanian-held ground, broke weak Lithuanian resistance at Sejny and seized the Niemen bridges at Druskieniki on 22 and 23 September; VLE records heavy Lithuanian losses there. After the fight for Lida, Tukhachevsky ordered a general retreat on 26 September. Szukała and VLE both put the prisoners at about 40,000, and VLE ranks the battle second only to Warsaw in the whole war. The armistice signed in Riga on 12 October ended the fighting on 18 October and opened the way to the Peace of Riga.15
Why it ranks here: This second defeat of Tukhachevsky's armies forced the armistice and the Riga line, so it scores 5 on contribution and consequence; recognition and memory, at 3 each, live in the shadow of Warsaw and hold it to 39.
6 Komarów, 1920
- Where
- Near Komarów, east of Zamość, Lublin region, Poland
- War
- Polish-Soviet War
- Sides
- Poland (1st Cavalry Division, Colonel Juliusz Rómmel) vs Soviet Russia (1st Cavalry Army, Semyon Budyonny)
- Strength
- Two Polish cavalry brigades vs a cavalry army of about 11,600 sabres (its own report of 25 August)
- Result
- Polish victory; the 1st Cavalry Army broke out east with heavy losses
After Warsaw, Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, the most feared Soviet force of the war, finally turned north toward Lublin. By its own reports it counted 1,352 commanders, 11,581 sabres and 51 guns on 25 August. At Zamość it ran into a garrison under the Ukrainian Colonel Marko Bezruchko, an ally of Poland: the 31st Kaniów Rifles and about 400 men of his 6th Sich Division held the town for three days, 29 to 31 August, while Polish units closed a ring round the Soviet cavalry.16
On 31 August Colonel Juliusz Rómmel's 1st Cavalry Division, two brigades against four large Soviet divisions, attacked near Komarów, charging in the morning and again in the evening. A charge by the 8th Uhlans and the arrival of the 6th Cavalry Brigade decided the day; the Polish division lost several hundred men killed and wounded and about 700 horses. Myth and fact: Budyonny's army was not destroyed; it broke out east toward Hrubieszów, but it was so badly mauled that it was later withdrawn from the front. Polish historians call Komarów the largest cavalry battle of the twentieth century, and the Lithuanian encyclopedia the largest since 1813. The battle is re-enacted at Komarów every summer, a PAP report noted in 2017.17
Why it ranks here: It took the most feared Soviet army out of the campaign, so consequence is 4, but it protected the victory at Warsaw rather than winning a border itself, so contribution is 3; recognition of 3 and a living local memory of 4 give it 35.
7 Eastern Galicia Offensive, 1919
- Where
- Eastern Galicia, from Lwów to the Zbruch (today western Ukraine)
- War
- Polish-Ukrainian War
- Sides
- Poland, with Józef Haller's army from France, vs the Ukrainian Galician Army of the West Ukrainian People's Republic
- Strength
- About 50,000 Polish troops in May 1919 vs a Ukrainian army of about 40,000 to 80,000 at different stages (Encyclopedia of Ukraine)
- Result
- Polish victory; the Ukrainian army and government crossed the Zbruch, 16 to 18 July 1919
Through the winter of 1918 to 1919 the Ukrainian Galician Army besieged Lwów and in March 1919 cut its railway to Przemyśl. Each side turned down a compromise in turn: the West Ukrainian government rejected a Polish offer to divide Galicia in February and March 1919, and Poland rejected the Allied Botha line, which left Lwów to Poland and the Drohobych oil basin to the Ukrainians.18
On 14 May 1919 about 50,000 Polish troops attacked, among them divisions of Haller's army, which the Allies had let return from France against the Bolsheviks and which, as both Polish and Ukrainian accounts note, Poland had promised not to use against the Ukrainians. Within two weeks they took Stanisławów and Halicz. In June a Ukrainian counteroffensive from Czortków came within about 40 km of Lwów before it ran short of ammunition. On 25 June the Paris conference authorized Poland to occupy Eastern Galicia up to the Zbruch, and from 28 June a new offensive, led by Piłsudski in person for its first three days, drove the Ukrainian army back; on 16 to 18 July it crossed the Zbruch, with its government. For Ukrainians this was the end of the West Ukrainian People's Republic on its own soil; the Allies recognized Polish rule over Eastern Galicia only in March 1923.19
Why it ranks here: It decided the whole province, so it scores 5 on contribution and consequence, but few Polish readers know it by name and its memory is divided, for Ukrainians the loss of their western republic, so recognition and memory are 2 and it ends at 34.
8 Zadwórze, 1920
- Where
- Railway station at Zadwórze, 33 km east of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine)
- War
- Polish-Soviet War
- Sides
- Polish volunteer battalion vs Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army (6th Cavalry Division)
- Strength
- About 330 Poles vs an enemy the IPN puts at ten to twenty times stronger
- Result
- Battalion destroyed, 318 killed; Budyonny delayed and Lwów not taken
In August 1920, while the fate of the war was being decided at Warsaw, Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army was closing on Lwów. On 17 August a battalion of about 330 volunteers, most of them young men from the city, under Captain Bolesław Zajączkowski, ran into the Soviet 6th Cavalry Division near the station at Zadwórze, 33 kilometers east of Lwów.20
The Poles took a hill by the railway and beat back six cavalry charges in a fight that, by the IPN's account, lasted eleven hours. When their ammunition ran low they took cartridges from the dead and wounded; called on to surrender, Zajączkowski answered: "Boys! To the last round!" At the end he shot himself rather than be captured, and the last men, with no officers left, fought with bayonets and rifle butts until the Cossacks cut them down. Of about 330, 318 were killed. The IPN puts the enemy at more than ten times the battalion's strength in one text and twenty times in another. The day they bought let Polish units fall back to Lwów, and the city was not taken. Poles call the battle the Polish Thermopylae, and the mother of one of its unidentified dead, Konstanty Zarugiewicz, later chose the soldier who lies in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.21
Why it ranks here: The name "Polish Thermopylae" keeps the memory strong (4) and puts Zadwórze a point ahead of the Kiev Offensive, but one battalion's stand could not decide a border or the war, so contribution and consequence are 3, and outside Poland the battle is little known (recognition 3).
9 Kiev Offensive, 1920
- Where
- Right-bank Ukraine, from Volhynia and Podolia to Kyiv (Kiev)
- War
- Polish-Soviet War
- Sides
- Poland and the Ukrainian People's Republic vs Soviet Russia (12th and 14th Armies)
- Strength
- Polish 2nd and 3rd Armies with 9,000 to 11,500 Ukrainian infantry and 950 to 1,300 cavalry
- Result
- Kyiv taken on 7 May 1920, abandoned in June
In April 1920 Piłsudski allied Poland with Symon Petliura's Ukrainian People's Republic; the public was told only that Poland recognized Ukraine's right to independence, and the detailed terms were kept secret. As the historian Juliusz S. Tym explains in an IPN publication, the aim was both political and military: to build an independent Ukrainian state, take Kyiv as its capital and smash the Soviet 12th Army. Soviet and, today, Russian accounts present it as Polish aggression; the IPN historian Mirosław Szumiło calls it a preventive strike.22
The offensive opened at dawn on 25 April. Cavalry raids cut the Soviet lines apart, the Red Army fell back across the Dnieper without a pitched battle, and on 7 May troops of General Edward Rydz-Śmigły's 3rd Army entered the abandoned city together with Ukrainian units. Poland celebrated, but the people of Kyiv were far cooler, and most did not accept Petliura's government. In mid May the Red Army struck in Belarus, on 5 June Budyonny's cavalry broke the front south of Kyiv, and Rydz-Śmigły ordered the city abandoned; the 3rd Army fought its way out at Borodzianka on 11 to 13 June. Szumiło's verdict is blunt: the expedition ended in defeat.23
Why it ranks here: Nearly every Polish reader knows the march on Kyiv (recognition 4, higher than Zadwórze), but the city was held for little more than a month, no border came of it and it opened the way to the Soviet counteroffensive, so contribution is only 2 and it sits a point behind Zadwórze.
10 Żeligowski Mutiny, 1920
- Where
- Wilno (Vilnius) and the Wilno region
- War
- Polish-Lithuanian conflict of 1920
- Sides
- General Lucjan Żeligowski's "mutinous" Polish divisions vs Lithuania
- Strength
- About 15,000 men under Żeligowski, covered by over 50,000 Polish troops; Lithuanian troops gave up the city with little fighting
- Result
- Wilno taken on 9 October 1920; incorporated into Poland in 1922
Both new states wanted Wilno: for Lithuanians it was the historic capital of the Grand Duchy, while Poles stressed that the city and its surroundings were overwhelmingly Polish. In July 1920 Poland's government, seeking Allied help at Spa, agreed that Wilno should go to Lithuania, and the Red Army, having taken the city, handed it to the Lithuanians. Unable to act openly, Piłsudski asked General Lucjan Żeligowski, a native of the region, to lead a "mutiny" of troops recruited from Lithuania and Belarus, whom Warsaw would officially disown. Piłsudski admitted in public in August 1923 that the plan had been his.24
Żeligowski marched on 8 October, and on 9 October his first units entered Wilno, which the Lithuanian troops gave up with little resistance. Three days later he proclaimed a state of "Central Lithuania". Lithuanians saw a broken agreement and an act of aggression: a Lithuanian commander recalled that the attack came right after the agreement signed with Poland at Suwałki, and that his troops stopped the advance on Kaunas at Širvintos and Giedraičiai. An armistice followed on 29 November. League of Nations mediation collapsed in January 1922. A Wilno assembly, elected in a vote the Lithuanians boycotted, asked to join Poland, and the Sejm in Warsaw incorporated the region in spring 1922. The Allied Conference of Ambassadors recognized the border in March 1923, but Lithuania never did, and the two states had no normal relations until 1938.25
Why it ranks here: It decided where Wilno belonged until 1939 (contribution 4), but the war with Soviet Russia did not turn on it (consequence 3), and a memory that Poles and Lithuanians read in opposite ways scores only 2.
11 Kostiuchnówka, 1916
- Where
- Kostiuchnówka on the Styr, Volhynia (now Ukraine)
- War
- First World War (Brusilov offensive)
- Sides
- Polish Legions (in the Austro-Hungarian army) vs the Russian Empire
- Strength
- About 5,500 infantry and 800 cavalry vs about 13,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry with some 120 guns (dzieje.pl)
- Result
- Held for three days, then withdrew; about 2,000 Legion casualties
The Polish Legions went to war in 1914 on Austria-Hungary's side against Russia, men who wanted to win Polish independence by force of arms. In June 1916 General Aleksei Brusilov's great offensive broke the Austro-Hungarian front at Łuck, and the Legions, with all three brigades together, were ordered to hold the road to Kowel at Kostiuchnówka at any cost. By dzieje.pl's figures they had about 5,500 infantry and 800 cavalry against 13,000 Russian infantry and 3,000 cavalry with about 120 guns.26
The Russians attacked on 4 July after heavy shelling. Piłsudski's First Brigade held the redoubt named after him and threw back the evening assault, but the Hungarian units on the flanks gave way. The Legions fell back line by line, counterattacking with the bayonet, until on the afternoon of 6 July they were ordered to withdraw behind the Stokhid. They lost about 2,000 killed, wounded and missing, the heaviest toll of any Legion battle; the IPN historian Łukasz Przybyło reminds readers that it was a lost battle, though the front did not break. Przybyło argues that Kostiuchnówka paved the way to the Act of 5 November 1916, which put the Polish question back on the agenda of the warring powers. The dead lie in Legion cemeteries on the battlefield, such as Polska Góra.27
Why it ranks here: It is the best known of the Legions' battles and a living memory (recognition 3, memory 4), but a lost battle on another empire's front could help independence only indirectly, so contribution and consequence are 2. It ties the Defence of Płock on 29 points and goes above it on recognition.
12 Defence of Płock, 1920
- Where
- Płock and its Vistula bridge, northwest of Warsaw
- War
- Polish-Soviet War
- Sides
- Polish garrison and townspeople vs the Soviet 3rd Cavalry Corps of Gai Khan
- Strength
- About 1,200 Polish soldiers plus civilians vs about 3,500 attackers (PAP figures)
- Result
- Town held; about 250 to 270 dead, about 100 of them civilians
Tukhachevsky's plan for taking Warsaw included a sweep north of the capital: one Soviet army was to cross the Vistula at Płock and strike the city from the west. On 18 August 1920 the 3rd Cavalry Corps of Hayk Bzhishkyan, known as Gai Khan, about 3,500 men by PAP's count, attacked the town. It was held by three infantry battalions and the Tatar cavalry regiment, about 1,200 soldiers.28
The townspeople, women, children and scouts among them, joined the soldiers, and barricades went up in the streets. Major Janusz Mościcki and Captain Albert de Bure, a Frenchman from Haller's army, directed the defense of the town and the bridgehead, while gunboats of the Vistula Flotilla shelled the attackers from the river. In the part of town they took, Soviet soldiers killed 22 wounded Polish soldiers in the garrison hospital and looted, the Jewish quarter included. After almost a day of fighting the corps had to withdraw. PAP gives 250 dead, 100 of them civilians; the Płock historian Grzegorz Gołębiewski, on incomplete figures, 170 soldiers and 100 townspeople. The youngest of the fallen was a 14-year-old scout, Antolek Gradowski. In Gołębiewski's view, tying the corps down for nearly a day helped the Poles beat the Soviet armies on the Wkra.29
Why it ranks here: Płock still marks the anniversary at its garrison cemetery (memory 4), and the stand guarded the flank of the Battle of Warsaw (contribution and consequence 3), but few readers outside the region know it (recognition 2), and its numbers rest on one publisher with casualty counts that disagree (certainty 3). It ties Kostiuchnówka on 29 points and goes below it on recognition.
13 Vilnius Offensive, 1919
- Where
- Wilno (Vilnius), Lida and Nowogródek
- War
- Polish-Soviet War
- Sides
- Poland vs Soviet Russia
- Strength
- 842 Polish cavalry and about 4,000 infantry vs about 7,000 Soviet infantry around Wilno
- Result
- Wilno taken on 19 to 21 April 1919; lost again in July 1920
The Red Army had taken Wilno in January 1919. In April Piłsudski decided to strike before the Soviets could finish massing for their own offensive, and he directed the operation himself. While other groups attacked Lida, Nowogródek and Baranowicze, Lieutenant Colonel Władysław Belina-Prażmowski's cavalry, 842 sabres, was to slip through a gap in the Soviet front and cover about 100 km to Wilno, followed by General Edward Rydz-Śmigły's infantry, about 4,000 men. The Soviet Wilno group numbered about 7,000 infantry.30
The riders set off on 16 April and attacked Wilno before dawn on 19 April, seizing the station with help from railwaymen and armed Polish townspeople. By noon they held 1,000 to 1,200 prisoners, and as Soviet counterattacks grew they held on until infantry arrived on a captured train. On 21 April the Red Army left the city. On 22 April Piłsudski issued an appeal, in Polish and Lithuanian, to the people of the former Grand Duchy. Lithuania, which claimed Wilno as its historic capital, protested and rejected federation: its defense committee declared that no agreement was possible until the Poles gave Wilno back. The city stayed Polish until 14 July 1920, when the Red Army took it again.31
Why it ranks here: It took Wilno from the Red Army (contribution 4, not 5, because the city was lost again in July 1920), but few readers know it by name and its memory is divided with Lithuania (recognition and memory 2). It ties the Defence of Zamość and the Second Silesian Uprising on 28 points and on recognition and consequence, and goes above them as the older battle, one point behind Kostiuchnówka and Płock.
How we chose and ranked these battles that won Polish independence
We counted a battle, an offensive or an armed uprising on the armed road to independence from 1914 to 1921, from the Legions' battles to the fighting that won or fixed a border of the reborn Polish state against the West Ukrainian state, Germany, Soviet Russia, Lithuania or Czechoslovakia. Where a famous fight was one part of a larger battle, as Radzymin, Ossów and the counterattack from the Wieprz were parts of the Battle of Warsaw, we scored the battle as a whole. The road begins with the Legions, who fought in the First World War from 1914 before there was a Polish state; their battles count here and are scored on the same criteria, so they score low on contribution to the borders, which they could only help indirectly. Older Polish battles are in our guide to the greatest Polish battles, and Zadwórze also appears among the greatest last stands.
We considered 25 candidates and scored each one from 1 to 5 on five criteria. Recognition counts three times, because this page answers the question of which battles won Polish independence and Polish readers will judge the list by the names they know; the other four count twice, except certainty, which counts once:
- Recognition (×3). 5 if the name is known to almost every Polish reader and well beyond Poland, 1 if only specialists know it.
- Contribution to independence and borders (×2). 5 if it saved the state or won a whole province or border for it, 1 if it changed no border; the Legions' battles of 1914 to 1918 helped only indirectly, by keeping the Polish cause alive, and score 1 or 2.
- Consequence for the war's outcome (×2). 5 if it decided the outcome of its war (against Soviet Russia, the West Ukrainian state, Germany or Lithuania), 1 if it changed nothing beyond the battlefield.
- Memory (×2). 5 if it is still a living memory (a state holiday such as 15 August or 27 December, a memorial such as Ossów or the Lwów Eaglets' cemetery, a name such as the Polish Thermopylae), 1 if it is forgotten.
- Certainty (×1). 5 if the numbers and events are confirmed by independent sources, 1 if they rest on one source or are disputed.
The list is ranked by total score, not by date. Ties go to the better known battle, then to the one with the greater consequence, then to the older one. The scores are our editorial judgment, made on the evidence in the sources below, and the table shows every one of them, so you can see exactly why the Battle of Warsaw is first and why Zadwórze, the "Polish Thermopylae" that every Polish reader remembers, sits only eighth: the battalion's stand cost Budyonny a day before Lwów, but it could not decide a border or the war the way the Eastern Galicia offensive of 1919 did.
| Rank | Name | Recognition ×3 | Contribution to independence and borders ×2 | Consequence for the war's outcome ×2 | Memory ×2 | Certainty ×1 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Battle of Warsaw | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 49 |
| 2 | Greater Poland Uprising | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 46 |
| 3 | Defence of Lwów | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 42 |
| 4 | Third Silesian Uprising | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 42 |
| 5 | Battle of the Niemen | 3 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 39 |
| 6 | Komarów | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 35 |
| 7 | Eastern Galicia Offensive | 2 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 34 |
| 8 | Zadwórze | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 33 |
| 9 | Kiev Offensive | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 32 |
| 10 | Żeligowski Mutiny | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 31 |
| 11 | Kostiuchnówka | 3 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 29 |
| 12 | Defence of Płock | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 29 |
| 13 | Vilnius Offensive | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 28 |
Close calls
Five battles came close and did not make the thirteen:
Defence of Zamość, 1920. From 29 to 31 August 1920 a Polish rifle regiment and Ukrainian troops of Colonel Marko Bezruchko's 6th Division, under his command, held Zamość against Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, giving the Polish command time to close the ring that led to Komarów. Remembered by Poles and Ukrainians alike, it ties the Vilnius Offensive on points, recognition and consequence and misses as the later battle.32
Second Silesian Uprising, 1920. The rising of 19 to 25 August 1920, sparked by the murder of the Polish activist Andrzej Mielęcki, ended in success: the Allies disbanded the German-leaning security police and replaced it with a mixed Polish and German plebiscite police. It ties the Vilnius Offensive on points, recognition and consequence and misses as the later event; the Third Silesian Uprising carries the Silesian story.33
Lwów, 1920. In August 1920 Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army pressed on Lwów, which Stalin, as political commissar of the Southwestern Front, was determined to take; the city held, and the cavalry turned north toward Zamość and Lublin. Its defense is told through Zadwórze, and accounts of the fighting at the city itself are thin, so certainty is 3 and it falls a point short.34
Rarańcza, 1918. On the night of 15 to 16 February 1918, in protest at the Treaty of Brest, which gave the Chełm region to Ukraine, Józef Haller's Second Brigade broke through the front in Bukovina; about 1,600 men got across. A turning point in the Legions' politics, it was a small fight with an indirect effect on independence, so it stays below Kostiuchnówka.35
Cieszyn Silesia, 1919. On 23 January 1919 Czechoslovak troops crossed the provisional line to take all of Cieszyn Silesia, where both nations had a real claim; the hardest fighting came at Skoczów. The border came not from the fighting but from the Allies: Poland agreed at Spa in July 1920 to let them decide, and the Conference of Ambassadors divided the region on 28 July 1920.36
The Legions, 1914 to 1918: fighting before there was a state
The road to independence begins before Poland existed. The Polish Legions went to war in 1914 on the side of Austria-Hungary against Russia, with Józef Piłsudski commanding the First Brigade. Their costliest battle, Kostiuchnówka in July 1916, is number 11 in the ranking. In February 1918, in protest against the peace of Brest-Litovsk, which gave the Chełm region to Ukraine, Józef Haller's Second Brigade broke through the front at Rarańcza in Bukovina; it misses the list by four points (see the close calls). In May 1918 German troops forced the Polish II Corps to capitulate at Kaniów, and Haller escaped to France, where he took command of the Blue Army.37
When did Poland regain independence?
Poland celebrates 11 November 1918. Piłsudski, released from German internment in Magdeburg, reached Warsaw on 10 November; the next day, as the armistice ended the fighting in the West, the Regency Council handed him supreme command of the Polish forces. But the state had no agreed borders that day. They were settled by war and treaty over the next three years, ending in the east with the Peace of Riga in March 1921 and in Upper Silesia with the partition of October 1921.38
The other sides
Poland's wars were fought against neighbors with their own national hopes. Petliura's Ukrainian army, Poland's ally in 1920, was left to fight on alone after the armistice and crossed into Poland over the Zbruch on 21 November 1920, where its soldiers were interned. When Piłsudski visited the camp at Szczypiorno on 15 May 1921, Szumiło records, he told them: „Ja Was, panowie, przepraszam” (I apologize to you, gentlemen).39
Captivity was harsh on both sides. Szumiło writes that at least 15,000 Polish prisoners never returned from Soviet captivity, and that 16,000 to 18,000 Red Army prisoners died of typhus and dysentery in Polish camps. The West Ukrainian state lost Lwów in November 1918 and the rest of Eastern Galicia in 1919. Lithuania, which saw Wilno as its historic capital, lost the city to Żeligowski's troops in October 1920 and refused to recognize the new border; the two states had no normal relations until 1938.40
How the battles are remembered
Poland marks 11 November as its Independence Day, the same date that Britain, France and the Commonwealth keep as Armistice Day and the United States as Veterans Day. Behind the Polish holiday stand the battles in this guide, and the soldiers of every side who did not come home from them.41
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