Józef Haller: the general of the Blue Army

Few Polish soldiers of the First World War took a longer road to independence than Józef Haller. He broke through the front lines in 1918, slipped out of Russia after a lost battle, and returned to Poland at the head of an army raised in France, part of it from Polish emigrants in America.

An Austrian officer

Haller was born in 1873 in Jurczyce near Kraków¹, in Austrian Galicia. He trained as an artillery officer in the Austro-Hungarian army¹, then left the service and threw himself into Polish social work, including the Sokół gymnastic society and the early scouting movement¹.

The Legions and Rarańcza

In 1914 he joined the Polish Legions and in 1916 took command of their 2nd Brigade. When the Central Powers signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Ukraine in February 1918, granting it Polish-claimed land around Chełm¹, the brigade broke with Austria. On the night of 15 to 16 February 1918 Haller led it across the front near Rarańcza to join the Polish forces on the Russian side.

Kaniów

Haller then commanded the Polish II Corps in Ukraine. On 11 May 1918 the corps was attacked by German troops at Kaniów and, after a hard fight, forced to surrender. Haller escaped, made his way through Moscow and Murmansk, and reached France.¹

The Blue Army

In October 1918 Haller became commander of the Polish Army in France, called the Blue Army after its French horizon blue uniforms. Its ranks included former prisoners of war and a large contingent of Polish American volunteers, by most estimates more than 20,000². In the spring of 1919 the army, roughly 70,000 strong, travelled to Poland³, mostly by train across Germany⁴, bringing modern weapons, aircraft and tanks, and was soon fighting in the war with the Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia.

The wedding to the sea

In early 1920 Haller's Pomeranian Front took over the part of Pomerania awarded to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles. On 10 February 1920 at Puck he performed the symbolic wedding¹ of Poland to the sea, casting a ring into the Baltic. The ceremony became one of the best-known images of reborn Poland.

1920 and after

During the Polish-Soviet War Haller organised the volunteer army and in August 1920 commanded the Northern Front, which held the approaches to the capital⁵ during the Battle of Warsaw while Piłsudski struck from the south. He later opposed Piłsudski's coup of 1926 and was pushed out of the army. In the Second World War he served as a minister in the Polish government in exile, stayed in London after 1945 and died there in 1960. In 1993 his remains were brought back to Kraków.