POW has become legendary. The clandestine army, fiercely acting against both partitioners, became a symbol of the struggle for independence, and years later - also a model for the Home Army. Who really was behind this success?
The Polish Military Organization was established in Warsaw in the earliest days of the First World War.
Little can be said about the exact origins of this new conspiratorial network behind enemy lines. In a situation where the departure of Kadrówka did not lead to the outbreak of an uprising against the Romanovs, and the Austrian army, instead of entering hostile territory like butter, crashed into a granite wall, it was simply necessary to establish underground structures, gathering people opposing the Russian authorities.
Forgotten founding mother
A founding meeting was quickly held, attended by the leaders of the so far competing, subversive unions. Of course, conflicting ambitions and personal animosities emerged. The witnesses of the events could not agree on who came out with the initiative, who gave way to whom, who showed disinterested patriotism, and who showed an unsuitable will for power ...
We know two things for sure. The meeting was mediated by the local women's organization. Not only that - an influential activist, Maria Kwiatkowska, was invited to the direct debates, not as a silent witness, but as one of the four main negotiators.
It was the first time that a woman played a leading official role at the dawn of an independence organization. And not only at the very beginning, as Kwiatkowska was immediately appointed head of the Women's Department of the Polish Military Organization.
What does Grandpa say?
The well-known misogynist Piłsudski would certainly not like such a development. He was getting a white fever just thinking that someone could say the words "woman" and "military" in one sentence. The commandant made great efforts to remove all women from the Legions as soon as possible. For a long time he also prevented them from joining the shooting associations and officially forbade them from participating in the Active Combat Association.
Commemorative badge of the Polish Military Organization (photo:Olerys, license CC ASA 3.0U).
If he could, he would also have blocked women's access to the POW. But no one asked "Grandpa" for his opinion.
"I founded POW by sending [Tadeusz] Żuliński to Warsaw at the beginning of the war in 1914 to organize an equivalent of what in the history of the legion was a movement of the First Brigade," Piłsudski himself wrote years later. Maybe he didn't want to tell the truth, or maybe he had already forgotten what the truth looked like. In any case, it was completely missing from reality.
The Polish Military Organization was established in a similar way to the already mentioned and existing for a few years the Union of Active Combat - grassroots, under the pressure of the moment, without waiting for acceptance from higher factors. Piłsudski, in fact, sent the aforementioned Żuliński, the commander of the POW, to Warsaw and ordered him to take control of the organization. Except… he did it way too late.
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By the time the Commander's man reached his destination, the POW had been in existence for about nine or ten weeks. Even the name "Polish Military Organization", famous today, was probably not influenced by my grandfather.
The backbone of the conspiracy
When Piłsudski's direct nominee took matters into his own hands, the Women's Branch of the POW was in full swing and proved its worth every day. "We foresaw rightly that the women's action would become part of our work in the Russian rear," recalled one of the POW commanders and the future author of the obsessively detailed chronicle of the Marshal's life, Wacław Jędrzejewicz. He was right, but it was quite an understatement on his part.
Women quickly took the lead in the conspiracy, and they formed the bloodstream of underground activities. They manufactured passports, collected funds, distributed illegal prints, installed bombs, stored weapons ...
Tadeusz Żuliński. It was not him who founded the Polish Military Organization.
They also dealt with smuggling weapons and only from time to time complained that it was easier to do it before the war, when the enemy was the tsarist police. Now they were discovering that a military rifle was much more difficult to smuggle than an inconspicuous pistol. "If I do not know how to pack a rifle carefully, it does not want to resemble anything else, but a rifle" - noted the deputy Irena Wasiutyńska - "When we carried such an art, we had to mask it well, because it could not take the shape of a roller shutter roller anyway".
Women were also full of office work, in quarters, courier tasks, and finally - in the intelligence service, for which they were perfectly prepared for the first months of the war and activities in personnel departments .
At the heart of the struggle
In general, espionage operations have largely become the domain of female soldiers. The key points of the capital - from the Kierbedzia Bridge, through Krakowskie Przemieście to Aleje Jerozolimskie - were constantly patrolled by members of the Female Units, regardless of the time and weather conditions.
The briefings of the highest instance, the POW Intelligence Bureau, were held in the apartment of an inconspicuous teacher, Zofia Szteynówna. There were also kept, of course in the strictest secrecy, the priceless records of the organization. They were hidden so carefully that even when the premises were searched by hostile services, they did not manage to find any documentation. Materials needed by the troops at the front were prepared at the house of Maria Gieysztorówna, usually in the presence of the highest commanders of the entire organization, and then sent directly to the disposal of the first brigade of the Legions.
POW female department. Members of 3rd and 4th platoons.
If it was impossible to do it through couriers, they reached for… the press. Women placed special announcements in newspapers (but of course only those that reached the military) about missing dogs or everyday items placed on the market. A code was used, which was then decrypted by signalers of the Legions. The practice developed on a large scale, because, however, she recalled from the peowiaczek:"the girls giving the advertisements heard a lot of amazed remarks about the incredible number of dogs dying in Warsaw for some time".
In turn, the apartment of a certain Maria Optołowiczówna became a contact and transfer point for fighters from outside Warsaw. A similar function was to be performed by the locality of a certain Sołomowiczówna. Perhaps it is about one and the same person:traditionally, Poles did not care for women's merits after regaining independence, and we do not even fully know about many members of the POW, what their names were, let alone who exactly they were.
Even the members of the so-called sanitary section - apparently performing a pacifist activity, focusing on the issue of caring for the wounded and the sick - to a considerable extent supported the Polish intelligence. Many of them found employment in Warsaw military hospitals. They made friends with Russian soldiers, tricked them into extracting valuable information, analyzing their record cards and even stole their papers when needed.
Sometimes, an attentive conversation was enough:after all, the soldiers talked about the battles they had gone through, about triumphs and defeats, about lost colleagues or about the mood at the front. A little attention, compassion and genuine interest were enough to start the seemingly inaccessible veterans pouring out endless fountains of words.
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Hard to imagine
"The members of the Women's Department gave enormous services," emphasizes Professor Jerzy Gaul, the best specialist in the espionage activities of the POW. Wacław Jędrzejewicz, who watched the bustle of women up close, had a similar opinion. "It's just hard to imagine what our intelligence work would be like without this help," he said.
However, the belief in the merits of women did not equal the acceptance of their work. Piłsudski and his people tolerated the presence of their friends in the conspiracy only because it was absolutely necessary for the time being.
On the eve of the German offensive in the spring and summer of 1915, which was to oust the Russians as far as the eastern border of the Congress Kingdom, ladies were visible at every stage of the work. Not only were heavy fights expected, but also that the Russians would not accept defeat and would not allow themselves to tear Polish lands away:they would set them on fire sooner. The conspiratorial Polish Military Organization had to be prepared for battle, so as to intervene depending on the development of events. And for that, intelligence data was needed.
Scouts of POW from Kielce (1916, left) and one of the most distinguished members of the Women's Division, Stanisława Waroczewska.
A member of the Women's Division, Jadwiga Barthel de Weydenthal, recalled:“It was necessary, if possible, to make a plan, to list all buildings, such as barracks, prisons and factories; mark street bends, coal yards, fences, scaffolding, circuses and pedestrian houses, and list the number and positions of police stations.
Resistance points and warehouses were organized, to which food supplies and sanitary materials were directed. Women also took part in the works aimed at preventing the bridges over the Vistula from being blown up, and thus paralyzing the agglomeration. Unexpectedly, however, the Russians withdrew without any shots. And they did the work of destruction not in Warsaw, but in the eastern parts of Poland, destroying crops, burning farms, and devastating villages and towns. Fortunately, the tremendous work of the prisoners did not have to bear fruit. Besides, their efforts were surprisingly easily forgotten.
The Germans had barely settled down on the Vistula River and introduced their own regime, and the optimistic authorities of the POW ordered ... to liquidate the supposedly unnecessary Women's Branch of the organization overnight. And as you might guess:this decision was quickly regretted.