The German Question, Part Eighty-Eight

 "The Aftermath of the Great War & The Weimar Republic"/Part Three/C

"Poland Anew"

During the war, the Allies, and most certainly American President Woodrow Wilson, agreed that an independent Polish nation should be re-established when the Great War ended. The problem was, no one knew exactly how the borders of the new nation should be drawn.* Poland had been dismembered by three European powers in the second half of the 1700s, although it temporarily appeared for a few years during Napoleon's time, only to go out of existence again upon Napoleon's defeat. Russia controlled the largest part of Poland, including Warsaw and eastern Poland; Austria (still the leading German state at that time) controlled a portion of southern Poland, and Prussia (the other dominant German state) controlled western Poland, including Poznan (Posen, in German),** which was a majority Polish city, but with a substantial German minority, which included the local government officials. Germany controlled the Russian portion for much of World War One, as the Russian armies retreated from most of the area.

When the armistice went into effect on November 11, 1918, Poles rose up in rebellion to German rule shortly thereafter in late December. Much of the Polish territory taken more than a hundred years before was again put under Polish control. Germany, in the midst of revolution and dispirited by defeat, was limited in its ability to launch a major effort to regain the lost territory, but some of the fighting was very intense, and the Germans did periodically succeed in recapturing, at least temporarily, some lost towns and villages.

This rebellion is important, because during that time, a new Polish government (pretty much separate from this rebellion) was taking shape in Warsaw to administer a reborn Poland. Further, negotiations were also simultaneously underway in Paris to put together a treaty to formally end the war (remember, technically there was only an armistice in place at that time) and make boundary adjustments. By taking so much territory, the brave Polish insurgents laid claim to a substantial parcel of land and gained the attention of the Paris negotiators, who decided to include them in the listing of "Allied" forces. It was not long before the "Warsaw" Poles and the Polish forces engaged against the Germans essentially joined together. The details of the eventual treaty would inflame many Germans, and I will deal with the treaty and I will return to the situation between Germany and Poland in the near future. The main thing to remember is, an independent Poland was a fact and again a neighbor on Germany's eastern frontier.

*While most Americans trace their ancestry to Europe, far fewer Americans, in my opinion, understood (or today, understand) the potential consequences of border adjustments between countries in Europe. Americans have to look at things in the context that many European countries are no more the size (in area) of some American states. Americans might drive a few hundred miles and cross into two, three, or even more states and never think anything about it. Doing the same thing in Europe could put you into a different country or two, complete with a different language or languages, ethnic background, religion and type of government. As nationalism grew among the various peoples of Europe, particularly in the 1800s and 1900s, some "ethnic populations" included in countries not ruled by people of their own background grew restless in the desire to be included in nations controlled by their own ethnic group. The extent of this nationalism varied from group to group, but like it or not like it, it was a fact. Just as an example, for those following this series, you have seen how the various ethnic groups of Austria-Hungary put strains on holding the multi-ethnic empire together for quite some time; a force which finally pulled Austria-Hungary apart.

** The Prussian controlled territories later became part of Germany upon unification in 1871.

WORD HISTORY: 
Deck-Since I did "thatch" in the last installment, I decided to follow with "deck," which is really the same word as "thatch." "Deck" is interesting, because it replaced an already existing English word to which it is closely related (as I noted above, actually the same word, but in altered form). It goes back to Indo European "(s)teg," which meant "cover." The "s" is in parentheses because some Indo European dialects emphasized its sound (modern Lithuanian, for instance, has "stogas" for "roof"), while Old Germanic emphasized the "t" sound (or "d" in some dialects). This gave Old Germanic "thakan," which also meant "cover, covering," which then gave Anglo-Saxon (Old English) the verb "theccan," "to cover," and the noun "thaec," "roof" (see "thatch" in previous article for the further history of this word in English). Meanwhile, in Low German and Dutch, close relatives of English, their forms of the same word developed, it seems as "deck" and "dek" (meaning "roof" or "covering") in the noun forms and "decken" and "dekken" in verb forms, and both meaning "to cover." There was heavy trade between England and northwestern Europe, the land of Dutch and Low German. With the related English word, "thaec," that became modern "thatch," already taken, so to speak (and by then having the tie to "straw" for roofing), English borrowed "dekke" from Dutch "dec" in the early to mid 1400s. It COULD be that English developed the sense of "covering for a ship," as early usage of this borrowing related to "canvas material to cover a boat." That meaning progressed to "covering for a ship," and then to "covering/roof of one area that served as a walking surface above." Modern German has "Deck" with the same meaning, but German could have taken that meaning from English, or did it just take the same sense development? I don't know. Dutch didn't develop the same nautical meaning until well after English used it in that manner; however, at about the time of the English borrowing, Low German had "(ver)deck," with a possible tie to "ship's covering." All sources noted that use for "a pack of cards," dating to the late 1500s, undoubtedly came from the notion of the "cards being stacked like the decks of a ship." "Deck the halls," as in the Christmas song, simply means "cover the halls," which was use of the verb form, also a borrowing from Dutch "dekken." This borrowed verb form replaced the closely related English form, "theccan," of the same meaning. German has "Decke"=cover; "Deckel"=lid; "Deck"=ship's deck; (verb) "decken"= to cover. Besides the German and Dutch forms, other Germanic languages have similar words, all tracing back to the same sources as the original Old English words, and having to do with "cover": West Frisian has "dekke" (to cover, wrap up), Swedish has "däck," Norwegian has "dekk," Danish has "daek." (NOTE: The verb "deck" meaning "to hit someone hard enough to knock them down," as in, "If that guy makes another remark to my wife, I'll deck him," can be seen as a separate verb or simply as another meaning of the original verb borrowed from Dutch, as it came from the notion of knocking someone to the deck of a ship in the 20th Century, perhaps patterned after the verb use of "floor" in the similar sense, which developed in the mid 1600s: "If that guy messes with me, I'll floor him.")