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Józef Haller
The body of high-ranking officers involved
in the formation, from November 1918, of
the command of the Polish Army was mostly
made up of figures well-known to the public
on account of their achievements. One such
figure was certainly Józef Haller, without
whom the volunteer Polish army in France,
called the Blue Army and, with time, also
Haller’s Army, would not have come to life. In
1918, the Army was recognized by the Entente
countries as allied forces.
Józef Haller came from a family of landed gentry
from Lesser Poland, boasting strong patriotic and
religious traditions. The vicissitudes of his life
show Poles’ tortuous paths to independence.
Haller trained to be a soldier in the Austro-
Hungarian army. After the outbreak of World
War I, he became a co-founder of the Polish
military formations fighting alongside the Austro-
-Hungarian forces. As commander of the 3rd
Regiment of the Legions he waged bloody battles
with the Russian army in the Carpathians.
Following changes on the international arena in
1918 a further alliance with the Central Powers
was becoming pointless, and thus in February
Haller renounced allegiance to Austria-Hungary
and together with his soldiers advanced to
Ukraine, taking charge of the 2nd Polish Corps
stationed there. In May 1918, the Corps was
defeated by the Germans near Kaniów; however,
Haller managed to escape to France, where he
became commander of the Blue Army, formed
a year earlier.
In April 1919 the army of approx. 70,000 well-
-armed soldiers reached Poland, where they
successfully fought against the Ukrainians in
Eastern Galicia and against the Bolsheviks during
the war of 1920.
On 10 February 1920, Józef Haller, as
commander of the Pomeranian Front,
performed a symbolic “marriage” of Poland
to the Baltic Sea in the seaside town of Puck.
The ceremony was a fitting culmination
of the General’s contribution to Poland’s
successful struggle for independence.
Andrzej Chojnowski