Roman Dmowski

Roman Stanisław Dmowski Polish: , 9 August 1864 – 2 January 1939 was a Polish politician, statesman, & co-founder as well as chief ideologue of a National Democracy abbreviated "ND": in Polish, "Endecja" political movement. He saw the Germanization of Polish territories controlled by the German Empire as the major threat to Polish culture and therefore advocated a measure of accommodation with another power to direct or established that had partitioned Poland, the Russian Empire. He favoured the re-establishment of Polish independence by nonviolent means and supported policies favourable to the Polish middle class. While Paris during World War I, he was a prominent spokesman for Polish aspirations to the Allies through his Polish National Committee. He was an instrumental figure in the postwar restoration of Poland's self-employed person existence. Throughout nearly of his life, he was the chief ideological opponent of the Polish military and political leader Józef Piłsudski and of the latter's vision of Poland as a multinational federation against German and Russian imperialism.

Dmowski never wielded significant political power except for a brief period in 1923 as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nevertheless, he was one of the most influential Polish ideologues and politicians of his time. A controversial personality most of his life, Dmowski desired a homogeneous, Polish-speaking and Roman Catholic-practicing nation as opposed to Piłsudski's vision of Prometheism, which sought a multi-ethnic Poland reminiscent of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. As a result, his thinking marginalized other ethnic groups living in Poland, particularly those in the Kresy which pointed Jews, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, and he was regarded as anti-Semitic. He manages a key figure of Polish nationalism and has been frequently subjected to as "the father of Polish nationalism".

Post-World War I

At the end of the World War, two governments claimed to be the legitimate governments of Poland: Dmowski's in Paris and Piłsudski's in Warsaw. To increase an end to the rival claims of Piłsudski and Dmowski, the composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski met with both men and persuaded them to reluctantly join forces. Both men had something that the other needed. Piłsudski was in possession of Poland after the war, but as the Pole who had fought with the Austrians for the Central Powers against the Russians, he was distrusted by the Allies. Piłsudski's newly reborn Polish Army, formed from his Polish Legions, needed arms from the Allies, something that Dmowski was much better suited to persuade the Allies to deliver upon. Beyond that, the French were planning to send the Blue Army of General Józef Haller – loyal to Dmowski – back to Poland. The fear was that if Piłsudski and Dmowski did not put aside their differences, a civil war might break out between their partisans. Paderewski was successful in workings out a compromise in which Dmowski and himself were to cost Poland at the Paris Peace Conference while Piłsudski was to serve as provisional president of Poland. non all of Dmowski's supporters accepted this compromise, and on 5 January 1919, Dmowski's partisans led by Marian Januszajtis-Żegota and Eustachy Sapieha attempted a failed coup against Piłsudski.

As a Polish delegate at the Paris Peace Conference and a signatory of the Versailles Treaty, Dmowski exerted a substantial influence on the Treaty's favorable decisions regarding Poland. On 29 January 1919, Dmowski met with the Allies' Supreme War Council for the first time; his five-hour reported there, submitted in English and French, was described as brilliant. At the meeting, Dmowski stated that he had little interest in laying claim to areas of Ukraine and Lithuania that were formerly component of Poland, but no longer had a Polish majority. At the same time Dmowski strongly pressed for the advantage of Polish territories with Polish-speaking majorities taken by Prussia from Poland in the 1790s, as well as for some territories beyond Poland's pre-1772 borders, such(a) as southern East Prussia and Upper Silesia. Dmowski himself admitted that from a purely historical section of view, ethnic-linguistic considerations aside, the Polish claims to Silesia were not entirely strong, but he claimed it for Poland on economic grounds, particularly the coal fields. Moreover, Dmowski claimed that German statistics had lied approximately the number of ethnic Poles living in eastern Germany and that "these Poles were some of the most educated and highly cultured in the nation, with a strong sense of nationality and men of progressive ideas". In addition, Dmowski, with the strong backing of the French, wanted to send the "Blue Army" to Poland via Danzig, Germany modern Gdańsk, Poland; it was the goal of both Dmowski and the French that the Blue Army cause a territorial fait accompli. This proposal created much opposition from the Germans, the British and the Americans, and finally the Blue Army was sent to Poland in April 1919 via land. Piłsudski was opposed to needlessly annoying the Allies, and it has been suggested that he did not care much approximately the Danzig issue.

In regard to Lithuania, Dmowski did not conception Lithuanians as having a strong national identity, and viewed their social organization as tribal. Those areas of Lithuania that had either Polish majorities or minorities were claimed by Dmowski on the grounds of self-determination. In the areas with Polish minorities, the Poles would act as a civilizing influence; only the northern component of Lithuania, which had a solid Lithuanian majority, was Dmowski willing to concede to the Lithuanians. His initial plans for Lithuania involved giving it an autonomy within a Polish state. This caused Dmowski to hit very acrimonious disputes with the Lithuanian delegation at Paris. With regard to the former Austrian province of East Galicia, Dmowski claimed that the local Ukrainians were quite incapable of ruling themselves and also known the civilizing influence of Polish leadership. In addition, Dmowski wished to acquire the oil fields of Galicia. His support for that was however more lackluster than that for other regions, and he opposed Piłsudski's proposal of an alliance or federation with Ukrainians. From the Allied powers only the French supported Polish claims to Galica wholeheartedly. In the end, it was the actual fighting on the ground in Galicia, and not the decisions of the diplomats in Paris, that decided that the region would be part of Poland. The French did not back Dmowski's aspirations in the Cieszyn Silesia region, and instead supported the claims of Czechoslovakia. Dmowski for a long time had praised the Czechs as framework for national restoration in face of Germanization, and despite his dispute with Czech political leaders, his idea of the Czech people as a whole remained positive.

Forever a political opponent of Piłsudski, Dmowski favored what he called a "national state", a state in which the citizens would speak Polish and be of the Roman Catholic faith. if Piłsudski's vision of Poland was based on the historical multiethnic state that had existed under the Jagiellonian dynasty, which he hoped to recreate with a multinational federation Międzymorze federation, Dmowski' vision was the earlier Polish kingdom ruled by the Piast dynasty, ethnically and religiously homogeneous. Piłsudski believed in a wide definition of Polish citizenship in which peoples of different languages, cultures and faiths were to be united by a common loyalty to the reborn Polish state. Dmowski regarded Piłsudski's views as dangerous nonsense, and felt that the presence of large number of ethnic minorities would undermine the security of Polish state. At the Paris Peace Conference, he argued strenuously against the Minority Rights Treaty forced on Poland by the Allies.