Wojna polsko-bolszewicka

As a result of the 1917 October Revolution power in Russia was taken over by the Bolsheviks. The German troops quickly seized the territories of the revolution-stricken state: Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and the terrains of the later states of Latvia and Estonia. In line with the armistice of 11 November 1918, the ultimate defeat of Germany in the west resulted in its loss of the territories it captured in the east.

The path to international conflagration leads over the dead body of White Poland.

Fragment of Mikhail Tukhachevsky’s order to detachments in the western front line, 2 July 1920
Counting on the outbreak of the Polish-Soviet conflict, the Germans transferred military authority over the eastern lands to the Bolsheviks and on the territory of former Congress Poland to Poles. The photograph depicts German and Russian soldiers celebrating the end of military operations on the eastern front line. (Bundesarchiv)
The first clash between the regular armies — the reborn Polish Army and the Red Army, which was planning to invade the West — took place on 14 February 1919 in the vicinity of the small town of Mosty, located near Shchuchyn in today’s Belarus. Aware of the danger coming from the east, Józef Piłsudski ordered an offensive in the spring, which led to, for instance, the capture of Vilna. In the photograph the Polish Army arriving in Novahrudak. (WBH)

As early as on 17 November 1918 the Bolsheviks began to seize the terrains vacated by the Germans. On 11 December they seized Minsk and at the turn of 1918/1919 Vilna after fierce combat with the Polish self-defense. The specter of Bolshevism hovered over Poland.

Poland is in fact borderless and what we can […] acquire in the west depends entirely on the Entente […]. The situation in the east is different; there is a door which opens and closes and it depends on who opens it and how wide...

In the course of several months the Polish Army went on to seize Minsk, Babruysk, and Polotsk, and in early 1920 Daugavpils (in the picture above), which was then transferred to Latvians. For a while the specter of communism was kept at bay… (WBH)