On 27 December 1918 shooting broke out in Poznań, then still a German city, after rival Polish and German demonstrations set off by the visit of Ignacy Jan Paderewski. It began the Greater Poland Uprising. By mid-January the insurgents had freed almost the whole region, and the Treaty of Versailles gave it to reborn Poland.1
Full story · ~12 min readThe Greater Poland Uprising, 1918 to 1919: Poznań risesOn 27 December 1918 Poznań rose against German rule; seven weeks later the Armistice of Trier froze the front and Versailles gave Greater Poland to Poland.Read the full story ›
A German province with a Polish majority
When World War I ended in November 1918, Poland was independent again, but the province of Posen, the heart of Greater Poland, was still part of Germany. Germany itself was shaken by revolution, the armistice said nothing about a Polish state, and local Polish leaders feared that the region would be left inside the new Germany.2
On 26 December Paderewski, the pianist and statesman, arrived in Poznań and stayed at the Bazar hotel, and crowds of Poles turned out to greet him. The historian Marek Rezler, quoted by the Polish Press Agency, stresses that Paderewski did not call for an uprising and tried to calm the mood, since a fight in a city that was still formally German could cause a diplomatic incident.3
The first shots
On 27 December German nationalists marched through the city in answer to the Polish demonstrations of the day before. In the afternoon the two crowds met outside the Bazar, and a shot was fired. It is not known which side fired it. The fighting spread, and within a few days the insurgents held most of Poznań.4
The last German stronghold near the city was the air station at Ławica. The insurgents stormed it on 6 January 1919 and took its 26 aircraft. Paweł Głuszek of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) adds that about 215 more aircraft in parts, or as many as 300 by other accounts, were found in the airship hangar at Winiary, and calls it the largest haul of booty in the history of the Polish army. The captured aircraft became the core of the Polish air arm.5 › Battle of Ławica, 1919
From uprising to front
By 15 January 1919 the Polish units had freed almost all of Greater Poland apart from parts of the northwest and south. The uprising was led at first by Stanisław Taczak, a captain when he took command on 28 December and a major from 2 January 1919, and from mid-January by General Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki. The Armistice of Trier, signed on 16 February 1919, confirmed the insurgents' gains and halted the fighting along a demarcation line, though skirmishes went on until June. The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, gave almost all of Greater Poland to Poland.6
The losses are given differently. The IPN gives an estimate of almost 2,500 dead, counting those who died of wounds or disease, and 6,000 wounded, and cites recent research on the named list of the dead that counts 2,261; Paweł Anders, in a guide published in 1998, gave about 2,000 Poles killed and 4,000 to 6,000 wounded. Since 2021, 27 December has been a Polish state holiday, the National Day of the Victorious Greater Poland Uprising. The wider story of how Poland's borders were won is told in The Battles That Won Polish Independence.7
