Actions of the Military Commission for the recreation of the Polish military literature in the years 1917–1918

Abstract

Due to the fall of the November Uprising and the abolition of the regular Polish army, the Polish military did not have, as was typical of the European armies before 1914, a specialised unit devoted to military historiography. All the historical accounts created after 1831 were either individual work or inspired by particular political forces. The Military Commission was created to design the modern military terminology and to use it as a basis in the creation of modern military writing. The aim of the article is to analyse the actions of the Military Commission for the recreation of Polish military literature from 1917 to 1918. This process included both the analysis and the diagnosis of 19th-century military writing as well as the attempts on publishing works about contemporary military expertise. The latter was done by the translation of mostly German writings with the unwilling cooperation of the Germans in providing access to the sources. The article was based on the Polish and German archival sources as well as the Polish and foreign literature on the subject.