Key issues of the history of the Polish Legions in the historiography of the Second Polish Republic

Abstract

The article aims to show how selected Polish military historians of the interwar period referred to pivotal moments in the history of the Polish Legions (1914–1917). The author, subjectively but justifiably, distinguishes two critical points in which the processes essential for understanding this phenomenon intertwine: the very creation of the Polish Legions in 1914 and the dispute between Józef Piłsudski and Władysław Sikorski, which was ongoing since 1915. Taking into account the fact that the history of these formations was the most important founding myth of the Second Polish Republic, these matters were given a lot of attention in the interwar period and the activities of historians of the era, military ones in particular, should be assessed in the context of political and personal disputes. The analysis concerns primarily historians affiliated with the Military History Bureau and the Józef Piłsudski Institute for Research in the Modern History of Poland, Wacław Lipiński, Julian Stachiewicz and Tadeusz Pelczarski, and the essence of the proposed approach is to pick out subtle, though significant, interpretative differences.