Poland, the great power of Central Europe, once had a brief glory, was the shield of the Europeans against the Mongols, occupying the largest territory in Europe at that time, but later, the East and the West had the rise of great powers, Poland was in the junction zone between the powers, and eventually became a big country, and after several partitions, the country was destroyed, although it had undergone several difficult restorations, it was only forcibly conceived as a buffer zone in the dispute between the great powers.
Poland, standing on the plains of Eastern Europe, has a history of more than a thousand years, from the sixth century to the tenth century AD, with the successive migration of the Germanic tribes to the south and west, a branch of the Vikings went south, occupied the vacuum area after the Migration of the Germans, and after merging with the locals, formed the Slavs, the Slavs also continued to expand and move out, one of which remained in the Polish corridor and became the West Slavs.
After centuries of gestation and development, the West Slavs finally established their own state in Eastern Europe in the tenth century AD. By the 11th century, a unified Kingdom of Poland was established. During this period, farming culture and urban culture arose, and Poland immediately fell into an era of hegemony, and the country was divided into several principalities, and the division of the country lasted for two hundred years. Until the thirteenth century, with the emergence of the Mongol Iron Horse, in the face of powerful foreign enemies, the Poles chose to unite against foreign enemies, and then opened the more glorious centuries of the Kingdom of Poland.
In 1241, the Poles were defeated at the Battle of Rignitz, and after surviving the most difficult thirty years, the Poles were able to recover. In 1287-1288, when the Mongols invaded again, in the defense of Krakow, the Poles confronted the Mongols, completely blocking the expansion of the Golden Horde to the west.
At this time, Poland's geographical disadvantages were revealed. Although the Golden Horde in the east temporarily stopped its westward expansion, it still held the western part of Ukraine, and its strength was still strong, and it was eyeing the Polish corridor.
In the West, with the end of the Crusades, the Teutonic Knights, in desperate need of a place to live, invaded all the way along the southern part of the Holy Roman Empire and burned the flames of war into Poland.
Caught between the Teutonic Knights and the Golden Horde, and seeking valuable living space, the Poles chose a maverick path, first of all, during the decades of the reign of Kazimierz III, the greatest monarch in Polish history, Poland united with the Kingdom of Hungary and suppressed the Mongols.
Subsequently, Poland embarked on the most successful joint strategy in history, that is, to unite with another great power in the northeast, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The two countries signed a treaty of alliance at Krevo in 1385, in which dynastic union was carried out by marriage. Although united, the two countries also had strengths and weaknesses, and in order to win over the powerful Lithuanians, the Poles made Władysław II Jagiello, Grand Duke of Lithuania in the United Kingdom, the King of Poland.
In this way, the first power of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages was born. The glorious era of the Poles came, and for the next two or three hundred years the Polish-Lithuanian United Kingdom was largely unhindered in Eastern Europe.
The first is to show force by taking the most powerful enemy to open the knife, and in 1410, at the Battle of Grunwald, the Teutonic Knights were dealt a devastating blow, completely breaking the Teutonic Knights' way to invade the east. At the same time, it began to expand into Ukraine, occupying a large area of territory in northwest ukraine, pushing the splendor of Poland to its peak, and at its peak, even annexing Ukraine east of the Dnieper River, ruling an area of more than one million square kilometers, and was the most powerful country in Europe at that time.
But after a brief period of peaking, Poland was plunged into a long, tragic moment that lasted for hundreds of years.
Because, the East Slavs who really controlled the history of Eastern Europe rose, and from the 16th century onwards, the Grand Duchy of Moscow defeated the Tatars and established Tsarist Russia, expanding and advancing westward along the eastern European plains. Moreover, just as the so-called blessings are incomparable, the misfortune is not alone, at the beginning of the Tsarist Russia, the Swedish kingdom in the north has also begun to expand to the south, the Ottoman Empire in the south has gone all the way north, Austria in the west is not weak, and Poland is under siege.
In the mid-17th century, Poland officially began to decline, first during the Polish-Swedish War, Poland suffered a crushing defeat and lost part of the Baltic sea coast, a war that did not cause much damage to Poland. But in the ensuing Northern War, Poland was forced to join the Tsarist side and participate in the Battle against Sweden. In the end, Russia won a complete victory and seized the mouth of the Baltic Sea, and Poland had to face a powerful Russia from then on.
Surrounded by powerful foreign enemies, there were conflicts of interest and opinion within Poland, which eventually evolved into a brutal struggle for the throne, which ended in Poland experiencing decades of civil strife and a sharp decline in national strength, laying a deep foreshadowing for the subsequent transformation into the fish of the great powers.
From the 17th century to the 18th century, the world situation changed dramatically, and after experiencing the development of Peter the Great, Tsarist Russia reached its peak in the era of Catherine, defeating Ottoman Turkey, taking eastern Ukraine, directly bordering Poland, and geographically encircling Poland on three sides. While Prussia in the West rose to establish a powerful military empire in northern Germany, Austria remained powerful and controlled central Western Europe.
Throughout the 18th century, the great powers were constantly expanding, and the weakened Poland occupied the strategic thrust between East and West Europe, and naturally became the object of coveting by the great powers. Then there were the famous three partitions of Poland in history.
First partition of Poland: In the mid-to-late 18th century, there was a bud of capitalism in Poland, and in order to avoid a strong Poland, Catherine took the initiative to dominate Poland. However, at this time, in order to prevent Russia from invading the Balkans, Turkey was eager to move in the south, and Prussia and Austria also expressed strong resistance to Russia's aggressive expansion, and Austria even allied with Turkey to resist Tsarist Russia.
In order to break the alliance between Turkey and Austria, Tsarist Russia was forced to give up monopoly on Poland and unite Prussia and Austria to divide Poland. In August 1772, Russia, Prussia and Austria signed a treaty to divide Poland in St. Petersburg. Russia occupied 96,000 square kilometers of Belarus and the Baltic Sea coast in the east, Prussia occupied 38,000 square kilometers of Warmia and Pomorie, and Austria occupied 83,000 square kilometers of Krakow Province, southern Sandomierz Province, and most of Galicia.
Second partition of Poland: Under the influence of the French Revolution, Polish youth also began a revolutionary movement to save the country, a movement to recover lost land through reform. And Tsarist Russia and Prussia naturally could not sit idly by, so in 1792 they sent troops to Poland together, and the 100,000-strong army of Tsarist Russia drove straight in, directly occupying 250,000 square kilometers of land in the entire eastern Poland; Not to be outdone, Prussia occupied the cities of Gdansk and Toruń, several provinces of greater Poland, and part of Mazovshe, covering an area of 58,000 square kilometers.
The Third Partition of Poland: After two partitions, Poland was largely extinct, with all classes in the country dissatisfied with the status quo and rebelling, with Kościuszko leading the Polish people in a massive uprising and repeatedly defeating the Russian troops that had come to encircle and suppress them. Finally, at the end of 1794, Russia, Prussia, and Austria jointly sent troops to quell the uprising in Poland. In order to prevent the recurrence of chaos in Poland, the three countries decided to solve the problem by "completely erasing independent Poland", and signed an agreement in 1795 to divide all Polish territory from the east, south and west.
Since then, the once powerful Kingdom of Poland has disappeared from the map of Europe for 123 years, during which the Polish revolts have continued, but in the end it has not been able to liberate Poland and re-establish the country. Until the first world war, several years of war, coupled with the flu raging, the German-Austrian allies lacked troops, in order to win over the Poles, promised to allow poles to establish an independent state, as a condition, recruited Poles to join the army.
In 1918, the protracted war led to the collective collapse of the European powers, first of all, Tsarist Russia took the lead in the end, and after the February Revolution, it withdrew from the war in a panic. Germany and Austria were on the verge of collapse, and the Poles decided to honor their promise of independence, restoring independence in November 1918 under Piłsudsky's leadership.
At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Entente decided to allow Poland to become independent for their own interests and drew a polish-Russian dividing line, but the Poles were not satisfied and wanted to take back the land that had been annexed by Tsarist Russia, so a war broke out with the nascent Soviet regime, known as the Soviet-Polish War. The result was a crushing victory for Poland, which wiped out the family in the First World War, but fortunately seized a large area of territory from the hands of The Soviet Union and achieved a temporary victory, but laid the groundwork for the second subjugation of the country.
After several five-year plans, the Soviet regime achieved full industrialization. Stalin, on the other hand, would not forget the humiliation of the Soviet Union in the Soviet-Polish War, and that Nazi Germany was growing stronger every day, and it was necessary to take a buffer zone on the western border to curb the expansion of the German army.
In 1939, while Germany blitzed western Poland and opened the prelude to World War II, the Soviet Union also marched a large army into eastern Poland, Germany occupied the Polish corridor on the south bank of the Baltic Sea, the Soviet Union occupied western Ukraine and western Belarus, and the Soviet Union divided Poland with the line of the Pissa River- Nalev River - Vistula River - Sang River as the boundary, Poland's second subjugation, the Polish army casualties and captured a total of one million people.
At the end of World War II, the Soviet army advanced to Warsaw, the warsaw people organized the Warsaw Uprising, in response to the Soviet attack, and the Soviet Union did not pay attention to the Polish people's counterattack, refused to help, directly led to the Warsaw Uprising was suppressed by the German army, Poland paid the price of tens of thousands of troops and more than 200,000 civilian deaths, warsaw city was razed to the ground.
Some six million Poles were killed throughout World War II, and under the Yalta Agreement, the country was restored after the war. After World War II, the Soviet Union did not abandon the land it had occupied in 1939, and with the Curzon Line as the boundary, the territory of Poland was pushed two hundred kilometers to the west, and even the hinterland of national origin was almost lost.
Therefore, the geographical location can be said to determine the rise and fall of the country, if the country can not develop in time, it will often become a knife under the fish, in the strategic location of Poland, the Middle East countries are the best proof.