ACT 1
“The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.”
-Otto von Bismarck.
ACT 1:
“The White Negroes of Europe”: The History of Persecution of the Polish People, by Piotr S. Wandycz.
-Otto von Bismarck.
ACT 1:
“The White Negroes of Europe”: The History of Persecution of the Polish People, by Piotr S. Wandycz.
It would be incredibly hard to pinpoint the moment when Poles became the most undesirable people of the European continent, taking the crown that previously belonged to the Jews. Effectively, ever since the concept of “Polish” has existed, someone somewhere has had a reason to hate us. Like the Spanish, the Poles’ golden age lies far back in the past, when ships were still made of wood and most Slavs of the world lived under the yoke of some Germanic or Turkic oppressor. Unlike the Spanish, however, the Polish descent into powerlessness was dramatic and, although not unpredictable, very swift. The Kingdom of Spain had the luck of lying at the very tip of peninsular Europe, surrounded by water, while Poland was located on a flat plain, without a single friendly neighbor to speak of.
At least some of the blame for this can be placed on the complacency of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s rulers, as they silently watched the rise of Prussia in the 18th century and did very little to stop it. Furthermore, there was no worst point in history to double down on serfdom, as the Polish nobility did during the country's twilight. When the Industrial Revolution hit Western Europe, Poland, as well as its West Slavic neighbors under the Austrian crown, was tied down as a grain exporter to bustling French and British cities, all to benefit the nobility of the country. By the 1760’s, the Polish economy had been completely surpassed by regions it previously dwarfed, such as Italy and Russia. Far before the Ottoman Empire earned the nickname “Sick Man of Europe”, Poland was already a stagnant power amidst rising ones.
Obviously, this led to the infamous partitions of the country. Disdain for the Polish people and their culture are most likely born out of this seminal moment, as Poles were no longer the core of a single sovereign state, but minorities in multiple larger countries. Once they were subjected to that situation, though, the Polish people did not comply with their conquerors. In 1830, the populace of Congress Poland rebelled against their status as tools and tax payers for the Tsars, which led the uprising to be crushed brutally by a Cossack savage under the orders of the Russian state, Ivan Paskevich. The same man would also lead the Imperial Russian Army in a campaign in Galicia during the Springtime of Peoples, to prevent the Poles from freeing themselves from the Hapsburgs’ grip.
All of these were significant to the balance of European power in some manner, such as the 1848 intervention indebting the Hapsburgs to the Romanovs and paving the way for their disgrace when they did not pay back. Still, the most important and relevant to understand the current situation of the Polish people is undeniably the Wiśniewski Case. June 24th, 1878, went down in history as the day that proved our “sly manners” and why we must be kept down. The sheer level of outrage following the events that took place in Bonn effectively flipped the course of European history, being directly or indirectly responsible for events like the collapse of Western European colonialism and the death of Europe’s socialist movement.
Firstly, however, there must be a bit of context. In the previous decades, the main player seeking to capitalize on the decline of the Ottoman Empire had been Russia. Over the course of the 19th century, the Tsars tried repeatedly to break out of their cage in the Black Sea to reach further out into the world’s oceans. The main opposition to this was Britain, who, with control of the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar, was the preeminent naval power in the Mediterranean. In 1853, for example, Britain effectively swayed the direction of the Crimean War by destroying the Russian fleet at Sinop, thus allowing for landings on Russia’s coastal territories. That same protectiveness towards the declining Ottomans couldn’t be upheld for long, though.
In 1876, the brutal suppression of a Bulgarian uprising sent ripples throughout Christendom, as influential figures condemned the Ottomans for the treatment of their ethnic minorities. Due to the great public disapproval, Britain couldn’t intervene when Russia declared war on the Ottomans in the following year, which led to a crushing Russian victory and the humiliating Treaty of San Stefano. The terms of the treaty essentially swept away all Ottoman influence in the Balkans, as a Greater Bulgaria was put forward, which had access to both the Black and Aegean seas, therefore presenting a way for Russian naval power projection to go around the Turkish Straits.
Heavy opposition to the treaty from the international community forced Russia to accept a revisioning, which was to take place in Berlin, since Germany offered itself to be a neutral mediator. In the summer of 1878, the most powerful men in the continent gathered around a round table to discuss the fates of millions who lived in Southeastern Europe, despite the fact that those same people weren’t given much of a say in it. It was in this political environment that Paweł Wiśniewski decided to do what would forever stamp his picture on history books: the attempted assassination of the heir to the imperial throne of Germany [1].
Although there have been many biographies written on him over the years, the most acclaimed one having an ex-roommate of his as author, I’ll offer just a small bit of background on the Polish Madman before proceeding. He was born in Silesia, to a poor family with four other children, but the fact that he was sent to live with an aunt in Krakow during his teen years would drive much of the conversation surrounding him. After learning the trade of locksmith, he moved back to Germany and stayed in the region of Silesia until his mother’s death, in 1874. Because he knew at least some form of broken German, Wiśniewski moved to the Rhineland in search of better employment.
No one can be sure of why he chose that specific moment to do what he did, since he had been living relatively close to the University of Bonn, where Prince Wilhelm studied, for a few years by then. Maybe it was the fact that the Balkan peoples whose fates were being decided held little to no sway over decisions in the Congress of Berlin, which reminded him of how Poles had been thrown around like a bag of potatoes by St. Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna. Alternatively, it might have seemed to him incredibly hypocritical that the Austro-Hungarians, who had no qualm about partitioning Poland with the Russians, were now decrying the Treaty of San Stefano so vehemently.
Still, what matters are his actions, not the reasoning behind them. Paweł chose the 24th of June, the same date Napoleon invaded Russia, to infiltrate Prince Wilhelm’s university, blending in with the institution’s staff. However, before reaching the wing where the Hohenzollern heir was at that moment, he was discovered by a student. There was a pistol concealed in his jacket, which he pulled out in desperation, shooting the youth who revealed him, Felix Müller, twice in the chest, which caused him to die a few days later due to the injuries. This stirred the surrounding crowd, and a teacher tried taking the gun from Wiśniewski, who then fired a warning shot that grazed the teacher’s head and caused him to throw himself at the ground.
The Pole then tried to run after the prince, who had, on his account, already heard the shots but didn’t know exactly what was happening and where he should go. This miscommunication almost allowed the attempted murder to succeed, as the assassin had the time to reach the room where Wilhelm was chatting with his friends. Once he saw what was in Paweł’s hand, though, the future emperor of Germany tried to flee. He and two other students ran to the exit, and in response Wiśniewski pulled the trigger one last time, only hitting the leg of one of Wilhelm’s friends. He was then tackled to the ground by a group of students and teachers who managed to catch up to the invader.
After the local police force detained him, the Pole was taken to a secret location to be interrogated. The debriefing given to morning newspapers by the authorities in the morning stated that Wiśniewski had acted alone, which was confirmed by documents released a few decades later. As far as anyone knows, the man had no connection to the underground organizations that fought for Polish independence later on. The trial was scheduled for Thursday, three days after the attack, which proved a very, very bad idea considering the unrest that ensued in the meantime.
“Czarny Wtorek”, which means Black Tuesday in Polish, was how the Polish community of the German Empire dubbed the events of the day following Wiśniewski’s arrest. Although the attempted assassination took place in Northern Rhineland, in the westernmost part of the country, the regions that saw the fiercest backlash were West Prussia and Posen, which housed most of the empire’s 3 million strong Polish population. Violence and looting by German citizens became commonplace in Polish neighborhoods that day, especially Polish businesses and churches, since the Catholic Church was seen as inherently Polish in the eastern parts of the country. When it wasn’t actively taking part in the crimes against Poles, the German police force turned a blind eye to everything.
By far the moment people remember the most is the burning of the Posen Cathedral. A German mob gathered around the building in the afternoon of June 25th, to begin another round of looting and lynching, but something went differently. It is not clear how the fire began, but the crowd soon worked to increase the flames, and then exited the cathedral in droves as it burned down. The German government quickly trialed and imprisoned half a dozen people, which wasn’t nearly as many as were present. An apology was also sent directly to the pope for the actions of a few “misguided patriots” and Berlin offered to pay for half of the reparation expanses. In Saturday, after a sham trial in the previous day, Wiśniewski was barbarically hanged in front of a cheering crowd in the Ruhr Valley and his family members were not allowed to disclose where they buried the body [2].
All of this represented a major change in the zeitgeist of Germany at the time. For most of its short history as a unified state, the young nation considered Kulturkampf, the battle for influence between the Catholic Church and the mostly Protestant government, as its greatest tribulation. Now, though, the uncomfortable existence of ethnic minorities in what was supposed to be a perfectly Deutsch country was brought to light, which had previously been just a concern of the eastern section. People in places like Hamburg and Frankfurt now asked themselves if they should be concerned about the behavior of their non-German neighbors. Jews, Frisians, French... They were all suspect now, although none to the same extent as the hateful Pole. Truly, if Wiśniewski thought his actions could possibly lead to a free Poland, his mind must have been most disturbed.
Mitteleuropa: The German Dream, by Fritz Fischer.
Bismarck once summarized the entirety of German history in a single sentence: “Here is Russia and here is France, and we are in the middle”. Although environmental determinism has been repeatedly disproven by countries like Korea, which have overcome their natural hurdles to develop and become great nations, the history of Germany is probably the best argument in favor of that theory. Its position right in the middle of Europe can be broadly imputed with guilt for why its history went down the way it did, even if a few individuals’ decisions did play a large role in it too.
Like I said, ever since Caesars ruled a quarter of humanity from palaces in Rome, Germany was naturally built for disunity, war and a primitive form of colonization. Before revolutions in agriculture in the Medieval Period, the region was sparsely inhabited, especially when compared to its larger, wealthier and more influential neighbor of France, which led to the building of small communities far away from each other. Further down the line, knights and castles gave local authorities an immense amount of power, even more so in the mountainous south. Meanwhile, the flat north was dominated by trading leagues and faced constant incursions from Scandinavia.
However, these factors came together to make Germany an eastward facing nation. To the west, homogenous and unified empires like France and the Netherlands ran off to chase world domination during the Age of Exploration, while puny German duchies argued over a town or another. To the south, the Hapsburgs and their marriage schemes halted most chances of reform in Southeastern Europe, so what was left was to carve up uncivilized Slavic land to the east. Furthermore, expanding eastward didn’t require a lot of effort because of the flatness of the Great European Plain. This mentality, of looking to Central Europe for its ambitions, culminated in the Teutonic Order and the colonization of the Baltic coastline.
This didn’t really change when the country unified. There was still a fear that, being sandwiched from all sides by Great Powers and in a barely defensible position, Germany could still be reduced to a patchwork of states due to a massive war. Although the Iron Chancellor had guided Germany to unify through, in his own words, iron and blood, he still feared what a large European war, in the scale the Napoleonic ones, could do to the young nation. So, he worked to keep a diplomatic system where Mitteleuropa would be immune from war. His plans were completely derailed by the Wiśniewski Case, however.
Wilhelm I’s infamous distaste for Catholics and their practices was nothing compared to how he referred to Poles after the attack upon his grandson. Some eyewitnesses declared that the Kaiser had a meeting with Bismarck a few hours after the incident became public, and this meeting likely was the one that changed the fate of Germany forever. From then on, antagonizing Russia was out of the question for German geopolitical strategy, since a war between the two would almost certainly end with an independent Polish state.
This new factor was like a monkey ranch in the engine of Bismarck’s Realpolitik, which heavily relied on flexibility and the fact that Germany could flip flop between alliances. Up until then, the Reichskanzler had always sought to side with two others of the five Great Powers in geopolitical matters, so to create a negotiating bloc powerful enough to dissuade anyone thinking of war. Therefore, Germany’s role from its foundation all the way to Bismarck’s departure had been primarily reactive, identifying when a two-power bloc was formed and then joining it regardless of what the matter was. In the Congress of Berlin, the carve up of the Ottoman Empire had brought Britain and Austria-Hungary together out of fear of a growth in Russian influence, while France remained relatively haphazard towards the subject. Usually, the Iron Chancellor would have approached the British and Austro-Hungarians, even though he always thought befriending Russia should be the cornerstone of German politics. But, as I said, societal unrest resulting from Wiśniewski’s actions changed everything.
Despite the fact that Germany had the most powerful land army in the world by that point, thus allowing it to push Russia’s agenda in the talks if needed, Bismarck still preferred a three power-bloc to avoid paving the way for war further down the line. Since Britain didn’t have real stakes in the affair, only involving itself for fear of the growing Russian influence, nothing could really be offered to convince the British ambassador to revert his anti-Russia position. Meanwhile, France, due to the lingering discontent for the Franco-Prussian War, was automatically opposed to any German proposal. This left Austria-Hungary, whose long and troubled history with Russia made a deal almost impossible. Still, Gorchakov, the Russian diplomat, made it clear that no talks about the Polish Question would be answered before some large, Russophile state was born in the Balkans.
When mediating the talks between the Austro-Hungarians and Russians, the main issue faced by the Germans was distrust. Discussions often revolved around the multitude of pacts with Austria-Hungary that Russia broke when it wrote the Treaty of San Stefano, mainly the Budapest Convention, which explicitly prohibited the creation of a large Slavic state in the Balkans. Bismarck responded to the Austro-Hungarian concerns by stating that Vienna’s recent history didn’t add to its credibility either, considering its neutrality in the Crimean War. Furthermore, Russia’s actions regarding Bulgaria could even be considered compensation for having to face Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire alone in 1853. However, the representatives of the Hapsburgs still feared that, if left unchecked, Bulgaria would try pushing other nations, mainly Serbia, to meddle in Vienna’s backyard, so to distract them from Sofia’s own ambitions.
In order to curb that sentiment, the western gains made by the Bulgarians in the Treaty of San Stefano had to be curtailed. This resulted in the newly acquired Macedonian territories being greatly diminished, as the new border became the Vardar River [3]. The Austro-Hungarians hoped that, if enough of Macedonia was left out of Bulgaria’s grasp, the country would go to war with its neighbors to gain more, thus distracting everyone from Austria-Hungary's own dealing in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In exchange for backing this new version of Bulgaria, which was smaller than San Stefano’s but still far bigger than what the British wanted, the Austro-Hungarian Empire demanded a reinsurance of the other terms of the Budapest Convention.
Because the Russian state had proven its unwillingness to uphold the contracts previously set forth by Austria-Hungary, Count Andrássy demanded that Germany acted as guarantor of said agreement. Russia should cease its support for irredentist and nationalistic organizations in the Balkan countries, namely Serbia, under the possible punishment of economic sanctions from both Berlin and Vienna. Since support for said organizations was hard to verify in an international court, this clause played second fiddle to the main one: the Tsar should acknowledge, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Bosnia-Herzegovina lied in the hands of the Hapsburgs, as well as retract any military support for a Balkan nation that sought military gains north of the Danube. Bismarck hoped that, with these terms, Russia would have to secure Austria-Hungary's interests in order to achieve its own, thus making the two allies unwillingly and consequently creating a two-power bloc Germany could join.
With the terms between Russia and Austria-Hungary settled, Gorchakov finally sat down to talk about measures for the Poles. The Austro-Hungarians also had a vested interest in the discussion due to their ownership of Galicia, so Count Andrássy was invited to the talks as well. It’s from this discussion that the Russian ambassador's most memorable quote comes, as he spoke in German with a heavy Russian accent: “kein Polen; je” (no Poland; ever). Put simply, the three powers agreed to work together towards preventing the Polish people from ever gaining independence. On any side of the borders, Polish independence movements would be viciously crushed wherever they sprung up. Furthermore, to prevent the lack of geographical boundaries from causing border tensions between the German and Russian empires, Bismarck and Gorchakov agreed that, whatever the future held, the two wouldn’t support territorial changes as result of conflicts they weren’t directly involved in.
Therefore, the Congress of Berlin ended with an amicable agreement between Russia and Austria-Hungary, who was even able to wash away some of the stain of its cowardice during the Crimean War. Most importantly, there was a pretty big shift in the German zeitgeist about Russia. Instead of a remote and foreign land, full of people who worshipped a weird Jesus, Russia was now an ally in keeping control of the Mitteleuropa that they had dreamed about. It effectively seemed to be the end of the dream of an independent Polska, as Poles would become akin lighter-skinned Armenians, pressed into powerlessness by the surrounding empires. From then on, most people expected Central Europe to finally know peace. Such assertions become morbidly funny considering the future the region would have.
[1] The main premise for this TL is pretty much “what if the Dreikaiserbund endured?”. In order to make that happen, I needed something that pushed Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany to work together in the European scene. So, what do they all have in common? Polish minorities. To make the Poles a problem big enough to pull the three great powers together, I came up with this quasi-terror attack which, although not high in number of casualties, is meant to shock the population into demanding action from the government.
[2] If the character author sounds a bit emotional when describing a fact, be it very criticaly or very complimentary, that’s because, considering his/her background, they’d have a reason to do so. In this case, the author is Polish and is describing what he considers disproportional excitement towards a Pole’s execution.
[3] The border between Austria-Hungary and Bosnia-Herzegovina is still there to show that the region hasn’t been formally annexed. Yet.
