The Austrian census of 1910 showed a Polish-speaking majority in most of the duchy except for its furthest western part. The whole area is divided approximately in half by the Olza river, which runs through the town of Teschen. The Poles called the part west of the Olza "Zaolzie," or the land beyond the Olza.
On November 5, 1918, an agreement was signed by local Polish and Czech Councils, dividing the Duchy of Teschen along ethnic lines, i.e. Polish and Czech.William J. Rose (1885-1968) a Canadian Quaker, who had been interned in Teschen by Austrian authorities in 1914, participated in drawing up this agreement, and then went to London to report on it. (See Daniel Stone, ed., THE POLISH MEMOIRS OF WILLIAM JOHN ROSE, Toronto, 1975, ch. 3). Rose later became a historian of Poland.
In December 1918, Jozef Pilsudski, Head of the Polish state, sent a small delegation to Prague with a proposal to negotiate an amicable settlement on Zaolzie. Masaryk met briefly with the delegates, agreed that negotiations for an amicable settlement were desirable, and told them to discuss the matter with members of the Czechoslovak government. However, the latter did not want to negotiatiate so the delegates returned to Warsaw empty-handed. (For this episode, see Wandycz book in bibliography below).
Here we should note that Masaryk and most Czechs believed that all of western Teschen, including the preponderantly Polish Zaolzie, should belong to Czechoslovakia for three reasons: (a) it was part of the historic lands of the Bohemian Crown, and Benes had obtained French recognition that all these lands should go to Czechoslovakia (although the French did not realize at the time that this included Teschen); (b) because good coking coal and a steel mill were deemed vital to the Czechoslovak economy, while the Poles were expected to get the same with eastern Upper Silesia in a peace conference award from Germany; (c) they pointed to the fact that the only railway line connecting Bohemia-Moravia with Slovakia went through Zaolzie.
The Polish government emphasized the predominantly Polish character of the region, but also believed that Poland needed the coal and steel. Furthemore, it argued that a branch railway line could be built elsewhere to connect Bohemia-Moravia with Slovakia.
In late December 1918, the Polish government proclaimed elections to the Constituent Assembly and the designated electoral districts included Zaolzie. The Czechoslovak government feared the elections would demonstrate the preponderantly Polish character of the region, and so decided to seize it. Czech troops were sent into Zaolzie in January 1919. The local Polish troops were too weak to offer effective resistance and could not be reinforced because Polish troops were then fighting the Ukrainians for the city of Lwow (Ukr. L'viv) in East Galicia. The Czechs occupied the disputed territory, but the allied powers forced them to leave.
In the period January 1919-end July 1920, there were several Polish and Czech attempts to resolve the problem peacefully, either by plebiscite or by arbitration, but no agreement was reached. Finally, as the Red Army was advancing on Warsaw in early July 1920, the Polish delegation went to Spa, Belgium, to ask the allied leaders for aid against the Soviets. The Poles agreed to submit the Teschen dispute to the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris. They did not know that Benes had secretly obtained French and British agreement to his proposal that the Ambassadors' Conference would simply award the disputed area to Czechoslovakia in return for his promise to allow the transit of French military supplies to Poland. However, Benes did not fulfill this promise and Czechoslovak railwaymen continued to block the supplies. *
*(For the Franco-British-Czech deal on Zaolzie, see Anna M. Cienciala and Titus Komarnicki, From Versailles to Locarno. Keys to Polish Foreign Policy from Versailles to Locarno, Univ. Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Ks., 1984, p. 171).
The decision of the Conference of Ambassadors, July 28, 1920, to award Western Teschen (Zaolzie) to Czechoslovakia without a plebiscite or arbitration, was a shock to the Poles and remained an unhealed wound. The Czechoslovak government always refused to negotiate the issue. It also refused to consider an alliance with Poland in the 1920's, when the Poles were interested in it. Masaryk and Benes believed that Poland would have to cede some territory to Germany and the USSR, so they did not want an alliance with her which would antagonize Berlin and Moscow. Finally, the Czechs implemented a policy of Czech assimilation to the Poles of Zaolzie, that is, they were pressured to declare themselves Czechs and send their children to Czech schools if they wanted to keep their jobs and avoid being transferred to other parts of the country.
