Polish Cavalry

© MP Stefan Byczyński, his wife and Landowski's wife

© Capt. Antońy Landowski

© Capt. A. Landowski with his wife

© Walking in 1000 years oaks alley

© Capt. A. Landowski and Wacław Święcki with wives

Day after day, in the name of communist revolution, thousands upon thousands of ideological opponents were sent to slow death in the forced labour camps... to cut timber, pumpe oil and mine coal for the benefit of Jacob Schiff in New York. They were the lucky ones. The unlucky perished under torture, or they were shot in the back of the head.

1918, Polish nationalists united under Piłsudski against soviet occupant. After 127 years of bondage, the independence of Poland was declared.

June 1918. The head of Red Army, Lev Bronstein (aka Leon Trotsky), a vicious idealist among the cutthroats creates Army Intelligence, but 25 days later TCHEKA'S political commissars savagely execute the Front Intelligence staff, as well as most of the other staff sections and the front commander M.A. Muravev who was attempting to join his troops with a Czech Legion. Lenin personally signs Tsar's execution order.

In the night of July 16-17, 1918, Tsar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, four daughters; Grand Duchesses Anastasia, Maria, Olga and Tatiana, the tsarevitch; Alexis, imperial family's maid; Demidova, Doctor Botkine and three other members of tsar's retinue are to be shot in the basement of Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. Later renamed Svierdlovsk to commemorate the jew Jacob Solomon [aka Yakov Sverdlov], member, "Revolutionary Military Center"; member, Central Committee; who co-signed Lenin's execution order.
A committee composed of Tolmatchev, Beloborodov (the committee chairman) and jews Safarov and Golotschekine issue directives for the execution to jewish executioners Syromolotov, Mikhail Medvedev, Piotr Ermakov and Yankel (Yakov) M.Yurovsky (who writes the protocol of execution), then Yurovsky shot the Tsar in the head and others shot over-and-over Tsarina Alexandra, their 14 years son old Alexis, daughters and members of Tsar's retenue. The drunken executioners finished off daughters with bayonets. One of the killers even beat the children's dog to death; an orgy of atheistic jews over the blue blood monarchy. Later they will donate revolvers to a museum. A jewish chemist, Pinkus Voikov (Weiner), disfigured the bodies using sulphuric acid. To round out the picture, on the wall of the room where the execution took place was a distich from a poem by Heine (written in German) about King Balthazar, who offended Jehovah and was killed for the offense.
The bodies were dumped into an unmarked grave. The example was set.

Leon Trotsky had revealed years earlier that Lenin and Sverdlov had together made the decision to put the Tsar and his family to death. Recalling a conversation in 1918, Trotsky wrote:

Speaking with Sverdlov, I asked in passing:
"Oh yes, and where is the Tsar?"
"Finished," he replied. "He has been shot."
"And where is the family?"
"The family along with him."
"All of them?," I asked, apparently with a trace of surprise.
"All of them," replied Sverdlov. "What about it?" He was waiting to see my reaction. I made no reply.
"And who made the decision?," I asked.
"We decided it here. Ilyich [Lenin] believed that we shouldn't leave the Whites a live banner to rally around, especially under the present difficult circumstances."

For his part, Trotsky defended the massacre as a useful and even necessary measure. He wrote: "The decision [to kill the imperial family] was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the Tsar's family was needed not only in order to frighten, horrify, and instill a sense of hopelessness in the enemy (Russian people) but also to shake up our own ranks, to show that there was no turning back, that ahead lay either total victory or total doom."

October 21, 1918. Lenin signs a decree establishing a Registration Directorate of Field Staff, a military intelligence branch of the Red Army. Dzerzhinsky's only triumph is that a senior officer of TCHEKA is appointed to lead it: a jew Simon Ivanovich Aralov, a man with roots in Lvov, a town of eastern Poland.

November 1, 1918. The Western-Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed with Lviv as its capital. Upon entering Lviv (Polish: Lwów), the Ukrainian forces were successfully opposed by local self-defence units formed mostly of WWI veterans, students and children.

November 18, 1918. Vladimir Lenin issued orders to the Red Army to begin an operation, codenamed in some sources as Target Vistula. The basic aim of the operation was to drive through eastern and central Europe, institute Soviet governments in the newly independent countries of that region and support communist revolutions in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

On November 21, after two weeks of heavy fighting within the city of Lviv, an armed unit under the command of Lt. Colonel Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski of the renascent Polish Army broke through the Ukrainian siege and arrived in the city.

On January 5, 1919, the Red Army entered Minsk almost unopposed, thus putting an end to the short-lived Belarusian People's Republic.

On January 12, 1919, Soviet High Command declared the goal of Target Vistula operation: deep scouting towards Niemen.

On February 12 that goal was updated to Western Bug River.

In the spring of 1919, Soviet conscription produced a Red Army of 2,300,000. The majority of Red Army forces were engaging the Anton Ivanovich Denikin's White Russians, in civil war. On a soviet side, Trotsky appoints three generals to lead the soviet troops:
(1) Michail Tukhachevsky, a young general with a taste for luxury and politics, at the head of soviet infentry.
(2) Semyon Budienny, a handsome man with monumental moustaches and knowledge of cavalry tactics, at the head of soviet cavalry.
(3) Aleksandr Yegorov

Polish politics was under the strong influence of the statesman and military leader Józef Piłsudski.

On February 14, 1919, the first serious armed conflict of the Polish-bolshevik War took place. While Soviets units retreated without a fight from the town of Mosty, fighting has erupted near the towns of Maniewicze and Bereza Kartuska in Belarus where 57 Polish soldiers and 5 officers attacked Soviet forces capturing 80 soldiers of the Red Army. By late February the bolshevik offensive had come to a halt.

On 27 February 1919, Soviets have proclaimed the creation of Bielorussian-Lithuanian Socialist Republic.

Separately, both Polish and Soviet forces have also been engaging the Ukrainian forces. A short Polish-Ukrainian conflict developed. After two months of heavy fighting the conflict was resolved in March of 1919 by fresh and well-equipped Polish units under General Edward Rydz-Śmigły.

Prolog   Cavalry   Players   Trip   Meeting   Airport   Boat ride   Castle   Visiting   Bad Harzburg   Epilog   Executions   Photos   The End