THE REBIRTH OF THE POLISH STATE Z89Command. On II November, the day of the Western Armistice, he took office
as Commander-in-Chief, on the plea of the Regency Council. He proposed to
the German Command that they should simply lay down their arms and take the
first train out, before civil commotion erupted. The Germans readily agreed.
Hardened stormtroopers handed over their rifles to schoolboys. The Citadel
was abandoned to a gang of youths. Besseler fled, leaving his copious wine cel-
lar intact. Within a few hours, the Germans had gone. Warsaw too was free.
Within three days, the entire Kingdom up to the Bug was clear of German
troops. On 14 November, the Regency Council surrendered all its functions to
Pilsudski, to whom it gave the title of Chief-of-State. On that same day, he
accepted Daszyriski's demission of the Provisional Government in Lublin, and
took charge of all political affairs. Thus began the attempt, in Lewis Namier's
words, 'to build Poland while Russia and Germany slept'.
From the legal point of view, it is difficult to know exactly what state it was
that Pilsudski was now controlling. It was hard to say whether he had merely
succeeded to the Polish Kingdom as revived by the Germans in 1916 or whether
he was already in command of the Polish Republic whose legitimate existence
was not certainly confirmed, by democratic elections and by international
recognition, until the following January. For practical purposes however, the
key to the situation lay in the fact that Pilsudski was in sole control, and that nei-
ther the KNP nor the Allied governments had played any part in his appoint-
ment. This was enough for Dmowski to claim that the appointment was 'illegal'
and for the Allied governments to look with great suspicion on the ex-Austrian
Brigadier and German prisoner who had 'seized control' of a country which
they had hoped to control themselves. In truth, Pilsudski's appointment was nei-
ther 'legal' nor 'illegal'. He had arrived in Warsaw from prison and exile with
no precise knowledge of what he would find. Like Lenin in Petrograd in the pre-
vious year, he had 'found power lying in the street'. As he stooped to pick it up,
the Polish phoenix fluttered from the ashes of war which lay at his feet.
In subsequent years,.many Polish historians have assumed that the rebirth of
the Polish state was the natural conclusion of the nation's struggles during the
period of Partition. In their view, it formed the only proper, not to say the inevit-
able, destination of 'the Road to Independence'. Certainly, the recent publica-
tion of popular memoirs from the First World War, such as that of a Polish
soldier fighting in the ranks of the German army, reveals the extent to which
ordinary Polish people were fervently yearning for the restoration of their long-
lost homeland.^25 Yet one cannot assume that the wish was necessarily the father
of the deed. In actual fact, the Poles were given very little opportunity to fight
for their independence. All the enterprises which they undertook in this direc-
tion, including the Legions, were defeated. All the plans which were laid for the
creation of a Polish state in conjunction with the Central Powers, with Russia,
or with the Western allies, came to nothing. The outcome of the War in
the Polish lands was exactly foreseen by nobody, and in the event involved vir-
tually no fighting. If the historian is to distinguish the achievement of national