WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.140 The Red Tram. I think if you ask anyone with 00:00:03.140 --> 00:00:05.620 even a passing knowledge of Polish history for 00:00:05.620 --> 00:00:07.120 a quote, that's the one they'll come up with. 00:00:07.219 --> 00:00:09.419 It's just it's so perfect. It really is. It has 00:00:09.419 --> 00:00:12.900 that that cutting edge to it. Exactly. So the 00:00:12.900 --> 00:00:16.640 story goes, it's 1918. Poland is finally miraculously 00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:19.660 independent. And Józef Piłsudski, the man of 00:00:19.660 --> 00:00:22.079 the hour, runs into some of his old socialist 00:00:22.079 --> 00:00:24.539 comrades. Right. The guys he was in the trenches 00:00:24.539 --> 00:00:27.620 with, metaphorically speaking. For years. And 00:00:27.620 --> 00:00:29.600 they greet him like one of their own. They call 00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:32.579 him Comrade, you know, expecting the old solidarity, 00:00:32.920 --> 00:00:35.380 the secret handshakes, the whole nine yards. 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:37.560 And he just stops them cold. Just completely 00:00:37.560 --> 00:00:39.460 shuts it down. He looks them in the eye and says, 00:00:39.619 --> 00:00:42.579 Comrades, I took the red tram of socialism to 00:00:42.579 --> 00:00:44.380 the stop called Independence, and that's where 00:00:44.380 --> 00:00:46.820 I got off. You may keep on to the final stop 00:00:46.820 --> 00:00:49.399 if you wish, but from now on, let's address each 00:00:49.399 --> 00:00:53.340 other as Mr. It's such a devastating line. It's 00:00:53.340 --> 00:00:55.759 an absolute mic drop. It perfectly encapsulates 00:00:55.759 --> 00:00:58.039 the man, doesn't it? Oh, completely. It's sharp. 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:01.219 It's a bit arrogant and it's brutally pragmatic. 00:01:01.320 --> 00:01:03.659 All the things that made him who he was. It really 00:01:03.659 --> 00:01:06.340 is. Yeah. But OK, before we go ahead and sort 00:01:06.340 --> 00:01:08.540 of build our whole understanding of him around 00:01:08.540 --> 00:01:11.340 this one quote, we have to do our due diligence 00:01:11.340 --> 00:01:14.769 here. Did he actually say it? Because it sounds 00:01:14.769 --> 00:01:17.769 almost too perfect, like something a screenwriter 00:01:17.769 --> 00:01:20.390 would come up with 50 years later to really hammer 00:01:20.390 --> 00:01:22.290 the point home. And that's the million dollar 00:01:22.290 --> 00:01:25.569 question. It's debated. Historians have gone 00:01:25.569 --> 00:01:27.950 back and forth on the authenticity of that specific 00:01:27.950 --> 00:01:30.670 phrasing. So it could be apocryphal? It might 00:01:30.670 --> 00:01:32.670 be or, you know, it's been heavily polished over 00:01:32.670 --> 00:01:35.250 the years by storytellers. But here's the thing. 00:01:35.890 --> 00:01:38.989 Whether he said those exact words or not, the 00:01:38.989 --> 00:01:43.549 sentiment is the absolute. 100 % truth of his 00:01:43.549 --> 00:01:46.310 life. Okay. It explains the central tension of 00:01:46.310 --> 00:01:48.629 his entire career. I mean, you're looking at 00:01:48.629 --> 00:01:51.090 a man who used revolutionary methods, socialism, 00:01:51.329 --> 00:01:53.709 conspiracy, underground printing presses, even, 00:01:53.790 --> 00:01:55.909 you know, banditry. We'll definitely get to the 00:01:55.909 --> 00:01:58.790 train robbing. We will. But he saw all of those 00:01:58.790 --> 00:02:02.150 things solely as vehicles. They were tools to 00:02:02.150 --> 00:02:04.489 get to a specific destination. And that destination 00:02:04.489 --> 00:02:07.870 was a sovereign Poland. A sovereign Poland. Once 00:02:07.870 --> 00:02:09.669 he arrived, he didn't need the vehicle anymore. 00:02:09.770 --> 00:02:12.530 He just... He hopped off the tram. And that destination, 00:02:12.789 --> 00:02:15.270 that independent Poland, it wasn't just a political 00:02:15.270 --> 00:02:17.969 goal he was chasing. I mean, for most of his 00:02:17.969 --> 00:02:19.870 life, it was essentially a fantasy. It was a 00:02:19.870 --> 00:02:22.310 ghost. It was a country that only existed in, 00:02:22.310 --> 00:02:25.569 what, books and songs and memory? Exactly. You 00:02:25.569 --> 00:02:27.389 really have to situate yourself in the reality 00:02:27.389 --> 00:02:30.349 of the 19th century to grasp the stakes here. 00:02:30.509 --> 00:02:35.069 When Piłsudski was born, 1867, Poland simply 00:02:35.069 --> 00:02:37.729 did not exist. It had been erased from the map 00:02:37.729 --> 00:02:40.060 of Europe. For... Over a century at that point. 00:02:40.199 --> 00:02:43.620 For 123 years, to be precise. It was partitioned 00:02:43.620 --> 00:02:46.020 and just swallowed up by its neighbors, the Russian 00:02:46.020 --> 00:02:48.580 Empire, the German Empire, or Prussia at the 00:02:48.580 --> 00:02:51.419 time, and the Austro -Hungarian Empire. So Paszewski's 00:02:51.419 --> 00:02:54.099 mission wasn't to, say, lead an existing nation 00:02:54.099 --> 00:02:56.539 or win an election in a functioning democracy. 00:02:56.979 --> 00:02:59.300 No, no. It was to conjure a country back into 00:02:59.300 --> 00:03:02.039 existence through sheer force of will. It's an 00:03:02.039 --> 00:03:04.460 act of creation, not politics. He's often called 00:03:04.460 --> 00:03:07.039 the father of the Second Polish Republic. It's 00:03:07.039 --> 00:03:11.560 a grand title. The resume? It's messy. It's really 00:03:11.560 --> 00:03:13.860 complicated. We're looking at a revolutionary, 00:03:14.360 --> 00:03:17.659 a train robber, a self -taught general. A head 00:03:17.659 --> 00:03:20.300 of state and eventually. A dictator. A dictator. 00:03:20.580 --> 00:03:22.919 The benevolent dictator, some would argue, or 00:03:22.919 --> 00:03:25.180 a democratic dictator, which is a term that gets 00:03:25.180 --> 00:03:27.819 thrown around. But yes, an authoritarian. He 00:03:27.819 --> 00:03:31.180 completely defies easy categorization. You can't 00:03:31.180 --> 00:03:33.020 put him in a box. You really can't. He's not 00:03:33.020 --> 00:03:35.479 one of the fascists of the 1930s, not in the 00:03:35.479 --> 00:03:37.939 same way as Mussolini or Hitler, but he's certainly 00:03:37.939 --> 00:03:40.860 not a liberal Democrat from the West. He is something 00:03:40.860 --> 00:03:45.229 entirely unique. to that region and that incredibly 00:03:45.229 --> 00:03:48.050 chaotic era. So let's map out where we're going 00:03:48.050 --> 00:03:50.650 in this deep dive. We need to look at the Siberian 00:03:50.650 --> 00:03:53.150 exile, which seems to be the forge where his 00:03:53.150 --> 00:03:55.129 character was really made. The crucible, absolutely. 00:03:55.150 --> 00:03:56.610 We have to talk about the Japanese adventure, 00:03:56.810 --> 00:03:58.629 which is a chapter of history I think very, very 00:03:58.629 --> 00:04:00.710 few people know about. It's bizarre. It's one 00:04:00.710 --> 00:04:02.629 of those truth is stranger than fiction moments. 00:04:02.990 --> 00:04:05.129 And it's absolutely crucial to understanding 00:04:05.129 --> 00:04:08.129 his global mindset. Right. And then obviously 00:04:08.129 --> 00:04:11.699 the big one. The miracle at the Vistula, where 00:04:11.699 --> 00:04:13.979 he arguably saved not just Poland, but maybe 00:04:13.979 --> 00:04:16.519 all of Western Europe from a Soviet invasion. 00:04:16.839 --> 00:04:18.959 The stakes could not have been higher. And finally, 00:04:19.019 --> 00:04:22.459 the coup, the tragic turn, the moment the father 00:04:22.459 --> 00:04:24.839 of the nation turned his guns on the very government 00:04:24.839 --> 00:04:27.480 he helped create. It really is a tragedy in the 00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:30.180 classical sense. To understand the man who led 00:04:30.180 --> 00:04:32.339 the coup, you have to understand where he started. 00:04:32.540 --> 00:04:35.079 You have to go all the way back to that Siberian 00:04:35.079 --> 00:04:37.420 crucible. Let's start there, then. Section one, 00:04:37.579 --> 00:04:40.480 the Siberian crucible and the socialist mask. 00:04:40.920 --> 00:04:44.319 So you said he was born in 1867. The location 00:04:44.319 --> 00:04:46.860 is interesting. Zulav, that's in modern day Lithuania. 00:04:47.019 --> 00:04:49.620 Correct. And this is a nuance that confuses a 00:04:49.620 --> 00:04:52.920 lot of modern observers, I think. Today, we see 00:04:52.920 --> 00:04:55.279 Poland and Lithuania as two distinct separate 00:04:55.279 --> 00:04:57.180 nation states. They have their own languages, 00:04:57.259 --> 00:04:59.279 their own borders. Right. Two different flags 00:04:59.279 --> 00:05:02.100 on the map. But Piłsudski was a creature of the 00:05:02.100 --> 00:05:05.300 old Polish -Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was a 00:05:05.300 --> 00:05:08.319 single, multi -ethnic state for centuries before 00:05:08.319 --> 00:05:11.139 the Partitions. He was born into an impoverished, 00:05:11.199 --> 00:05:13.620 noble family, the Piłsudskis. They were a part 00:05:13.620 --> 00:05:16.100 of the slachta, the nobility, but they had fallen 00:05:16.100 --> 00:05:18.300 on some pretty hard times. So ethnically, culturally, 00:05:18.639 --> 00:05:21.800 who did he think he was? Culturally, he was Polish 00:05:21.800 --> 00:05:23.980 through and through. But he often described himself 00:05:23.980 --> 00:05:26.759 as a Lithuanian of Polish culture. He didn't 00:05:26.759 --> 00:05:29.139 see a contradiction there. Not at all. For him, 00:05:29.240 --> 00:05:32.810 Lithuania was a regional identity. a homeland 00:05:32.810 --> 00:05:35.910 within the greater Polish political and cultural 00:05:35.910 --> 00:05:38.089 tradition. It's sort of like how someone in the 00:05:38.089 --> 00:05:39.870 18th century might have been a Virginian and 00:05:39.870 --> 00:05:42.649 an American. He loved the landscape of Lithuania, 00:05:42.750 --> 00:05:45.110 the folklore, the traditions, but his political 00:05:45.110 --> 00:05:48.430 soul, his mission, was Polish. And the crucial 00:05:48.430 --> 00:05:50.410 part of his upbringing wasn't just the geography, 00:05:50.550 --> 00:05:53.110 it was the atmosphere in the home. The source 00:05:53.110 --> 00:05:55.149 material really highlights his mother, Maria. 00:05:55.449 --> 00:05:58.160 She was the engine of his patriotism. You have 00:05:58.160 --> 00:05:59.980 to imagine the pressure they were under. The 00:05:59.980 --> 00:06:01.819 Russian authorities were aggressively trying 00:06:01.819 --> 00:06:04.560 to russify these territories. What does that 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:06.720 mean in practice? It means the Polish language 00:06:06.720 --> 00:06:09.420 was banned in schools. Polish history was banned. 00:06:09.699 --> 00:06:12.139 Polish literature was suppressed. If you were 00:06:12.139 --> 00:06:14.819 caught teaching it, you could go to prison. So 00:06:14.819 --> 00:06:16.560 Maria turned their home into a secret school, 00:06:16.740 --> 00:06:20.079 a fortress of Polishness. Wow. At night, she 00:06:20.079 --> 00:06:22.800 would read her sons the forbidden poets, Mikiewicz. 00:06:23.240 --> 00:06:27.040 suiwaki these epic romantic poems about polish 00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:29.839 heroes and past glories she taught them the real 00:06:29.839 --> 00:06:32.279 history of the failed uprisings against russia 00:06:32.279 --> 00:06:36.959 she instilled this deep almost religious patriotism 00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:39.319 in Joseph and his brothers. And an equally deep 00:06:39.319 --> 00:06:42.480 hatred of Russia. Oh, a visceral hatred. When 00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:44.939 he went to school, the gymnasium in Vilnius, 00:06:44.959 --> 00:06:47.079 it was a Russian state institution. He was a 00:06:47.079 --> 00:06:48.959 Catholic boy forced to attend Russian Orthodox 00:06:48.959 --> 00:06:51.560 services. He was forbidden from speaking Polish 00:06:51.560 --> 00:06:53.300 in the hallways with his friends. That must have 00:06:53.300 --> 00:06:55.879 been infuriating for a kid like him. He rebelled 00:06:55.879 --> 00:06:58.439 in the only way he could. He wasn't a great student 00:06:58.439 --> 00:07:01.079 academically, mostly because he refused to engage 00:07:01.079 --> 00:07:03.389 with the system. He essentially boycotted his 00:07:03.389 --> 00:07:05.910 own education out of protest. He left that school 00:07:05.910 --> 00:07:08.550 with a profound, lifelong aversion to the Tsar 00:07:08.550 --> 00:07:10.750 and everything the Russian Empire represented. 00:07:10.949 --> 00:07:14.149 And that aversion escalates very, very quickly. 00:07:14.389 --> 00:07:17.990 In 1887, he's 20 years old. He's studying medicine 00:07:17.990 --> 00:07:21.230 at Kharkov University and he gets arrested. The 00:07:21.230 --> 00:07:25.250 charge is massive. A plot to assassinate Tsar 00:07:25.250 --> 00:07:27.930 Alexander III. Yeah, he didn't start small. He 00:07:27.930 --> 00:07:29.750 went straight for the top. But was he actually 00:07:29.750 --> 00:07:32.189 the ringleader? Was this young medical student 00:07:32.189 --> 00:07:35.009 really plotting to kill the emperor of all Russia? 00:07:35.189 --> 00:07:37.910 No. And this is the twist. He was actually quite 00:07:37.910 --> 00:07:40.610 peripheral to the whole thing. His older brother, 00:07:40.750 --> 00:07:43.189 Bronesa, was the one who was deeply involved 00:07:43.189 --> 00:07:45.670 with a group of Russian revolutionaries from 00:07:45.670 --> 00:07:48.089 a group called the People's Will. They were planning 00:07:48.089 --> 00:07:51.269 the assassination. So Joseph was guilty by association. 00:07:51.709 --> 00:07:54.290 Pretty much. He helped with some logistics, maybe 00:07:54.290 --> 00:07:56.389 acted as a guide for one of the conspirators 00:07:56.389 --> 00:07:58.500 who was visiting Vilnius. He knew what was going 00:07:58.500 --> 00:08:00.379 on, but he wasn't the bomb maker. It didn't matter. 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:03.259 The Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, they 00:08:03.259 --> 00:08:05.199 didn't really do nuance. Right. Close enough. 00:08:05.339 --> 00:08:07.839 Close enough. Bronislaw got a much harsher sentence, 00:08:08.040 --> 00:08:10.720 15 years of hard labor. But Joseph was sentenced 00:08:10.720 --> 00:08:13.259 to five years of administrative exile in eastern 00:08:13.259 --> 00:08:16.379 Siberia. Siberia. I mean, it's the classic trope 00:08:16.379 --> 00:08:18.899 of Russian literature. But for Prisutsky, this 00:08:18.899 --> 00:08:22.259 wasn't fiction. This was a real physical ordeal. 00:08:22.420 --> 00:08:26.379 It was brutal. And there is one specific incident. 00:08:26.779 --> 00:08:29.139 during his transport that tells you everything 00:08:29.139 --> 00:08:30.879 you need to know about his character. It defines 00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:33.379 him. They were at the Irkutsk transit prison, 00:08:33.500 --> 00:08:36.419 a temporary stop. And one of the other political 00:08:36.419 --> 00:08:39.480 prisoners insulted a guard or failed to follow 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:43.240 some petty order. The details vary. But the guards 00:08:43.240 --> 00:08:45.840 decided to make an example of them. They retaliated 00:08:45.840 --> 00:08:47.519 collectively. They just started wading into the 00:08:47.519 --> 00:08:49.419 political prisoners and beating them. And what 00:08:49.419 --> 00:08:51.820 did Pisinski do? Did he try to hide? He did the 00:08:51.820 --> 00:08:54.889 opposite. He fought back. He physically resisted 00:08:54.889 --> 00:08:57.309 the guards. In the chaos, they smashed him in 00:08:57.309 --> 00:08:59.690 the face with a rifle butt or a fist and knocked 00:08:59.690 --> 00:09:01.789 out two of his front teeth. So he's 20 years 00:09:01.789 --> 00:09:04.389 old in a Siberian prison. His teeth are knocked 00:09:04.389 --> 00:09:06.889 out. And he's not done. Even after being beaten, 00:09:07.029 --> 00:09:09.809 he doesn't submit. He helps organize a hunger 00:09:09.809 --> 00:09:12.409 strike to demand the reinstatement of their rights 00:09:12.409 --> 00:09:14.450 as political prisoners. He decides to starve 00:09:14.450 --> 00:09:18.470 himself. For a week. It nearly killed him. He 00:09:18.470 --> 00:09:21.500 was already weakened. But it worked. The authorities 00:09:21.500 --> 00:09:24.419 caved, and they got their privileges back. That's 00:09:24.419 --> 00:09:26.620 just unbelievable defiance. But it came at a 00:09:26.620 --> 00:09:30.179 huge cost. Later in his exile, he spent a night 00:09:30.179 --> 00:09:32.600 in a cell that was 40 degrees below zero. That 00:09:32.600 --> 00:09:35.340 kind of cold just gets into your bones. It permanently 00:09:35.340 --> 00:09:37.899 damaged his health. He had heart issues and other 00:09:37.899 --> 00:09:40.700 ailments for the rest of his life. But psychologically, 00:09:41.139 --> 00:09:43.960 it hardened him into diamond. He learned a lesson. 00:09:44.200 --> 00:09:46.240 He learned that you could say no to the most 00:09:46.240 --> 00:09:48.600 powerful empire on Earth, even if it cost you 00:09:48.600 --> 00:09:51.750 your teeth. that defiance was possible. He wasn't 00:09:51.750 --> 00:09:53.649 just suffering, though, right? He was learning. 00:09:53.730 --> 00:09:55.850 This was a networking opportunity in a strange 00:09:55.850 --> 00:09:59.269 way. It was. He met other exiles, the Sybaraks, 00:09:59.309 --> 00:10:01.750 as they were called. This was the great unintended 00:10:01.750 --> 00:10:04.570 consequence of the Russian exile system. It was 00:10:04.570 --> 00:10:07.480 like a forced university for radicals. Russia 00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:09.720 was concentrating all its most intelligent, most 00:10:09.720 --> 00:10:12.100 committed dissidents in one place. So they shared 00:10:12.100 --> 00:10:14.639 ideas. They debated, they argued, they taught 00:10:14.639 --> 00:10:17.820 each other. Pisutsky tutored local children in 00:10:17.820 --> 00:10:20.000 mathematics and languages to make a little money. 00:10:20.139 --> 00:10:23.159 He already spoke French, German, Lithuanian, 00:10:23.159 --> 00:10:24.980 and Russian, and he started learning English 00:10:24.980 --> 00:10:28.580 there. He went in as a rebellious student and 00:10:28.580 --> 00:10:31.039 came out as an intellectual revolutionary. So 00:10:31.039 --> 00:10:35.350 he returns from Siberia in 1892. He's 25. He's 00:10:35.350 --> 00:10:37.710 hardened. He's educated in the ways of revolution. 00:10:38.169 --> 00:10:40.090 And this is where he makes a pivotal choice. 00:10:40.470 --> 00:10:43.149 He joins the Polish Socialist Party, the PPS. 00:10:43.370 --> 00:10:45.370 Right. And this brings us right back to the red 00:10:45.370 --> 00:10:49.570 tram. Why the socialists? He was a nobleman by 00:10:49.570 --> 00:10:52.330 birth from the sluchta. Surely he wasn't a doctrinaire 00:10:52.330 --> 00:10:54.970 Marxist. That's the key question. And the answer 00:10:54.970 --> 00:10:57.809 is almost entirely pragmatic. You have to look 00:10:57.809 --> 00:10:59.970 at the political landscape of Poland in the 1890s. 00:10:59.970 --> 00:11:02.110 Or the option. The other major Polish parties, 00:11:02.129 --> 00:11:04.309 like the National Democrats, led by Roman Drowski, 00:11:04.509 --> 00:11:06.629 were advocating for something called organic 00:11:06.629 --> 00:11:09.730 work. Which means? It means, let's not fight. 00:11:10.120 --> 00:11:12.460 Let's negotiate with the Tsar. Let's build up 00:11:12.460 --> 00:11:15.600 our economy, improve education, and maybe, just 00:11:15.600 --> 00:11:17.759 maybe, we can get some autonomy within the Russian 00:11:17.759 --> 00:11:20.700 Empire. And Piłsudski thought that was a fool's 00:11:20.700 --> 00:11:22.899 errand. He thought it was delusional. A surrender. 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:26.320 He wanted total, absolute independence. And the 00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:28.659 only group on the political scene crazy enough 00:11:28.659 --> 00:11:31.179 to talk about armed insurrection, about violence 00:11:31.179 --> 00:11:33.980 against the state, were the socialists. So he 00:11:33.980 --> 00:11:37.220 put on the socialist mask. Exactly. He brilliantly 00:11:37.220 --> 00:11:39.740 merged the social demands of the workers with 00:11:39.740 --> 00:11:42.419 the national demands of the Poles. He realized 00:11:42.419 --> 00:11:45.340 that the industrial working class was a massive, 00:11:45.539 --> 00:11:49.360 untapped army. If he could mobilize them, he 00:11:49.360 --> 00:11:51.360 could use them as a battering ram against the 00:11:51.360 --> 00:11:54.190 czar. It was a strategic alliance. For him, it 00:11:54.190 --> 00:11:56.710 was. For many in the party, the socialism was 00:11:56.710 --> 00:11:59.509 the goal. For him, socialism was the tram. He 00:11:59.509 --> 00:12:01.870 starts living the underground life. He's printing 00:12:01.870 --> 00:12:04.590 secret newspapers. He becomes the editor, printer, 00:12:04.789 --> 00:12:07.090 and often the distributor of Robotnik, which 00:12:07.090 --> 00:12:09.429 means the worker. It was a hugely influential 00:12:09.429 --> 00:12:12.610 underground paper. And he gets married in 1899 00:12:12.610 --> 00:12:16.490 to Maria Jaskiewicza. But reading about it, even 00:12:16.490 --> 00:12:18.350 the marriage feels like part of the operation. 00:12:18.730 --> 00:12:21.070 It certainly was. Biographers are pretty clear 00:12:21.070 --> 00:12:23.370 that while there may have been genuine affection, 00:12:23.690 --> 00:12:26.129 it was largely a marriage of convenience for 00:12:26.129 --> 00:12:29.490 the cause. How so? Think about it. Having a wife 00:12:29.490 --> 00:12:32.789 and a respectable domestic setup was the perfect 00:12:32.789 --> 00:12:36.269 cover for an illegal printing press. If you're 00:12:36.269 --> 00:12:39.009 a single man living alone, moving heavy equipment 00:12:39.009 --> 00:12:42.309 in and out, the police get suspicious. If you're 00:12:42.309 --> 00:12:44.419 a married couple, you're invisible. And there 00:12:44.419 --> 00:12:47.559 was a legal angle, too, right? Yes. Russian law 00:12:47.559 --> 00:12:49.919 at the time made it much harder to prosecute 00:12:49.919 --> 00:12:52.000 a wife for her husband's illegal activities. 00:12:52.639 --> 00:12:55.460 She provided a layer of legal security for the 00:12:55.460 --> 00:12:57.399 operation. It was all part of the conspiracy. 00:12:57.860 --> 00:12:59.679 It's like something out of a spy novel. Honey, 00:12:59.779 --> 00:13:01.720 please ignore the massive printing press in the 00:13:01.720 --> 00:13:03.960 living room. Until the police find it, which 00:13:03.960 --> 00:13:06.519 they did. And that brings us to Section 2, the 00:13:06.519 --> 00:13:09.159 action hero phase. Because if you think the underground 00:13:09.159 --> 00:13:11.960 printing was exciting... What happens next is 00:13:11.960 --> 00:13:13.940 straight out of a movie. Okay, so it's 1900. 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:16.320 The Russians raid the apartment in the city of 00:13:16.320 --> 00:13:19.740 Yudu. They find the press. The jig is up. Pistutsky 00:13:19.740 --> 00:13:22.080 is arrested and thrown into the Warsaw Citadel. 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:24.820 Which is a high -security political prison. A 00:13:24.820 --> 00:13:26.759 fortress. It looks like the end of the line for 00:13:26.759 --> 00:13:28.720 him. It should have been. A one -way ticket back 00:13:28.720 --> 00:13:31.399 to Siberia or worse. It absolutely should have 00:13:31.399 --> 00:13:34.620 been. But Pistutsky decides to improvise. He 00:13:34.620 --> 00:13:37.120 quickly realizes he can't fight his way out of 00:13:37.120 --> 00:13:40.009 the Citadel. It's impossible. So he needs to 00:13:40.009 --> 00:13:42.350 get transferred. How do you get transferred out 00:13:42.350 --> 00:13:45.250 of a maximum security prison? You decide to feign 00:13:45.250 --> 00:13:48.830 insanity. Wow. How do you even begin to do that 00:13:48.830 --> 00:13:51.470 convincingly enough to fool Russian prison doctors 00:13:51.470 --> 00:13:54.269 who have probably seen it all? It takes incredible 00:13:54.269 --> 00:13:56.950 commitment. He stopped eating. He started ranting 00:13:56.950 --> 00:13:59.529 incoherently. He would stare at the wall for 00:13:59.529 --> 00:14:02.649 hours on end, completely unresponsive. He had 00:14:02.649 --> 00:14:04.549 to convince the guards and the doctors that he 00:14:04.549 --> 00:14:07.269 was completely certifiably losing his mind. And 00:14:07.269 --> 00:14:09.450 they bought it. They bought it. They transfer 00:14:09.450 --> 00:14:11.610 him to a mental hospital in St. Petersburg, St. 00:14:11.710 --> 00:14:14.490 Nicholas Hospital. Which was less secure. Crucially, 00:14:14.570 --> 00:14:17.470 yes. The staff were doctors and nurses, not prison 00:14:17.470 --> 00:14:19.830 guards. They were less security -minded. And 00:14:19.830 --> 00:14:22.289 most importantly, there was a Polish doctor on 00:14:22.289 --> 00:14:25.389 staff, Yordisiel Mazurkiewicz, who was sympathetic 00:14:25.389 --> 00:14:27.909 to the cause. The inside man. The inside man. 00:14:28.350 --> 00:14:31.850 He helped coordinate the escape. One day, Pasutzki 00:14:31.850 --> 00:14:34.230 simply walked out of the hospital, got into a 00:14:34.230 --> 00:14:36.570 waiting carriage, and vanished into the city. 00:14:36.840 --> 00:14:39.600 He fled to Galicia in the Austrian part of Poland 00:14:39.600 --> 00:14:41.940 and then on to London. London was the classic 00:14:41.940 --> 00:14:44.899 safe haven for revolutionaries then. But he doesn't 00:14:44.899 --> 00:14:46.879 stay there long. And this is the part that really 00:14:46.879 --> 00:14:50.200 surprised me. It's 1904. The Russo -Japanese 00:14:50.200 --> 00:14:53.299 War breaks out. Right. A huge conventional war 00:14:53.299 --> 00:14:55.659 between two major empires thousands of miles 00:14:55.659 --> 00:14:57.960 away in Manchuria. And what does Pesitsky do? 00:14:58.100 --> 00:15:00.480 He gets on a series of boats and trains and goes 00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:02.820 all the way to Tokyo. The enemy of my enemy is 00:15:02.820 --> 00:15:06.299 my friend. It is pure, unadulterated real politic. 00:15:07.099 --> 00:15:09.259 Basutsky saw the war as a golden opportunity. 00:15:09.659 --> 00:15:12.299 Russia was distracted. Its military was stretched 00:15:12.299 --> 00:15:14.779 thin. He thought if he could get Japanese funding 00:15:14.779 --> 00:15:17.019 and support, he could launch an uprising in Poland 00:15:17.019 --> 00:15:19.299 that would cripple Russia's western flank. He's 00:15:19.299 --> 00:15:21.440 basically pitching himself to the Japanese imperial 00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:24.500 government as a geopolitical asset. That's exactly 00:15:24.500 --> 00:15:27.080 what he did. He met with senior figures in their 00:15:27.080 --> 00:15:29.799 military and intelligence services. He even proposed 00:15:29.799 --> 00:15:33.580 creating a Polish legion. A Polish army fighting 00:15:33.580 --> 00:15:37.899 for Japan. Yes. A legion made up of Polish conscripts 00:15:37.899 --> 00:15:40.399 who had been forced into the Russian army, sent 00:15:40.399 --> 00:15:42.580 to fight in Manchuria, and then captured by the 00:15:42.580 --> 00:15:45.139 Japanese. He wanted to turn these prisoners of 00:15:45.139 --> 00:15:48.399 war into an army against Russia. The sheer audacity 00:15:48.399 --> 00:15:51.460 of that idea is just breathtaking. It's pure 00:15:51.460 --> 00:15:54.720 Piłsudski. But he wasn't the only Pole in Tokyo 00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:58.000 pitching ideas to the Japanese. No. And this 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:00.940 is where the great rivalry of modern Polish history 00:16:00.940 --> 00:16:03.990 plays out. Not in Warsaw, but... in a hotel lobby 00:16:03.990 --> 00:16:06.049 in Tokyo. It's incredible. Roman Dramowski was 00:16:06.049 --> 00:16:08.450 there, too. Dramowski, the leader of the National 00:16:08.450 --> 00:16:11.210 Democrats, Piłsudski's political arch nemesis. 00:16:11.250 --> 00:16:13.730 And what was Dramowski's pitch? The exact opposite. 00:16:14.289 --> 00:16:16.470 Dramowski was telling the Japanese, do not listen 00:16:16.470 --> 00:16:19.169 to this romantic lunatic. An uprising in Poland 00:16:19.169 --> 00:16:21.389 right now is doomed to fail. It will just lead 00:16:21.389 --> 00:16:23.850 to a massacre of Poles by the Russian army, and 00:16:23.850 --> 00:16:25.830 it's a complete waste of your money and resources. 00:16:26.269 --> 00:16:28.950 So you have Dramowski, the cautious pragmatist, 00:16:28.970 --> 00:16:30.970 versus Piłsudski, the romantic revolutionary. 00:16:31.919 --> 00:16:34.220 Who did the Japanese listen to? Well, they mostly 00:16:34.220 --> 00:16:36.620 listened to Jarowski's caution. They thought 00:16:36.620 --> 00:16:39.120 the idea of a Polish legion was too risky and 00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:42.279 complicated, but they liked Busitski. They were 00:16:42.279 --> 00:16:44.559 impressed by his intelligence network and his 00:16:44.559 --> 00:16:46.419 boldness. So they didn't send him away empty 00:16:46.419 --> 00:16:49.620 -handed? No. They gave him a significant amount 00:16:49.620 --> 00:16:53.460 of money. About 20 ,000 pounds sterling, which 00:16:53.460 --> 00:16:57.059 was a huge sum at the time in exchange for intelligence 00:16:57.059 --> 00:16:59.360 on Russian troop movements, railway lines, that 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:01.440 sort of thing. But they rejected the military 00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:05.079 alliance. So it was a partial failure. But Pisuzzi 00:17:05.079 --> 00:17:07.700 comes back with cash and he realizes that if 00:17:07.700 --> 00:17:09.680 Japan won't build him an army, he has to buy 00:17:09.680 --> 00:17:12.420 one himself. Correct. But intelligence work doesn't 00:17:12.420 --> 00:17:15.740 fund an army. He needs more capital, a lot more. 00:17:15.940 --> 00:17:18.859 And this leads directly to the Bizdani raid in 00:17:18.859 --> 00:17:21.660 1908. The train robbery. It's often called the 00:17:21.660 --> 00:17:23.660 action of the four prime ministers, which is 00:17:23.660 --> 00:17:26.640 a bit of a joke among historians. Why? Because 00:17:26.640 --> 00:17:28.480 four of the men who participated in the raid, 00:17:28.579 --> 00:17:31.440 including Piłsudski himself, would later go on 00:17:31.440 --> 00:17:33.720 to become prime ministers of Poland. So the future 00:17:33.720 --> 00:17:35.579 leaders of the country were robbing a train. 00:17:36.079 --> 00:17:39.740 Yes. Pisutsky and his elite paramilitary group, 00:17:39.880 --> 00:17:42.819 the combat organization of the PPS, attacked 00:17:42.819 --> 00:17:45.779 a Russian mail train near Vilnius at a small 00:17:45.779 --> 00:17:48.339 station called Bizdani. This wasn't just two 00:17:48.339 --> 00:17:50.779 guys with pistols, was it? No, this was a full 00:17:50.779 --> 00:17:53.400 -blown military operation. They had intelligence. 00:17:53.579 --> 00:17:56.140 They used explosives to stop the train. There 00:17:56.140 --> 00:17:57.920 was a coordinated firefight with the Russian 00:17:57.920 --> 00:18:00.500 soldiers guarding it. It was meticulously planned. 00:18:00.759 --> 00:18:04.910 And the loot? They seized 200 ,812 rubles. Can 00:18:04.910 --> 00:18:07.329 you contextualize that amount for us? How much 00:18:07.329 --> 00:18:09.589 was that really worth? It was an absolute fortune. 00:18:09.750 --> 00:18:11.970 It was equivalent to the entire operating budget 00:18:11.970 --> 00:18:14.009 of his organization for the previous two years 00:18:14.009 --> 00:18:16.250 combined. It was a game changer. So what did 00:18:16.250 --> 00:18:18.390 he do with the money? It allowed him to transform 00:18:18.390 --> 00:18:20.670 his movement from a small group of conspirators 00:18:20.670 --> 00:18:23.410 into a proper paramilitary force. He found the 00:18:23.410 --> 00:18:26.549 Union of Active Struggle, the ZWC. He bought 00:18:26.549 --> 00:18:29.369 Mauser rifles, ammunition, and most importantly, 00:18:29.549 --> 00:18:31.349 he started training the Corps of Professional 00:18:31.349 --> 00:18:33.920 Officers. He's building an army for a country 00:18:33.920 --> 00:18:36.539 that doesn't exist yet. It still seems delusional. 00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:40.500 Until you get to 1914. This Paris lecture that's 00:18:40.500 --> 00:18:42.279 mentioned in the source material, it honestly 00:18:42.279 --> 00:18:44.920 gave me chills. It's his prophet of war moment. 00:18:45.220 --> 00:18:48.619 It's January 1914. He gives a lecture to a group 00:18:48.619 --> 00:18:51.740 of Polish activists in Paris. Europe is at peace. 00:18:52.019 --> 00:18:55.259 The Belle Epoque is in full swing. Nobody is 00:18:55.259 --> 00:18:57.839 seriously expecting a continent -wide war. But 00:18:57.839 --> 00:19:01.019 Piłsudski is. He predicts the future with terrifying, 00:19:01.259 --> 00:19:04.160 almost psychic accuracy. He lays out the logic, 00:19:04.240 --> 00:19:06.539 and I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, for Poland 00:19:06.539 --> 00:19:09.140 to be free, our three partitioners must destroy 00:19:09.140 --> 00:19:11.519 each other. It has to happen in a specific order. 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:14.619 First, Russia must be beaten by the central powers, 00:19:14.720 --> 00:19:17.220 Germany and Austria. Then, after Russia is knocked 00:19:17.220 --> 00:19:19.380 out, the central powers must be beaten by the 00:19:19.380 --> 00:19:22.160 West France, Britain, and America. That is, that 00:19:22.160 --> 00:19:24.539 is exactly what happened in World War I. To the 00:19:24.539 --> 00:19:27.000 letter. It sounds like wishing for a double meteor 00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:29.400 strike on your enemy's houses. It's an incredibly 00:19:29.400 --> 00:19:31.859 unlikely sequence of events. No serious political 00:19:31.859 --> 00:19:34.440 analysts believe that would happen. But Piszczewski 00:19:34.440 --> 00:19:36.500 saw the structural weaknesses in the European 00:19:36.500 --> 00:19:39.380 alliance system. And a few months later, an archduke 00:19:39.380 --> 00:19:42.200 is shot in Sarajevo and his prophecy starts to 00:19:42.200 --> 00:19:44.640 come true. The world changes forever. Yeah. And 00:19:44.640 --> 00:19:48.000 Piszczewski is ready. Section 3. World War I 00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:52.579 and the legions. So. The war begins. Piłsudski 00:19:52.579 --> 00:19:54.839 has his little army in waiting, the First Cadre 00:19:54.839 --> 00:19:57.559 Company, ready to go in Krakow and Austrian Poland. 00:19:57.859 --> 00:20:00.460 He decides to invade Russian -occupied Poland. 00:20:00.579 --> 00:20:04.500 Right. The strategy is, we march in, the Polish 00:20:04.500 --> 00:20:06.480 people will see us as liberators, they'll rise 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:08.920 up en masse, and we'll ride this popular wave 00:20:08.920 --> 00:20:11.480 all the way to Warsaw. And it was a total embarrassing 00:20:11.480 --> 00:20:14.160 flop. What happened? They marched into the first 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:17.259 sizable town, Kielce. Pazewski expected to be 00:20:17.259 --> 00:20:20.079 showered with flowers, hailed as a hero, young 00:20:20.079 --> 00:20:22.480 men flocking to join his army. Instead, the residents 00:20:22.480 --> 00:20:24.599 locked their doors and closed their window shutters. 00:20:24.680 --> 00:20:27.359 Total silence. Were they pro -Russian? No, not 00:20:27.359 --> 00:20:29.279 at all. They were terrified. They were pragmatic. 00:20:29.400 --> 00:20:32.039 They had seen failed uprisings before, in 1830 00:20:32.039 --> 00:20:34.460 and 1863. They knew that if they helped these 00:20:34.460 --> 00:20:36.599 few hundred guys in fancy uniforms, the massive 00:20:36.599 --> 00:20:38.700 Russian army would be back the next day to brain 00:20:38.700 --> 00:20:40.599 their village down and hang them. They were survivors? 00:20:41.210 --> 00:20:43.890 Exactly. And the Austrians, who were technically 00:20:43.890 --> 00:20:46.690 Piłsudski's patrons at this point, looked at 00:20:46.690 --> 00:20:49.950 this tiny force of 150 -odd men and basically 00:20:49.950 --> 00:20:52.269 rolled their eyes. They thought, OK, that was 00:20:52.269 --> 00:20:54.890 a nice little patriotic display, boys. Now get 00:20:54.890 --> 00:20:56.809 integrated into the regular Austro -Hungarian 00:20:56.809 --> 00:21:00.289 army as scouts. But Piłsudski manages to salvage 00:21:00.289 --> 00:21:03.410 the situation. He negotiates and forms the Polish 00:21:03.410 --> 00:21:06.390 Legions, which fight as a distinct Polish unit 00:21:06.390 --> 00:21:09.039 alongside the Austrians. And this is where the 00:21:09.039 --> 00:21:11.599 legend is really solidified. The cult of the 00:21:11.599 --> 00:21:13.539 commandant, they called it. Tell me about the 00:21:13.539 --> 00:21:16.960 culture of the legions. It was unique. Initially, 00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:19.980 they didn't use formal military titles like general 00:21:19.980 --> 00:21:22.799 or captain. They addressed each other as citizen. 00:21:23.369 --> 00:21:25.529 Echoing the French Revolution, Piłsudski was 00:21:25.529 --> 00:21:28.410 known simply as the commandant. He lived with 00:21:28.410 --> 00:21:30.970 his men. He ate the same rations. He shared their 00:21:30.970 --> 00:21:33.730 hardships. He wasn't some distant general in 00:21:33.730 --> 00:21:36.130 a chateau. He was a father figure. The personal 00:21:36.130 --> 00:21:38.869 loyalty they had for him was fanatical. But there's 00:21:38.869 --> 00:21:41.089 a fundamental problem here. He's fighting for 00:21:41.089 --> 00:21:43.890 Austria and Germany. He is technically fighting 00:21:43.890 --> 00:21:46.089 on the side of two of Poland's partitioners. 00:21:46.210 --> 00:21:48.829 This was the tightrope he had to walk. He knew 00:21:48.829 --> 00:21:51.390 he had to fight Russia first. That was step one 00:21:51.390 --> 00:21:55.569 of his prophecy. But by 1917, the world had shifted 00:21:55.569 --> 00:21:57.509 dramatically. The Russian Revolution. Exactly. 00:21:57.630 --> 00:22:00.190 The first part of his prophecy comes true. The 00:22:00.190 --> 00:22:02.750 Russian Revolution happens. The Tsar is toppled. 00:22:02.789 --> 00:22:04.970 The Russian army on the Eastern Front completely 00:22:04.970 --> 00:22:07.809 collapses and disintegrates. Russia is out of 00:22:07.809 --> 00:22:10.789 the war. Step one complete. Now he needs step 00:22:10.789 --> 00:22:14.230 two. Germany and Austria must lose to the West. 00:22:14.369 --> 00:22:16.920 Precisely. So he needs to switch sides, but he 00:22:16.920 --> 00:22:19.059 can't just defect. It would look opportunistic. 00:22:19.180 --> 00:22:21.220 He needs a grand gesture. He needs to become 00:22:21.220 --> 00:22:23.559 a victim of the central powers. The oath crisis. 00:22:23.779 --> 00:22:26.440 The oath crisis of 1917. The Germans, seeing 00:22:26.440 --> 00:22:28.359 that Russia is out of the war, decided they want 00:22:28.359 --> 00:22:30.339 to fully incorporate the Polish legions into 00:22:30.339 --> 00:22:32.619 the German army. They want to create a puppet 00:22:32.619 --> 00:22:35.859 Polish state. And to do that, they demand that 00:22:35.859 --> 00:22:37.980 all the Polish soldiers swear an oath of loyalty, 00:22:38.180 --> 00:22:40.839 not to a future Poland, but to Kaiser Wilhelm 00:22:40.839 --> 00:22:44.319 II of Germany. And Piłsudski says no. He flatly 00:22:44.319 --> 00:22:47.059 refuses, and he secretly orders his soldiers 00:22:47.059 --> 00:22:50.079 in the 1st and 3rd Brigades to refuse as well. 00:22:50.980 --> 00:22:53.400 I will not swear an oath of loyalty to a German 00:22:53.400 --> 00:22:55.539 emperor. He knows this is going to get him arrested. 00:22:55.859 --> 00:22:58.299 He's counting on it. Yeah. It is an absolute 00:22:58.299 --> 00:23:00.720 masterstroke of political timing. Think about 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:03.119 it. If he had stayed loyal to Germany and Austria 00:23:03.119 --> 00:23:06.299 until the very end of the war in 1918, he would 00:23:06.299 --> 00:23:08.240 have been on the losing side. The victors... 00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:10.859 France, Britain, America would have seen him 00:23:10.859 --> 00:23:13.539 as a German collaborator. A puppet. A puppet. 00:23:13.680 --> 00:23:15.920 But by getting himself arrested and thrown into 00:23:15.920 --> 00:23:18.460 Magdeburg Fortress in Germany, he washed his 00:23:18.460 --> 00:23:20.500 hands clean of any collaboration. He becomes 00:23:20.500 --> 00:23:22.819 a martyr. He becomes the ultimate symbol of resistance. 00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:25.579 He spends the final year of the war in a German 00:23:25.579 --> 00:23:28.200 prison cell, while Germany slowly crumbles and 00:23:28.200 --> 00:23:30.519 loses the war on the Western Front. So when the 00:23:30.519 --> 00:23:33.160 armistice is signed in November 1918, he emerges 00:23:33.160 --> 00:23:35.460 not as a German puppet, but as the one man who 00:23:35.460 --> 00:23:38.029 defied everyone. He fought Russia. They need 00:23:38.029 --> 00:23:40.630 to fight Austria and Germany. He's the only viable, 00:23:40.710 --> 00:23:43.430 credible leader for a new Poland. Section four, 00:23:43.609 --> 00:23:48.170 rebuilding a nation from scratch. So it's November 00:23:48.170 --> 00:23:51.549 1918. Germany releases him. He arrives in Warsaw 00:23:51.549 --> 00:23:54.190 on a train. He proclaims independence on November 00:23:54.190 --> 00:23:57.750 11th. But the practical reality he walks into. 00:23:58.319 --> 00:24:00.299 The sources describe it as an administrative 00:24:00.299 --> 00:24:03.099 nightmare. Nightmare is an understatement. It 00:24:03.099 --> 00:24:05.819 was a Frankenstein's monster of a country stitched 00:24:05.819 --> 00:24:09.339 together from three dead empires. Remember, for 00:24:09.339 --> 00:24:12.559 123 years. These territories were administered 00:24:12.559 --> 00:24:15.740 by three completely different bureaucratic systems. 00:24:16.160 --> 00:24:17.799 Give us some examples. What did that actually 00:24:17.799 --> 00:24:20.200 mean for the task of daily governance? Well, 00:24:20.220 --> 00:24:21.619 just take the law. There were nine different 00:24:21.619 --> 00:24:23.579 legal systems operating in Poland simultaneously. 00:24:24.039 --> 00:24:26.440 Nine? How is that even possible? Well, you had 00:24:26.440 --> 00:24:28.700 the Napoleonic Code in the central part of Poland 00:24:28.700 --> 00:24:30.519 that Napoleon had once controlled. You had Prussian 00:24:30.519 --> 00:24:32.900 law in the West, Austrian civil law in the South, 00:24:33.059 --> 00:24:35.000 Russian law in the East, and then variations 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:36.920 within those. It was absolute chaos. And the 00:24:36.920 --> 00:24:39.359 currency? Five different official currencies 00:24:39.359 --> 00:24:42.519 were circulating. You had German marks, Austrian 00:24:42.519 --> 00:24:45.799 crowns, Russian rubles, and a provisional currency 00:24:45.799 --> 00:24:48.019 called the Polish mark. And the economy had been 00:24:48.019 --> 00:24:49.539 looted by the Germans during their occupation. 00:24:50.019 --> 00:24:52.680 Wealth was down 10 percent. There was extreme 00:24:52.680 --> 00:24:55.660 poverty and a typhus epidemic was raging. But 00:24:55.660 --> 00:24:57.779 the train example is my favorite. It's the perfect 00:24:57.779 --> 00:25:00.240 metaphor. It really is. The source material says 00:25:00.240 --> 00:25:02.359 there were 66 different types of rail systems 00:25:02.359 --> 00:25:05.819 and 165 different models of locomotives. But 00:25:05.819 --> 00:25:08.500 the crucial part was the tracks themselves. The 00:25:08.500 --> 00:25:10.509 track gauges were different. The Russian Empire 00:25:10.509 --> 00:25:13.069 deliberately built their tracks on a wider gauge 00:25:13.069 --> 00:25:15.170 than the European standard to make it harder 00:25:15.170 --> 00:25:18.049 for an enemy, like Napoleon or the Germans, to 00:25:18.049 --> 00:25:21.130 invade by rail. So you physically could not drive 00:25:21.130 --> 00:25:23.849 a train from Warsaw to the eastern territories. 00:25:24.109 --> 00:25:26.750 You had to stop at the old border. Stop. Unload 00:25:26.750 --> 00:25:29.230 every single passenger and every piece of cargo 00:25:29.230 --> 00:25:31.490 and put it all on a completely different train. 00:25:32.470 --> 00:25:35.049 Piłsudski wasn't just governing a country. He 00:25:35.049 --> 00:25:37.049 was trying to glue together broken shards of 00:25:37.049 --> 00:25:39.910 pottery that didn't even fit. And on top of all 00:25:39.910 --> 00:25:42.089 that, he has to hold it together politically. 00:25:42.809 --> 00:25:46.289 He makes a very shrewd move. He brings in Ignacy 00:25:46.289 --> 00:25:49.250 Paderewski to be prime minister. Why him? He 00:25:49.250 --> 00:25:51.630 was a pianist. He was a global superstar. Yeah. 00:25:51.789 --> 00:25:54.509 Paderewski was arguably the most famous... pole 00:25:54.509 --> 00:25:56.970 in the world at that time. He was a world -famous 00:25:56.970 --> 00:25:59.750 concert pianist and composer. He was basically 00:25:59.750 --> 00:26:02.450 a celebrity in America and Britain. More importantly, 00:26:02.650 --> 00:26:05.329 he had the ear of President Woodrow Wilson. So 00:26:05.329 --> 00:26:07.710 it was about international recognition. Exactly. 00:26:08.150 --> 00:26:10.589 Pisutsky knew that the Western allies were suspicious 00:26:10.589 --> 00:26:13.180 of him. They remembered him as that socialist 00:26:13.180 --> 00:26:15.380 radical, the guy who worked with Germany at the 00:26:15.380 --> 00:26:17.000 start of the war. He was a question mark. So 00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:19.460 he made the charming, universally admired Paderewski 00:26:19.460 --> 00:26:21.799 the prime minister to win over the West, while 00:26:21.799 --> 00:26:23.819 Piłsudski held the real power as head of state 00:26:23.819 --> 00:26:26.380 and commander -in -chief of the army. Very smart. 00:26:26.680 --> 00:26:29.160 But Piłsudski had a vision that went far beyond 00:26:29.160 --> 00:26:31.319 just the borders of Poland. He had this grand 00:26:31.319 --> 00:26:34.799 idea of intermarium. Misimors, literally between 00:26:34.799 --> 00:26:37.599 seas. This was his grand geostrategic dream. 00:26:38.089 --> 00:26:40.849 He looked at the map and saw a giant, resentful 00:26:40.849 --> 00:26:43.690 Germany to the west and a giant, chaotic but 00:26:43.690 --> 00:26:46.609 potentially powerful Russia to the east. And 00:26:46.609 --> 00:26:48.990 Poland was stuck in the middle. And he concluded 00:26:48.990 --> 00:26:51.609 that a medium -sized Poland on its own would 00:26:51.609 --> 00:26:54.109 always be crushed between them eventually. It 00:26:54.109 --> 00:26:56.710 was just a matter of time. The only long -term 00:26:56.710 --> 00:26:59.970 solution, in his mind, was a massive federation. 00:27:00.210 --> 00:27:02.849 Who would be in it? Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, 00:27:03.170 --> 00:27:06.440 Belarus. Maybe even Latvia, Estonia, Finland, 00:27:06.559 --> 00:27:09.900 and Romania down the line. A massive power block 00:27:09.900 --> 00:27:12.380 stretching from the Baltic Sea in the north to 00:27:12.380 --> 00:27:14.579 the Black Sea in the south. A counterweight to 00:27:14.579 --> 00:27:17.539 Germany and Russia. A third superpower in Eastern 00:27:17.539 --> 00:27:20.119 Europe. It sounds logical on paper. Why didn't 00:27:20.119 --> 00:27:23.359 it happen? Nationalism. The very same force that 00:27:23.359 --> 00:27:25.920 Piłsudski had harnessed to build Poland was now 00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:28.559 working against him. The Lithuanians didn't want 00:27:28.559 --> 00:27:30.960 to be the junior partner in a Polish -led federation. 00:27:31.099 --> 00:27:33.440 They wanted their own independent state. The 00:27:33.440 --> 00:27:35.359 Ukrainians wanted their own independence, not 00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:37.940 to trade Moscow's rule for Warsaw's. They were 00:27:37.940 --> 00:27:40.579 suspicious of Polish intentions. Deeply suspicious. 00:27:40.680 --> 00:27:42.660 They worried that federation was just a polite 00:27:42.660 --> 00:27:45.579 code word for a new Polish empire. And the Russians, 00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:47.740 obviously, were not just going to sit by and 00:27:47.740 --> 00:27:50.500 let this happen. Which brings us to the absolute 00:27:50.500 --> 00:27:55.410 climax of his military career. Section 5. The 00:27:55.410 --> 00:27:58.369 Polish Soviet War of 1920. This is the moment 00:27:58.369 --> 00:28:00.769 where the fate of Europe really hung in the balance. 00:28:00.950 --> 00:28:04.029 That is not an exaggeration. Lenin and the Bolsheviks 00:28:04.029 --> 00:28:06.730 had won the Russian Civil War. They had consolidated 00:28:06.730 --> 00:28:10.269 power. And their goal was never just Russia. 00:28:10.410 --> 00:28:12.930 It was world revolution. World revolution. They 00:28:12.930 --> 00:28:15.309 wanted to march west and link up with the powerful 00:28:15.309 --> 00:28:17.650 communist movements in Germany. If they could 00:28:17.650 --> 00:28:19.690 turn Germany communist, they believed all of 00:28:19.690 --> 00:28:22.109 Europe would fall. And Poland was the land bridge 00:28:22.109 --> 00:28:24.190 they had to cross to get there. Poland was the 00:28:24.190 --> 00:28:26.230 red bridge they had to cross. Yeah. And the corpse 00:28:26.230 --> 00:28:28.569 of white Poland, as they put it, was the obstacle 00:28:28.569 --> 00:28:31.109 in their way. Pisutsky doesn't wait to be attacked, 00:28:31.230 --> 00:28:33.670 though. He strikes first. He makes an alliance 00:28:33.670 --> 00:28:36.509 with the exiled Ukrainian leader, Simon Petliura, 00:28:36.730 --> 00:28:39.509 and he launches an offensive, capturing Kiev 00:28:39.509 --> 00:28:43.490 in May 1920. It was a huge gamble. He was trying 00:28:43.490 --> 00:28:45.410 to create that independent Ukraine that would 00:28:45.410 --> 00:28:47.670 act as a buffer state between Poland and Russia, 00:28:47.789 --> 00:28:50.740 a key part of his intermarium idea. But the Red 00:28:50.740 --> 00:28:53.539 Army's response was overwhelming. They counterattacked 00:28:53.539 --> 00:28:56.339 with incredible ferocity and numbers. The Soviet 00:28:56.339 --> 00:28:58.900 commander, the brilliant and ruthless Mikhail 00:28:58.900 --> 00:29:01.519 Tukhachevsky, issued that famous order to his 00:29:01.519 --> 00:29:04.160 troops. Over the corpse of white Poland lies 00:29:04.160 --> 00:29:07.500 the path to world conflagration. Onward to Berlin. 00:29:07.740 --> 00:29:10.579 By the summer of 1920, the Red Army is at the 00:29:10.579 --> 00:29:13.490 gates of Warsaw. The diplomatic corps is fleeing 00:29:13.490 --> 00:29:15.730 the city. The government is in a state of total 00:29:15.730 --> 00:29:18.470 panic. And Piłsudski's political enemies are 00:29:18.470 --> 00:29:20.450 accusing him of treason for the initial failure. 00:29:20.690 --> 00:29:23.309 It was the absolute darkest hour. The situation 00:29:23.309 --> 00:29:25.789 was so bleak, he actually offered his resignation 00:29:25.789 --> 00:29:27.750 as commander -in -chief to the prime minister, 00:29:27.930 --> 00:29:30.650 Winston DeVitos. And Widows refused it. He refused 00:29:30.650 --> 00:29:32.970 to accept it. He knew Piłsudski was the only 00:29:32.970 --> 00:29:35.349 one who could save them. But it shows you the 00:29:35.349 --> 00:29:37.650 level of desperation. So the Battle of Warsaw, 00:29:37.910 --> 00:29:41.299 August 1920. All the international military experts 00:29:41.299 --> 00:29:44.680 say Warsaw is doomed. What is Pisutsky's plan? 00:29:44.900 --> 00:29:47.059 He decides to do something that violates every 00:29:47.059 --> 00:29:50.319 rule in the standard military textbook. The main 00:29:50.319 --> 00:29:52.640 Soviet force was sweeping around to the north 00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:55.599 of Warsaw, trying to encircle the city and cut 00:29:55.599 --> 00:29:58.960 it off. Pisutsky, looking at the maps, noticed 00:29:58.960 --> 00:30:02.910 a huge gap. a weak seam between the Soviet armies 00:30:02.910 --> 00:30:05.289 attacking from the north and the smaller armies 00:30:05.289 --> 00:30:08.230 in the south. So he sees a weakness. What does 00:30:08.230 --> 00:30:10.109 he do with that information? He does something 00:30:10.109 --> 00:30:13.930 incredibly risky. He pulls his best, most battle 00:30:13.930 --> 00:30:16.589 -hardened troops, about 20 ,000 men, which he 00:30:16.589 --> 00:30:19.140 calls the strike group. out of the main defensive 00:30:19.140 --> 00:30:21.660 line around Warsaw. Which weakens the city's 00:30:21.660 --> 00:30:24.859 defenses. Terrifyingly so. If the main defensive 00:30:24.859 --> 00:30:27.119 line had broken while he was repositioning his 00:30:27.119 --> 00:30:29.180 troops, it would have been game over. The city 00:30:29.180 --> 00:30:31.000 would have fallen. He took personal command of 00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:32.940 this strike group, moved them south of Warsaw, 00:30:33.160 --> 00:30:36.039 and launched a massive surprise attack straight 00:30:36.039 --> 00:30:38.539 up from the south, slicing right into the exposed 00:30:38.539 --> 00:30:41.259 flank and rear of the encircling Soviet armies. 00:30:41.460 --> 00:30:43.740 It's a massive scythe maneuver. It's a perfect 00:30:43.740 --> 00:30:46.480 scythe. He completely severed their supply lines, 00:30:46.619 --> 00:30:49.000 their communications, and caused absolute panic. 00:30:49.319 --> 00:30:52.440 The Red Army just disintegrated. Tukhachevsky 00:30:52.440 --> 00:30:55.099 himself actually thought the Polish plans, which 00:30:55.099 --> 00:30:57.400 his intelligence had found on a dead Polish officer 00:30:57.400 --> 00:31:00.500 a few days earlier, were a bluff. He thought 00:31:00.500 --> 00:31:03.160 the maneuver seemed so reckless and amateurish 00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:05.750 that it had to be a trick. So he ignored the 00:31:05.750 --> 00:31:07.789 intelligence. A fatal mistake. One of the biggest 00:31:07.789 --> 00:31:10.569 military blunders of the 20th century. And the 00:31:10.569 --> 00:31:14.049 result was a total rout of the Red Army. Lenin 00:31:14.049 --> 00:31:16.890 later called it an enormous defeat. It single 00:31:16.890 --> 00:31:19.309 -handedly stopped the westward expansion of communism 00:31:19.309 --> 00:31:21.910 into Europe for the next two decades. And they 00:31:21.910 --> 00:31:25.029 called it the miracle at the Vistula. And interestingly, 00:31:25.349 --> 00:31:27.750 that name was originally meant to be an insult. 00:31:27.910 --> 00:31:31.049 It was coined by his political rival, Stanislaw 00:31:31.049 --> 00:31:34.359 Struski, who was a national Democrat. He wanted 00:31:34.359 --> 00:31:36.500 to imply that Piłsudski's generalship was so 00:31:36.500 --> 00:31:39.039 incompetent that only a divine intervention by 00:31:39.039 --> 00:31:40.940 the Virgin Mary could have saved Poland. He was 00:31:40.940 --> 00:31:43.240 trying to deny Piłsudski the credit. Exactly. 00:31:43.400 --> 00:31:46.339 But the name was so evocative and the victory 00:31:46.339 --> 00:31:48.839 so unlikely that the Polish people adopted it 00:31:48.839 --> 00:31:51.579 sincerely. They loved the name. Strowski's insult 00:31:51.579 --> 00:31:53.640 backfired completely and became a part of the 00:31:53.640 --> 00:31:55.960 national legend. But the aftermath of the war 00:31:55.960 --> 00:31:58.289 had a bitter taste for Piłsudski. The Treaty 00:31:58.289 --> 00:32:02.289 of Riga in 1921. It did. Poland survived and 00:32:02.289 --> 00:32:04.910 secured its independence. But the grand dream 00:32:04.910 --> 00:32:08.789 of intermarium died. To make peace. The Polish 00:32:08.789 --> 00:32:11.710 politicians, against Piłsudski's wishes, agreed 00:32:11.710 --> 00:32:14.210 to a border that split Ukraine and Belarus with 00:32:14.210 --> 00:32:16.730 the Soviets. So he had to abandon his Ukrainian 00:32:16.730 --> 00:32:19.730 allies. He had to abandon Simon Petliura and 00:32:19.730 --> 00:32:21.690 his Ukrainian soldiers who had fought and bled 00:32:21.690 --> 00:32:23.750 alongside the Poles. It was a source of deep 00:32:23.750 --> 00:32:26.509 shame for him. He famously went to an internment 00:32:26.509 --> 00:32:28.630 camp of Ukrainian officers after the war and 00:32:28.630 --> 00:32:31.029 said, I apologize to you gentlemen, I am very 00:32:31.029 --> 00:32:33.269 sorry. He felt it was an act of cowardice by 00:32:33.269 --> 00:32:35.309 the Polish parliament. There's also the lingering 00:32:35.309 --> 00:32:38.170 issue of Vilnius, his hometown. He couldn't let 00:32:38.170 --> 00:32:41.329 it go to Lithuania. No. The post -war international 00:32:41.329 --> 00:32:44.210 agreements had assigned Vilnius, which had a 00:32:44.210 --> 00:32:46.750 majority Polish population, but was the historic 00:32:46.750 --> 00:32:49.829 capital of Lithuania, to the new Lithuanian state. 00:32:51.109 --> 00:32:53.250 Piłsudski could not accept that. His heart was 00:32:53.250 --> 00:32:55.809 there. So what did he do? He couldn't just invade 00:32:55.809 --> 00:32:59.359 a neutral country. So he staged a mutiny. He 00:32:59.359 --> 00:33:01.599 secretly ordered one of his generals, Lucjan 00:33:01.599 --> 00:33:04.700 Julgowski, to rebel against the Polish government, 00:33:04.920 --> 00:33:07.220 march his division to Vilnius, and seize the 00:33:07.220 --> 00:33:09.599 city. He ordered his own general to pretend to 00:33:09.599 --> 00:33:12.220 go rogue. Yes. It gave the Polish government 00:33:12.220 --> 00:33:15.319 plausible deniability. Oh no, what a tragedy, 00:33:15.400 --> 00:33:17.359 those hot -headed soldiers acting on their own. 00:33:17.680 --> 00:33:19.240 But everyone knew who was really pulling the 00:33:19.240 --> 00:33:21.480 strings. It secured Vilnius for Poland for the 00:33:21.480 --> 00:33:23.940 next two decades, but it absolutely poisoned 00:33:23.940 --> 00:33:26.500 relations with Lithuania for the entire interwar 00:33:26.500 --> 00:33:28.319 period. They didn't even have formal diplomatic 00:33:28.319 --> 00:33:31.519 relations until 1938. So he is the savior of 00:33:31.519 --> 00:33:34.140 the nation. He is the marshal. But Section 6 00:33:34.140 --> 00:33:36.859 takes a very dark turn. The new Polish democracy 00:33:36.859 --> 00:33:40.400 is messy, chaotic, and Piłsudski has zero patience 00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:43.420 for mess. None whatsoever. The turning point 00:33:43.420 --> 00:33:48.359 is December 1922. Piłsudski had refused to run 00:33:48.359 --> 00:33:50.380 for president because the new constitution gave 00:33:50.380 --> 00:33:53.259 the president very limited, mostly ceremonial 00:33:53.259 --> 00:33:55.759 powers. He didn't want to be a figurehead. So 00:33:55.759 --> 00:33:58.079 his friend and ally, Gabriel Narodowicz, was 00:33:58.079 --> 00:34:00.059 elected instead. And the political right, the 00:34:00.059 --> 00:34:02.779 National Democrats, Dromsky's party, went absolutely 00:34:02.779 --> 00:34:05.680 crazy. They launched a vicious nationalist hate 00:34:05.680 --> 00:34:07.980 campaign against him. They called Narodowicz 00:34:07.980 --> 00:34:10.559 a Jewish president because he had been elected 00:34:10.559 --> 00:34:12.420 with the support of the parties representing 00:34:12.420 --> 00:34:15.559 Poland's ethnic minorities, Jews, Ukrainians, 00:34:15.619 --> 00:34:19.119 Germans. And it wasn't just words. No. A few 00:34:19.119 --> 00:34:21.280 days after taking office, President Nordovic 00:34:21.280 --> 00:34:23.820 was at an art gallery opening in Warsaw. And 00:34:23.820 --> 00:34:25.880 a right -wing fanatic, an artist who had been 00:34:25.880 --> 00:34:28.119 swept up in the nationalist fervor, walked up 00:34:28.119 --> 00:34:30.139 to him and shot him dead. The assassination of 00:34:30.139 --> 00:34:32.079 the first president, how did that impact Piłsudski? 00:34:32.320 --> 00:34:34.340 It broke something in him. He was disgusted. 00:34:34.380 --> 00:34:36.400 He was horrified. He felt that if the political 00:34:36.400 --> 00:34:38.699 parties could whip up so much hatred that they 00:34:38.699 --> 00:34:40.579 murdered the democratically elected president, 00:34:40.760 --> 00:34:43.219 then Polish democracy itself was morally bankrupt. 00:34:43.760 --> 00:34:46.239 He famously called the politicians prostitutes. 00:34:46.340 --> 00:34:49.320 So he lost faith in the system he helped create. 00:34:49.679 --> 00:34:52.440 Completely. He resigned all his official posts 00:34:52.440 --> 00:34:55.639 and retired to a small manor in Sulajowek, just 00:34:55.639 --> 00:34:58.539 outside Warsaw. He said he was done with politics. 00:34:58.820 --> 00:35:01.639 He lived simply and wrote his memoirs. But he 00:35:01.639 --> 00:35:05.420 didn't stay retired for long? No. By 1926, the 00:35:05.420 --> 00:35:07.920 country was unstable again. The economy was in 00:35:07.920 --> 00:35:10.659 shambles, there was hyperinflation, and governments 00:35:10.659 --> 00:35:13.019 were falling every few months due to petty squabbling 00:35:13.019 --> 00:35:16.340 in the parliament. Pisutsky, watching from the 00:35:16.340 --> 00:35:19.059 sidelines, decided he was the only adult in the 00:35:19.059 --> 00:35:21.659 room who could fix it. The May coup of 1926. 00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:24.380 He rallied the military regiments loyal to him 00:35:24.380 --> 00:35:27.000 and marched on Warsaw. He actually hoped the 00:35:27.000 --> 00:35:28.800 government would just see his troops, realize 00:35:28.800 --> 00:35:31.099 the game was up, and step aside out of respect 00:35:31.099 --> 00:35:33.460 for him. He met the president on the Poniatowski 00:35:33.460 --> 00:35:35.719 Bridge for a dramatic confrontation. But the 00:35:35.719 --> 00:35:37.860 government didn't back down. No. The president 00:35:37.860 --> 00:35:39.840 refused to yield. The government decided to fight 00:35:39.840 --> 00:35:42.659 back. So it wasn't a bloodless coup. Not at all. 00:35:42.760 --> 00:35:46.139 It was a short but brutal civil war. For three 00:35:46.139 --> 00:35:47.980 days, there was heavy fighting in the streets 00:35:47.980 --> 00:35:50.960 of Warsaw, brother against brother. In the end, 00:35:51.019 --> 00:35:55.219 379 people died, including over 160 civilians 00:35:55.219 --> 00:35:58.159 caught in the crossfire. This is the great stain 00:35:58.159 --> 00:36:00.679 on his legacy. He shot his way back into power. 00:36:01.019 --> 00:36:03.840 And then in a move that I think confuses everyone, 00:36:04.039 --> 00:36:07.059 he wins. He has total power, but he doesn't declare 00:36:07.059 --> 00:36:09.619 himself dictator for life or emperor. He doesn't 00:36:09.619 --> 00:36:11.699 even become president. It's a very strange move. 00:36:11.880 --> 00:36:14.420 The parliament, now terrified of him, elected 00:36:14.420 --> 00:36:16.719 him president, and he refused the office again. 00:36:16.960 --> 00:36:19.539 He installed a figurehead, a scientist named 00:36:19.539 --> 00:36:22.880 Ignacy Machiki, as president. Piłsudski took 00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:25.219 the title of minister of military affairs and 00:36:25.219 --> 00:36:27.119 inspector general of the armed forces. But make 00:36:27.119 --> 00:36:29.800 no mistake about it. He was the dictator. Nothing 00:36:29.800 --> 00:36:32.519 of importance happened in Poland from 1926 until 00:36:32.519 --> 00:36:34.500 his death without his approval. This brings us 00:36:34.500 --> 00:36:37.880 to Section 7, the Senation government. Yes, from 00:36:37.880 --> 00:36:39.960 the Latin word sanatio, which means healing. 00:36:40.139 --> 00:36:42.320 He claimed he was going to heal the nation's 00:36:42.320 --> 00:36:44.199 corrupt public life. But the healing process 00:36:44.199 --> 00:36:47.380 involved prisons and cracking down on dissent. 00:36:47.400 --> 00:36:50.300 It did. The Senation regime was authoritarian. 00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:54.099 The parliament, the Senj, became a rubber -stamped 00:36:54.099 --> 00:36:56.980 talking shop with no real power. When the political 00:36:56.980 --> 00:36:59.059 opposition got too loud or organized against 00:36:59.059 --> 00:37:02.300 him, Bisutski had them arrested. The breast trials 00:37:02.300 --> 00:37:04.699 saw the leaders of the opposition parties imprisoned 00:37:04.699 --> 00:37:07.199 on trumped -up charges. And then there was the 00:37:07.199 --> 00:37:09.500 Bereza -Kartuska prison. That was the darkest 00:37:09.500 --> 00:37:11.679 part of the regime. It was a detention camp established 00:37:11.679 --> 00:37:14.099 for political prisoners where the conditions 00:37:14.099 --> 00:37:16.559 were brutal and mistreatment was common. We cannot 00:37:16.559 --> 00:37:18.820 sugarcoat this part of his story. The beloved 00:37:18.820 --> 00:37:21.820 grandpa of the nation was, in his final years, 00:37:22.170 --> 00:37:24.090 running a police state. But you made a point 00:37:24.090 --> 00:37:26.170 earlier that he wasn't a fascist in the mold 00:37:26.170 --> 00:37:28.610 of Hitler or Mussolini. It's a crucial distinction. 00:37:28.909 --> 00:37:32.010 His regime was authoritarian, but not totalitarian. 00:37:32.349 --> 00:37:35.070 He didn't try to control every aspect of people's 00:37:35.070 --> 00:37:37.750 private lives. There was no single mandatory 00:37:37.750 --> 00:37:41.190 ideology. He didn't have a racial theory. In 00:37:41.190 --> 00:37:43.650 fact, he was fiercely opposed to the anti -Semitism 00:37:43.650 --> 00:37:45.349 of the Polish right. That's a very important 00:37:45.349 --> 00:37:48.469 point. How did Poland's large minority populations, 00:37:48.670 --> 00:37:51.469 especially the Jews, fare under his rule? His 00:37:51.469 --> 00:37:54.070 philosophy was what's called skate assimilation. 00:37:54.829 --> 00:37:57.510 He didn't care if you were Jewish, Ukrainian, 00:37:57.630 --> 00:38:00.829 or German by blood or religion. He cared if you 00:38:00.829 --> 00:38:03.590 were a loyal citizen of the Polish state. If 00:38:03.590 --> 00:38:06.190 you served in the army and paid your taxes, you 00:38:06.190 --> 00:38:08.929 were a full citizen in his eyes. As opposed to 00:38:08.929 --> 00:38:11.329 the ethnic assimilation of his rivals. Exactly. 00:38:11.329 --> 00:38:14.210 The National Democrats, the Indecja, wanted an 00:38:14.210 --> 00:38:17.670 ethnically pure Catholic Poland. They were openly 00:38:17.670 --> 00:38:20.250 anti -Semitic. For this reason, the Jewish community 00:38:20.250 --> 00:38:23.429 in Poland generally viewed Piłsudski as a protector. 00:38:23.829 --> 00:38:26.289 They consistently voted for his political bloc. 00:38:26.570 --> 00:38:29.489 When Piłsudski died, many Polish Jews felt they 00:38:29.489 --> 00:38:31.449 had lost their shield against the rising tide 00:38:31.449 --> 00:38:33.670 of nationalism. Let's turn to foreign policy 00:38:33.670 --> 00:38:36.389 in these final years. He's in an impossible position. 00:38:36.730 --> 00:38:38.769 He's looking at a rising Adolf Hitler in the 00:38:38.769 --> 00:38:41.349 West and a consolidating Joseph Stalin in the 00:38:41.349 --> 00:38:43.389 East. The policy he developed was called the 00:38:43.389 --> 00:38:46.269 policy of two stools. He famously told one of 00:38:46.269 --> 00:38:48.449 his aides, we are sitting between two stools. 00:38:48.449 --> 00:38:50.789 This cannot last long. We have to know from which 00:38:50.789 --> 00:38:52.809 stool we will tumble first and when. He was trying 00:38:52.809 --> 00:38:54.849 to balance between them. He signed non -aggression 00:38:54.849 --> 00:38:57.550 pacts with both, right? Yes, with the Soviet 00:38:57.550 --> 00:39:01.070 Union in 1932 and then shocking the world with 00:39:01.070 --> 00:39:05.059 Nazi Germany in 1934. He was buying time. He 00:39:05.059 --> 00:39:07.579 knew war was inevitable, and he knew Poland was 00:39:07.579 --> 00:39:09.519 not ready. There are those persistent rumors 00:39:09.519 --> 00:39:12.300 that in 1933, right when Hitler first came to 00:39:12.300 --> 00:39:15.360 power, Piłsudski secretly proposed a preventive 00:39:15.360 --> 00:39:17.920 war to France. Yes, the evidence is debated among 00:39:17.920 --> 00:39:20.400 historians, but the story is that he sounded 00:39:20.400 --> 00:39:23.239 out the French. Let's invade Germany now, together, 00:39:23.519 --> 00:39:26.079 and crush Hitler while he's still weak and rearming. 00:39:26.139 --> 00:39:28.579 And what did France say? The French, still scarred 00:39:28.579 --> 00:39:31.260 by World War I, weren't interested. They wanted 00:39:31.260 --> 00:39:34.260 peace at any price. So Buczynski had no choice 00:39:34.260 --> 00:39:36.159 but to pursue the balancing act, knowing it would 00:39:36.159 --> 00:39:38.599 eventually fail. Section 8. The end of an era. 00:39:38.719 --> 00:39:42.039 It's 1935. The Marshal is dying. He had liver 00:39:42.039 --> 00:39:44.079 cancer. It was kept a state secret until the 00:39:44.079 --> 00:39:47.179 very end. He died on May 12, 1935 at the Bill 00:39:47.179 --> 00:39:50.260 Witter Palace in Warsaw. The reaction in Poland 00:39:50.260 --> 00:39:52.579 was seismic. The entire country just stopped. 00:39:52.739 --> 00:39:54.880 There was a massive outpouring of genuine grief. 00:39:55.119 --> 00:39:57.440 And the international reaction is startling, 00:39:57.480 --> 00:39:59.900 to say the least. Condolences came from everywhere. 00:40:00.349 --> 00:40:03.170 Pope Pius XI, Stalin sent a message, Mussolini. 00:40:03.429 --> 00:40:06.409 But the most chilling and bizarre one came from 00:40:06.409 --> 00:40:09.230 Hitler. Hitler sent condolences. Hitler went 00:40:09.230 --> 00:40:12.190 much further. He ordered a memorial mass for 00:40:12.190 --> 00:40:14.929 Piłsudski to be held in Berlin. And he attended 00:40:14.929 --> 00:40:17.989 it himself. He sat in the front row of a Catholic 00:40:17.989 --> 00:40:20.730 cathedral to honor the Polish dictator. It was 00:40:20.730 --> 00:40:23.829 the only time in his entire rule that he ever 00:40:23.829 --> 00:40:26.269 attended a religious service for a foreign leader. 00:40:26.769 --> 00:40:30.239 Why on earth would he do that? He respected Piłsudski. 00:40:30.360 --> 00:40:33.159 He saw him as a fellow strongman, a bulwark against 00:40:33.159 --> 00:40:35.579 Bolshevism. He had this mistaken belief that 00:40:35.579 --> 00:40:38.639 with Piłsudski gone, he could woo Poland into 00:40:38.639 --> 00:40:40.960 becoming a junior partner in an anti -Soviet 00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:43.420 alliance. He fundamentally misread the Polish 00:40:43.420 --> 00:40:45.079 character. The funeral arrangements themselves 00:40:45.079 --> 00:40:47.860 were also uniquely complex. Oh, even in death, 00:40:48.019 --> 00:40:50.340 he couldn't just do things normally. His body 00:40:50.340 --> 00:40:53.420 was embalmed and laid to rest in a crypt in Wawel 00:40:53.420 --> 00:40:55.980 Cathedral in Krakow. Which is the burial place 00:40:55.980 --> 00:40:58.360 of the Polish kings. It's the Pantheon. It was 00:40:58.360 --> 00:41:00.920 a massive honor and very controversial. But his 00:41:00.920 --> 00:41:03.199 heart, his heart was surgically removed from 00:41:03.199 --> 00:41:06.179 his body. And according to his will, it was taken 00:41:06.179 --> 00:41:08.500 to Vilnius and buried in his mother's grave. 00:41:09.260 --> 00:41:12.519 It was his final romantic tribute to his Lithuanian 00:41:12.519 --> 00:41:14.579 homeland and the mother who taught him to be 00:41:14.579 --> 00:41:17.300 a Polish patriot. And his brain wasn't buried 00:41:17.300 --> 00:41:20.320 with his body either. No. His brain was removed 00:41:20.320 --> 00:41:22.980 and sent to the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius 00:41:22.980 --> 00:41:25.880 for scientific study. They wanted to see if they 00:41:25.880 --> 00:41:28.420 could find a biological basis for his political 00:41:28.420 --> 00:41:31.199 and military genius. Talk about leaving a piece 00:41:31.199 --> 00:41:33.619 of yourself everywhere. An incredible story. 00:41:33.960 --> 00:41:36.719 It truly is. So here we are at the outro. When 00:41:36.719 --> 00:41:38.860 we try to sum it all up, how do we assess the 00:41:38.860 --> 00:41:41.320 legacy? I know the communists who ruled Poland 00:41:41.320 --> 00:41:43.780 after World War II tried to erase him from history, 00:41:43.880 --> 00:41:47.039 didn't they? They tried their best. For 45 years 00:41:47.039 --> 00:41:49.880 under the Soviet -imposed government, you couldn't 00:41:49.880 --> 00:41:52.900 teach Posudski's story honestly in schools. He 00:41:52.900 --> 00:41:55.719 was officially branded a fascist, an imperialist, 00:41:55.739 --> 00:41:58.400 an enemy of the people. Because, of course, he 00:41:58.400 --> 00:42:01.079 had personally humiliated the Red Army and stopped 00:42:01.079 --> 00:42:03.869 their march into Europe. But the memory survived. 00:42:04.250 --> 00:42:07.070 People told the stories in their homes. And after 00:42:07.070 --> 00:42:10.289 1989, when Poland became free again, the statues 00:42:10.289 --> 00:42:13.130 went back up almost immediately. It brings us 00:42:13.130 --> 00:42:14.869 right back to that central question, that image 00:42:14.869 --> 00:42:17.449 of the Red Tram. He was willing to be a socialist, 00:42:17.710 --> 00:42:20.429 a robber, a soldier, a coup leader, a dictator. 00:42:21.130 --> 00:42:23.550 He was willing to be whatever he needed to be 00:42:23.550 --> 00:42:26.250 for that one singular goal of independence. There's 00:42:26.250 --> 00:42:28.690 a quote from him back in 1908 where he asked 00:42:28.690 --> 00:42:30.690 his followers not to make him out to be a whiner 00:42:30.690 --> 00:42:33.289 and a sentimentalist. He despised the Polish 00:42:33.289 --> 00:42:35.730 tradition of martyrdom, of Poland as the noble 00:42:35.730 --> 00:42:38.090 victim. He believed independence was something 00:42:38.090 --> 00:42:40.610 you took, something you fought for and seized, 00:42:40.829 --> 00:42:42.929 not something you were given by other countries 00:42:42.929 --> 00:42:45.110 and treaties. And that leads us to the final 00:42:45.110 --> 00:42:47.369 provocative thought for you to take away. We 00:42:47.369 --> 00:42:50.929 can critique the authoritarianism. We can. And 00:42:50.929 --> 00:42:54.210 we absolutely should condemn the Borysa -Kartuska 00:42:54.210 --> 00:42:56.789 prison and the May coup. But when you look at 00:42:56.789 --> 00:43:01.250 the map of Europe today, without this one specific 00:43:01.250 --> 00:43:03.449 contradictory man, without that unique blend 00:43:03.449 --> 00:43:06.409 of romanticism and ruthlessness, would Poland 00:43:06.409 --> 00:43:08.510 exist on that map at all? Or would it just be 00:43:08.510 --> 00:43:10.269 another province on a Russian or German map? 00:43:10.570 --> 00:43:12.610 That's the question he leaves us with. Sometimes 00:43:12.610 --> 00:43:15.269 history needs a man who is willing to get the 00:43:15.269 --> 00:43:17.429 details wrong in order to get the one big thing 00:43:17.429 --> 00:43:19.349 right. Thank you for joining us for this deep 00:43:19.349 --> 00:43:19.989 dive. Bye.