THE PARTITION OF UPPER SILESIA On the re-creation of the Polish State in 1918 the question of the attribution of Upper Silesia, with its great mineral wealth and mixed population of 2,280,902, became one of great importance. It was decided and provided by Article 88 of the Treaty of Ver sailles (1919) that the inhabitants of Upper Silesia should be called upon to decide by plebiscite whether they would belong to Germany or Poland (except in the purely German districts of Falkenberg, Grotthau, Neisse, part of Neustadt and Hultschin), the supreme authority in the area meanwhile being vested in an Inter-Allied commission consisting of one representative of France, Great Britain and Italy respectively. On Feb. 1, 1920, Allied troops occupied the plebiscitary district; local German officials were subordinated to the Inter-Allied authorities, and the German police replaced by a special polling police, composed half of German-speaking and half of Polish-speaking inhabitants. The Plebiscites.—On the whole, the collaboration of the Inter-Allied control and the German officials proved satisfactory. Both the Poles (under Korfanty) and the Germans opened an active canvassing campaign; and the Poles, after previous ex cesses, attempted on Aug. 19, 1920, to seize the country by force, and order was not restored for several weeks. The Polish terror ism revived when the date of the plebiscite was announced for March 20, 1921, reaching a climax before the plebiscite, and re commencing after it. Bands, chiefly recruited from Congress Po land, usurped authority. The poll showed 717,122 votes for Ger many and 483,514 for Poland. In 664 districts there was a Ger man, in 597 a Polish majority. Practically all the towns voted for Germany. There was a Polish majority in the administrative districts of Rybnik, Pless, Beuthen, Tarnowitz and Gross-Streh litz. The Inter-Allied Commission proved unable to agree on the
allocation of the disputed regions, the French representative (who had from the first been accused of tacitly supporting the Poles) wishing to allot the whole of southern and eastern Upper Silesia to the Poles, while the British and Italian representatives wished to apportion the industrial region to Germany. Protracted diplo matic negotiations between Paris, London and Rome led to no result. At the end of April a report became current that the Council of Ambassadors had given only the districts of Rybnik and Pless to Poland; whereupon in May, Korfanty, at the head of a force armed and reinforced from Poland, occupied the whole south-eastern part of Upper Silesia, nominated himself dictator of these districts, took over the administration, and treated even the Allied officials so curtly that they were obliged to vacate the regions occupied by the Poles, except the larger towns. A further Polish advance was prevented, after severe fighting, by the Ger man defence force, composed of Upper Silesians and volunteers from other parts of the Reich, under Gen. Hofer.
After fruitless attempts to negotiate with Korfanty, the Allies dispatched reinforcements of French and British troops to Upper Silesia. Lengthy negotiations were carried on with the German defence force, and British troops had, by June 20, re-occupied the larger towns, the Poles commanding the rural districts. Korfanty now lost control over his bands, which plundered the villages; work in many mines and ironworks stopped and the industrial dis trict suffered severe losses.