Piłsudski's colonels,Pilsudski Bros., TIME, Monday, April 07, 1930Colonels' Constitution, TIME, Monday, December 25, 1933 () or the colonels' regime refers to the group of politicians who governed the Second Polish Republic from 1926 to 1939.Jerzy Jan Lerski, Piotr Wróbel, Richard J. Kozicki, Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966-1945, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996, , Google Print, p. 368 Alternatively, the term refers to the regime following the death of Józef Piłsudski in 1935.
Name The term "Colonel's group" refers to a group of several dozen politicians with military backgrounds who were close to Marshal Piłsudski and, after the May Coup, became involved in political life outside the army structures. Many of these individuals were senior officers, though military rank was not a defining criterion, as not all members of the group held such a rank. The names most commonly associated with this group include: Walery Sławek, Aleksander Prystor, Kazimierz Świtalski, Bogusław Miedziński, Józef Beck, Janusz Jędrzejewicz, Wacław Jędrzejewicz, Adam Koc, and Ignacy Matuszewski. While this is not an exhaustive list, it represents the core of the group of soldier-politicians involved in governmental roles after 1926.Piotrowski Jacek (2011). Grupa pułkowników jako zaplecze polityczne rządów autorytarnych w latach 1926–1939. ACTA UNIVERSITATIS WRATISLAVIENSIS No 3365. Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi XXXIII. Wrocław 2011. Uniwersytet Wrocławski. p.253.
History Close allies of Józef Piłsudski, most of "the colonels" had served as officers in the Polish Legions and Polish Military Organisation (POW),, Google Print, p.170 and in the Polish Army (particularly during the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1920, prior to Piłsudski's 1923 resignation as Chief of the Polish General Staff). They had held key, if not necessarily the highest, military ranks during Piłsudski's May 1926 coup d'état. SANACJA, Encyklopedia Interia
Later they became important figures in Piłsudski's Sanation movement and ministers in several governments. After the BBWR's 1930 electoral victory (the "Brest elections"), Piłsudski left most internal matters in the hands of his "colonels", while himself concentrating on military and foreign affairs.
The "colonels" included Józef Beck, Janusz Jędrzejewicz, Wacław Jędrzejewicz, Adam Koc, Leon Kozłowski, Ignacy Matuszewski, , Bronisław Pieracki, Aleksander Prystor, Adam Skwarczyński, Walery Sławek, and Kazimierz Świtalski.
The colonels' regime is divisible into three periods: 1926–1929, 1930–1935 and 1935–1939. Jacek Piotrowski, Piłsudczycy u władzy , "Mówią wieki" (05/2006) During the first period, after the May 1926 coup, the colonels (and Sanation generally) consolidated their control over the government. The second period, following the 1930 "Brest elections", saw the colonels' regime under Piłsudski's guidance, with power exercised by his allies and friends such as Walery Sławek and Aleksander Prystor, both of whom had known Piłsudski since 1905 and had served in the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party before World War I. After Piłsudski's death in 1935, the hardliner "colonels", led by Walery Sławek, lost influence to the Castle faction of Ignacy Mościcki and Edward Rydz-Śmigły.Jerzy Jan Lerski, Piotr Wróbel, Richard J. Kozicki, Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966-1945, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996, , Google Print, 368 Nevertheless, the "colonels' regime" and Sanation still dominated the Polish government from 1935 to the German invasion of Poland, in September 1939.Raymond Leslie Buell, Poland - Key to Europe, READ BOOKS, 2007, , Google Print, p.118 Some scholars draw a distinction between the "Piłsudski period" (1926–35) and the "colonels' period, proper" (1935–39).Peter D. Stachura, Poland, 1918-1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic, Routledge, 2004, , Google Print, p.68
From 1937, the colonels' new political front would be the Camp of National Unity (OZON).Abraham J. Edelheit, Hershel Edelheit, History of the Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary, Westview Press, 1994, , Google Print, p.187 In that last period, the Polish government, a "dictatorship without a dictator", to bolster its popular support, paradoxically adopted some of the nationalistic anti-minority policies that had been opposed by Piłsudski and advocated by his most vocal adversaries, the National Democrats.Paul N. Hehn, A Low Dishonest Decade: The Great Powers, Eastern Europe, and the Economic Origins of World War II, 1930-1941, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002, , Google Print, p.66
See also Józef Piłsudski's cult of personality Military dictatorship Piłsudskiite
References
Sources Wereszycki, H. (1968). "Towards a Total Dictatorship (1931-1939)". In History of Poland, Warsaw, 1968, pp. 689–709.