Introduction
On 27 May 1920, among advertisements for cigarettes, bicycles and steamship tickets to Danzig, readers of the Polish-American newspaper Unity (Zgoda) were presented with a striking image. A man in a military uniform towered over two sets of crowds: in the East, multiple hands helped him to hold the Polish flag, while hands extending from the West presented him with dollar bills. The man was Józef Piłsudski, leader of the recently established Second Polish Republic, and the advert promoted bonds of that republic to its diaspora in the United States (Figure 1).Footnote 1
‘The hour of action has struck!’ Illustration by Witold Gordon. Source: Zgoda, 27 May 1920, 6. With thanks to Library of Congress.
This advertisement was emblematic of one of the most significant consequences of the First World War: the creation of new nation-states in East Central Europe. Unfolding amid civil and borderland wars that persisted across the ruins of the defeated empires until the early 1920s, recent scholarship has defined this period as part of a ‘Greater War’.Footnote 2 It has shown that the impact of the Great War in Europe can only be fully understood when considered alongside the protracted post-1918 conflicts. At the same time, the Greater War perspective also raises awareness of the specificities of the region’s history.
Much has been written on the financing of the Great War, in particular the patriotic war bond campaigns that allowed ordinary citizens to take part in the war effort.Footnote 3 However, although access to funds was just as important to the governments of states that were established after 1918, historians have not examined the role of fundraising in this period.Footnote 4 This article explores popular war bond campaigns of the Second Polish Republic, the largest state created at Versailles, which found itself at the epicentre of what Jochen Böhler has termed ‘the civil war in Central Europe’.Footnote 5 It presents fundraising as a prism through which to view the challenges facing the new Polish state and also a means by which the state sought to overcome those challenges.
The new Polish government’s fundraising strategy, the sale of patriotic war bonds, clearly belongs to the same paradigm as the popular war bonds of the belligerents in the Great War. Two of the principal aims of these war bonds – raising funds and encouraging citizens to ‘buy in’ to the war and the nation – were also crucial to the survival of the states established during the Greater War.Footnote 6 The transatlantic nature of Poland’s fundraising is another point of continuity with the Great War, which saw immigrant groups in the United States collecting huge amounts of relief funds for their homelands in Europe.Footnote 7
The historiography of war finance in the Great War can be split into two strands. The first focuses on the conversion of states and their economies to a war footing, with the most notable contributions from Chickering and Förster, Strachan, and Broadberry and Harrison.Footnote 8 A second strand applies a political lens, with a particular focus on popular war bonds, and explores how belligerents used mass communication to persuade their citizens to contribute financially.Footnote 9 This second strand, to which this article seeks to contribute, presents two central, interrelated themes: the sale of war bonds as a means of including minority groups in the national project and the democratisation of investment.Footnote 10
While there are numerous, mostly Polish-language works on the financing of inter-war Poland, only a handful of these relate to wartime government bonds.Footnote 11 More generally, studies that investigate the use of war bonds in the Greater War are scarce, with in-depth exploration limited to the Irish and Lithuanian Wars of Independence.Footnote 12 Nevertheless, some common themes can be observed. Most obviously, the organisers of the post-1918 war bond campaigns had the examples of the Great War belligerents to draw upon. The same was true of potential bond subscribers, who had already been educated about war bonds and become accustomed to their means of promotion.
However, while clearly sharing a genus with the Great War bond campaigns, the Greater War campaigns were a somewhat different animal. In broad terms, the war bond campaigns of the European belligerents in the Great War can be interpreted as established states encouraging established populations to identify with a novel national project: the war effort. For the United States, the war bond drives were a variation on this theme: an established state encouraging a newly arrived population to identify with a novel national project. For the new nation-states of the post-1918 world, however, the state, citizenry and national project were all novel and the implications of this were profound. At stake was not just success at war or societal cohesion, but the very existence of the state beyond its infancy. Furthermore, the existential threat facing the new states established after 1918 placed an added weight of symbolism on the war bonds as a performance of their newfound sovereignty.Footnote 13
As well as contrasts in type, there are also contrasts in context. In the United States, Liberty Loan campaigns were used to draw newly arrived ethnic minorities into the national project, but in East Central Europe, the ethnic minorities were largely indigenous to the region.Footnote 14 The immigrants to the United States had chosen to migrate there; the minorities of East Central Europe had borders imposed upon them. Another point of contrast is the way in which the bond campaigns of post-1918 nation-states appealed to their diasporas as potential subscribers. While the US Liberty Loan campaigns allowed immigrants to signal loyalty to their host country, the tendency of new nation-states in Europe to appeal to their diasporas in the United States enabled the same minorities to reaffirm their connection with their homelands.
The context of the Greater War also has implications in terms of the availability of sources. The lack of established bureaucracies and chaos of civil war mean that surviving archival sources are patchy. Furthermore, as noted by Jerzy Łazor, inter-war data for Poland is often questionable. This has led historians to adopt a qualitative approach, enabling greater understanding of the relationship between politics and the economy.Footnote 15 This article follows this approach by focusing on questions of nation-building and identity, rather than on the technical aspects of the bonds or their role in the finances of the Second Polish Republic.
Historians investigating nation-building in the Greater War have largely focused on the roles of violence and armed struggle.Footnote 16 Yet the popular financial mobilisation that accompanied the military effort reveals continuities between peacetime and wartime nation-building practices. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, nationalist intelligentsias within imperial realms had sought ways to engage with the broader population. This civic, ‘organic work’, as Polish intellectuals termed it, included the ‘enlightenment’ of the people and their socio-economic improvement.Footnote 17 The sale of patriotic bonds was an example of the governments of newly established states taking the lead in the nation-building effort. It was a novel initiative, but one deployed through pre-existing grassroots networks.
Poland also transcended its borders, appealing to its diaspora and using the expertise of non-Poles. To illuminate the transatlantic dimension of Polish nation-building, this article explores the sale of patriotic bonds both in Poland and among the Polish diaspora in the United States. It shows how the newly established Polish state relied on its diaspora for both funds and external validation of the nation-building project. Thus, it aims to contribute to a growing body of literature that examines the purportedly peripheral position of Poland in global hierarchies and its attempts at repositioning.Footnote 18
The article proceeds as follows: first, it provides a brief overview of the political, military and economic context of the early Second Polish Republic. Then, focusing on Poland’s domestic loan campaigns, it investigates the convergence of top-down and bottom-up initiatives to overcome challenges of organisation and legitimacy. Next, the article evaluates Poland’s efforts to appeal to a wide range of subscribers, including ethnic minorities, women and the poor. Then, turning to Poland’s bond drive in the United States, the article explores the tension between patriotism and professionalism in fundraising for a nationalist cause. Finally, in an exploration of the performance of sovereignty, attention turns to the image of Poland as portrayed and perceived in the bond drive.
The Political, Military and Economic Context
Poland was the only stateless nation specifically named in US President Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’ speech of January 1918, in which he set out his vision of a Europe of nation-states. Although this vision of post-war boundaries was based on ethno-linguistic demographics, much of East Central Europe was ethnically mixed. This was particularly the case for the new Poland, where ethnic minorities made up almost a third of the population.Footnote 19 To overcome this apparent contradiction, Polish political leaders advanced two rival nationalist propositions. Roman Dmowski, chief ideologue of the right-wing National Democracy (ND) movement, had an ethnocentric view of the Polish state. The ND sought a secure Polish majority, in which non-Polish Christian groups would be polonised, and dismissed the Jewish minority as harmful and unassimilable. Józef Piłsudski, the left-leaning Polish military leader and head of state during this period, conceived of the Second Polish Republic as a successor to the ancient Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and sought to revive this multi-ethnic federation.Footnote 20 Although apparently more inclusive, Piłsudski’s vision of Poland was tinged with imperialism, as it required territorial expansion and assumed the supremacy of Polish culture.Footnote 21
The territory claimed by the Second Polish Republic was hotly disputed by neighbouring states-in-the-making. From late 1918 until 1921, the newly established Poland engaged in border wars with the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia and Bolshevik Russia.Footnote 22 Multiple Polish military fronts required considerable financial resources. Historians estimate that in the years 1918–20 military expenses consumed up to three quarters of the national budget.Footnote 23
The Polish lands had suffered enormous human and material loss during the First World War, so economic reconstruction was another strain on the new state’s finances. However, the fragmented nature of the economy that the Second Polish Republic inherited was an impediment to its ability to raise funds. Since the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late eighteenth century, when its territory was split among the Habsburg Monarchy, Kingdom of Prussia and Russian Empire, separate monetary, fiscal, legal and infrastructural systems had been in place.Footnote 24 The economic unification of Poland was a long and complicated process. For instance, by April 1920 the Polish state had succeeded in establishing its own currency – the Polish mark – in much of the country, but this brought its own problems and it was not long before the Polish government exploited its paper currency to cover spiralling fiscal deficits. This contributed to rampant inflation, which, by 1923, transformed into hyperinflation.Footnote 25 Furthermore, with its dysfunctional economy and fragile sovereignty, Poland struggled to obtain foreign loans.Footnote 26
An overview of Poland’s political, financial and military situation during the Greater War would be incomplete without considering the role of the Polish diaspora, known as Polonia, most of which was concentrated in the United States. From the late nineteenth century to the outbreak of the Great War, over 1.9 million people from the Polish territories migrated to America, including 950,000 from the Kingdom of Poland, 900,000 from Galicia and 50,000 from the Prussian-ruled lands.Footnote 27 By 1920, first- and second-generation Polish Americans numbered 2.4 million, of whom 1.7 million were Polish-born.Footnote 28 The social structure of the Polish diaspora was much more homogenous than that of their country of origin: the vast majority were former peasants who found industrial jobs in their adopted home. Polish-language newspapers and cultural institutions ensured that Poles living in the United States maintained a strong bond with their ancestral homeland. Of course, like all diasporas, Polonia was fractured politically, with factions that echoed the ideological lines of the old country.Footnote 29
A major animating force within Polonia during the First World War was the effort to raise a Polish army in the United States. Ultimately, around 25,000 Polish Americans joined the so-called Blue Army in France.Footnote 30 This Polish military contingent first served on the Western Front, before transferring to Poland where it became part of the new state’s military.Footnote 31 However, many more Polish emigrants played a role in the nation-building process by contributing funds. Indeed, the war served to institutionalise Polonia’s long history of sending remittances, in the form of multiple competing relief funds.Footnote 32
The creation of the Second Polish Republic brought the further institutionalisation of patriotic fundraising, moving from a model of donations to one of government bonds. During its borderland conflicts, the Polish government launched four popular bond drives: the first state loan, Rebirth Loan (Pożyczka Odrodzenia) and ‘One Million’ (Milionówka) lottery loan in Poland, and another loan targeting the diaspora in the United States. Legislation for a fifth, compulsory loan was passed in 1920 but not fully implemented.
Borrowing Legitimacy
As a newly established entity, the Second Polish Republic lacked the state capacity and credibility that comes with time. To overcome this, Poland drew on grassroots volunteerism. Religious institutions were also important in lending credibility to the new state, as were historical allusions that framed the establishment of the Second Polish Republic as a reformulation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Facing threats on all its borders, the Second Polish Republic had another way of reinforcing its legitimacy: a call to unite against a common enemy.
The launch of the first Polish domestic loan preceded the symbolic political unification of Poland under the leadership of Piłsudski. While still under the auspices of the German Empire, on 30 October 1918 the Polish ‘Regency Council’ decreed a one-year-term 5 per cent domestic loan.Footnote 33 Poles had already become accustomed to this method of fundraising; in the Great War, Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian governments solicited their subjects to subscribe to imperial war loans.Footnote 34 Similarly, Polish loan organisers could draw inspiration from wartime imperial loan propaganda tactics. Reflecting the disparate empires from which the new Poland was being assembled, these bonds were issued in Polish marks, Austro-Hungarian crowns and Russian rubles.Footnote 35 The first state loan was introduced as an extraordinary measure and was undertaken while the reorganisation of the tax system was underway. Among the stated aims of the loan was to finance civil administration and rebuild the country’s industries and infrastructure. However, its main purpose was to provide funds for assembling and maintaining a national army.Footnote 36
Just like the Great War’s bond campaigns, the announcement of the first state loan spurred multiple promotional initiatives, especially among affluent and educated circles. Banks were among the first subscribers and set an example for their customers.Footnote 37 The Polish Landowners’ Association made plans to publish articles on previous national loans that had been organised during the Kościuszko (1794), November (1830–1) and January (1863–4) uprisings.Footnote 38 Polish press representatives formed a commission comprised of famous writers in order to devise ways of promoting the loan.Footnote 39 However, the initial enthusiasm of the Polish upper class for the first domestic loan cooled after Piłsudski appointed the Republic’s first government, which was led by the socialist Jędrzej Moraczewski.Footnote 40 According to the socialist parliamentarian Tomasz Arciszewski, representatives from Poznań pledged to subscribe up to half a billion marks on the condition that Moraczewski’s government resign.Footnote 41 This illustrates how the promise of subscribing could be used as a means of exerting political pressure.
The subscriptions to the first Polish domestic loan reached around 2 billion Polish marks ($75 million).Footnote 42 This represented a significant contribution to the national budget as the state expenditure in 1919 amounted to around 10 billion marks.Footnote 43 The Polish authorities were pleased with these results but assumed that this source of income was not yet depleted.Footnote 44 Therefore, faced with ongoing costly border disputes and a growing budget deficit, the Polish government decided to raise a second domestic loan.
Treasury minister Władysław Grabski launched the second domestic loan on 27 February 1920, passing bills on five- and forty-five-year-term bonds, both bearing an interest rate of 5 per cent per annum.Footnote 45 This loan was dubbed the ‘Rebirth Loan’, emphasising the deep roots of Polish statehood and optimism about its future. Reinforcing this point, a focus of the loan’s promotional activities was to be the 3 May Constitution Day, which commemorated the 1791 declaration of the Constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.Footnote 46
Grassroots mobilisation was an important part of the Great War bond campaigns, but for a newly established state like the Second Polish Republic it was particularly significant. To that end, the government made efforts to create a network of loan committees at the level of the province (województwo), county (powiat) and commune (gmina).Footnote 47 As before, the Rebirth Loan was promoted in the Polish press and in public meetings.Footnote 48
Just as with other war bond campaigns in the Greater War in Ireland and Lithuania, the clergy took an active role in both the promotion and sale of Polish war bonds.Footnote 49 For a new nation-state with untested popularity and weak institutions, the network and credibility provided by organised religion was a valuable resource.Footnote 50 Clergymen also had experience of fundraising and the trust of their parishioners who were accustomed to giving them money. From the clergymen’s point of view, involvement in fundraising was a way for them to take part in the nation-building process without joining the military or becoming overtly involved in politics.Footnote 51 In East Central Europe, the fear of Bolshevism and atheism provided clergy with added incentive to help with the fundraising.Footnote 52
Another way to compensate for the Second Polish Republic’s lack of credibility was to unite against a common enemy. As noted above, Poland faced several external threats in this period, most prominent among them the Red Army. The mass mobilisation efforts intensified during the Bolshevik counter-offensive of summer 1920 and the political crisis that it precipitated. Catholic priests joined calls for men to enlist in a new volunteer army and for communities to collect money for the war effort.Footnote 53 New local national defence and national loan committees appeared all over the country.Footnote 54 In the context of this imminent menace, and reflecting the unifying effect of a common enemy, the Rebirth Loan was renamed the Defence Loan.Footnote 55
The Diversity Challenge
As noted above, the purpose of the war bond campaigns was not just to raise funds but also to unite the population behind the war effort by persuading as many as possible to subscribe. Poland’s ethnic and socio-economic heterogeneity made this both vital and challenging. External threats enabled Poland to unite against a common enemy, but virtually each of these threats could also potentially be identified within the state’s borders. Similarly, while the Catholic Church provided credibility to the Polish nation-building project, over-reliance on it risked excluding those of different faiths.
Perhaps with this in mind, the rhetoric and strategy of the Rebirth Loan was explicitly universalist, appealing to all the citizens of the state regardless of faith, class or region.Footnote 56 This echoed the Polish Citizenship Act of January 1920, which defined a Polish citizen as anyone who ‘without distinction of sex, age, religion and nationality, [was] firstly resident within the territory of the Polish state or, secondly, [was] born within the Polish state’.Footnote 57 However, as Keely Stauter-Halsted has shown, this principle was regularly circumvented or violated.Footnote 58 She demonstrates, in particular, how the practices of sorting of returning refugees along Poland’s new borders, the culling of former imperial civil servants and the collection of citizen denunciations all served to separate loyal citizens from perceived foreign enemies. To what extent, then, was the domestic loan campaign actually inclusive of the state’s ethnic minorities?
The engagement of ethnic Germans in the domestic loan campaign posed a formidable challenge. The incorporation of formerly Prussian territories into the Second Polish Republic was accompanied by an exodus of German speakers. However, in the first years of independence, Poland relied on the continued service of Prussian civil servants.Footnote 59 As Ingo Loose has convincingly argued, this demonstrates a largely peaceful and pragmatic transfer of power and knowledge in a region often viewed through the lens of allegedly perpetual Polish–German hostility.Footnote 60
Closer inspection of the fundraising effort in the Pomeranian province (województwo), which was formerly part of the German Empire, reveals a similarly complex picture. In the county of Działdowo, the starosta (head of the county administration) did not expect much from local Germans, who owned most of the land and controlled most trade and commerce there.Footnote 61 Moreover, the Masurians, local Polish-speaking Protestants, were also unwilling to subscribe.Footnote 62 The situation was quite different, however, in other localities of the Pomeranian province and German speakers could be found among the organisers of the loan as well as among its subscribers. In Tuchola, for example, a Protestant clergyman and four ethnic Germans of influence joined the local loan propaganda committee.Footnote 63 Reaching German speakers was also of concern for local authorities in Chojnice, who requested promotional and administrative material in German as well as public speakers fluent in the language.Footnote 64 Furthermore, a list of nearly 500 subscribers to the Rebirth Loan from Świecie county reveals that a significant minority had German or hybrid names.Footnote 65 This suggests that the attempts of the Polish authorities to reach people of mixed and fluid identities – in order to make those identities more fixed – bore some fruit.
As argued earlier, Poland’s external threats provided an incentive for its inhabitants to unite against a common enemy. In particular, the Soviet counter-offensive in the summer of 1920 was a turning point for Jewish involvement. Thus far, Polish-Jewish newspapers were generally careful not to take a side, but in July 1920, many of them joined the call to arms. The Warsaw Jewish Council and Rabbinate issued a dramatic appeal for Jews to ‘show the world and our enemies inside and outside the country that the Jewish nation understands its obligations’ to Poland by subscribing to the Rebirth Loan.Footnote 66 Many responded to these appeals. In the above-mentioned list of subscribers to the Rebirth-Defence loan in Świecie county, some Jewish names can be identified. For instance, a wealthy Jewish merchant and freemason Davis Friedman invested 20,000 Polish marks into the long-term bonds, well above the median personal subscription of 2,000 marks in the county.Footnote 67 In Kielce, in the former Russian partition, there was already a Jewish loan propaganda committee, and the local newspaper published a list of eighty-seven Jews who had purchased bonds worth over 300,000 Polish marks.Footnote 68 In Galicia, just a few days later, Podhale Newspaper (Gazeta Podholańska) published a list of sixty-five pupils from a school in Czarny Dunajec who subscribed to the loan.Footnote 69 Around half of these pupils were Jewish.Footnote 70 In total, their subscriptions amounted to just 4,000 Polish marks, but the real value was symbolic, encouraging others to follow the example of the youth.
Meanwhile, despite Jewish leaders’ show of patriotism, Jews also faced significant coercion to subscribe. In November 1920, Jewish representatives to the Polish Parliament complained that Polish Jews were being refused passports unless they purchased bonds, citing examples when 5,000 and 10,000 marks were demanded.Footnote 71 This was within the context of a wave of anti-Jewish violence that shook Poland in the aftermath of the First World War, particularly within the Russian and Austrian partitions.Footnote 72 Historians have documented widespread extortion and mugging of Jews by Polish soldiers as well as civilians, with estimates of fatalities ranging from 500 to 1,000.Footnote 73
The Great War’s bond campaigns aimed to democratise investment, by not just bridging ethnic divides but also transcending socio-economic status through appealing to the working classes. This aspiration was already clear in the first Polish domestic loan campaign, when the minimum subscription was reduced from 500 to 100 marks.Footnote 74 Later, in order to reach more passive or financially illiterate Poles, the treasury launched the Milionówka, a forty-year 4 per cent state premium loan that included a weekly prize draw of 1 million Polish marks for a period of twenty years.Footnote 75 The propaganda for this loan focused on rags-to-riches stories that portrayed people of limited means suddenly becoming millionaires. One of the first winners of a million marks, Mrs J. Babska, provides a good example. A cook working for the Warsaw electric power plant, she was perfectly suited to such a narrative and her story was publicised in the press.Footnote 76
Special appeals were made to the peasants, who in 1921 constituted 51.2 per cent of Poland’s population.Footnote 77 Various peasant newspapers, including the organ of Wincenty Witos’s agrarian Polish People’s Party ‘Piast’, called on their readers to fulfil their patriotic duty, either by enlisting in the army or by subscribing to the Rebirth-Defence loan.Footnote 78 The Polish clergy continued their efforts to involve their flock in patriotic fundraising. These appeals were, however, largely unsuccessful.Footnote 79 It is possible that this suggests a degree of national indifference among Poland’s peasant population.Footnote 80 However, the economic context must of course be born in mind; the Polish peasantry had suffered greatly from the destruction of the Great War and disposable income was in very short supply.Footnote 81
In contrast to the response of the peasants, the Bank of the Landowners’ Associations (Bank Związków Ziemian) in Warsaw subscribed 5 million Polish marks to the Rebirth Loan. In addition, at the same bank, 18 million Polish marks were raised through individual subscriptions. Landowners’ Review (Przegląd Ziemiański) published a list of 214 landowners who subscribed to the loan, along with the value of each subscription.Footnote 82 The threat of land reform, already underway in Poland, might have contributed to the collective display of loyalty from this particular social class.Footnote 83
The Polish bonds were sold to women as well as men, but fragmentary records of the Rebirth-Defence loan suggest that their participation varied from place to place. For example, in Świecie, Pomeranian province, 21 per cent of subscribers were women, while in the rural commune (gmina wiejska) of Złota, Kielce province, they made up only 9 per cent.Footnote 84 In both places, women on average subscribed in lower amounts than men, which potentially reflects their lack of financial independence.
The Rebirth-Defence and Milionówka loans were both less successful than the first state loan. The former raised 7 billion Polish marks ($20 million), including 3.9 billion from Congress Poland, 2.1 billion from the former Prussian partition and 935,504 from Galicia, while the latter raised only 900 million ($1.8 million).Footnote 85 Rising inflation was a major factor. While the Rebirth Loan offered 5 per cent annual return, in 1920 prices rose more than five times.Footnote 86 Compared to the first state loan, the significance of subsequent loans for the national budget diminished sharply, as state expenditure in 1920 and 1921 surpassed 300 billion Polish marks.Footnote 87
Between Patriots and Professionals
While the domestic loans were underway in Poland, the new Polish state was also active fundraising among the diaspora and selling popular war bonds denominated in US dollars. As with their kinsmen in Poland, Polish Americans had become accustomed to the concept of war bonds, specifically the US Liberty Loan campaigns of 1917–19.Footnote 88 Polish Americans were particularly incentivised to subscribe in January 1918, when President Wilson endorsed independence for Poland. With slogans such as ‘He who buys a bond helps Poland’, influential figures within the Polish-American community urged their compatriots to associate their bond purchases with their nationality, instead of the standard practice of crediting their employer.Footnote 89 This enabled Polish Americans to display their collective loyalty to the United States while also giving greater salience to their ethnic identity.
When it came to the establishment of the promised independent Polish state, Polonia was expected to play a prominent role in fundraising. In March 1920, twenty-nine Polish writers signed an appeal to compatriots in the United States declaring that ‘once again a large part of Poland’s future rests in your hands’.Footnote 90 A similar plea was soon issued by twenty-eight Polish organisations, including the Warsaw Scientific Society, Polish Women’s League, National Workers’ Union and Union of Banks in Poland.Footnote 91 Polish internal loan organisers also encouraged private individuals to write letters promoting the loan to family and friends in the United States.Footnote 92
To reach the diaspora, the Polish government faced a choice: to rely on Polish-American patriots for the organisation and promotion of the bond drive or engage the services of foreign professionals. The former could bring tacit knowledge of the target market and networks of trust, but the latter could offer access to networks beyond the diaspora, as well as greater efficiency and ideological neutrality.
In June 1919, the Polish government signed an agreement with John F. Smulski, a leading Polish-American figure and president of the Chicago-based North West Savings Bank (also known as ‘the Polish Bank’), to place a $100 million loan. However, US banks were unwilling to lend to the fledgling Polish Republic, so Smulski lowered his expectations. Resolving to target Polish Americans only, he reduced his private target from $100 million to just $25 million.Footnote 93
In October 1919, Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski received a proposal from Philip Patchin and John C. O’Laughlin of the People’s Industrial Trading Corporation of the United States (PITCUS).Footnote 94 An assistant to the President of Standard Oil and former publicist for the US State Department, Patchin was a well-connected man.Footnote 95 During the Great War, he was a leading figure in the US State Department’s overseas propaganda effort and he had recently served as the executive secretary of the US Commission to Negotiate Peace at Versailles in July 1919.Footnote 96 Another former official of the US State Department, O’Laughlin was also a man of great influence.Footnote 97 The two Americans brought glowing letters of recommendation from US Secretary of State Robert Lansing, US Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Vice President of the National City Bank of New York Samuel McRoberts. After three weeks of negotiations, the Polish government signed a contract with PITCUS, unilaterally cancelling the agreement with Smulski.Footnote 98
PITCUS had been established four months earlier, under the liberal corporate regulations of Delaware. The president was Emmanuel Rosenbaum, a Jewish-American grain magnate of German origin who had a 20 per cent stake in the company.Footnote 99 Ivan Stakheef & Co held the largest share at 50 per cent.Footnote 100 This was a Russian trading company with a variety of commercial interests, including grain. Its owner and manager, P.P. Batolin, was a Russian business tycoon whose position was jeopardised by Bolshevik nationalisation decrees and the disruption of the Russian civil war.Footnote 101 Smaller shareholders included the Armour Grain Company of Chicago and senior executives of the National City Bank of New York.Footnote 102
According to Zbigniew Landau, the terms of this new contract were very favourable to PITCUS. Without stipulating a minimum amount of bonds to be sold, they provided little incentive to deliver a good result. Moreover, as the contract also made PITCUS the Polish government’s financial agent in the United States, it is possible that the company was primarily interested in representing Poland in trade dealings, particularly in the sale of grain.Footnote 103 As to why the Polish government concluded such an agreement with PITCUS, international diplomacy might have been a factor. According to O’Laughlin, it was the US legation to Warsaw that brokered the relationship.Footnote 104 However, in the US Ambassador’s view, Polish government officials did not need much persuasion, as Polish treasury minister Leon Biliński and Prime Minister Paderewski were vying to take credit for discovering PICTUS.Footnote 105
Whatever the terms of the PITCUS contract, unilaterally breaking the agreement with Smulski had serious consequences. Snubbed by the Polish government, Smulski and his allies – the Polish National Department, Polish legation in the United States and the ND in Poland – launched a campaign against the proposed bond drive. The ND in particular targeted Rosenbaum’s Jewish ethnicity, drawing on well-known antisemitic tropes. Realising its mistake, the Polish government tried to cancel the contract with PITCUS, but this was opposed by the US State Department. Ultimately, after two months of negotiations, the Polish government signed a new, revised contract with the company. Yet, according to Landau, it failed to achieve better terms than the first.Footnote 106
Unfortunately for the Polish government, its American counterpart also opposed a key part of PITCUS’s sales plan – persuading Polish Americans to part with their US Liberty bonds in exchange for bonds of the Polish Republic. In this way, the company planned to exploit the success of the US Liberty Loans while also linking the cause of Polish independence with President Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’. However, the US State Department objected to this practice on the grounds that it might have a negative effect on the price of the US Liberty bonds.Footnote 107 O’Laughlin blamed interference from the Polish legation for this intervention, but this is unlikely.Footnote 108 The contemporary Irish bond drive in the United States, which used the same tactics, faced similar censure despite its organisers having cordial relations with the treasury.Footnote 109
Notwithstanding these impediments, on 15 April 1920, the Polish legation in the United States announced the establishment of a 6 per cent twenty-year loan and called on all Polish-American organisations to join the bond drive effort.Footnote 110 When the campaign was finally launched, the Polish-American right and left united to promote it.Footnote 111 Despite the infighting with PITCUS and Smulski, there were high expectations for the loan. For instance, the pages of the Financial Times contained speculation that the resulting influx of capital to Poland would rapidly strengthen the value of the Polish mark.Footnote 112
Reaching Polonia
As with the Polish domestic loans, the Polish bond drive in the United States relied extensively on grassroots mobilisation. While PITCUS played a key role in orchestrating the publicity of the Polish bond drive, Polish-American ethnic associations served as the main networks of distribution.Footnote 113 In addition to the loan committee of the Polish legation in Washington, a multitude of local committees sprang up across Polish communities in the United States.Footnote 114 Numerous Polish-American women’s organisations also contributed by forming a separate loan committee.Footnote 115 Collaboration with Polish-American musicians, painters, actors and writers was indispensable for the propaganda effort.Footnote 116 Polish students, scouts and members of the Falcon (Sokół) youth organisation engaged in door-to-door canvassing and participated in national parades and other loan events.Footnote 117
In a similar manner to Poland’s domestic loans, the Polish-American clergy was deeply involved in the bond drive in the United States.Footnote 118 In 1920 there were over 1,000 Polish priests in the United States serving some 700 Polish-American parishes. Around 400,000 students attended the parochial schools that were attached to these parishes.Footnote 119 As in Poland, this provided valuable avenues through which to promote the bonds. While in Poland the use of religious institutions risked exacerbating ethnic divisions, it could be a means of transcending them within the diaspora. Polish-American parishes had an uneasy relationship with the wider US Catholic Church, which at that time was dominated by Irish-American clergy.Footnote 120 Nevertheless, some Irish-American churchmen also bought Polish bonds. Bishop Gallagher of Detroit, who subscribed $500, wrote a letter of endorsement that was read throughout his diocese.Footnote 121 A letter from Cardinal Gibbons endorsing the Polish bond drive was also used in print advertising.Footnote 122
The influence of the US Liberty Loans was also evident in the Polish bond drive’s promotion. At the most fundamental level, the smallest denomination available for both bond issues was the same: $50. Like the US Liberty Loan campaigns, the Polish bond drive used volunteer propagandists known as ‘Four Minute Men’, who gave brief patriotic speeches at cinemas during reel changes.Footnote 123 Social pressure was a key part of the marketing campaign. Again mirroring the US Liberty Loan campaigns, subscribers to the Polish bond drive were encouraged to put a white eagle sticker on their windows and wear a special pin, both serving as proof of subscription.Footnote 124 A special epithet, slacker bondowy (bond slacker), was used to label those who did not subscribe.Footnote 125 This also mimicked the tactics of the US Liberty Loans, which stigmatised ‘slackers’ for not buying their fair share of bonds.Footnote 126
As with bond drives during the Great War, endorsement from important public figures and celebrities was an integral part of the promotional strategy.Footnote 127 Special appeals to Polish Americans were made by Paderewski, Piłsudski and Republican Congressman John Casimir Kleczka – the first Polish-American elected to the US Congress.Footnote 128 Novelist Władysław Reymont toured the main centres of the Polish-American population accompanied by poet Zdzisław Dębicki, while Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad wrote a telegram in support of the loan.Footnote 129
Most of the advertising efforts that were connected to the Polish bond drive were showcased in the Polish-American press. However, its support was not immediately forthcoming. The Polish government’s first contract with PITCUS faced heavy criticism from several Polish-language newspapers in language that was laced with antisemitism. When the terms of the first PITCUS contract came to light, the editors of the Polish Daily News (Dziennik Związkowy), the Polish National Daily (Dziennik Narodowy), and the Chicago Daily News (Dziennik Chicagoski) met to sign a resolution that they would ‘use everything against the Jews and their pawns to prevent the scandalous stretching of the pockets of the American Poles’.Footnote 130 Zgoda, calling the contract a ‘shameful Jewish racket’, directed its 125,000-strong readership to ‘wring the neck of the Jewish hydra’.Footnote 131 Not surprisingly, and in contrast to the situation in Poland, it seems that Polish Jews in the United States were not involved, at least collectively, in the Polish bond drive effort.
The Polish bond drive organisers also courted the mainstream American press, but the targets of these advertisements were still Polish Americans.Footnote 132 Much of this English-language advertising appeared around the United States Independence Day on 4 July. Like the Polish domestic loans’ use of Constitution Day on 3 May, this was an historical allusion that sought to bolster the credibility of the Polish national project. Linking Poland’s newfound sovereignty to American independence served to legitimise the former in a way that did not conflict with Polish Americans’ loyalty to the United States. Promotion of the Polish bond drive was not aimed solely at potential subscribers because it was important to depict the loan as a success in order to demonstrate the viability of the Polish state to foreign governments and investors. This strategy can be observed in a number of rose-tinted descriptions of the loan’s progress, presumably based on press releases from the Polish government.Footnote 133
Of course, as with Poland’s domestic loans, the fate of the Polish bond drive in the United States was linked to the success or failure of the Polish government and the numerous battles being fought at its borders. Protracted borderland wars might have discouraged many people from contributing because they may have been unwilling to put their savings into the treasury of a state that faced the risk of annihilation.Footnote 134 The economic and political chaos that characterised the first years of the Second Polish Republic also counted against the bond drive.Footnote 135 Indeed, the progress of subscriptions soon proved disappointing, especially in Chicago and New York, the two most important centres of the Polish-American population.Footnote 136 Chicago, the unofficial capital of Polonia, was expected to raise $10 million, but by mid-June (the initially planned end of the drive) only $3 million was reached.Footnote 137 However, the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920 seemed to breathe new life into the Polish bond drive. The US Bureau of Investigation observed mass meetings of Polish groups in over 500 cities across America in the first two weeks of August. In Chicago alone, on 15 August 1920 there were fifty-five meetings, with some 75,000 Polish Americans in attendance and strong support for the bond drive.Footnote 138
By the time the Polish bond drive in the United States closed in October 1920, it had raised $18.2 million gross, falling far short of its target of $50 million. This result paled in comparison to the estimated $170 million sent to Poland in family remittances during the period 1919–23.Footnote 139 Landau puts this apparent failure down to the PITCUS scandal, which, he argues, undermined the new state’s reputation in the United States.Footnote 140 As noted by Piotr S. Wandycz, the acrimony disgusted many Polish Americans.Footnote 141 However, it is also possible that, at $50, roughly the same price as a common household appliance, the bonds were simply too expensive for many predominantly working-class Polish Americans.Footnote 142 Indeed, for the contemporary, highly successful Irish bond drive in the United States, its $10 bonds proved the most popular among subscribers.Footnote 143 One can only wonder whether a low-price strategy would have yielded better results for the Polish diaspora loan.
‘Worthless Bonds of a Chimerical Government’
The more fragile a state’s sovereignty, the greater its need to perform it. In Poland, the promotion and sale of domestic bonds was one such performance that was directed at the citizens of the new republic. However, for this sovereignty to be fully legitimised, external validation was essential. States in a precarious position often suffer from a poor national image, particularly abroad. For them, war bond campaigns offer an opportunity to brand or rebrand the nation for foreign audiences as well as for their own citizens. But the reputation of the bonds, and of the states themselves, is never entirely theirs to control.
The importance of external validation was clear in Polish politicians’ discussions on the design of its domestic loans. Regarding the Milionówka, the parliamentarian Antoni Rząd was concerned that a lottery loan could damage Poland’s reputation by confirming the stereotype of a reckless Pole, who preferred gambling and speculation to thrift and hard work.Footnote 144 Poland’s national reputation on the international stage was also central to the decision not to implement a compulsory loan, as it faced criticism not just in Poland but also from abroad.Footnote 145 While Milionówka risked portraying Poles as gamblers, there was a danger that the compulsory loan would make the new state appear desperate and authoritarian. The condition of Jews in Poland was also of concern to the Polish bonds’ promoters in the United States, with O’Laughlin writing to prominent advertiser and Jewish-American activist Albert Lasker to downplay accusations of mistreatment.Footnote 146
Meanwhile, printed by the American Bank Note Company, the Polish bonds in the United States were a vehicle through which the Second Polish Republic could project its image as a sovereign state abroad. The plan to accept US Liberty bonds in exchange for Polish bonds was also intended to imply parity of credibility between Poland and the United States. The newspaper advertising for the Polish bond drive in the United States was another opportunity to shape Poland’s reputation abroad. The standard advertisement for the bonds in the English-language press branded Poland as a bulwark against Bolshevism, attributing civilisational significance to the Polish national struggle.Footnote 147 Rather than a nation on the periphery, this placed Poland at the epicentre of an international struggle. The same advertisement claimed ‘Your Motherland is not begging for charity. She is offering you $50,000,000 6 per cent twenty-year gold bonds, pledging all her enormous resources as security.’Footnote 148 Thus, in contrast to the relief appeals of the First World War that relied on depictions of Poland as a victim, the bonds were presented as a prudent investment.
Yet, as observed by a member of the Polish bond campaign committee, the American investor ‘would not look twice’ at the Polish bonds.Footnote 149 Rather, they were primarily regarded as a sentimental investment. As described by the Dearborn Independent, they were ‘something just short of a gift in which there is chance of repayment’.Footnote 150 The sociologist Daniel Lainer-Vos makes a similar observation about Irish and Zionist diaspora bonds. A hybrid of a gift and an investment, they were an effective socio-technical mechanism for the creation of national attachments.Footnote 151
There are several references, however, that suggest the Polish bonds had some attributes beyond mere sentimental value. They appeared in newspapers’ lost-and-found sections, for example, and were reported as stolen.Footnote 152 There were also some instances of Polish bonds being used as a medium of exchange. Philadelphia’s Baldwin Locomotive Works, under direction of its president, Samuel M. Vauclain, sold rolling stock to the Polish government in exchange for $7 million in Polish bonds.Footnote 153 This vote of confidence, along with an endorsement from Vauclain, was used in advertising for the loan.Footnote 154 The US government also took payment of Polish bonds in exchange for railway machinery and food aid. This drew sharp criticism from sections of the American press. A writer for the Butte Daily Bulletin railed against Secretary Baker for accepting ‘Worthless Bonds of a Chimerical Government’, claiming ‘There is no limit to the number of such bonds that Poland can put up’.Footnote 155 Given its socialist outlook, it is possible the Butte Daily Bulletin’s attitude was borne of pro-Bolshevik sentiment.
Beyond political opposition, there was also a negative reaction based on the apparent exploitation of Polish Americans’ patriotic sentiments for their homeland. This was in the context of a post-war boom in financial swindles persuading ‘citizen investors’ to exchange their US Liberty bonds for shares in dubious or even non-existent enterprises.Footnote 156 A number of firms emerged in the United States appealing to Polish Americans’ loyalty to their homeland and exploiting their guilt for not returning to help build the new state.Footnote 157 According to Karen Majewski, thousands of Polish-American families squandered their savings on schemes like ‘Union Liberty’ and the ‘Polish Food Loan’ (Polska Pożyczka Żywnościowa).Footnote 158 The most famous fraudster was Charles Ponzi, who was operating in Boston at the same time as the Polish bond drive.Footnote 159 Many of Ponzi’s victims were Polish Americans, and his fall from grace resulted in the bankruptcy of two Polish-American institutions: the Hanover Trust Bank and the Polish Industrial Association.Footnote 160 If Ponzi’s autobiography is to be believed, the president of the Hanover Trust asked for his help in raising funds for the Second Polish Republic. Fortunately for the Polish bond drive, this deal fell through.Footnote 161
Nevertheless, the recognisable character of the fraudulent Polish fundraiser was satirised in Czesław Łukaszkiewicz’s 1923 novel The Strange Girl: A Novel from Polish-American Life (Dziwna dziewczyna: powieść z życia polsko-amerykańskiego). In this cautionary tale aimed at Polish Americans, a wheeler-dealer promotes his ‘Union Victory’ fund at a rally that closely resembles those used to promote the Polish bond drive. A fake Polish war hero addresses a hall festooned with slogans such as ‘Enriching ourselves, we will enrich Poland’. Echoing the antisemitic rhetoric that accompanied the Polish bond drive, the slogan ‘Who should rule Poland, us or the Jews?’ also featured.Footnote 162 By drawing on readers’ familiarity with such figures and rhetoric, the satire not only lampooned fraudulent fundraising but also hinted at a growing fundraising fatigue within Polonia, which had been solicited for contributions throughout the war.
Conclusion
This article has sought to contribute to the historiography of the Greater War by exploring the fundraising campaigns that supported the largest state established in East Central Europe in 1918. The creation of the Second Polish Republic took place within a chaotic economic, political and military context. To survive, Poland needed access to funds, and as a newly sovereign state with a fractured administrative infrastructure, the sale of bonds presented a well-tested and appropriate way to achieve this. Just as the border wars of East Central Europe were a continuation of the Great War, the techniques used by Poland to finance its ensuing conflicts were a variation on a theme that had been established by great power belligerents. However, for the Second Polish Republic, the political significance of government bonds was particularly salient: they were a vehicle through which the new state could perform its sovereignty, both at home and abroad.
The sale of Poland’s domestic war bonds required top-down planning and bottom-up initiative. For the mission to succeed, the Polish government borrowed legitimacy from more established actors and institutions such as the Catholic Church. As a diverse country, it was important that Poland made its bonds available to various sections of society, including ethnic minorities. As with the war bonds of the Great War, there were also attempts to democratise the loan, encouraging both rich and poor to subscribe, both men and women. The loans’ organisers made a universalist appeal to Polish society, and this appeal was, at least to some extent, answered. This article provides some suggestive evidence that the new Polish state did not rely solely on ethnic Poles for funding. Indeed, it seems that in a time of war and crisis of governance, vulnerable minorities sought to reinforce their security through subscribing to patriotic bonds.
As depicted in the newspaper advertisement at the beginning of this article (Figure 1), the Polish diaspora’s long history of sending remittances and its more recent experience of US Liberty Loans made it a promising source of revenue. In some ways a mirror image of the US Liberty Loans, which appealed to Polish Americans to demonstrate their loyalty to their host country, the Polish bonds in the United States were an opportunity to reaffirm their affinity with the homeland. Indeed, as a new state with doubtful future, Poland’s success fundraising in the United States rested on this sentimental attachment. However, by engaging the services of professionals who did not have any sentimental connection with Poland, the Second Polish Republic risked alienating the diaspora from which it sought to raise funds.
As a performance of Poland’s newfound sovereignty, the war bonds found a mixed reception, facing scepticism from international investors and fundraising fatigue from the diaspora. The promoters of the Second Polish Republic struggled to frame its nation-building project as a prudent investment. Nevertheless, many Poles and Polish Americans subscribed to the loans, with each bond purchase not just a contribution to the war effort but also a small act of popular recognition.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the institutions that made this research possible: the Fondation Philippe Wiener – Maurice Anspach for Vaida Nikšaitė, and the Leverhulme Trust for Robin J.C. Adams. We also thank Katherine Lebow and the attendees of her Modern East Central Europe reading group at Christ Church College, Oxford, in particular Michał Adam Palacz, for discussions on our work in progress; William A. Allen and Griffin B. Creech for their helpful comments and Emilia Stuchlik for her linguistic guidance; and editor Siobhán Hearne and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.
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