Poles in Kaisers Army On the Front of the First World War. Ryszard Kaczmarek

field artillery (Feldartillerie) – until then supporting infantry regiments in the front line – was separated from the heavy artillery and the siege artillery (Fußartillerie). The Silesian Field Artillery No. 6 first turned into the 6th Field Artillery Brigade and, in 1872, again into the Silesian Field Artillery No. 6 that temporarily consisted of six heavy and two light artillery batteries, divided into two units (Abteilungen). Its staff and one unit quartered in Świdnica, while the second unit in Nysa.³⁴ Each battery included six canons but only four of them had horse-drawn carts, whereas two ←22 | 23→cannons remained in the reserve. At the time, those were heavy six-pounder cannons (9 cm caliber) and light four-pounder cannons (8 cm caliber). Those already were a breech-loading cannons, but only the smaller ones had locks. The reorganization of the regiments occurred in 1874, which is when it received the name of the Upper Silesian Field Artillery Regiment No. 21. Since then, it consisted of three units and eight artillery batteries. At the time, the regiment started to use new explosive material C 73 (tetryl) and new cannons with breech (8.8 cm caliber).³⁵ After William II’s ascension to the throne and for his first birthday – a generally celebrated event in the German Empire – of January 27, 1889, the regiment was named “von Clausewitz” after the most prominent Prussian military theorist. In 1899, four artillery regiments (6th, 42nd, 21st, 7th), that until then belonged to the corpus brigade, constituted new independent brigades assigned to both Silesian divisions. The 12th Artillery Brigade that included the soldiers of the 21st Regiment now belonged to the Upper Silesian Division. In 1901, the regiment received the name of the 1st Upper Silesian Field Artillery Regiment “von Clausewitz” No 21. In 1914, the regiment’s structure comprised staff and the 1st Unit in Nysa (light artillery in three batteries), and the 2nd Unit in Grodków (howitzers in three batteries) with munitions companies supporting each of the units. In 1916, the third unit joined the regiment with three artillery batteries and one more munitions company.³⁶

      Furthermore, the 12th Field Artillery Brigade in Nysa consisted of the 2nd Upper Silesian Field Artillery Regiment No. 57 (2. Oberschlesisches Feldartilerie-Regiment Nr. 57). It was created in March 1899. Its armament and structure resembled the armament and structure of the 21st Upper Silesian Field Artillery Regiment. Its staff and the 1st Unit quartered in Prudnik, while the 2nd Unit in Gliwice.

Since the mobilization after the outbreak of the First World War also applied to the reserve corps in the German Army, the VI Reserve Corps (VI. Reserve-Korps) was also created as a compact unit under command of the General of the Infantry Konrad Ernst von Goßler until 1917, and then, until the end of the war, under the General of the Infantry, Kurt von dem Borne.³⁷ It also included two reserve infantry divisions, analogical to their mother divisions: the 11th Infantry Reserve Division and the 12th Infantry Reserve Division At the outbreak of the war, the commander of the 2nd Upper Silesian division became lieutenant general ←23 | 24→Walther Freiherr von Lüttwitz. It comprised the 22nd Infantry Reserve Brigade (22. Reserve-Infanterie-Brigade) under command of major general von Leyser. The brigade consisted of the 23rd Infantry Reserve Regiment of Opole under command of Lieutenant Colonel von Passov and the Infantry Reserve Regiment No. 38 (Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 38) with its battalions in Oleśnica and Wrocław. Its commander was Lieutenant Colonel von Rosenberg.

      Moreover, the 2nd Upper Silesian division conveyed the 23rd Infantry Reserve Brigade under command of major general Freiherr von Wilimowski that consisted of the Infantry Reserve Regiment No. 22 (Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 22) with its battalions in Rybnik, Racibórz, and Koźle and the Infantry Reserve Regiment No. 22 (Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 51) in Nysa and Gliwice.

Furthermore, the Upper Silesian division comprised the Field Artillery Reserve Regiment No. 12 in Nysa and Prudnik (Reserve-Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 12), which during the war only consisted of two units³⁸; the Uhlan Reserve Regiment No. 4 in Brzeg and Grodków (Reserve-Ulanen-Regiment Nr. 4); and the Sapper Reserve Company of the Sappers Battalion No. 6 in Brzeg (Reserve-Kompanie Pionier-Bataillon Nr. 6).³⁹

The wartime mobilization also applied to Landsturm units responsible for homeland defense, which consisted of older year groups of soldiers no longer in active duty. First, because of the potential Russian threat in 1914, and from guard duty needs in the back lines. No one respected this formation, which is in stark contrast to the later Volkssturm of the Second World War. What best pictures the combat value of Landsturm’s 40- and 50-year-old members is the popular joke about their guard duty in Katowice, at the beginning of the First World War: “The sentry on duty calls a person that approaches him in the darkness: “Halt! Who’s there? Keyword?” The stranger thinks for a second and answers in Silesian Polish, “Oh, darn it [pieronie], I forgot the password!” The guard answers, “If you say ‘darn it’ [pieronie], than you belong to us and may enter.””⁴⁰

Poles in Prussian Regiments Before the First World War

The specific character of conscription in Prussia, and later in the German Empire, caused foot soldiers to live close to garrisons. For instance, the soldiers of the 12th Infantry Division and the 12th Infantry Reserve Division came from ←24 | 25→Upper Silesia, mainly from the Upper Silesian Industrial Region, as we find in regimental memoirs. Even the members of the rather elite regiment of this division, the 21st Field Artillery Regiment, mostly recruited from “the workers of the Upper Silesian mines and steel mills.”⁴¹ It meant that they belonged to a group of large-scale industrial workers, and the members of the Prussian Army treated them with reluctance because of the great influence of social democracy in this milieu; unjustified fears in the Upper Silesian case as the influence of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Polish Socialist Party of the Prussian Partition was imperceptible. Therefore, after the formation of the 63rd Infantry Regiment, the administration located its barracks in the capital of the Regierungsbezirk Opole and in Lubliniec, so that it could intervene at any time. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Prussian civil administration asked the army to increase the number of the military units on the German-Russian border, as the former feared social upheavals in the region.⁴²

Cavalry conscription was not so strictly associated with the territorial division of the military districts. However, after von Moltke’s military reform, even in this case, the recruits almost exclusively came from the Wrocław area of the VI Army Corps, let alone the group of professional officers. Whereas, especially among line regiments in 1914, for the sake of the mobilization plan, conscription was only limited to the districts in direct neighborhood with garrisons, depending on the deployment of battalions, squadrons, and batteries.⁴³ It allows us to treat soldiers of the Upper Silesian regiments as the representatives of the local communities, just like in the case of Greater Poland, Pomeranian, and East Prussian regiments. The term “Polish regiments” appeared in the Prussian Partition already in the Franco-Prussian War, which referred to regiments mostly formed of Poles as there were no uniform Polish regiments at that time. However, when it comes to ethnic origin, the Poles comprised the majority of these regiments, particularly in Poznań. They were called Katschmarek Regiments (Katschmarkenregimenten).⁴⁴ This name remained in use and popularity in Poznań even during the First World War.⁴⁵ For example, the famous Polish writer Arkady Fiedler mentions the name when thinking of 1915,