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Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I by Jesse Kauffman (review)

Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I, by Jesse Kauffman. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2015. 267 pp. $35.00 US (cloth). In a 1917 letter to his wife, Hans von Beseler, Governor General of German-occupied Poland during WWI, confessed, "I would ... prefer it if there were Germans living here ... but there are Poles here, and you can't chase them all away or kill them all, so you've got to find a way to live with them somehow" (227). This statement encapsulates an essential point of Kauffman's engaging and well-researched book, arising from his Stanford dissertation. While scholars have often interpreted such comments as revealing German colonial fantasies, foreshadowing Nazi genocidal policies, Kauffman instead concentrates his analysis on the last part of the statement, drawing a clear distinction between the German occupation regimes of World War I and World War II. Beseler, at the heart of Kauffman's story, sought to lay the foundations of a Polish nation-state during the occupation--albeit one subordinated to German diplomatic, military, and economic interests--but a Polish state nonetheless. Whereas German policy in WWII aimed to wipe out any trace of Polish statehood, crush its army, and eradicate its educated elites, the occupation regime under Beseler endeavoured instead to establish a Polish administration, a Polish army, and a Polish education system that would produce the professionals and officials necessary to exercise Polish sovereignty (within limits defined by the Germans, of course). The failure of Beseler's project, Kauffman suggests, contributed to the brutality of the Nazis' occupation just two decades later. Rather than establishing a colonial protectorate that would pave the way for a German settlement colony, Beseler aimed to win Polish sympathies and lay the foundations for a subordinate state, which Kauffman documents in chapters on the nascent Polish army, bureaucracy, school system, and university. While it has often been dismissed as a cynical ploy to recruit cannon fodder for the German war effort, Beseler's efforts to create a Polish army were based on other long-term goals. Beseler himself privately expressed skepticism about the usefulness of Polish units in the current war, and aimed instead to build an army that would be subordinate to German command in wartime and would help shield Germany against Russia in the next. It would also serve as a core institution of the nascent Polish state. Parallel with the development of a Polish military, occupation authorities built a Polish administrative apparatus, including elected representative bodies in both town and country. …