The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers, by which Russia withdrew from World War I. The treaty, which followed months of negotiations after the armistice on the Eastern Front in December 1917, was signed at Brest-Litovsk.
The United Baltic Duchy, or alternatively the Grand Duchy of Livonia, was the name of a short-lived state during World War I that was proclaimed by leaders of the local Baltic German nobility.
The General Government, formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region, was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovakia and the Soviet Union in 1939 at the onset of World War II. The newly occupied Second Polish Republic was split into three zones: the General Government in its centre, Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in the west, and Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union in the east. The territory was expanded substantially in 1941, after the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, to include the new District of Galicia. The area of the Generalgouvernement roughly corresponded with the Austrian part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.
The Kingdom of Poland, also known informally as the Regency Kingdom of Poland, was a short-lived polity that was proclaimed during World War I by the German Empire and Austria-Hungary on 5 November 1916 on the territories of formerly Russian-ruled Congress Poland held by the Central Powers as the Government General of Warsaw and which became active on 14 January 1917. It was subsequently transformed between 7 October 1918 and 22 November 1918 into the independent Second Polish Republic, the customary ceremonial founding date of the latter being later set at 11 November 1918.
Carl Adolf Maximilian Hoffmann was a German military strategist. As a staff officer at the beginning of World War I, he was Deputy Chief of Staff of the 8th Army, soon promoted Chief of Staff. Hoffmann, along with Erich Ludendorff, masterminded the devastating defeat of the Russian armies at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. He then held the position of Chief of Staff of the Eastern Front. At the end of 1917, he negotiated with Russia to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Hans Hartwig von Beseler was a German colonel general.
The Eastern Front or Eastern Theater of World War I was a theater of operations that encompassed at its greatest extent the entire frontier between Russia and Romania on one side and Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany on the other. It ranged from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, involved most of Eastern Europe, and stretched deep into Central Europe. The term contrasts with the Western Front, which was being fought in Belgium and France. Unlike the static warfare on the Western Front, the fighting on the geographically larger Eastern Front was more dynamic, often involving the flanking and encirclement of entire formations, and resulted in over 100,000 square miles of territory becoming occupied by a foreign power.
The Polish Legions was a name of the Polish military force established in August 1914 in Galicia soon after World War I erupted between the opposing alliances of the Triple Entente on one side and the Central Powers on the other side, comprising the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. The Legions became "a founding myth for the creation of modern Poland" in spite of their considerably short existence; they were replaced by the Polish Auxiliary Corps formation on 20 September 1916, merged with Polish II Corps in Russia on 19 February 1918 for the Battle of Rarańcza against Austria-Hungary, and disbanded following the military defeat at the Battle of Kaniów in May 1918, against Imperial Germany. General Haller escaped to France to form the Polish army in the West against the anti-Polish German-Bolshevik treaty.
The marka was the currency of the Kingdom of Poland and of the Republic of Poland between 1917 and 1924. It was subdivided into 100 Fenigów, like its German original after which it was modelled.
The Supreme Commander of All German Forces in the East, also known by its German abbreviation as Ober Ost, was both a high-ranking position in the armed forces of the German Empire as well as the name given to the occupied territories on the German section of the Eastern Front of World War I, with the exception of Poland. It encompassed the former Russian governorates of Courland, Grodno, Vilna, Kovno and Suwałki. It was governed in succession by Paul von Hindenburg and Prince Leopold of Bavaria. It was abandoned after the end of World War I.
The Polish Military Organisation, PMO was a secret military organization that was formed during World War I (1914–1918). Józef Piłsudski founded the group in August 1914. It adopted the name POW in November 1914 and aimed to gather intelligence and to sabotage the enemies of the Polish people. Piłsudski used it to act independently from his cautious Austro-Hungarian supporters, and it became an important, if somewhat lesser known, counterpart to the Polish Legions. Its targets included the Russian Empire in the early phase of the war and the German Empire later. Its membership rose from a few hundred in 1914 to over 30,000 in 1918.
Ostrubel is the name given to a currency denominated in copecks and rubels, which was issued by Germany in 1916 for use in the eastern areas under German occupation. It was initially equal to the Imperial rouble. The reason for the issue was a shortage of currency. The banknotes were produced by the Darlehnskasse in Posen on 17 April 1916.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Lithuania.
1st Polish Corps in Russia was a military formation formed on 24 July 1917 in Minsk from Polish and Lithuanian personnel serving in the Western and Northern Fronts of the Russian Army.
Estonia was under military occupation by the German Empire during the later stages of the First World War. On 11–21 October 1917, the Imperial German Army occupied the West Estonian archipelago, including the larger islands of Saaremaa (Ösel), Hiiumaa (Dagö), and Muhu (Moon).
The Great Retreat was a strategic withdrawal and evacuation on the Eastern Front of World War I in 1915. The Imperial Russian Army gave up the salient in Galicia and the Polish Congress Kingdom. The Russian Empire's critically under-equipped military suffered great losses in the Central Powers' July–September summer offensive operations, which led to the Stavka ordering a withdrawal to shorten the front lines and avoid the potential encirclement of large Russian forces in the salient. While the withdrawal itself was relatively well-conducted, it was a severe blow to Russian morale.
While Poland did not exist as an independent state during World War I, its geographical position between the fighting powers meant that much fighting and horrific human and material losses occurred on the Polish lands between 1914 and 1918.
The term "Polish Border Strip", also called "Polish Frontier Strip", refers to those territories which the German Empire wanted to annex from Congress Poland after World War I. It appeared in plans proposed by German officials as a territory to be annexed by the German Empire after an expected German and Central Powers victory. German planners also envisioned forced expulsion and resettlement of the Polish and Jewish population which would be replaced by German colonists. The proposed area of the Border Strip comprised up to 30,000 km2, and up to 3 million people were to be ethnically cleansed to make room for German settlers. The strip was also intended to separate the Polish inhabitants of Prussian-held Greater Poland from those in Congress Poland.
Polish Armed Forces in the East around World War I is a term used for several Polish military formations formed in Russia and operating in the period of 1914–1920. Early formations were part of the Imperial Russian Army. Later, during the Russian Revolution, the Polish formations were mainly allied to the White Russian forces and the Western powers. All the formations were eventually incorporated into the Polish Army by 1920.
The Military General Government of Poland, also known as the Military General Government of Lublin, was a military administration of an area of the Russian Empire under the occupation of Austria-Hungary, during the World War I, that existed from 1915 to 1917. It was administered under the command of Governors-General, with the seat of government originally based in Kielce, and in October 1915, moved to Lublin.
