German and Austrian Occupation of the Intermarium, 1915-1919

The Institute of World Politics

About the lecture: In 1915 Germany's successful offensive in the east resulted in the occupation of the Western chunk of the Russian Empire, a swath of land between the Baltic and Black Seas. We refer to it as the Intermarium, and it is essentially coterminous with the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Germans shared their conquest with their junior partners, the Austrians. Both made sure not to include the captured lands into their own partitions of Poland. Instead, they kept them apart as the so-called Polish Kingdom and, further east, the Ober Ost. In the former, the Germans favored the Poles; in the latter, they advantaged the Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Jews. In neither place did the occupiers agree to serious political concessions; they permitted local autonomy at best. It was a classical divide et impera situation. The main objective of Berlin (which by 1918 totally dominated its Viennese partner) was to gain a permanent geopolitical advantage and to exploit the area's economy and labor. The Second Reich pursued a similar policy toward Ukraine when it expanded there in the wake of Brest Litovsk in February 1918. Ultimately, however, Germany's plans collapsed as a result of its defeat on the Western Front. About the speaker: About the speaker: Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz holds The Kosciuszko Chair in Polish Studies at The Institute of World Politics and leads IWP’s Center for Intermarium Studies. At IWP, he also serves as a Professor of History and teaches courses on Geography and Strategy, Contemporary Politics and Diplomacy, Russian Politics and Foreign Policy, and Mass Murder Prevention in Failed and Failing States. He is the author of Intermarium: The Land Between the Black and Baltic Seas and numerous other books and articles. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has previously taught at the University of Virginia and Loyola Marymount University.