The American Rescue of Poland Through Danzig in 1919

The Institute of World Politics

This lecture is part of the 12th Annual Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium in honor of Lady Blanka Rosenstiel sponsored by the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium studies. About the lecture: In early 1919, newly reborn Poland was virtually a landlocked country. Border conflicts caused by the geopolitical earthquake of World War I had brought international trade to a standstill. The only hope for economic relief and humanitarian aid to the war-ravaged nation was access to the Baltic sea through German-controlled Danzig. In the late winter of 1919, the small Mission to Danzig, led by the first chief of the American Relief Administration in Poland, Colonel William R. Grove, and the versatile Chief Delegate of the Polish Government, Mieczysław Jałowiecki, would play an indispensable role in opening Poland's economy to the world, before the decisive showdown with Bolshevik Russia in 1920. About the speaker: Nicholas Siekierski earned his PhD at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. His dissertation, "Operations of the American Relief Administration in Poland, 1919-1922", tells the story America's critical role in the early history of the Second Polish Republic. Dr. Siekierski is also a translator, most recently of 485 Days at Majdanek, the memoir of concentration camp survivor Jerzy Kwiatkowski, published last year by the Hoover Institution. It was the subject of a presentation at last year's Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium at IWP.