The impact of Ukrainian and German minorities in Poland on the security of the state in the years 1919-1939

This article attempts to look at the impact of the Ukrainian and German minorities in Poland on the national security in the years 1919-1939. In the study, the thesis was adopted that in the years 1919-1939 the Ukrainians and the Germans were two minorities that affected the security of Poland more than any other ethnic group. This impact was destabilizing. It was decided to rely on variable literature in order to prove the above thesis. The source documents from the Archives of the Józef Piłsudski Institute in NYC, the USA, were important research material as well. The analysis and evaluation of theses source documents had an additional input in the matter of research on how the national minorities had affected the internal security of the Second Republic of Poland. The content provided suggests that the influence of many actions of the Ukrainian and German minorities actually destabilized the inner situation in the Second Republic. The nature of activities of the both minority groups, however, was fundamentally different. The Ukrainian minority often referred to the paramilitary operations and assistance of military organizations for spreading terror and political forcing of their demands. Whereas, the German minority benefited from measures of political propaganda and agitation inspired from Germany. Its political parties and various associations often smuggled anti-Polish contents, in the spirit of the German policy of revisionism.