“TO ARMS! JOIN THE LIGHTNING ARMY!”

Mistakenly seen as easy prey by the belligerent Bolsheviks, the newly formed Second Polish Republic had no desire to doff the cap to the Russian Empire, communist or otherwise. Warsaw decided instead to strike eastward and expand its borders to those regions of Ukraine and Belarus with a significant Polish population. The Polishsoviet War of 19191921 quickly faced an overwhelming counterattack as the Red Army gained the upper hand in the Civil War and was able to free soldiers for a second front.