This year will mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw, also known as the Miracle of the Vistula, which was Poland’s most decisive victory over the Red Army during the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–20. Last November, Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki announced that a triumphal arch commemorating the event would soon be erected in Warsaw. The announcement was made in the form of an answer during a question-and-answer session on Facebook. The prime minister wrote: “The monument of the Battle of Warsaw should have been created 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 10 years ago, and should be done next year. It won’t, but I promise that it will be done shortly.” Morawiecki explained his decision in the following words: “There have been deciding moments in the history of Europe and the world. The 1920 Battle of Warsaw was one of them. Poles saved their homeland and the entire continent. We all owe them a huge debt. Without them, we wouldn’t be here and neither would Europe as we know it today. They deserve a huge commemoration.”
These were not just empty words: Culture and National Heritage Minister Piotr Gliński, who is also Deputy Prime Minister in Morawiecki’s government, confirmed at the beginning of December that an imposing monument would be built this year to mark Poland’s historic victory over the Bolsheviks in August 1920. While Morawiecki had criticised the local authorities in Warsaw for their lack of cooperation on the project, Gliński made his announcement at a joint news conference with City Hall officials. He said that an open competition would be launched to choose a design for the monument, which could take the shape of a triumphal arch. And indeed, Jarosław Sellin, secretary of state in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, confirmed that the monument will “probably be in the form of an arch of triumph”. We now know that the monument will stand on the Plac na Rozdrożu square, where the City of Warsaw already planned to erect a monument for the centenary of the Battle of Warsaw, for which a competition to choose a design was to take place by December 2019. However, the characteristics of this square, through which run two main road axes with tunnels, made it impossible for the city to push the project forward, and even now with the help of state funds it is doubtful whether the imposing monument the Polish government has spoken of will be standing by August this year as promised. It is much more likely that a date on or around August 15 will be chosen for the laying of the foundation stone, as the choice of a design is now planned for March.
Gliński’s announcement put an end to numerous suggestions about the PM’s supposedly preferred choice of a 150- to 200-metre-tall triumphal arch in the middle of the Vistula river. Such a project has been promoted for years by the Patriotic Association (Towarzystwo Patriotyczne) led by satirist Jan Pietrzak. One of the reasons for such a design was that Warsaw City Hall would not have been able to block the project, as it has no authority over the Vistula river itself.
(source: http://www.luktriumfalny1920.pl/ )
Critics, in particular those closer to the leftist or liberal opposition, were quick to react to Morawiecki’s announcement. In an article published by Newsweek, the project was renamed “Arch of Triumph and Discord”. On the TVN television channel the idea of building a huge arch in the middle of the Vistula was mocked by MP Joanna Scheuring-Wilgus, from The Left, who suggested it would be a better idea to build a fantastic new library to mark the event, and was adamant that no-one would ever come to Warsaw to see its triumphal arch. Warsaw’s deputy mayor Paweł Rabiej said of the idea of a triumphal arch standing in the Vistula river that it reminded him of the post-Soviet republics and not of a modern country. Later, when it became known that the future monument would stand at Plac na Rozdrożu, he criticised suggestions that it would take the form of a triumphal arch. “It is a shape belonging to the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century”, he said, asking whether Poland could not find a more modern way of commemorating the Battle of Warsaw.
On the other end of the political spectrum, Jan Pietrzak pointed out that there are “different kinds of triumphal arches in many capital cities, but none of them, not one of those monuments which are famous all over the World commemorates events which decided the fate of the World, which is what the Battle of Warsaw is known for”. And as a matter of fact, triumphal arches are not just a relic of the 19th century.
In Paris, best known for the Eiffel Tower and for the Arc de Triomphe, built in the years 1806–36 to honour those who died for France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, socialist President François Mitterrand had his own arch built to commemorate the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989. The 110-metre-tall Great Arch of the Défense, also called The Great Arch of Fraternity, now closes the axis running from the Louvre through the Arc de Triomphe, and it was in fact designed to be a late 20th-century version of the early 19th-century triumphal arch. It was inaugurated in July 1989 with the great military parade that marked the 200th anniversary of the founding event of the French Republic. Apart from housing government offices, the Grande Arche is seen by many thousands of tourists each year (150,000 accessed its panoramic roof during the year following its reopening after works on 1 June 2017).
The Arc de Triomphe itself was inaugurated in 1836, and is one of the most famous monuments in Paris. Standing at the western end of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, its design was inspired by the 1st-century Arch of Titus in Rome. Building works for the world’s most famous triumphal arch were begun in 1806 at the request of Emperor Napoleon after his victory at Austerlitz. Its construction was halted during the Bourbon Restoration, and completed under the reign of King Louis-Philippe between 1833 and 1836. Engraved in the Arc de Triomphe are the names of major French victories in the Revolution and Napoleonic wars and the names of French generals of that era, including some who could probably be considered criminals against humanity by today’s standards, such as generals Amey and Turreau, who played active roles in the planned genocide perpetrated by the young French Republic during the War in Vendée. Beneath the arch is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The most famous victory marches which have passed around or under the most important French triumphal arch were those of the Germans in 1871, the French in 1919, the Germans again in 1940, and the French and Allies in 1944 and 1945. The Arc de Triomphe is also the starting point of the July 14 military parade which has been held almost every year since 1880, and it remains an essential symbol of pride and identity for the French Republic.
Apart from the 50 m high Arc de Triomphe standing at the top of the Champs-Élysées, Paris also has a 19 m arch called the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, which stands in front of the Louvres pyramids at the opposite end of the so-called historic axis from Mitterand’s Grande Arche. Just like the larger Arc de Triomphe marking the centre point of the historic axis, the Carrousel Arch was built at the request of Emperor Napoleon between 1806 and 1808 on the model of the 4th-century Arch of Constantine in Rome. It originally stood as the gateway to the Tuileries imperial palace (destroyed by the Paris Commune in 1871) and its bas-reliefs depict Napoleon’s diplomatic and military victories.
On the other side of the English Channel, King George IV had two triumphal arches built to commemorate Britain’s victories in the Napoleonic Wars. These are the Wellington Arch and Marble Arch, both in London. The Wellington Arch was completed in 1830 and was inspired by the Arch of Titus in Rome, as was the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The design for Marble Arch was modelled on the Arch of Constantine in Rome and the Carrousel triumphal arch in Paris. The Wellington Arch originally supported a huge equestrian statue (the largest such statue ever made) of the Duke of Wellington, the victor of the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon. Marble Arch was originally situated in front of Buckingham Palace, and was later moved to serve as a ceremonial entrance to Hyde Park. It is used for ceremonial processions, and the Queen’s coach passed under it during Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.
Berlin’s 26-metre-high Brandenburg Gate is one of Germany’s best-known monuments. It was built between 1788 and 1791 at the request of the Prussian King Frederick William II. Built on the model of the Propylaea, the gateway to the Acropolis in Athens, it was first named the Peace Gate, and it was to be a symbol not of military victories but of Frederick William II’s rule. Napoleon was the first to pass under the Gate for a triumphal procession after the Prussian defeat of 1806. It was after Napoleon’s defeat in 1814 that the Brandenburg Gate was redesigned as a Prussian triumphal arch, and the Quadriga (chariot drawn by four horses) driven by Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, was equipped with the Prussian eagle and Iron Cross on her lance. The Quadriga was reinstalled without the Eagle and Iron Cross after World War II to renew the original peaceful symbolism of the Peace Gate, but the Prussian symbols were reinstated during the last renovation of the Gate after German reunification. The Brandenburg Gate has been the site of many important events in Berlin’s and Germany’s history.
The first of Europe’s post-Roman triumphal arches was built in the Spanish capital Madrid at the time of King Charles III, to replace a smaller 16th-century gate. The neoclassical Puerta de Alcalá (Alcalá Gate) was inaugurated in 1778.
The Battle of Warsaw of 12–25 August 1920, where retreating Polish forces inflicted a crushing defeat on communist Russia and stopped the advance of the Red Army to the West, was one of the most important battles in the history not only of Poland but also of Europe and the Western World, as it put a hold on the spread of communism to the West. In August 1920, “the Red Army – sure of victory and pledged to carry the Revolution across Europe to ‘water our horses on the Rhine’ – was crushed by a devastating Polish attack. Since known as the ‘miracle on the Vistula’, it remains one of the most decisive battles of the Western World”, says the foreword to the book White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919–20 by British historian Norman Davies. It is often compared in importance to the Battle of Vienna fought against the invading Ottoman Turks by Christian armies under the command of Polish King John III Sobieski in 1683. Had it not been for the Polish victory of August 1920, “not only would Christianity have experienced a dangerous reverse, but the very existence of Western civilisation would have been imperilled. The Battle of Tours [fought by Frankish and Burgundian forces under Charles Martel in 732, also called the Battle of Poitiers] saved our ancestors from the Yoke of the Koran; it is probable that the Battle of Warsaw saved Central and parts of Western Europe from a more subversive danger – the fanatical tyranny of the Soviet.”[1]
One hundred years after the victorious Battle of Warsaw, 31 years after the fall of communism in Europe and 29 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there is no capital city in Europe that deserves a new triumphal arch more than Warsaw. If the French could build their Grande Arche referring to the Napoleonic Arc de Triomphe for the bicentennial of their Revolution in 1989, there is no reason why Poles should reject such a monument as just a thing of the past or something typical of authoritarian regimes, as some suggested after PM Morawiecki’s November announcement. Nor was there any better time to build a triumphal arch commemorating the Battle of Warsaw before, as the victory over Bolshevism became final only 30 years ago. Indeed, during the Second Polish Republic (1918–39) it could still “be that communist doctrine repelled by force of arms in 1920 [would] later achieve the disruption it [sought]”,[2] as it eventually did in Central Europe, first in 1939–41 thanks to the German–Soviet Pact, and then in 1944–89 as a consequence of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
Olivier Bault