Mary Against the Marxists, part IV
Read part I: The Communist Bayonet.
Read part II: Poland Against All Odds.
Read part III: The Miracle on the Vistula
After the victory, Piłsudski became a national legend and received glory for his work. The state began honoring soldiers in the battle with medals. Piłsudski himself twice thanked the Blessed Mother for the victory against the Bolsheviks at the monestary of Jasna Góra in Częstochowa.[1] Piłsudski, in a conversation with Cardinal Kakowski said, “Your Eminence, I myself do not know how we won the war.”[2]
However, the events of the miracle were suppressed by both sides, the Polish and the Bolsheviks for different reasons. The Bolsheviks suppressed the events due to the shame of defeat. In Poland this miracle was swept under the rug as it was uncomfortable for the freemasons in power of whom there was many in politics at the time and wanted to remove God from society.[3] It was also uncomfortable for the ministry of defense who did not want to take away from the honor of the Polish soldiers and generals. All mentions of “miracle” or “Miracle on the Vistula” were suppressed and censured in the press and at book publishers (most were controlled by freemasons) as it was politically incorrect. Even the Polish soldiers did not talk about it because no one reasonable would believe rumors that the weird color of the sky scared the Bolsheviks away.[4] It was to remain a victory of man, and not the divine, a victory of Marshall Piłsudski without the aid of the supernatural. Even though it was suppressed at the political level, there was a small chapel and cemetery built in Ossów to commemorate the miracle.
Despite the hundreds if not thousands of Bolsheviks that openly testified to seeing the Mother of God and running away in fear of her, no canonical investigation was undertaken by Cardinal Kakowski who was very aware of what happened as he wrote of the events. It could be because Cardinal Kakowski was made bishop before the First World War when Warsaw was under Russian occupation. We know that his candidacy as bishop of Warsaw by the Vatican was supported by the Russian state (including Tsar Nicholas II himself) which helped cover the costs of the preparation of documents for his candidacy. He was known to be a lousy rector, pro-government and as someone who “knew how to walk around his own affairs.” In other words, he was likely someone who would most likely go with the politically correct narrative and therefore not likely to launch a formal canonical investigation of the apparition. It didn’t help that the only direct witnesses of the event were the Bolsheviks themselves; the most that the Poles noticed was an odd color glow in the sky and the seemingly unwarranted reaction and retreat of the Bolsheviks.
The place of death of Father Jan Skorupka is marked with a cross to this day. His stole and cross are kept in the Warsaw military museum. In order to give thanks to the Blessed Mother for her divine intervention at the battle of Warsaw, three churches were built in Warsaw.[5] When the Apostolic Nuncio Cardinal Achille Ratti became Pope Pius XI, he commissioned a painting of Father Skorupka on the wall of the papal chapel in the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the Pope.
After Poland captured all the prisoners of war, Lord D’Abernon went to see them. His interviews with them were very revealing:
The latest estimate of captures is as follows: 60,000 prisoners, 200 guns and 1,000 machine guns. …The Polish Government is becoming seriously embarrassed by the task of feeding so many prisoners. I have made a special point of seeing how prisoners are treated. So far as I can ascertain the conditions are satisfactory. There is no rancour. Prisoners are regarded as victims rather than as hated enemies. Those I have seen are healthy and well fed. Most of them seem glad to be out of the fighting line.[6]
…They realized that they were more or less safe, that they would have adequate, if not abundant, food, that there would be no Jewish Commissaires to shoot them if they ran away, nor Chinese to torture them if they offended or spoke evil of the Soviet. It might be true that they had lost their chance of the pleasures of war, but they were apathetic about the joys of victory; they realised from past experience that the ultimate profit from sacking a town is greater in theory than in fact, and that the allied and associated pleasures may easily be overrated. [7] .
…They were mild, downtrodden peasants without enthusiasm, fanaticism or conviction. They had good boots— no uniforms— and looked fairly well fed. They said, however, that until they got into Poland their fare had been very scanty. Jewish Commissaires did everything in their division— commandeered food— gave orders— explained objectives.[8] Many captured Soviet officers assert that they served merely because it was their only way to keep from starving.[9] … The general impression they gave was that of good-natured serfs, who were just driven forward by Commissaires and Chinese— their only desire was to get home. This applies to nine-tenths of the prisoners I have seen— the other tenth appear fanatical devils.[10] … None of these men had any idea of the extent of the Bolshevik disaster— they only knew that something had gone wrong. Most of them grinned with pleasure when informed of the defeat of the army to which they had belonged.[11]
The Bolsheviks did not take this defeat lightly and considered the outcome to be temporary. As per Lord D’Abernon:
Recent speeches made by influential leaders of the Communist Party in Moscow show that the present peace is intended by them to be merely transitory. They regard it as a breathing space; a respite before the coming war. It is also certain that, if and when war comes, it will be ‘ integral,’ an expression much in vogue with the Soviet, meaning that every weapon of destruction, legitimate or otherwise, will be employed, and that every device of insidious subornation will be resorted to. Bolshevism remains a relentless foe to civilization.[12]
General Toukhatchevsky was ironically executed 17 years after the Battle of Warsaw by the same Bolshevik regime that he served. This was done by Stalin under the accusation of treason. He shared the same fate as Kara Mustafa, the general that led the Muslim army to their defeat by Polish King Jan Sobieski at the battle of Vienna.
After the Second World War during the Soviet occupation of Poland, the Communists suppressed Polish history from schools and removed from all libraries the events of the pre-war period. There was no mention of the Battle of Warsaw in the textbooks, and not even the victory of Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna. The chapel and cemetery built in Ossów to commemorate the miracle was blocked off, the bridge destroyed and placed into a restricted military area with no access to the public. Information on the events of the battle of Warsaw were only printed outside of the borders of Poland.[13]
On June 13th 1999, Polish Pope John Paul II visited the cemetery of soldiers who died during the Battle of Warsaw in Radzymin. He told the faithful:
Today I visited a place that is especially important for our national history. … It was a great victory for the Polish army, so great that it could not be explained in a purely natural way and that is why it was called the Miracle on the Vistula. This victory was preceded by a fervent national prayer… There was a conspiracy of silence for decades about the great Miracle on the Vistula River. Today God’s Providence imposes an obligation on the new Warsaw-Praga diocese to keep the memory of this great event in the history of our nation and the whole of Europe.[14]
The contemporary academic consensus is that the victory at the battle of Warsaw was due to the military genius of Marshall Piłsudski and his strategy. This argument is not convincing if one considers the following facts:
- The Bolsheviks were defeated by the ill-equipped Warsaw defense forces which were expected to fail after a few days and by no means were supposed to defeat the entire Bolshevik army.
- Piłsudski’s main attack group did not engage as planned as the Bolshevik forces were already well into their lightning-fast retreat (to the surprise of Piłsudski who said it was like a dream).
- The entire experienced Bolshevik army effectively retreated from:
- Teenage boys who first learned how to use a rifle a few days before and were hiding for their lives as they were getting massacred by Bolshevik machine gun fire at Ossów.
- A small rogue battalion headed by Pogonowski.
- Nothing went according to Piłsudski’s strategy or even to the best of his hopes but substantially better.
- The thousands of independent and consistent Bolshevik accounts of seeing the Mother of God.
- The thousands of Polish accounts of their unwarranted reaction and fear.
None of the above facts make sense by the laws of this universe unless one takes into account the possibility of intervention from the realm of the divine. After all, Piłsudski himself said that on the day of the battle “the finger of God touched the Earth.”[15] Zenon Jankowski (died at 99 in 2004) a veteran of General Hallers volunteer army said: “Everyone here is convinced that it was a miracle. At the moment of the Russian advance, there appeared a glow. The Russians fled from it in panic, covering their eyes. They ran away, they lost their boots and rifles.”[16] There was victory, but it didn’t look like it was a result of Piłsudski’s crazy plan. If anything one could say (and perhaps based on more merit) that Piłsudski’s plan was so bad that divine intervention was necessary in order to answer the overwhelming prayers of the entire Polish nation. After all, it is likely that if the Bolshevik forces did not retreat on the 14th and 15th of August, by the time Piłsudski would have launched his attack on the 16th, the Polish army would have been shamefully trying to recapture their own capital city and save its inhabitants from the trauma of Bolshevik destruction.
In 1872, before Poland existed on the map, the Servant of God Wanda Malczewska had an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary where she said:
Soon after Poland gains independence, her former oppressors will rise up against her to crush her – but my young army, fighting in my name, will defeat them, drive them far away, and force them to make peace. I will help them. … (a year later on August 15th): Today’s celebration (feast of the Assumption) will soon become a national holiday for you Poles, because in this day you will win a great victory against the enemy who is striving for your extermination.[17]
Hence, who really was the architect of victory, Piłsudski or God?
Lord D’Abernon explains the historical significance of the victory of the Battle of Warsaw:
On the essential point there is little room for doubt; had the Soviet forces overcome Polish resistance and captured Warsaw, Bolshevism would have spread throughout Central Europe, and might well have penetrated the whole continent. In every large city of Germany, secret preparations had been made by Communist agents – a definite programme had been prepared – leaders had been chosen – lists of victims had been drawn up – undermining intrigue would have been followed by ruthless assassination and murder.[18]
All of Europe was on the brink of an all-out Communist revolution. All the Bolsheviks had to do was show up.
The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples (Ps. 33:10).
On a final note, It is worth brining to light an interesting interview that Lord D’Abernon had with one prisoner of war who reveals what life was like under the Communist Regime in Russia:
One of the prisoners interviewed, a Jew, made some interesting statements about railways. All private traveling has been suspended; an individual can only travel with a special order, and this cannot be obtained except by Communists and is only issued by Commissaries: nobody suspected of anti-Bolshevism can get an order. There are no tickets for sale.[19]
The description provided by the POW on travel restrictions parallels almost perfectly the modern COVID passports and travel requirements. If one does not subscribe to the current Marxist vaccine ideology then they cannot travel, just as in the fallen Soviet Union and current China with its social credit system.
May the evils of true Communism and Socialism be known along with its defeat by the grace of God through His Mother. May we keep this historical event in memory as we today face the same enemy: the Marxists but in a different form. Just as certain defeat by Communists in 1920 was overturned by the most Blessed Mother, so too, if the will of God permits it, will she defeat the diabolical Marxist scourge facing the world and Church today.
Jesus is King, always was, and always will be!
Photo: from John Paul II’s visit to Poland in 1999.
[1] Ewa J.P. Storożyńska and Józef M. Bartnik ,SJ., Matka Boża Łaskawa A Cud Nad Wisłą (Krakow: Wydawnictwo AA, 2020), 28.
[2] Ibid., 28.
[3] Ibid., 245.
[4] Ibid., 38.
[5] Ibid., 67-70.
[6] Viscount D’Abernon, The Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World: Warsaw 1920 (London: Hyperion Press, 1977), 100.
[7] Ibid., 120.
[8] Ibid., 76.
[9] Ibid., 99.
[10] Ibid., 77.
[11] Ibid., 110-111.
[12] Ibid., 172.
[13] Storożyńska and Bartnik, 42.
[14] Ibid., 56.
[15] Ibid., 29.
[16] Ibid., 62.
[17] Ibid., 247-248.
[18] D’Abernon, 11-12.
[19] Ibid., 109.
