Miracle on the Vistula 1920 – Part 1

By Fr. Christopher Foeckler, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

After the Russian Revolution in 1917 the new Soviet Red Army defeated the White Forces for control of the country in a bloody civil war. With a large victorious army assembled, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin decided on a bold plan to spread the Revolution to all of Western Europe with the assistance of the local proletarians who were ripe for revolution because of the economic and social upheavals from the devastation of World War I. They were confident they could “revolutionize” Germany, France and even Great Britain! But to accomplish any of it, they first had to conquer Poland, or as the commanding Russian General Tukhachevsky put it, “Over the corpse of white Poland lies the road to worldwide conflagration!”.

Poland had just regained its independence in 1918 in the realignment of borders following WWI after 120 years of non-existence within the empires of the day. Its 1000-year-old Christian culture and history had been well preserved within a Christian empire and was like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. But now its new-found independence was threatened with total annihilation by atheistic forces that were on the march to do just what they had done in Christian Russia. This war was one of the most important of the 20th Century and it was not only political, but above all a spiritual battle. Our Lady had warned of Russia “spreading its errors” at Fatima and asked Catholics to turn to her for victory. 

As the Communist juggernaut rolled into Eastern Poland in early August, 1920, the Polish people were mobilized to stop the invaders. National leaders and the Catholic Clergy rallied the people: able-bodied men were mustered into the under-equipped regular army while university students, teenagers and older men were organized into militias. Young women became nurses and support personnel and all were given very hasty basic training. The Poles were not only defending their homeland from unjust aggression, but also their Catholic Faith against the atheistic Communists whose atrocities in Russia were still very fresh in the minds of all. Priests often accompanied the troops going into battle and Fr. Ignacy Skorupka became one of the most revered casualties of the war. He had died holding aloft his crucifix to encourage the young recruits in the desperate battle of Ossow on the evening of August 14th.