The White Eagle of Poland by E.F. Benson

All this year then the occupying powers could come to no decision about the constitution of Poland, Austria made proposal after proposal, leaning towards the ‘Austrian Solution,' to each of which Germany demurred, on the ground that any such arrangement would give too great a preponderance to her Ally. Also German opinion -- that is to say, the opinion of the governing classes in Germany -- was crucially divided. Bethmann-Hollweg, for instance, was in favour of transforming Poland into a sort of buffer-state between Russia (which was not yet disintegrated) and Germany, giving her some semblance of independence, but really placing her under the political and economical control of Berlin. To this arrangement Austria objected, as did also the more pronouncedly Junker party in Germany itself, which, under the lead of the Crown Prince and Hindenburg, preferred open annexation, not of Poland only, but of Lithuania and Courland.

Other ‘orientations' in Germany favoured a fresh partition of the Kingdom of Poland, assigning to Germany some three millions of its inhabitants, and leaving the remainder to Austria. There would follow a fresh partition of Galicia, of which the Western part would go to Austria and the Eastern be joined on to the government of Cholm. This was tantamount to a fresh partition of Poland, to which Count Audrassy was (very rightly) opposed from the point of view of the Central Empires, saying that such an arrangement would but throw Poland back into Russian arms. From a military point of view the advantages of complete annexation, with this further partition, were to be found in the rectification of Germany's Eastern frontier, in which the Kingdom of Poland at present forms a huge salient; politically, it would result in the complete destruction of Polish nationality.