Social Justice and National Diversity: The Case of War Invalids in Poland

War invalid politics were, as Michael Gayer put it in an often quoted article, “the harbinger of the welfare state”. After the war millions of men came home with heavy injures, often unable to work. It was one of the most urgent tasks of the European nations to take care for those men and for their families. But, whereas soldiers of the Western armies had fought for the purposes of their national states, Polish soldiers had fought within the unions of the partition powers. Only some of them took part in the legions and therewith in the national fight for independence. Against that backdrop – and with the fact of national diversity within the new state in mind – one can consider a profound hierarchy within the group of ex-combatants. Nevertheless the state took care for war invalids of different armies. The article will examine the interrelation between the mentioned hierarchy and the demand for social justice in the field of war invalid politics in interwar Poland. Thereby it will ask whether social care functioned as a kit for the new national state and in how far it served for the legitimatization and for the stability of the new national democratic order.