Polish Military Organization

Polish Military Organisation, PMO (Polish: Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, POW) was a secret military organization created by Józef Piłsudski in August 1914, and officially named in November 1914, during World War I. Its tasks were to gather intelligence and sabotage the enemies of the Polish people. It was used by Piłsudski to create a body independent from his cautious Austro-Hungarian supporters, and it was an important, if somewhat lesser known, counterpart to the Polish Legions. Its targets included the Russian Empire in the early phase of the war, and the German Empire later. Its membership rose from a few hundred members in 1914 to over 30,000 in 1918.

The Polish Military Organization (PMO) can be traced to formations of August 1914 or even earlier, but it was officially founded in November 1914, as a merger of two previously-existing youth para-military organisations: the Drużyny Strzeleckie and the Związek Strzelecki. Active in the Russian-held Kingdom of Poland, the PMO served as the intelligence and sabotage arm of Piłsudski's Polish Legions. In fact, many members of the illegal and secret PMO were at the same time soldiers of the Austrian-backed Polish Legions. The PMO was commanded militarily by Piłsudski himself, while the political command was a secret "A" Convent headed by Jędrzej Moraczewski.

Initially active only in Central Poland, with time the PMO units were formed in all parts of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including modern day Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. It was mainly preoccupied with intelligence and sabotage, as well as military training of its members and acquisition of arms from various armies fighting on Polish soil. The PMO members were seen as the core of the future Polish Army after Poland regained her independence.

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