Bad Ass of the Week: Josef Pilsudski

Here is one inspirational read for you…

August 15^th, 2015 marks the 95^th anniversary of the greatest military victory in modern Polish history.  And before you assholes out there start talking about how they finally built a mosquito-proof submarine because they installed screen door hatches or some other such bullshit, you should know that on August 15, 1920, the battered, war-torn country of Poland defended their capital against the onslaught of Leninist Soviet Russia, halting the progress of Communism across post-World War I Europe despite being outnumbered, outgunned, and almost completely surrounded by hardcore enemy soldiers wanting nothing more than to stomp Polish faces into proletariat borscht with the bootheels of militant Bolshevism.   With their own capital city at their backs, the Poles utterly demolished the entire might of the Soviet army during the “Miracle on the Vistula”, and they did it in the most badass way imaginable – by straight-on bayonet charging a superior force in the hopes of breaking their morale with one ultra-brave display of the Polish military’s giant kielbasa dongs.

In their desperate attack, sweeping through the demoralized conscript forces of the Red Army and rolling up their flank, the Poles were led by the greatest military commander in modern Polish History – Marshal Jozel Pilsudski.  Take a look at that dude for a second.  Honestly, his amazing moustache and badass manly 1900s crew cut alone should convince you of his crippling badassitude, but this guy was a revolutionary, bank robber, guerilla, underground writer, General, and political activist who shanked faces with a razor-sharp saber and survived hardcore imprisonments in everything from Siberian gulags and St. Petersburg Mental Institutions to Polish castles and inescapable German mountain fortresses.

Despite all the lame dad jokes about their military might, Poland has a long and amazing history of hardcore military awesomeness that has been massively underappreciated throughout time.  These guys aren’t pussies.  They’re hardasses, and anyone who tells you otherwise is woefully underinformed about military history.  Unfortunately for the Polish fighting man, they’re completely fucked by having terrible geography:  They’re completely squished in between Germany and Russia, two of the most epic military powers to ever exist, and a complete lack of decent warm-water ports means these guys have to basically fight both of these powers on their own without any hope of resupply or reinforcements from outside powers.  As a result, Poland ended up spending pretty much all of the 18^th century getting conquered alternately by the Prussians, the Austrians, and the Russians, and all those –ussians just kept on carving the country up between them however the fuck they wanted.  This shit is known as the “Partitions of Poland”, because various powerful European dictators and monarchs just spent like 150 years carving the place up like a friggin’ ham.

Read the Remainder at Bad Ass of the Week