Legal battles over the (non-)punishment of an officer for a duel in the Second Polish Republic: The case of Lieutenant Colonel Zygmunt Dzwonkowski, 1924/1925

Abstract

For a Polish Army officer in the Second Polish Republic, duelling always gave rise to a moral dilemma: whether to stand on the field of honour, weapon in hand, or to refuse to participate in such a ‘meeting’ and thus risk expulsion from the officer corps. The article, drawing on previously undisclosed archival materials held in the Central Military Archives at the Military Historical Office in Warsaw, presents the case of Lt. Col. Dzwonkowski in the context of the (non-)punishment of Polish Army officers for duelling, which was a matter of debate within the military judicial corps. This issue even reached the military justice system, which, in considering the case of Lt. Col. Zygmunt Dzwonkowski’s 1924 duel, entered into a judicial dispute. This was primarily due to the different approaches to the duelling of a Polish Army officer taken by the prosecutor’s office, which strictly adhered to the regulations, and the judges, who always ruled in the accused’s favour. The court case, or rather three trials of Lt. Col. Dzwonkowski, became a platform (unprecedented in the history of Polish military justice in the Second Polish Republic) for a dispute over the (non-)punishment of an officer who, in defence of honour, sought satisfaction with a gun in his hand. The final decision was made only by the President of the Republic of Poland, who exercised his power of pardon in favour of Lt. Col. Dzwonkowski, thereby effectively bringing the matter to a close.