The symbolic term used to describe the troops was subsequently adopted by General Józef Haller von Hallenburg to represent all newly organized Polish Legions fighting in western Europe.

[1] This time there was considerable interest, and the Canadians sought and were given permission by British high command to start setting up a Polish Army Camp in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

A month earlier, Ignacy Jan Paderewski submitted a proposal to U.S. House of Representatives to accept Polish-American volunteers for service on the Western Front in the name of Poland's independence.

Similar Polish uprisings erupted in Poznań on 27 December 1918,[9] Upper Silesia in August 1919 then again in 1920 and May 1921 — separated by the ad-hoc (or outright illegitimate) plebiscites with trainloads of German agents acting as local inhabitants.

[9] In all, some 2,100 soldiers of the Blue Army who enlisted in France from the Polish diasporas died in the fighting, including over 50 officers serving with Haller.

[7] The first divisions were formed after the official signing of a 1917 alliance by French President Raymond Poincaré and the Polish statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski.

On 4 October 1918, the National Committee appointed General Józef Haller von Hallenburg as chief commander of the Polish Legions in France.

The first unit to enter combat on the Western Front was the 1st Rifle Regiment (1 Pułk Strzelców Polskich) fighting from July 1918 in Champagne and the Vosges mountains.

After being denied permission by German officials to enter Poland via the Baltic port city of Danzig (Gdańsk), transportation was arranged via rail.

Immediately after its arrival, the divisions were integrated into the regular Polish Army and sent to the front lines to fight in the Polish–Ukrainian War, which was being contested in eastern Galicia.

In response, the allies sent several telegrams ordering the Polish government to halt its offensive, as using the allied-equipped army against the Western Ukrainian People's Republic specifically contradicted the status of the French military advisors, but the demands were ignored.

In July 1919, after securing victory on the Ukrainian front, the Blue Army was transferred to the border with Germany in Silesia, where it prepared defensive positions against a possible German invasion of Poland from the west.

Haller's troops would try to entrap small units of Bolshevik soldiers as well as raid garrisons for food, ammunition and to spread panic amongst the enemy.

[23][24] Pavel Korzec wrote that as the army traveled further east, some of Haller's soldiers, as a way to exact retribution, continued to loot Jewish properties and engage in violence.

[27] The Morgenthau Report estimated that the total number of Jews killed as a result of actions made by the Polish military (including the Blue Army) did not exceed 200–300.

[28] As a result of the Blue Army's activities, General Haller's visit to the United States was met with protests from American Jewish and Ukrainian communities.

He claims that the term "pogrom" in the accepted sense of the deliberate killing of Jewish civilians could not be applied to the great majority of the incidents in which the Blue Army was involved.

For soldiers from Western Poland who remembered how many Jews have previously collaborated with Germany during a recent Polish-German conflict in 1919, this allowed framing of anti-semitic attacks as retribution on enemies of the Polish nation.

Officers and soldiers in the Blue Army expressed these tendencies, and often treated all Jews as communists, despite the traditional religious character and political diversity of Jewish communities.

It is likely that the cultural shock of finding themselves confronted by a multitude of unfamiliar ethnic, political and religious groups that inhabited Western Ukraine led to a feeling of vulnerability, that in turn provoked the violent outbursts.

Encyclopaedia Judaica writes that because of its French ties the Blue Army enjoyed independence from the main Polish command, and some of its soldiers exploited this when engaging in undisciplined action against Jewish communities in Galicia.

[35] Polish Jews enlisted and fought alongside ethnic Poles within the Blue Army, serving as soldiers,[36][37] doctors and nurses.