Jan Leśniak

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Jan Leśniak (born  November 21, 1898 near Gorlice ; †  April 15, 1976 in Vienna ) was a Polish officer and secret service employee of the Polish cipher bureau Biuro Szyfrów (BS) before and during the Second World War , most recently with the rank of Pułkownik ( Colonel ) .

Life

Born in Wampierzów near Gorlice on the estate of Countess Skarbek in the north of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Crown Land of Galicia , he graduated from the Imperial and Royal Middle School in Gorlice. In 1917, still during World War I , he was drafted into the Imperial and Royal Army . Immediately after the end of the war he joined the newly founded Polish army as a volunteer . He fought in the Polish-Soviet War (1919–1921) and was seriously wounded.

On June 1, 1928 he was promoted to Kapitan ( captain ). In the mid-1930s he was transferred to Intelligence Section  II (Polish: Oddział II ) of the Polish General Staff , headed by Stefan Mayer . There he was considered the leading specialist in matters of the Wehrmacht and from 1937 was head of the department responsible for Germany . In this function, he was largely responsible for the interpretation of the intelligence information that the cryptanalysts of the BS4 , i.e. the department of the BS responsible for German ciphers ( Enigma ), gained by continuously deciphering the encrypted radio messages of the Wehrmacht. The Polish general staff received a very precise picture of the German plans and battle lines, especially of the army and navy .

In September 1939, after the German invasion of Poland , he was evacuated together with other officers of the General Staff to Brest , and, immediately before the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland on September 17, 1939, then via Kolomyja to Romania. From October 20, 1939, a ship brought him to Marseille into French exile via the port city of Constanța . After the fall of France in June 1940, it went on to the United Kingdom . Until the end of the war in 1945 he continued to work as an intelligence officer in London . In addition, he regularly gave encouraging radio addresses (under a pseudonym ) to his compatriots on the BBC radio .

Jan Leśniak died long after the war at the age of 77 as a result of a traffic accident that he suffered in Austria on his return journey from Italy, after a short hospital stay in Vienna.

Awards (selection)

literature

  • Władysław Kozaczuk : Enigma - How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two. Translated by Christopher Kasparek, University Publications of America, Frederick 1984, ISBN 0-89093-547-5 , pp. 58 and 64-66.

Web links

  • Andrzej Pepłoński: Zarys rozwoju organizacyjnego polskiego wywiadu wojskowego w latach 1914–1945 (“Overview of the organizational development of the Polish military intelligence service in the years 1914–1945”), Słupskie Studia Historyczne 8, 179–192, 2000, bazhum.m (PDF; 1.1 MB; Polish)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrzej Pepłoński: Zarys rozwoju organizacyjnego polskiego wywiadu wojskowego w latach 1914-1945. Słupskie Studia Historyczne 8, 179–192, 2000, p. 190, accessed on April 26, 2019.
  2. ^ The Code Breakers of Bletchley Park. 2010, henstridgephotography.com (PDF; 1 MB; English), p. 1, accessed on April 26, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Leśniak, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish officer
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1898
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1976
Place of death Vienna