Wladyslaw Sikorski

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Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski, around 1942

Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski (born May 20, 1881 in Tuszów Narodowy near Mielec , Galicia / Austria-Hungary , now Poland ; † July 4, 1943 near Gibraltar ) was a Polish officer, commander in chief , statesman, politician and from 1922 to 1923 Polish Prime Minister and Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile from 1939 to 1943 .

Life

In the struggle for independence

Sikorski (1918)

In addition to Marian Kukiel , Walery Sławek , Kazimierz Sosnkowski , Witold Jodko-Narkiewicz and Henryk Minkiewicz , he was the organizer of the "Association of Active Struggle" (Polish: Związek Walki Czynnej ) in Lemberg in 1908. The aim of the ZWCz was to prepare an armed uprising in the Russian partition of Poland. Then he founded the Lviv shooting association "Strzelec" . In 1912 he became a member of the "Provisional Commission of the Confederate Independence Parties " (Polish Komisja Tymczasowa Skonfederowanych Stronnictw Niepodległościowych ).

On August 9, 1914, he was appointed by Józef Piłsudski as his deputy in Galicia . In this function he formed the Polish Legions in Cracow and Lemberg , which on August 18th were subordinate to General Conrad von Hötzendorf , Chief of Staff . In August 1917 the I. and III. Legion Brigade disbanded because the German Kaiser as the new commander of the Polish army to refused allegiance . The II.  Brigade , however, was converted into the Polish Auxiliary Corps , and Sikorski was entrusted with recruiting tasks.

On October 12, 1918, the Regency Council took over the Polish armed forces and issued Sikorski with powers of attorney for Galicia on October 17. At the beginning of November he recruited auxiliary troops ("Grupa San ") in Krakow to fight the Ukrainians in Galicia. This group took control of Przemyśl on November 12, 1918 and moved on to Lviv on November 19, 1918.

In the Polish-Soviet War he held various command posts, including a. Commander of the Polish group during the Kiev offensive, the 5th Army during the Battle of Warsaw and the 3rd Army during the fighting in the Zamość area . From 1921 to 1922 he was chief of staff .

Interwar period

Minister of the Polish Government in 1936. Sikorski far left.

After the assassination of Gabriel Narutowicz who appointed him Sejm , Maciej Rataj , on 16 December 1922. Prime Minister (to 26 May 1923). At the same time he was Minister of the Interior. His government reached u. a. the recognition of the Polish eastern border by the western powers. 1923-1924 he was inspector general of the infantry, 1924-1925 Minister of War in the cabinet of Władysław Grabski . In 1925 he was appointed commander of the VI. Corps / Defense Area in Lviv appointed. As such, he was recalled in 1928 due to his conflict with Piłsudski.

During the May coup he did not leave Lviv and did not send any help to the government, which made it easier for the supporters of Piłsudski.

Until 1939 he remained an officer without a task, at the disposal of the Minister of War. He attended the École supérieure de guerre in France . In 1936 he was, alongside Wincenty Witos , Ignacy Paderewski and Józef Haller , one of the signatories of the declaration of the opposition front in Morges .

Second World War

Wladyslaw Sikorski
Polish postage stamp, 1981

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he demanded that Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły be assigned to a combat unit, but did not receive it. He went to France, where on September 28th he began to set up the remaining Polish armed forces to form an army in exile.

On September 30th he became Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, first in Paris, then in London. On November 7th he was appointed Supreme Commander and Inspector General of the Polish Armed Forces.

After the defeat of France, he signed a contract on August 5, 1940 to rebuild the Polish army in Great Britain . The British government under Winston Churchill took over the equipment of the Polish associations. The Polish government-in-exile was allowed to maintain military bases in Scotland under its own sovereignty. Sikorski had internment camps set up in which politically suspicious and socially suspicious people were detained without trial, including many Jews. One of the inmates was the author Isaac Deutscher , from 1940 to 1942.

After Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, on July 30th he signed an agreement with the Soviet ambassador Iwan Maiski on the formation of a Polish army in the east ( Sikorski-Maiski Agreement ). Thanks to this, the Soviet government issued an amnesty for Poles, who from 1939 to 1941 from the Soviet-occupied eastern Poland to the Soviet Union deported had been.

In December 1941, Sikorski tried for the first time in Moscow to obtain information about the fate of the Polish soldiers and civilians who had been "evacuated" by the Soviets after the occupation of eastern Poland . When the German troops discovered mass graves of Polish officers near Smolensk ( Katyn massacre ) in April 1943 , Sikorski turned to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland with a request for a neutral investigation on the spot. This gave Stalin the pretext to break off relations with the Polish government-in-exile at the beginning of May 1943, even before Sikorski withdrew the inquiry on May 4th under British pressure.

death

Sikorski's funeral

Sikorski died on July 4, 1943 while traveling back from inspecting Polish forces in the Middle East . After a stopover at the British airport in Gibraltar , his plane crashed into the sea shortly after take-off; all 16 occupants died, only the pilot survived. Sikorski's body was transferred to England and buried in the cemetery of Polish aviators in Newark near Nottingham . On September 17, 1993 the remains were transferred to the Kraków Wawel .

Because the Royal Air Force was unable to explain the technical cause of the crash in 1943, theories arose that attributed Sikorski's death to a secretly planned assassination attempt. A forensic examination in Poland in 2009 revealed that Sikorski had died from injuries sustained in the impact. However, sabotage on the aircraft was not ruled out.

Web links

Commons : Władysław Sikorski  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Evan McGilvory: A Military Government in Exile. The Polish Government-in-Exile 1939-1945. Solihull 2010, pp. 43-48.
  2. ^ The Jewish Chronicle, Life inside the concentration camps of Scotland, http://www.thejc.com/life-inside-the-concentration-camps-of-scotland-1.57427
  3. ^ Rainer Blasius: But a murder for reasons of state? In: FAZ , September 3, 2011, p. 12.
  4. ↑ Władysław Sikorski in the Munzinger archive , accessed on September 11, 2011 ( beginning of the article freely accessible).
personal data
SURNAME Sikorski, Wladyslaw
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sikorski, Władysław Eugeniusz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish officer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Tuszów Narodowy near Mielec
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1943
Place of death Gibraltar