Władysław Sikorski, photo from the interwar period
Władysław Sikorski (1881–1943) –Polish politician and military, two-time Prime Minister of the Government of the Republic of Poland, in the country and in exile.
Born on May 20 in Tuszów Narodowy near Sandomierz. In 1904 he entered the military service in the Austro-Hungarian army, where he obtained the rank of second lieutenant. Involved in independence activities, supporter of the PPS. His lectures on military infantry tactics were attended, among others, by Józef Piłsudski, Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Walery Sławek and Aleksander Prystor.
From 1918, a soldier of the Polish Army. Sikorski achieved his first military success on January 11, 1918, as the leader of the "Bartatów" operational group. He organized relief for Lviv during the fights for the city with the Ukrainians, and then took part in the Polish-Bolshevik war. In mid-July 1919, Sikorski captured Tarnopol and Zbaraż, after which he was appointed commander of the 9th Infantry Division forming the Poleska Group. On February 26, 1920, Sikorski struck Mozyrz and Kalenkowicze. Due to this success, he was promoted to the rank of general.
On August 6, he was nominated as the leader of the 5th Army, which was to lead the active defense of the northern flank against the advancing army of the Western Front by Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Despite the lack of equipment, insufficient time to prepare the defense and not well-trained soldiers, Sikorski managed to stop the enemy by aggressive actions. This, combined with the offensive on the Wieprz River, brought a turning point in the Battle of Warsaw. In recognition of his merits, he became the commander of the 3rd Army, at the head of which he continued to achieve success in defeating the Bolsheviks.
After the Polish-Bolshevik war, head of the General Staff (1921–1922), briefly Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs (December 1922 - May 1923), and Minister of Military Affairs (1924–1925). During the May Coup, he sided with the legal authorities, and thus he was removed from active military service and removed from politics.
After the outbreak of the war, he made his way through Romania to France, where on September 30, 1939, he became the prime minister of the government-in-exile. From June 1940 he lived in Great Britain. Responsible for the conclusion of the Polish-Soviet pact in the summer of 1941 (the so-called Sikorski-Majski pact), as a result of which the Anders Army was created. He died in a plane crash in Gibraltar on July 4, 1943.