Władysław Sikorski

Biography

Władysław Sikorski was born in 1881 in Tuszów Narodowy in Austrian Galicia, the son of a schoolteacher. He studied road and bridge engineering at the Lwów Polytechnic, graduating in 1908, and trained as an Austrian reserve officer. In Lwów he became active in the clandestine independence movement, co-founding the Union for Active Struggle with Józef Piłsudski and others in 1908 and leading the local Riflemen's Association.

During the First World War he ran the military department of the Supreme National Committee and recruited for the Polish Legions. In the wars that followed Polish independence he commanded troops against Ukrainian and Soviet forces, and in August 1920 his 5th Army held the northern sector during the Battle of Warsaw. He became chief of the General Staff in 1921, prime minister from December 1922 to May 1923 and minister of military affairs in 1924-1925.

Sikorski opposed Piłsudski's coup of May 1926, was removed from command in 1928 and spent much of the next decade in opposition, largely in Paris, before joining the anti-Sanation Front Morges in 1936. Denied a command during the German invasion of 1939, he escaped to France, where he became prime minister of the government-in-exile and, from November 1939, commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces.

In July 1941 he concluded the Sikorski-Mayski agreement restoring relations with the Soviet Union and allowing a Polish army to be formed from deportees, but relations broke down in April 1943 after his government asked the Red Cross to investigate the Katyn graves. On 4 July 1943 the aircraft carrying him back from inspecting Polish troops in the Middle East crashed on take-off from Gibraltar, killing him and his daughter.