Edward Rydz-Śmigły
“Poland will fight, even if it is to fight alone and without allies.”
Edward Rydz was born in the Austro-Hungarian region of Galicia in 1886, son of a Polish NCO in the Haosburg’s Imperial Army who later worked as a local police officer. Rendered an orphan as a teenager, he would be raised by his grandparents before they too died, leaving him in the care of a local physician. It was thanks to the better financial status of this last guardian that the young Edward was able to attend the local gymnasium (a higher end secondary school in German speaking countries), graduating with honors in 1905 before going on to study at the Krakow and later Vienna Schools of Fine Arts.
During this period he fell in with socialists as well as Polish nationalists, leading to a switch from arts to political philosophy, at the same time taking on the pseudonym “Śmigły” (“fast”) during his time as a member of communist militant groups.
In 1910 he entered his compulsory military service in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army, serving his mandatory year in the 4th Infantry Regiment of the Austrian portion of the army, leaving in 1911 as an officer-candidate, and he became a leader in the Polish Rifleman’s Association, a paramilitary group that operated with the blessing of the Hapsburg Government in Vienna, who knew the Poles would be on the frontlines of the upcoming war with the Russian Empire.
This war came in July of 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The ensuing crisis would see the reserves called up across Europe, and Rydz was recalled to the Army as an officer, serving now as a Lieutenant in the 55th Infantry Regiment. This was not to last long, however, as an old friend of his, Josef Pilsudski, who was forming the various Polish paramilitary groups into the Polish Legions, and he requested Rydz to take command of the 3rd Battalion. Various small engagements followed along the frontier of Russian Poland, and Rydz showed great promise, rising to the rank of Colonel over the following two years.
Rydz (right, facing camera) with other Polish Legion officers in 1916
By late 1916 Pilsudski had been agitating for a guarantee of Polish independence by the Central Powers, and this was nominally granted, with Piludski taking control of a Regency government. Despite this, the Polish leaders could see which way the wind was blowing when the Tsar’s government in Russia collapsed in early 1917, and the increasing uncooperativeness of these formations led to the arrest of Pilsudski after his refusal to order the Polish forces to swear allegiance to the Austrian and German crowns. Rydz, operating under his pseudonym of Smigly, subsequently took command of the Polish Military Organization (a secret organization within the Polish forces used by Pilsudski for deniable intelligence and sabotage actions against all of their enemies, including the Germans and Austrians as well as the Russians. In late 1918, with the Central Powers teetering toward collapse, Śmigły authorized a rash of sabotage actions, crippling their operations further and signaling to the Entente Powers in the west that the Poles desired independence and were willing to fight the Central Powers to obtain it.
A Polish Provisional Government was declared by Polish Socialist politician Ignacy Daszyński on 7 November, and Śmigły was named Minister of War. Three days later, Pilsudski was released as the Austrians collapsed, and demanded that the Daszyński Government be dissolved. This was done, and Rydz-Śmigły was assigned to command the Military District of Lublin, formally changing his name at the same time. He would later be posted to the Warsaw Military District as Pilsudski oversaw the formal creation of the Republic of Poland in the aftermath of the Great War.
Rydz-Śmigły (right) confers with Pilsudski during the Polish-Soviet War
The end of the Great War did not mean the end of the fight for Polish independence. With the fall of Imperial Germany the new socialist government of Lenin in Russia saw an opportunity to reconquer the lands lost in the Treaty of Best Litovsk, thereby allowing the Soviets to support communist insurrections in central and western Europe. Pilsudski had moved Polish troops into the regions considered Polish by his government, and further operations were directed into Lithuania and Ukraine, with Kiev being secured by early 1920. During these drives, Rydz-Śmigły was in command, regaining favor with Pilsudski.
Soviet counterattacks would drive almost to Warsaw before being repelled by Rydz-Śmigły’s forces, in a coup de grace that came to be known as the “Miracle on the Vistula”. Rydz-Śmigły oversaw the destruction of the entire Soviet invasion force, with the Red Army taking some 126,000 casualties, including those interned when they were forced to withdraw into German East Prussia.
As Inspector General, Rydz-Śmigły inspects a Chevallier Regiment
Following the victory over the Soviets, Rydz-Śmigły continued to rise within the Polish Army, and he remained at Pilsudski’s side when the Marshal launched a successful coup in 1926, resulting in the reorganization of the country into a more centralized state with greater executive power. This also resulted in Rydz-Śmigły becoming for all intents and purposes the second most powerful man in Poland behind Pilsudski himself.
By 1935 Marshal Pilsudski was in a state of rapidly declining health. In May he summoned Rydz-Śmigły for a conference, where it is believed that the ailing leader asked the General to take up his mantle. Pilsudski died that night, and on 12 May of 1935 Rydz-Śmigły was named Inspector General of the Army. The Marshal’s death saw his political supporters divided, but many viewed Rydz-Śmigły as his successor. He would build his political base as the year went on, effectively supplanting the Prime Minister to become the “Second Man in the State”, as well as being named Marshal in 1936.
Rydz-Śmigły (left) serving as a pallbearer during the funeral of Marshal Josef Pilsudski in 1935
By 1936 Rydz-Śmigły was the de facto leader of Poland, and his increasingly conservative regime began to look more and more like a military dictatorship. Despite this, there remained a lack of a central figure, with Rydz-Śmigły sharing power with the Prime Minister, as the country found its geopolitical status rapidly changing. The rise of a resurgent Germany under the National Socialist Party placed Poland in the unenviable position of being sandwiched between two expansionist authoritarian regimes, and Rydz-Śmigły began working to expand and modernize the Armed Forces for a potential future conflict.
Rydz-Śmigły inspects troops shortly after his promotion to Marshal in 1936
For some time it was hoped that Poland and Germany could coexist, with the Polish state serving as a buffer against the USSR, although Rydz-Śmigły remained cautious to Hitler’s ultimate intentions. He raised no objections to the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, and even took advantage of the dismembering of Czechoslovakia later in the year. In the aftermath of the Munich Agreement the Polish government issued an ultimatum to the Czechs to turn over the region of Trans-Olza, with the crumbling government of Edvard Beneš capitulating in early October.
Polish tanks entering Czechoslovakia after the ceding of Trans-Olza in 1938
Despite this cooperation, in early 1939 Hitler began to make demands once again of Poland. At this point Rydz-Śmigły was thoroughly convinced that war with Germany was both inevitable and imminent, and he stated as such in a meeting with President Mościcki and other top officials. By the end of March a formal alliance was signed with the British, and partial mobilization was declared. The Polish Army was rapidly redeployed to the western frontier from their positions facing the Soviet border, but neither Rydz-Śmigły nor the anyone else was aware of the secret agreements signed between Berlin and Moscow, which sealed the fate of Poland, and condemned the world to a second Great War.
Hitler reviews German troops marching into Poland
On the morning of 1 September, 1939, the German Wehrmacht stormed across the Polish border, and Rydz-Śmigły was named Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces, as well as naming him Presidential Successor. Within a week the government was forced to evacuate Warsaw as the Polish lines were pierced by the oncoming blitzkrieg. Faced with this massive combined arms offensive, Rydz-Śmigły redeployed his forces to defend the border region near Romania, as well as ordering the defense of Warsaw to the end, hoping to hold out until the French and British could relieve them with an attack into western Germany.
German and Soviet troops after meeting in Poland
This strategy collapsed, however, when the Red Army invaded Poland in accordance with their previous agreement, and regardless, the Western Allies never harbored any serious plans for Poland to survive. Seeing the situation was untenable, Rydz-Śmigły ordered a general withdrawal southward, while Warsaw was ordered to make a last stand. The Marshal thus led what remained of his army into Romania, where they were interned.
Although many Polish soldiers were able to escape via Romania to form an Exile Army in France, their Supreme Commander was not so lucky. Arrested and held under heavy guard in Bucharest, before being transferred to a villa in the Carpathians. The new President of the exiled Polish Government, Władysław Raczkiewicz, sent a request to Rydz-Śmigły to relinquish his commands, as he could not exercise his authority while interned, to which the Marshal acquiesced. In his response he accepted full responsibility for the defeat.
Despite this, Rydz-Śmigły was not yet resigned to captivity, and organized an escape in late 1940, making his way through Hungary, remaining in that country for almost a year before reentering Poland in October of 1941. He made his way back to Warsaw, and made it known to the Polish Home Army that he intended to join their fight as a common soldier to redeem himself. Despite this, his health had declined considerably, and just over a month after his return to the occupied Polish capital he died of heart failure on 2 December. He was buried under a false name in Warsaw, with his real name only added in 1994.
Edward Rydz-Śmigły remains a controversial figure in Poland to this day. He was demonized by the post-war communist regime in Poland, and even still is mainly remembered for his failure to defend the country in 1939, in particular his decision to flee into Romania.
