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In 1918 both the Russian and Austrian empires collapsed, and Poland became independent. In 1920 the Red Army of the new SovietThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1 regime in Russia invaded Poland. Sikorski commanded the Polesie Group during the Kiev offensive in 1920. Later he commanded 3rd Army and 5th Army (Lower Vistula Front) during the Battle of WarsawThe Battle of Warsaw (sometimes referred to as the Miracle at the Vistula was the decisive battle of the Polish-Bolshevik War (also known as the Polish-Soviet War) that took place soon after World War I. It was fought between 13 and 25 August 1920, as Red. His command over the latter stopped the BolshevikA Bolshevik ("", derived from Russian word loosely translated as "majority") was a member of a faction of Bolsheviks of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) led by Vladimir Lenin. The other faction was known as the Mensheviks, derived from "m advance on the northern front and gave Jozef Pilsudski the time he needed for his counter-offensive. After the battle Sikorski advanced with his troops towards LatviaThe Republic of Latvia ( Latvian: Latvijas Republika , or Latvia ( Latvian: Latvija , is a republic in Northeastern Europe. Bordering the Baltic Sea, Latvia is known as one of the Baltic States, together with Estonia and Lithuania, which border the nation and deep into BelarusThe Republic of Belarus ( Belarusian: #x301 Russian: #x301 (former: #x301 ) is a landlocked nation of Eastern Europe with the capital Minsk. Name Main article: White Russia The spellings Belorussia and Byelorussia are transliterations of the name of the c. The Poles defeated the Soviets and the Soviet-Polish Treaty of Riga in March 1921 gave Poland substantial areas of Belarus and Ukraine.
In 1921 Sikorski succeeded Pilsudski as Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army and in 1922 he became Prime Minister. During his year in office he obtained recognition of Poland's eastern frontiers from Britain, France and the United States.
In May 1926 Pilsudski established a semi-dictatorial regime, and Sikorski withdrew from politics and retired to Paris. Basing on his experiences in the Polish-Soviet War, Sikorski wrote Modern Warfare ( 1934 in French, 1943 in English), in which he advanced ideas similar to the German concept of blitzkrieg ("lightning war"). Together with Charles De Gaulle and Mikhail Tukhachevski he could be considered one of the pioneers of blitzkrieg.
As the international situation deteriorated, Sikorski returned to Poland in 1938, hoping to be of service, but was refused a military post when Poland was invaded by Germany in September 1939. He escaped to Paris, where he joined with Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz and Stanislaw Mikolajczyk in the Polish government-in-exile, in which he became Prime Minister.
Sikorski's government was recognised by the western Allies, and commanded substantial armed forces: the Polish Navy had escaped to Britain, and many thousands of Polish troops had escaped via Romania or across the Baltic. These forces took part in the Battle of Britain and fought in France and the Middle East. In 1940 Sikorski and his government moved to London, and began training a new Polish Army.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Sikorski went to Moscow and established diplomatic relations at a meeting with Stalin. Stalin agreed to invalidate the Soviet-German partition of Poland, and to release tens of thousands of Polish prisoners-of-war held in Soviet camps.
In April 1943, however, relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government in exile broke down when the Germans revealed the discovery of the bodies of 4,000 Polish officers who had been murdered by the Soviets, buried at Katyn. Stalin claimed that the atrocity had been carried out by the Germans. When Sikorski refused to accept this, Stalin broke off diplomatic relations.
Sikorski was killed in an air crash over Gibraltar in July 1943. As he was the most prestigious leader of the Polish exiles, his death was a severe setback to the Polish cause, and was certainly highly convenient for Stalin. It was in some ways also convenient for the western Allies, who were finding the Polish issue a stumbling-block in their efforts to preserve good relations with Stalin.
This has given rise to persistent suggestions that Sikorski's death was not accidental. Many historians speculate that his death might have been effect of Soviet, British or even Polish conspiracy. This has never been proved, and the fact that the principal exponents of this theory have been the revisionist historians David Irving and Rolf Hochhuth has not encouraged many western historians to take it seriously.
On the other hand by 2000 only a small part of the British Intelligence documents related to Sikorski's death had been unclassified and made available to Polish historians. The majority of the files will be classified for another "50 to 100 years."
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