Edward Rydz-Smigly

Edward Rydz-Smigly (Polish, Edward Rydz-Śmigły) (1886-1941) was a Polish military and political leader as well as a painter and poet. He served as General-Inspector of Poland's armed forces during the invasion and conquest of that country by Germany and the Soviet Union at the outset of World War II. On September 18, 1939, following the fall of his country, he entered Romania, where he was interned for slightly more than a year, during which time he renounced his command of the Polish military. In December 1940, he crossed from Romania into Hungary, and from there into Slovakia and then back into Poland, where he volunteered as a common soldier in the Polish resistance movement. He died of heart failure in Warsaw in December 1941.

Edward Rydz-Smigly in Hitler's War
Edward Rydz-Smigly was Marshal of Poland in 1938 and was an extremely powerful political figure, though he did not formally hold the office of either President or Prime Minister. The Soviet Union accused Rydz-Smigly of policies which discriminated against ethnic Byelorussians living in Polish territory, thus giving itself a casus belli to attack Poland. Rydz-Smigly requested and received military support from Germany, thus bringing Nazi and Soviet troops into direct contact with one another for the first time since the fall of Czechoslovakia.