Information and Intelligence Services of Polish Military Formations Clustering Round the Polish Legions (1906-1916)

• Authors: Mikietynski P.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Polish nationalist groups started to cooperate with the Austro-Hungarian Central Intelligence Service after a meeting in Przemysl on 29 September 1906 between Józef Pilsudski and Witold Jodko-Narkiewicz and, on the Austrian side, Lt-Colonel Franz Kanik and Captain Edmund Hauser accompanied by Captain Walerian Wasylkowich-Witwicki and Józef Czarnecki. At that meeting Pilsudski offered the Austrians 'all kinds of intelligence services aimed against Russia in return for some favours'. Shortly before the start of hostilities at the end of July 1914 an intelligence reconnaissance mission targeted at Russia was set on foot by the Austro-Hungarian General Staff. This was followed by the creation of an Intelligence Bureau (headed by Walery Slawek) at the Supreme Command of the Riflemen's Clubs at the beginning of August 1914. The subsequent overhaul of the structures of the Polish Legions affected also the functioning of its intelligence service both in the military and the political sphere. The latter was to be served by a department called the Main Office (in the hands of Aleksandra Szczerbinska) at the Military Commissariat of the National Government in Kielce. Yet in the event the most important missions continued to be handled by the Intelligence Department at the Supreme Command of the Polish Legion. In the early phases of the Legion's history a great deal of intelligence gathering was also done by the intelligence service of the Polish Military Organisation (POW). The Information Department of the First Brigade had a rival in the Intelligence Section of the Military Department of the Supreme National Committee, which expanded its activities abroad.

Keywords

EN

INTELLIGENCE SERVICES (POLAND 1914)

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Księgarnia Akademicka
• Journal: Studia Historyczne
• Year: 2004
• Volume: 47
• Issue: 3-4
• Pages: 341-354
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Mikietynski P.

• P. Mikietynski

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

05PLAAAA0031755