Jan Kowalewski

Lt. Col. Jan Kowalewski (1892–1965) was a Polish cryptologist, intelligence officer, engineer, journalist, military commander, and creator and first head of the Polish Cipher Bureau. He was one of a large staff of cryptologists who broke Soviet military codes and ciphers during the Polish-Soviet War, enabling Poland to weather the war and achieve victory in the 1920 Battle of Warsaw.

Early life and Russian army

Jan Kowalewski was born 1892 in Łódź, Congress Poland, under rule of the Russian Empire. After graduating from a local trade school, between 1909 and 1913 he studied at the University of Liège in Belgium, where he graduated from the faculty of chemistry. He returned to Poland in 1913, only to be mobilized for the Russian Army the following year, at the outbreak of World War I. He fought in various formations on the Belarusian and Romanian fronts as an officer of the Engineering and Signal Corps, and in December 1918 he was allowed to join the Polish unit formed under command of Gen. Lucjan Żeligowski out of Poles living in Russia. As a chief of intelligence in the staff of the Polish 4th Rifle Division he crossed the border with Romania and, together with the rest of the unit, he reached Poland in May of 1919.

Polish-Ukrainian War

A polyglot and amateur cryptanalyst, he was initially attached to the staff of Gen. Józef Haller de Hallenburg fighting in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland during the Polish-Ukrainian War for the city of Lwów. During his service there he managed to break the codes and ciphers of the army of West Ukrainian People's Republic and the White forces of General Anton Denikin. Although his discovery was caused by an accident and boredom (he had to spent all night segregating the intercepted radio messages and discard all the ciphered ones), it became a major sensation in the staff. Because of that, in July of 1919 he was transferred to Warsaw, where he became the head of the radio intelligence department of the Polish General Staff. By early September he gathered a group of mathematicians from the Warsaw University and Lwów University (most notably the founders of the Polish School of Mathematics Stanisław Leśniewski, Stefan Mazurkiewicz and Wacław Sierpiński), who were able to break the German ciphers as well. Although his contribution to the Polish victory in the Polish-Bolshevik War remained a secret for more than 70 years, he was awarded the prestigious Virtuti Militari medal, the highest Polish military award.

Commander of intelligence services

After the war ended, he was attached to the staff of the Third Silesian Uprising as the commander of intelligence services. In 1923 he was sent to Tokyo, where he organized course of radio intelligence for Japanese officers. For his efforts in this area he was awarded Order of the Rising Sun - the highest military award in Japan. In 1928 he graduated from the École Supérieure de Guerre in Paris and was promoted to the rank of Major. Although not directly involved in radio intelligence any more, he remained a Polish intelligence officer. Since 1929 he served as a military attaché at the Polish embassy in Moscow. In 1933 he was found persona non grata and was moved to a similar post in the embassy in Bucharest, where he remained until 1937. Upon his return to Poland he briefly headed one of the branches of the Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego political organization and became the director of TISSA company, a Polish intelligence-sponsored company importing rare materials for the Polish arms industry. He was also promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.

Romania and France 1939

After the outbreak of the Polish Defensive War of 1939 he was evacuated to Romania, where he headed a committee of relief for Polish war refugees. In January of 1940 he moved to France, where he joined the Polish Army in exile and became one of the authors of an Allied offensive in the Balkans. However, the German spring offensive and the fall of France made the plan obsolete and Kowalewski had to flee the German-occupied country. Through Vichy France and Spain he reached Portugal, where he formed yet another committee of relief for war refugees. Initially based in Figueira da Foz, soon he moved to Lisbon, at the time of the "capitals of espionage" and battleground for spies of all countries involved in World War II. There he entered in contact with his colleague Jean Pangal, a Romanian centrist politician and a former Romanian envoy to Lisbon. Although dismissed by the end of 1941 by Romanian leader Ion Antonescu for his pro-Allied stance, Pangal remained in Lisbon and became one of the collaborators of the Polish intelligence in Allied attempts to win over the allies of the Third Reich - Hungary, Romania, Finland and Italy.

Lisbon 1941

The cooperation with Pangal proved vital to Polish and Allied war effort and Lt. Col. Kowalewski managed to convince Gen. Władysław Sikorski and minister Stanisław Kot to create a centre of Polish intelligence in Lisbon on January 15, 1941. Officially named "Centre for Contact with the Continent" ("Placówka Łączności z Kontynentem"), the Lisbon-based bureau was headed by Kowalewski and soon became the main centre of an extensive net of Polish resistance, sabotage and intelligence organizations throughout occupied Europe. Aside from similar groups in Poland itself, which were directly headed from London or Warsaw, the centre coordinated the efforts of dozens of groups in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Northern Africa, Spain and even Germany. The centre organized communication between the Polish Government in Exile and occupied Europe, as well as provided logistical and economic support for Polish resistance groups spread throughout Western Europe. The intelligence network led by Kowalewski was also helpful to the British government, as most of his reports were passed either to SOE or to Ministry of Economic Warfare. Among the most notable actions in Portugal was passing the information of the exact date of the outbreak of the Operation Barbarossa to the British who were informed of the fact at least 2 weeks prior to the actual invasion of Russia. Kowalewski also managed to neutralize a secret radio station used by the Germans to communicate with the U-Boots operating in the Atlantic Ocean. He was also crucial in allowing former Romanian king Carol II escape from Romania and then leave Spain for Lisbon.

Post-war

However, despite the fact that Kowalewski had contacts with numerous politicians of Hungary, Romania and Italy willing to change sides, the situation changed after the Casablanca Conference of 1943, when the Allies demanded the unconditional surrender of the Axis. The situation further deteriorated after the Tehran Conference, when it became clear that Hungary and Romania will fall under Soviet domination anyway and that the plan for a second front in the Balkans, which would allow the Hungarians and Romanians to break with the Nazi Germany was finally dismissed. According to recent research by a Polish-British joint history commission for investigation of Polish WWII intelligence service, at the latter conference the Soviets demanded that Kowalewski be withdrawn from his post to England. In late January 1944 Frank K. Roberts, head of the Central Department of the British Foreign Office, informed Gen. Colin Gubbins, head of the SOE, that Kowalewski's network was not only aimed at the Germans, but at creating a common "Polish-Hungarian-Romanian Bloc", which was allegedly aimed at vital Soviet interests. On March 6, 1944 Sir Alexander Cadogan of the Foreign Office informed the Polish minister of foreign affairs Edward Raczyński that Kowalewski's contacts with the "opposing powers" could be treated as treachery and that he should be dismissed. Although no proofs were presented, the Polish government felt forced to obey the British wish and Kowalewski was dismissed from his post on March 20 and on April 5 he was transported to London.

Kowalewski was named the chief of the Polish Operations Bureau at the Special Forces Headquarters. Among his task was preparation of the Polish resistance organizations in occupied Europe for the Operation Overlord. However, his post was mostly titular as it was already too late for any arrangements and Kowalewski could change nothing.

Exile in Great Britain

After the war Kowalewski remained in exile in Great Britain, where he started working as a journalist. Until 1955 he was the editor in chief of a "East Europe and Soviet Russia" monthly. In 1958 and 1959 he was also a tutor at an unofficial military school for the Polish diaspora. He also briefly collaborated with Radio Free Europe and other Polish exile organizations. In his late years, in 1963, he briefly returned to cryptanalysis and managed to break the codes used by Romuald Traugutt during the January Uprising. He died of cancer on October 31, 1965 in London.

ee also

* History of Polish Intelligence Services
* List of Poles

References

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