Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz
Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz was president of Poland for eight years, six of them from London, and he was abandoned by his allies before he died. He was a lawyer from the eastern borderlands who had organised Polish units in Russia during the first war, and afterwards served as interior minister, as governor of several provinces, and as speaker of the Senate and head of the association for Poles abroad - which is why he was in Paris rather than in Romanian internment in September 1939, and so the one man the interned president could appoint. He took office on 30 September and immediately signed an agreement handing most of his constitutional powers to his prime minister, on the argument that a government in exile could not also be a presidential dictatorship. What he presided over was not a committee. The exile government commanded Polish forces that fought in France, at Narvik, in the Battle of Britain, in North Africa and at Monte Cassino, funded and directed an underground state at home with its own courts, schools and army, and was recognised by every Allied power. It was also the government that received, in April 1943, the German announcement of mass graves of Polish officers in the Katyn forest, asked the Red Cross to investigate, and was punished for asking: the Soviet Union broke off relations, and from then on Poland's fate was decided between its allies without it. The Warsaw rising of August 1944 was launched by his own underground army to liberate the capital before the Soviets arrived. It lasted sixty-three days, killed some two hundred thousand people, and ended with the city demolished street by street while the Red Army held its position across the river. In July 1945 Britain and the United States withdrew recognition from his government and transferred it to the one installed in Warsaw. Raczkiewicz continued as president of a state nobody recognised until his death in 1947, and the office he held was passed on in London for another forty-three years.
- Lived: 1885 CE – 1947 CE
- Nationality: Polish
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
