Polish resistance provides Allies with German V-2 intel 73 yrs ago NOW
The night from July 25 to 26 marks the 73rd anniversary of the launching of Operation Most (bridge) III, in which Polish intelligence arranged for the transport of German V-2 missile parts to Britain, allowing Allied forces to examine Germany's latest weapon.
The V-2 missile, which landed in a field near central Poland's Blizna during German tests, was recovered by soldiers of the Polish Home Army anti-German resistance (AK, see: NOTE 1) helped by local peasants, who sought out and gathered the missile's fragments.
Subsequently, Polish intelligence arranged for the missile's transport to Britain on board a Dakota plane in what became known as Operation Most (bridge) III (25-26 July, 1944). Also, on the plane were Polish intelligence agents, including Jozef Retinger (see: NOTE 2), a Polish political adviser and later co-founder of the EU and the Bilderberg Group (see: NOTE 3). AK-intercepted V-2 parts arrived in London two days later.
The Home Army managed to alert the British to the dangers posed by the V-2 missiles, which resulted in their raised attention to the production of bombs and launching sites, thus helping lessen their destructive impact. Britain's Operation Hydra bombing raid on the V-2 production site in Peenemünde based on the AK's intelligence, and delayed the V-2 launch by six to eight weeks, saving lives of many civilians.
The Most III operation, among others, is presented in 'The Battle of the V-1' - a 1958 British war film starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Medina, Milly Vitale, David Knight and Christopher Lee. It is based on the novel "They Saved London" (1955) by Bernard Newman.
The film became a hit and was advertised on posters as "the Epic Film Tribute to the RAF and Polish Resistance".
It tells the real story of a wartime Polish Home Army resistance movement (AK) (see: NOTE 1) and its special unit, which in 1943 gathers intel on Peenemunde plant manufacturing mainly London-bound German 'Wunderwaffe' V-2 flying bombs (the film's title erroneously refers to the V-2's predecessor, the V-1, as the story mostly concerns the former).
The history-based film shows how intelligence gathered by the Polish AK, mainly from Polish forced labourers in the Peenemunde plant, enabled allied bombers to destroy the factory's (V-1 and) V-2 production lines.
However, it is not the last time AK's intel on German production sites proves fundamental in navigating British bombing raids, as 'Battle of the V1' then goes on to depict the aforementioned Most III mission.
A different Wunderwaffe-related AK operation, codenamed Synteza (synthesis), enabled the location of a German fuel factory in Police (Germ. Hydrierwerke Pölitz), which manufactured synthetic fuel for the V-1 and V-2 rockets (as well as U-boats - PAP), and the depots in which it was stored. In effect the Allies successfully bombed the installations. Working with the French resistance movement, AK teams also helped locate 162 V-1 launching installation in France. (PAP)
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NOTE 1: Founded in 1942, the Home Army was the largest underground resistance force in German-occupied Europe, with up to half a million soldiers fighting in its ranks. In his book 'God's Playground. A History of Poland', historian Norman Davies said that "the Home Army could fairly claim to be the largest of European resistance [organisations]".
Along with various combat activities, the AK was also widely involved in rescuing fellow citizens of Jewish descent, among others through the famous 1942-founded Council to Aid Jews (Rada Pomocy Zydom) codenamed 'Zegota' - the only organisation in Europe and the world established to defend and provide help to Jewish people in ghettos and outside.
After the war many Home Army soldiers refused to lay down their arms and continued fighting against Poland's Soviet-imposed communist regime, winning the name "Enduring Soldiers".
The Enduring Soldiers, also called "cursed" for having been treated by communist authorities as outlaws and at best sentenced to oblivion, battled the Soviet-imposed regime well into the 1950s. The last known "enduring soldier", Jozef Franczak, nome de guerre "Lalek" died in an ambush as late as 1963.
However, on June 13, 2017, in the village Poplawy-Rogale in southeast Poland's Lublin province, the teams from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) unearthed remains believed to belong to Antoni Dolega, a member of the post-World War II anticommunist resistance said to have remained in hiding until his death in 1982.
NOTE 2: Jozef Retinger (April 17 1888 – June 12 1960) was a Polish political adviser who co-founded the European Movement that led to the establishment of the European Union, and was involved in founding the Bilderberg Group.
Retinger was born in Krakow, south Poland as the youngest of four children. His father, Jozef Stanislaw Retinger, was the personal legal counsel and adviser to Count Wladyslaw Zamoyski, a prominent Polish aristocrat who took the young Retinger into his care when his father died.
In 1906 Retinger enrolled in the Sorbonne and was the youngest person to earn a Ph.D. there (at age twenty). He moved to England in 1911, where he befriended the Polish-English writer Joseph Conrad. Retinger wrote about Conrad in his 1943 book Conrad and His Contemporaries.
During World War II Retinger advised the Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile, General Wladyslaw Sikorski (see: NOTE 4). In 1944 he parachuted into occupied Poland in the so-called Operation Salamander to meet leading political figures and deliver funds to the Polish underground. He survived an unsuccessful assassination attempt by the Home Army, whose commanders were mistrustful of his secret mission into Poland.
In July 1944 Retinger took part in in the famous "Most III" (Polish for 'Bridge III' - PAP) mission, whose goal was the delivery of Home Army-seized elements of the world's first modern ballistic missile, Germany's 'Wunderwaffe' V-2 rocket, to British intelligence. Jozef Retinger was on the plane that smuggled the V-2 parts out of Poland. Towards the end of the war V-2 missiles terrified London and other British cities with hundreds of hits resulting in major infrastructure destruction and the death of many citizens.
During the war Retinger was also known for his ample financial contributions to aid the Polish underground, to which he is said to have transferred millions of dollars on behalf of U.S. and the Great Britain.
After the war Retinger was exiled from Poland by its communist government and became a leading advocate of European unity. He helped found both the European Movement (see: NOTE 5 - PAP) and the Council of Europe, and in later years served as the European Movement's Honorary Secretary General. In 1954 Retinger also initiated the Bilderberg conferences which led to the foundation of the Bilderberg Club, whose secretary he remained until his 1960 death from lung cancer.
Retinger is buried at North Sheen Cemetery.
NOTE 3: The Bilderberg Group, which Jozef Retinger helped co-initiate, also known as the Bilderberg conference, Bilderberg meetings or Bilderberg Club, is a 1954-established annual private conference of 120 to 150 people from the European and North American political elite and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media. The first Bilderberg conference, among others, initiated by Retinger, was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, from May 29 to 31 1954. It has operated to date.
NOTE 4: General Sikorski, whom Retinger advised during World War Two, was the first prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile formed in the aftermath of the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and their subsequent occupation of the country.
Despite Poland's occupation by the two hostile powers, the government-in-exile exerted considerable influence in Poland during the war through the structures of the Polish Underground State and its military arm, the Home Army. Under the authority of the government-in-exile Polish military units that had escaped the occupation fought under their own commanders as part of Allied forces in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
In July 1943 Sikorski was killed in an air accident when a plane carrying him and several other persons plunged into the sea immediately after the take-off from Gibraltar, killing all on board except the pilot. The exact circumstances of the crash have been disputed, giving rise to a number of conspiracy theories surrounding his death. Sikorski had been the most prestigious leader of the Polish exile government and his death was a major setback for the Polish cause during World War II.
NOTE 5: The European Movement International co-founded by Jozef Retinger is a lobbying association coordinating the efforts of associations and national councils to promote European integration. Its origins date to July 1947, when European unity was being promoted in the form of the Anglo-French United European Movement. The UEM was a co-ordinating platform for European organisations created in the wake of World War II.
The European Movement was formally initiated on October 25 1948, with Duncan Sandys as its President and Leon Blum, Winston Churchill, Alcide De Gasperi and Paul-Henri Spaak as Honorary Presidents. The first major achievement of the European Movement was the May 1949 establishment of the Council of Europe, the Movement was also responsible for the creation of the College of Europe in Bruges and the European Centre of Culture in Geneva. From the 1950s to the 1990s one of its major functions was setting up think tanks and a network of discussion groups across Europe, both in democratic and Communist countries. (PAP)
