Komorowski was supervising a cavalry training center in the Polish Corridor (the territory separating East Prussia from the rest of Germany) at the time of the September 1939 German invasion of Poland. Although his unit was forced to surrender at the end of September, Komorowski avoided capture and joined the underground Zwiazek Walki Zbrojnej (ZWZ, Union for Armed Struggle) in Kraków.
In May 1940, the commander in Chief of Polish armed forces in exile, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, sent Komorowski to Warsaw as a brigadier general and deputy commander to General Stefan Rowecki, then leader of the ZWZ. When the Gestapo arrested Rowecki in 1943, Komorowski replaced him, under the pseudonym Bór, as commander of the armed underground movement, which had become the Armia Krajowa (AK, Home Army) in 1942.
On Komorowski's orders, given with the approval of the government-in-exile's delegate in Poland, the Home Army rose against the German occupation in Warsaw on 1 August 1944. Although the Germans were hard-pressed to put down this Polish effort to retake Warsaw, the uprising ended in utter defeat for the Poles after two months of heavy fighting.
After his promotion to commander in chief of the Polish armed forces on 30 September, Komorowski was captured by the Germans in October 1944. Liberated by the U.S. Army on 5 May 1945, he emigrated to London and resigned as commander in chief in 1946. As prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile from 1947 to 1949, Komorowski remained a prominent member of the Polish émigré community until he died in England on 24 August 1966. Pascal Trees
Further Reading
Bór-Komorowski, Tadeusz. The Secret Army. Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 1984.; Korbonski, Stefan. The Polish Underground State. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.; Kunert, Andrzej, comp. Generao Bór-Komorowski w relacjach i dokumentach (General Bór-Komorowski based on reports and documents). Warsaw: RYTM, 2000.
