The Mysterious Death of General Sikorski
SR: Along with the "accidential" death of General George S. Patton in December of 1945, the demise of the Head Polish Commander Wladyslaw Sikorski, the leader of Poland's wartime government in exile remains open to speculation....
General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the leader of Poland's wartime government in exile, died 65 years ago this month when his plane plunged into the sea off Gibraltar.
A British inquiry in 1943 found that the crash was caused by the plane's controls jamming. But rumours persist of a plot to kill Gen Sikorski, whose defence of the Polish national cause threatened to derail Britain's relationship with the Soviet Union. :roll:
The general's death has attracted a swarm of conspiracy theories, which variously accuse British, Soviet and even rival Polish factions of orchestrating his murder. :x
But the most insistent rumours suggest that his death was ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, incensed by Gen Sikorski's demand for an investigation into the Katyn massacre of Polish officers by Soviet troops.
Stalin's accusers claim that Gen Sikorski's plane was left unguarded on the runway at Gibraltar, and could easily have been sabotaged. They also point out that on the day of the crash, July 4, 1943, a plane carrying the Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky and a small retinue of Soviet troops parked next to the doomed Polish leader's aircraft.
Allegations of a plot by the Soviet Union, determined not to let Polish nationalism get in the way of communist expansion after the war, have been further fuelled by the presence on Gibraltar of Kim Philby.
Investigators have also pointed the finger at the British wartime leader Winston Churchill. In 1967 the German dramatist Rolf Hochhuth suggested in the play Soldiers that Churchill was so anxious over Gen Sikorski's impact on ties with Stalin that he ordered the assassination.
However, in declassified papers from 1969, the former pilot Sir Robin Cooper reviewed the wartime inquiry into Sikorski's death and concluded that "the possibility of Sikorski's murder by the British is excluded".
"But," he added, "the possibility of his murder by persons unknown cannot be so excluded."
LINK
SR: Considering the way Churchill and Roosevelt maunvered the USA into WW2 and the way the death of Actor Leslie Howard and Bandleader Glenn Miller were swept under the carpet, the thoughts of the murder of General Sikorski by the Allied Powers cannot be dismissed...
SR: Along with the "accidential" death of General George S. Patton in December of 1945, the demise of the Head Polish Commander Wladyslaw Sikorski, the leader of Poland's wartime government in exile remains open to speculation....
General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the leader of Poland's wartime government in exile, died 65 years ago this month when his plane plunged into the sea off Gibraltar.
A British inquiry in 1943 found that the crash was caused by the plane's controls jamming. But rumours persist of a plot to kill Gen Sikorski, whose defence of the Polish national cause threatened to derail Britain's relationship with the Soviet Union. :roll:
The general's death has attracted a swarm of conspiracy theories, which variously accuse British, Soviet and even rival Polish factions of orchestrating his murder. :x
But the most insistent rumours suggest that his death was ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, incensed by Gen Sikorski's demand for an investigation into the Katyn massacre of Polish officers by Soviet troops.
Stalin's accusers claim that Gen Sikorski's plane was left unguarded on the runway at Gibraltar, and could easily have been sabotaged. They also point out that on the day of the crash, July 4, 1943, a plane carrying the Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky and a small retinue of Soviet troops parked next to the doomed Polish leader's aircraft.
Allegations of a plot by the Soviet Union, determined not to let Polish nationalism get in the way of communist expansion after the war, have been further fuelled by the presence on Gibraltar of Kim Philby.
Investigators have also pointed the finger at the British wartime leader Winston Churchill. In 1967 the German dramatist Rolf Hochhuth suggested in the play Soldiers that Churchill was so anxious over Gen Sikorski's impact on ties with Stalin that he ordered the assassination.
However, in declassified papers from 1969, the former pilot Sir Robin Cooper reviewed the wartime inquiry into Sikorski's death and concluded that "the possibility of Sikorski's murder by the British is excluded".
"But," he added, "the possibility of his murder by persons unknown cannot be so excluded."
LINK
SR: Considering the way Churchill and Roosevelt maunvered the USA into WW2 and the way the death of Actor Leslie Howard and Bandleader Glenn Miller were swept under the carpet, the thoughts of the murder of General Sikorski by the Allied Powers cannot be dismissed...