Officer Assigned to the Key Diplomatic Post – the Beginnings of Colonel Wojciech Fyda’s Activity as Military Attaché in Paris and in Brussels

Abstract

The article profiles Colonel Wojciech Fyda, Poland’s last military attaché in Paris and Brussels before the outbreak of World War II. The first in a series of texts focusing on this officer and his activity when posted in Paris, this article provides a synthetic overview of Fyda’s life and career up to his appointment as attaché. In particular, the focus is on the year 1936, and on the circumstances of Fyda’s appointment as well as the key aspects of his activity in his first months in Paris. The article touches upon some events that occurred as late as 1938; other issues, such as the implementation of the Rambouillet lending agreement in 1937–1938, will be the subject of a subsequent article. The period 1936–1939, when Fyda was the representative of the Polish Army in Paris, was crucial for the activation of the Polish-French alliance, which grew closer with the threat coming from the Third Reich but was also threatened by some individual and divergent goals of the two countries in foreign policy. Naturally, these rapprochements and frictions had an impact on the attaché’s activity. Therefore, this article also attempts to analyse the Polish-French relations via diverse sources (reports, private letters) created in the Paris office, frequently revealing the little known background of momentous events or of those yet unexplored.