Between Hitler and Stalin: The Quick Life and Secret Death of Edward Smigly Rydz, Marshal of Poland

When Edward Śmigły-Rydz appeared on its September1939 cover, Time Magazine described him as "a scholar-technician," "graceful, versatile, serious," "with a professor's inquisitive" mind. This was the man who was leading Poland's resistance to Hitler's invasion. An impoverished orphan he had risen to his country's highest military rank, admonishing his people, "To the Germans we would lose our freedom; to the Russians we would lose our souls."

In 1920 he had led a maneuver which defeated a westward surge by Russia's Red Army and had humiliated Joseph Stalin, but in 1939 Hitler and Stalin combined to overrun Poland. Interned, Śmigły-Rydz escaped, and despite a widespread manhunt, eluded his pursuers. In the end, he left behind a cryptic poem: "All around me are pensive crosses, black from smoke..." He also left behind a secret which undermined Germany's war effort and fostered Hitler's own defeat.