Polish Admiral Józef Unrug

“I forgot the German language on 1st September 1939.” — Admiral Józef Unrug

Born on October 7, 1884 in Brandenburg an der Havel into a noble family of Prussian and Polish descent, Unrug’s father was a Generalmajor in the Prussian Army. His aristocratic family was extremely wealthy, and Unrug grew up as a member of the elite.

He was educated in Germany, completing naval college in 1907. He began his service in the Imperial German Navy, where he served throughout World War I. But in 1919, after Poland regained its independence, Unrug left Germany and volunteered for the Polish Armed Forces. Soon afterwards, he was transferred to the nascent Polish Navy. In 1925, he became Commander of the Fleet of the Polish Navy (Marynarka). Unrug’s task as commander of the Polish Navy was largely to train officers for the nascent force.

With war looming in the summer of 1939, Unrug was appointed commander of the Coastal Region Defense and relocated his command from from Gdynia to the strategic Hel Peninsula, guarding access to the Gulf of Gdańsk.

During the 1939 German invasion of Poland, Unrug executed the agreed plan of strategically withdrawing the Polish Navy’s major vessels to the United Kingdom (“Operation Peking”). This plan had been conceived with Urug’s superior Admiral Jerzy Świrski upon the advice of General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, the chief of the British military mission to Poland. At the same time, Unrug got all Polish submersibles to lay naval mines in the Bay of Gdańsk (“Plan Worek”). Following that operation, these vessels either escaped to the United Kingdom or sought refuge in neutral countries.

Despite having effectively given up control of Poland’s naval vessels, Unrug remained in command of multiple military units, which he tasked with protecting the Polish Corridor from German attacks. Polish opposition to the advancing Germans was described as “fierce.”

On 1 October 1939, however, after both Warsaw and Modlin had capitulated, Admiral Unrug decided that further defense of the isolated Hel Peninsula was pointless, and the following day all units under his command capitulated. After sending men out under a white flag to negotiate a ceasefire, Unrug ordered all sensitive documents be burned, allowed those who wished to try to escape across the Baltic the chance to do so, and declared that he would go into captivity with his men.

Unrug spent the rest of World War II in several German POW camps, including the maximum security Oflag IV-C (Colditz Castle).

The Germans treated Unrug with great respect, undoubtedly because he had previously been a German officer. They brought former Imperial German Navy friends to visit him with the intention of making him switch sides.

Unrug responded by refusing to speak German, saying that he had forgotten that language in September 1939. To the irritation of the Germans, Unrug would always insist on having a translator present or communicating in French when speaking with the Germans, even though he was a native German speaker. He was greatly insulted by the attempt to have him switch sides, which made him identify with Poland even more.

Unrug was considered to be a leader of men who inspired other POWs to look up to him, and this led his captors to fear that he was inspiring escape attempts by the other POWs, thus leading to his frequent moves between various POW facilities

The Polish historian Mieczysław B. Biskupski has written about Admiral Unrug “his conduct in German captivity was the stuff of legend.”

At war’s end, Unrug went to the United Kingdom, where he served with the Polish Navy in the West and took part in its demobilization. After the Allies withdrew support from the Polish government, leaving Poland to the communists, Unrug remained in exile in the United Kingdom, and then moved to France where he died on February 28, 1973.

Originally buried in Montrėsor cemetery in France, in 2018 Unrug and his wife Zofia (who had died in 1980) were exhumed and transferred with a guard of honor for reburial in the Polish port of Gdynia.