Leon Mitkiewicz-Żółłtek – soldier, diplomat, historian

Abstract

The article presents the military career and writing achievements of Leon Mitkiewicz-Żółłtek (1896–1972), an outstanding line and staff officer of the Polish Army of the Second Polish Republic. He was a graduate of and lecturer at the War College in Warsaw, a lecturer at the Central Cavalry School (Cavalry School Camp) in Grudziądz, the first and last Polish military attaché in Lithuania (1938–1939) as well as the closest associate of Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief Władysław Sikorski in London and his representative in the Combined Allied Staff at the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington. Besides the army, Mitkiewicz’s passion was history, especially military history. Although his first publications (articles, lectures, dissertations) appeared before September 1939, his most fruitful decade was the 1960s. At that time, he chiseled his memoirs and wrote articles and dissertations in which he assessed the directions of the development of the geopolitical situation as well as highlighted various problems from the 20th-century military history of Poland and the world. Lithuania and Polish–Lithuanian relations, Russia, the Polish Army of the Second Polish Republic and the Polish Armed Forces in the Second World War played a prominent role in his writing, scientific dissertations and memoirs.