Commemorating the Battle of Warsaw
Jan Kowalewski (public domain)
Olga Topol
The Japanese had no intention of permitting us to rest on our laurels, so from 1919 until the spring of 1920 they introduced eleven different encryption codes for their communications.
We learned that they had employed a Polish cipher expert to revise their code and cipher systems. It took all of our skill to break the new codes that this man produced … The Polish cryptographer seemed to specialize in army codes, for the Japanese Military Attaché's codes suddenly became more difficult than those of any other branch of the Japanese Government. This new system was elaborate and required ten different codes.” The Polish cipher expert mentioned by American cryptologist Herbert O. Yardley, founder and leader of the Black Chamber (American Cipher Bureau) was none other than Jan Kowalewski. For his help with training Japanese radio intelligence officers the Polish cryptographer was awarded the highest military award in Japan – the Order of the Rising Sun.
At this stage Kowalewski was already the holder of another medal, one closer to his heart, the Silver Cross of Virtuti Militari. He had been given this honour for aiding the Poles in their victory in the Polish-Soviet war during which his talents were put to good use. The path to his spectacular success started by accident when he offered to stand in for his colleague Lieutenant Sroka whose sister was about to get married. Sroka’s work was to assess and intercept Russian radio traffic.
While performing the duties of his absent friend, out of boredom, Kowalewski occupied his brain by breaking the intercepted codes. the fact that he was an engineer and polyglot who was familiar with the practicalities of Russian signal intelligence from his time in the imperial army, Kowalewski was well equipped to succeed in this activity His spectacular abilities activities caught the eye of the Polish chief-of-staff General Rozwadowski, who was incredibly pleased to be able to eavesdrop on Russian communication on a regular basis.
Kowalewski was put in charge of General Staff’s radio-intelligence department. To boost the probability of the department’s success Kowalewski decided to take an interdisciplinary approach to human resources and to recruit mathematicians alongside linguists. He worked with many professors from Warsaw and Lviv’s Universities –including the founders of the Polish School of Mathematics.
The new approach to codebreaking, combining a knowledge of Russian language with logical mathematical thinking, quickly brought results and allowed the team to read operational orders from the Russian Front. Although the Soviets painstakingly changed the keys Kowalewski took personal pleasure in breaking them.
Thanks to constant surveillance of the enemy, members of the Polish General Staff were well aware that successfully dealing with Deniikin meant that the Bolsheviks would turn their attention to the western border next. A large part of the Polish success in stopping the Soviet offensive during the famous Battle of Vistula should be attributed to Kowalewski’s farsightedness and his extraordinary vision for organising the works of the radio-intelligence department.
The intelligence provided by Kowalewski’s team was so reliable that Commander-in-Chief Jozef Piłsudski risked his entire operation to defend Warsaw on Kowalewski’s word regarding the enemy’s movements. The information supplied by the Cipher Bureau was the deciding factor in Piłsudski’s planning of his military campaign and facilitated Polish success.
Kowalewski and his team were able to intercept messages that revealed the locations of various enemy divisions and most importantly suggested that there was a gap between forces of the northern army led by General Mikhail Tukhachevsky and General Semyon Budyonny’s cavalry to the south. As the two generals were competing to reach their prizes first – Warsaw and Lviv respectively – the two armies left a larger than intended area in the middle for the Mozyr Group to cover. The Red Army was stretched over hundreds of miles and their operational movements relied heavily on radio communication. To quickly use the enemy’s potentially short-lived vulnerability the decision was made to jam their communication. Kowalewski’s team executed the idea with precision that led to Tukhachevsky’s armies, engaged at the time with General Sikorski’s forces, not to realise what was going on to the rear. After 48 hours of no communication the Russians found themselves encircled. Budyonny’s forces did not manage to come to the rescue and, again thanks to radio-intelligence on the army’s movements, they were defeated by the Poles near Zamość. Marshal’s Piłsudski’s gamble taken on Kowalewski’s word paid off. Kowalewski could relax. A couple of years later, with the Virtuti Militari cross pinned to his chest he was ready to conquer Japan.
After serving for many years as a diplomat for the Polish state Kowalewski was tasked with creating a Polish intelligence centre in Lisbon during the Second World War. The centre organised communication between the Polish Government in Exile and the continent. Amongst his later successes was putting an end to a secret radio station used by Germans to communicate with U-boats. Judith Hare, Countess of Listowel, who worked with Kowalewski editing East Europe and Soviet Russia monthly, recalled: “On June 13th, 1941, Peter [a fake name given by the Countess to Kowalewski due to security reasons] reported to London that "Massive German troop movements began on June 7th. The Germans are concentrating troops on their eastern border. These concentrations will be completed about June 20th. Between June 20th and June 25th operations against Russia will begin. The Germans have chosen this date because they want to occupy Ukraine before the harvest, so as to prevent the Russians from destroying the crop. The Germans say that their war against Russia will be of short duration." This was the message in which Kowalewski informed the British of the planned date for Operation Barbarossa.
After the war Kowalewski remained in exile in the United Kingdom where he worked as a journalist and collaborated with Radio Free Europe and various Polish organisations. He was commissioned by Cambridge University to decipher the 18th century secret correspondence of Bishop Józef Załuski, envoy of King Stanisław Leszczyński.
The man who helped stopped Russians in their tracks in 1920 and was remembered by Judith Hare as the person who introduced her to “the fascinating art of intelligence work” died in London on 31st October 1965.
2020-08-15