Sikorski leaves Bordeaux — 18 June

General Władysław Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile and head of the Polish army reconstituted in France, watches his second host country collapse. After the fall of Poland in 1939 he had installed his government and his forces — about 80,000 men — on French soil. In June 1940 this Polish army is caught up again in the debacle.

On 18 June, as Pétain has asked for an armistice, Sikorski and his ministers must evacuate Bordeaux and the Atlantic coast before the Germans arrive. The question is not only how to flee, but how to save the very idea of a fighting Poland, twice driven from its territory.

A hero of the Polish-Soviet war of 1920, long sidelined by the Piłsudski regime, Sikorski has embodied since 1939 the continuity of the Polish state. The choice of means of transport, in a port that is congested and soon to be occupied, is no minor matter: he must reach England without falling into enemy hands, in order to reconstitute Polish forces, for a third time, on British soil.