Józef Beck
| Józef Beck | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Minister of Foreign Affairs | |
|
In office 2 November 1932 – 30 September 1939 |
|
| President | Ignacy Mościcki |
| Prime Minister |
Aleksander Prystor Janusz Jędrzejewicz Leon Kozłowski Walery Sławek Marian Kościałkowski Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski |
| Preceded by | August Zaleski |
| Succeeded by | August Zaleski |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
4 October 1894 Warsaw, Poland |
| Died | 5 June 1944 (aged 49) Stănești, Romania |
| Religion | Calvinism |
Józef Beck (4 October 1894 – 5 June 1944 ) was a Polish statesman who served the Second Republic of Poland as a diplomat and military officer, and was a close associate of Józef Piłsudski. Beck is most famous for being Polish foreign minister in the 1930s, when he largely set Polish foreign policy.
He tried to fulfill Piłsudski's dream of making Poland the leader of a regional coalition, but he was widely disliked and distrusted by other governments, which often refused to cooperate with him. He was involved in territorial disputes with Lithuania and Czechoslovakia. With his nation caught between two large, hostile powers — Germany and the Soviet Union — Beck sometimes pursued accommodation with them and sometimes defied them, trying to take advantage of their mutual antagonism. As this proved unsuccessful, he formed an alliance with Great Britain and France, but they could not or would not provide effective assistance to Poland. In 1939, when the Germany and Soviet Union both invaded Poland, the country was overrun quickly, and Beck and the rest of his government evacuated to Romania.
When World War I started, Beck was a student at a college of Engineering. After the outbreak of World War I, Beck was a member of the clandestine Polish Military Organization (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, or POW) founded in October 1914 by Piłsudski. Joining in 1914 Beck served until 1917 in the First Brigade of the Polish Legions and was an aide to Piłsudski. When the Brigade was interned, Beck escaped. After Poland regained independence, Beck was assigned as a commander of an artillery battery and assigned to the General Staff. Beck served as military attaché to France between 1922 and 1923. The French disliked Beck to the point of spreading lies about him, such that he was a Soviet agent. In 1926 he helped to carry out the May 1926 military coup d'état that brought Piłsudski to de facto governmental power.
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