Wiktor Thommée
| Wiktor Thommée | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
30 December 1881 Sventiany, Russian Empire |
| Died | 12 September 1962 (aged 80) Warsaw, Poland |
| Allegiance |
 Poland
|
| Service/branch | Polish Army |
| Years of service | from 1901 |
| Rank | generał brygady |
| Battles/wars | Russo-Japanese War, Russian Civil War, Polish-Bolshevik War, Invasion of Poland |
| Awards |
     
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Wiktor Thommée (1881–1962) was a Polish military commander and a brigadier general of the Polish Army. A veteran of the Great War and the Russian Civil War, he is best known for his command over Piotrków Operational Group and the battle of the Bzura during the Invasion of Poland of 1939.
Wiktor Thommée was born 30 December 1881 in Sventiany, Russian Empire (modern Švenčionys, Lithuania), to a family of distant French provenience. After graduating from trade schools in Lida and Dyneburg (modern Daugavpils, Latvia), in 1901 he joined an officers' school in St. Petersburg. In 1904 he graduated and received the grade of second lieutenant, after which he was attached to the Voronezh-based 124th Infantry Regiment. With that unit he took part in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Twice wounded, he spent several months in various hospitals, after which he was dismissed from active service for recovery and joined the Trade Institute in Kharkov (modern Kharkiv, Ukraine). In 1912 he was again admitted to the Russian Army and until 1914 he studied at the Academy of the General Staff in St. Petersburg.
After the outbreak of the Great War, Thommée joined the 276th Infantry Regiment and served with distinction as a commanding officer of a company and then battalion. In 1916 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and became an adjutant at the staff of the 48th Corps in the area of the Romanian front. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he quit the army and on 25 September 1918 he joined the Polish Army in the area of Kuban. There, on 9 November he became the de facto chief of staff of Lucjan Żeligowski's Polish 4th Rifle Division, formally a part of the Polish Blue Army allied to France, United Kingdom, U.S. and Imperial Russia. After the division returned to Poland and was reformed into the 10th Infantry Division, Thommée served as the chief of its staff during the opening stages of the Polish-Bolshevik War until August 1919. On 22 August that year he became the head of the Third department of the staff (Offensive intelligence "B"), controlling the intelligence net in the European part of Russia, at the North-Western Front, Masovian Front and then the Polish 1st Army under Gen. Franciszek Latinik.
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