Zanim wybuchła afera TUN. Generał Stanisław Tatar, Komitet Trzech, fundusz „Drawa” i operacja „Brzoza” 1944–1947
Before the TUN Scandal First Broke. General Stanisław Tatar, the Committee of Three, the ‘Drawa’ Fund and Operation ‘Birch Tree’, 1944–1947

Summary/Abstract: This article is the first part of a study that outlines the contacts and relations between Brigadier-General Stanisław Tatar (Deputy Head of Staff for Domestic Affairs in the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army in the West) and his self-appointed “Committee of Three” (General Tatar, Colonel Stanisław Nowicki and Lieutenant Colonel Marian Utnik) on the one hand, and the intelligence services of People’s Poland on the other. Tatar and his collaborators led the 6th Department (Special) of the Commander-in-Chief ’s Staff, whose primary task involved supporting the Underground forces in occupied Poland. Late in 1944, the three men formed a so-called “Committee of Three” in order to embezzle funds from the 6th Department. The three men used creative accounting and the existing structures of the 6th Department to turn the considerable amount (US$7 million at the time) into a so-called “Drawa” Fund, which they proceeded to smuggle to several European countries (and even to the United States) and hide there. This action, which bore all the characteristics of deliberate embezzlement, set in motion a chain of events in 1944–1947 which is described in this article. A separate problem (though also one that was inseparably linked to Tatar) was the so-called gold treasure of the National Defence Fund, its development also described in the article. Thewide basis of the source information available has made it possible to offer an account of the motivations of Tatar and his fellow committee members, their actions and their consequences (inasmuch as possible within the constraints of an academic publication). The article ends with a description of the handover of the gold treasure to the Warsaw regime as part of Operation “Brzoza” (Birch Tree) and the proposed gradual handover of the “Drawa” Fund. Part two of the publication will focus on that latter operation, which took place in 1947–1949, and on the conflicts between the members of the committee and their activities as agents of the Communist military intelligence (Nowicki and Utnik), ending with their arrest.

• Details
• Contents