Józef Unrug (German: Joseph von Unruh; 7 October 1884 – 28 February 1973) was a Polish admiral who helped establish Poland's navy after World War I.

Józef Michał Hubert Unrug was born in Brandenburg an der Havel into a noble family of Prussian and Polish descent.

[6] However, the vast cost of buying warships caused successive governments in Warsaw to balk at the immense expenditure that this would entail and to reject the "green water navy" plans of the Marynarka.

[7] Unrug and Admiral Jerzy Świrski were often at odds with Marshal Piłsudski who was opposed to what he called their "grandiose" plans for a vast Polish fleet.

[9] Piłsudski himself favored a "brown water navy" for Poland as he wanted the Marynarka to be equipped only with riverine gunboats and coastal patrol boats.

[10] In response, various civic groups in Poland started a public subscription campaign to raise enough money to buy a submarine to be named The Answer to Treviranus.

[14] In the aftermath of the Danzig crisis with the successful use of gunboat diplomacy, Piłsudski approved a six-year expansion plan for the navy, ordering two Grom-class destroyers and two Orzeł-class submarines.

[15] As such, no matter how much money was devoted to the Marynarka, the Kriegsmarine would always be the greater force, making the plans for a "green water navy" capable of dominating the Baltic impractical.

Despite the economical problems, in 1936 it was announced in Polish newspapers that the Marynarka was committed to a "maximum plan" of buying two battleships that would cost 70, 000, 000 zlotys each plus two heavy cruisers.

[16] By 1938, Polish newspapers were reporting that the "maximum plan" now envisioned a fleet of 3 battleships, 1 aircraft carrier, 2 heavy cruisers, 12 destroyers, 24 torpedo boats, 24 submarines, 16 minesweepers and 1 mine-layer.

[13] At the beginning of the Danzig crisis in May 1939, Unrug shifted the two naval rifle battalions assigned to defend Gdynia to building field works in the Polish Corridor.

[19] Rydz-Śmigły believed if the Danzig crisis led to a war, it would be possible for France and Britain to supply arms to Poland via Romania and as such control of the Baltic was not necessary.

[19] On 26 August 1939, the day after the signing of the Anglo-Polish alliance, Unrug issued the captains of all of the Polish destroyers, except the Wicher which had engine problems, with sealed envelopes with orders not to open them until the message "Execute Peking" was received.

[19] During the 1939 invasion of Poland, Unrug executed his plan of strategically withdrawing the Polish Navy's major vessels to the United Kingdom ("Operation Peking").

Another plan Unrug had developed was Operation Rurka for the mine-layer Gryf to lay a minefield off the Hel peninsula, but he decided to wait until the war started.

[1] Despite having effectively given up control of Poland's naval vessels, Unrug remained in command of multiple military units, which he tasked with protecting the Polish Corridor from German attacks.

[22] Conditions for the Polish defenders on the Hel were hellish as the Luftwaffe bombed them incessantly while the powerful guns of the Schleswig-Holstein and the Schliesen pounded them constantly.

[22] On 20 September 1939, Adolf Hitler arrived at the Kasino hotel in Zoppot (modern Sopot) on the other side of the Bay of Danzig to watch the spectacular sight of the two battleships blasting away with their 11-inch guns to hammer the Polish defenders on the Hel.

[23] A popular story has that Unrug forbade his gunners who wanted to fire at the Kasino hotel because it would be dishonorable to kill a head of state.

Unrug later gave as his reasons for surrendering that his forces were almost out of artillery shells and that he felt the civilians living in the coastal fishing villages had suffered enough.

[32] General Piskor was the most senior Polish officer held at Colditz, but Unrug was older than him and spoke fluent German, so in practice the two men shared the leadership.

[32] The Polish historian Mieczysław B. Biskupski wrote that Admiral Unrug "...was perhaps not the greatest tactician of the interwar navy, but his conduct in German captivity was the stuff of legend".

[33] After Poland was taken over by the Soviet Union in 1945, Unrug went to the United Kingdom, where he served with the Polish Navy in the West and took part in its demobilisation.

After the Allies withdrew support from the Polish government, Unrug remained in exile, in the United Kingdom, and then moved to France.

Unrug had specified in his will that he should not be buried on Polish soil until such time as all the remains of his fellow naval officers and men had been recovered from enemy control.