[1] Morgenstern-Podjazd was born into an upper-class Polish family in Czernowitz (modern Chernivtsi, Ukraine) in the province of Bukovina in the Austrian empire.
[2] His father Roman had fought in the January Uprising against Russian rule in 1863 and fled into the Austrian empire after the defeat of the rising.
[5] He reached the rank of lieutenant and served on the cruiser Helgoland and the battleship Habsburg in World War I against the Regia Marina in the Adriatic.
The Wedding to the Sea saw Haller deliver a speech envisioning Poland as having a fleet of two battleships, six cruisers and twenty-eight destroyers, a goal that proved to be impractical owing to the financial problems.
[2] In July 1920, he left his staff duties to become an adjutant to Captain Konstanty Jacnicz of the Marine Regiment made up of sailors who volunteered to fight against the Red Army during the Polish-Soviet war of 1920.
[2] In the years 1925–1927 he was the head of the Department of Regulations and Training of the Polish Navy, and in 1927 he returned to the Naval Officer's School as director of science.
[4] As the Danzig crisis moved towards its climax in the summer of 1939, the atmosphere at Bydgoszcz was tense with Morgenstern-Podjazd having the cadets conduct "field exercises" against the activities of the local volksdeutsch (ethnic German) community, many of whom were spying for Germany.
[4] On September 11, 1939, he was told to send his cadets to join the hasty formed naval battalions to fight the invading German forces.
On October 23, 1939, he was able to escape from Hungary into Romania where in common with many other Polish military personnel, he was not interned by the regime of King Carol II and instead permitted to go on to France.
[4] As naval attache, Morgenstern-Podjazd was deeply concerned about the Swedish treatment of the interned Polish sailors and frequently visited them to ensure that the Swedes were treating them humanely.
[4] In the summer of 1941, a scandal broke out when Commander Bogusław Krawczyk of the Polish submarine ORP Wilk committed suicide on July 19, 1941.
In response to the scandal, General Władysław Sikorski, the prime minister of the government-in-exile came into conflict with Admiral Jerzy Świrski and his deputy Commander Karol Korytowski.
[4] In common with most of the other Polish naval officers, Morgenstern-Podjazd was greatly embittered by Poland losing its independence and saw the outcome of the war as a defeat for his country.
During his exile, Morgenstern-Podjazd published articles in various Polish emigre magazines and spoke on Radio Free Europe to criticise the Communist regime.
[11] He was interviewed by the journalist Eugeniusz Romiszewski for a documentary that aired on the Polish channel of Radio Free Europe on May 12, 1968 about the 1932 crisis.