Marian "Marek" Spychalski (, 6 December 1906 – 7 June 1980) was a Polish architect in pre-war Poland, and later, military commander and a communist politician. During World War II he belonged to the Polish underground forces operating within Poland and was one of the leaders of the People's Guard, then People's Army. He held several key political posts during the PRL era, most notably; Chairman of the Council of State, mayor of Warsaw and Defence Minister. Biography Early career Born to a working-class family in Łódź, Spychalski graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology in 1931. That same year he joined the KPP, and kept his membership after the Nazi-Soviet invasion, when in 1942 KPP became the Polish Workers' Party, renamed in 1948 as the Polish United Workers' Party. Before World War II, he practised architecture and won several national and international competitions and awards. World War Two In 1943 as part of the subversive Soviet effort to destroy the independent Polish resistance movement associated with the Polish government-in-exile, he denounced to the Gestapo various members of those resistance organizations. Polish People's Republic After World War II, he held a number of offices in the government of Poland, one of his first being mayor of Warsaw (18 September 1944 – March 1945), with the war still in progress. Among other posts, he was a long-time member of the parliament, a close friend of Władysław Gomułka, and from 1945 to 1948 was both Deputy Minister of Defense and a member of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party. He was removed from his remaining political posts in 1949 and then in 1950 imprisoned as part of the Stalinist purges of social-democrats in 1949–1953, where he was accused of anti-Soviet tendencies akin to Titoism. In 1951 he appeared in a show trial where he was instructed to deliver official (and false) testimony against Gomułka. He was only released in the mass release of political prisoners in April 1956, and subsequently reinstated in the Polish United Workers' Party. With Gomułka's rehabilitation and return to power in 1956, Spychalski became the Polish Minister of Defence. In 1959 he again became a member of the Politburo, and in 1963 he was promoted to Field Marshal. In 1968 during the anti-Zionist purge of the army, at Gomułka's request he left the Polish Army and his job as Minister of