Wincenty Witos (; 22 January 1874 – 31 October 1945) was a Polish politician, prominent member and leader of the Polish People's Party (PSL), who served three times as the Prime Minister of Poland in the 1920s. He was a member of the Polish People's Party from 1895, and the leader of its "Piast" faction from 1913. He was a member of parliament in the Galician Sejm from 1908–1914, and an envoy to Reichsrat in Vienna from 1911 to 1918. Witos was also a leader of Polish Liquidation Committee () in 1918, head of the Piast party, and member of parliament in the Polish Sejm from 1919-1920. He served three times as the premier of Poland, in 1920–1921, 1923 (Chjeno-Piast), and 1926. In 1926 the third Witos government was overthrown by the May coup d'état led by Józef Piłsudski. Witos had been one of the leaders of the opposition to the Sanacja-government as head of Centrolew (1929–1930) and co-founded the People's Party. He was imprisoned shortly thereafter, then lived in exile in Czechoslovakia from 1933 to 1939. Over that time, he was seen as "the messiah of the peasants." Post-exile, he returned to Poland only to be imprisoned again by the invading Germans. In ill health by March 1941, he was put on supervised release by the Germans and ordered to stay in Wierzchosławice. In July 1944 the German occupation authorities requested that he declare an anti-Soviet appeal, but he refused to do so. In 1945, he was nominated one of the vice-chairmen of the State National Council () after World War II. In 1945-46 the People's Party was reorganized and taken over by Stanisław Mikołajczyk. Early life Wincenty was born in a peasant family in Wierzchosławice. His parents were Wojciech and Katarzyna née Sroka. The family was poor, owning little land and no livestock and they lived in a single room hut which had been converted from a barn. Wincenty had two brothers, Jan and Andrzej. Andrzej would also become a leader in the Polish agrarian movement. He began his education in the village school at the age of ten and finished four grades. Subsequently, he worked, helping his father, as a lumberjack for Prince Eustachy Stanisław Sanguszko. Between 1895 and 1897 Wincenty served in the Austrian Army (Galicia was part of the Austrian partition of Poland), first in infantry then in the artillery. He was stationed in Tarnów,