Ignacy Skorupka
A day later his body was transported to a garrison church in Warsaw, and shortly, he was given a state funeral at the prestigious Powązki Cemetery, attended by many government and military authorities; general Józef Haller presented him with a posthumous Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari. His death became a political ploy, used by the opponents of Polish military commander and leader Józef Piłsudski, architect of the Polish strategy that led to the victory at Warsaw. His opponents labelled the battle "miracle of Vistula", and attributed the Polish victory to a number of causes, up to and including divine intervention, and Skorupka's martyr-like death became part of their attempt to minimize Piłsudski's fame. Several monuments, streets and other landmarks were dedicated to him in the Second Polish Republic; he became a central figure in several books, poems and dramas; and Pope Pius XI commissioned a wall painting of him by Jan Henryk de Rosen at the battle at the Castel Gandolfo. Another popular painting of him was created by Jerzy Kossak.
Polish–Soviet War
The Soviet Western Front commander, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, felt certain that all was going according to his plan. However, Polish military intelligence had decrypted the Red Army's radio messages, and Tukhachevsky was actually falling into a trap set by Piłsudski and his Chief of Staff, Tadeusz Rozwadowski. The Soviet advance across the Vistula River in the north was moving into an operational vacuum, as there were no sizable Polish forces in the area. On the other hand, south of Warsaw, where the fate of the war was about to be decided, Tukhachevsky had left only token forces to guard the vital link between the Soviet north-west and south-west fronts. Another factor that influenced the outcome of the war was the effective neutralisation of Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, much feared by Piłsudski and other Polish commanders, in the battles around Lwów. At Tukhachevsky's insistence the Soviet High Command had ordered the 1st Cavalry Army to march north toward Warsaw and Lublin. However, Budyonny disobeyed the order due to a grudge between Tukhachevsky and Yegorov, commander of the south-west front.