riverboat thomas anders

Foto © Ben Wolf

THOMAS ANDERS was born on 1 March 1963 and is one of the few German stars who has made both a national and international impact on music history. During his immensely successful run with Modern Talking, he had countless chart hits, which made him famous in almost every corner of the earth.

“You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul” alone reached No.1 in 81 countries. Worldwide CD sales of Modern Talking and of Thomas Anders’ solo works have now topped the 125 million mark.

Thomas Anders has received more than 420 gold and platinum records and numerous awards for his artistic achievements, including the “Bambi”, the “Goldene Europa”, the “Goldene Kamera”, the “ECHO”, the “World Music Award”, the Golden and Silver “Bravo-Otto”, the “Golden Lion” from Radio Luxembourg and many more.

Despite his triumphant success, Thomas Anders is constantly looking for a new challenge. As a serious and professional entertainer he does not stand still.

The worldwide success he enjoyed with Modern Talking was followed by the release of many solo albums in Germany and abroad. His most recent solo pop album “STRONG” sold over 1.000.000 copies in Russia alone and immediately went platinum.

In his most spectacular music video “Stay With Me”, a solo track from his album “STRONG”, he performed in the role of James Bond in true 007-style.

In 2011 he joined musical forces with Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, who has successfully produced and composed some of the top hits of famous German singer NENA. Their album “Two” shot to number 11 in the album charts and for a brief period the “Gentleman of Music” musically transformed himself into a “Gigolo.”

After releasing more than 25 albums, Thomas Anders fulfilled his long-standing dream to record his first Christmas album in the style of an American Songbook. Just like its architect, “Christmas for You” was a multi-faceted kaleidoscope. New, yet traditional and international yet private, this was a work that reflected the very essence of the artist himself.

In 2016 Thomas Anders followed up with another successful album. HISTORY pays homage to his time as part of the most successful German pop duo ever – Modern Talking. The album follows the wishes of many fans and reflects his live concerts from all over the world.

In spring 2017 came a big surprise! Thomas Anders is to sing in German.

“Pures Leben” Pure Life is his first German-speaking album, showing his attitude towards life in all its unbridled glory. The album succeeds in allowing the listener to experience a multitude of varying, everyday situations and moments through his individual songs. With a little twinkle in his eyes Thomas Anders sings about things that really matter in life. For this album he has worked together with some of the most successful German songwriters. (Helene Fischer, Howard Carpendale and Udo Lindenberg.)

After singing in English for so many years, Anders had to focus on doing the same from scratch in his native language. He dealt with important phonetics and asked himself the most important question: Where do I stand with my age?! In working together with his producer Christian Geller, Anders has found a way to deliver his new and catchy pop songs to his audience in an authentic and convincing way.

In succession, the second German-language album “Ewig mit Dir” appears in 2018. With Christian Geller, he develops further songs that reflect his energy and joie de vivre. That is exactly what Thomas Anders would like to pass on – without any frills, sometimes profound. The song “Das Leben ist jetzt” radiates with great directness that we should not waste time, enjoy the moments and live in the here and now.

Thomas Anders und Florian Silbereisen

A joint production by him and Florian Silbereisen brings together two great colleagues and friends: “Sie sagte doch sie liebt mich” tells a crazy story straight from life.

This project gave rise to the idea of ​​continuing to spin this story. Together with the next single “Sie hat es wieder getan”, this is finally the beginning of a joint album by Florian and Thomas. Due to a pandemic, “Das Album“ is not released in March 2020 as planned, but in June and establishes a close collaboration with Germany’s most successful entertainer. 26 sold-out halls at the nationwide Schlagerfest by Florian Silbereisen in spring 2020 document the absolute enthusiasm of the fans. His participation in these shows, spells Thomas Anders that this way was the absolutely right decision. The star now comes a great deal closer to his German fans. It happens what was his wish for so many years. Music connects and music keeps alive.

The hit sensation 2020

With their first joint longplayer “Das Album”, the two succeeded in jumping to the #1 spot in Germany, Austria and Switzerland three times over at the first go. “Das Album,” which also featured the pre-released hit singles “Sie sagte doch sie liebt mich” (2018) and “Sie hat es wieder getan” (2019), managed to top the German and Austrian charts for two weeks straight and then spent an entire year in the Official German Album Charts. Finally, they received a platinum award in Germany and could also enjoy gold in Austria. After shortening the wait in 2021 with the programmatic single “Wir tun es nochmal!”, the next chapter for the Anders/Silbereisen duo dream team is actually beginning.

2021 back to the Fanbase

After his successful duet album with Florian Silbereisen, Thomas Anders is once again dedicating himself to a solo project and in the spring of 2021, with his album “Cosmic”, he will answer the long-awaited wish of his international fan base – finally, an album in English again. The song “Cosmic Rider” sounds just like a song has to sound to make the heart of die-hard fans beat faster: On the one hand, 100% the classic Modern Talking sound, but this was consistently thought out and transported into today’s time. The track was again produced by Christian Geller, who was also responsible for the duet album with Florian Silbereisen.

On to new shores

Much has been written and said about Thomas Anders in his career, which continues to this day. In 2022 he finally uses a trendy medium, the podcast, and turns the tables once. Now he speaks! About successes and failures, highs and lows. Unadorned and open, completely privately from his home, host Andreas Kunze takes him on a journey through time, in which he also looks back on the stories of his eventful life with a twinkle in his eye. Guests include friends, people close to his heart and companions who have accompanied him on his journey to the present day. Sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, but always from the perspective of a man who has remained down-to-earth. The result is an extraordinary podcast: honest – authentic – … simply Anders!

Thomas Anders is also known to his fans as a man of pleasure, not least through his cookbook “Modern Cooking”. Also in 2022, he enters into a cooperation with the renowned Rheinhessen winery St. Antony. Together with its managing director, he will create the Thomas Anders Pinot Gris. With winemaker Dirk Würtz and wine lover Thomas Anders, two men have found each other who combine lifestyle and joie de vivre with a love of craftsmanship, enjoyment and tradition. For both, wine means home, culture, lifestyle and nature.

Continuation of a successful duo

In December 2022, Thomas Anders and Florian Silbereisen set course for their second album together. With the single “Alles wird gut” they not only set an optimistic sign, but at the same time starts the countdown to the new studio album “Nochmal”, which is planned for fall 2023. The next chapter for the duo dream team Anders/Silbereisen is really starting now.

The anniversary year

In 2023, Thomas Anders celebrates his 60th birthday and continues to take off. He releases the song “The journey of life” for his fans worldwide on all streaming portals. The rousing song in the Modern Talking sound describes the journey of life of the now 45-year career of the internationally successful artist. As has been the case for many years, the successful producer Christian Geller is also responsible for the music and production, and the matching video for this title was shot in his brand new “Studio61”. The musical journey of Thomas Anders goes with “The journey of life” into the next round and into the new decade of life.

Of course, the  cooperation with the winery St. Antony will continue with the new vintage of Thomas Anders Grauburgunder, which is now complemented by a rosé.

Thomas Anders world of indulgence

He is also thinking about friends of good food again and is publishing his new cookbook “Meine Lieblingsrezepte #schmecktanders” in autumn 2023 with TRE TORRI Verlag. Cooking is still one of his passions and provides him with enjoyment as well as relaxation from the challenges of everyday life. For friends of sparkling enjoyment, another joint creation by St. Antony and Thomas Anders follows in 2024 – a rosé sparkling wine that will once again stylishly complement the artist’s repertoire in this area. But that’s not all, there will also be a collaboration with the Koblenz-based spice producer Hartkorn. An exclusive product line under the label “Anders Würzen” is developed and perfectly complements the world of indulgence that Thomas Anders has now created. A “Match made in Heaven” has emerged together with the family business.

The thoroughbred musician with a treasure trove of experience

After 40 years in the music industry, Thomas Anders continues to excite and enthuse the music world as a solo artist. His fans cherish his fascinating charisma and the stylish intimacy he shows in his concerts. They love the feeling and mood he comes across with in his songs.

Thomas Anders is a musician through and through with a wealth of experience in the entertainment industry. He has been on stage for more than 40 years and made his first TV appearance 35 years ago in a popular German show. After that his career consequently went in one direction – up! His concerts took him all over the world – from Cape Town to Hong Kong, from Tel Aviv to New York, from Santiago de Chile to Moscow. Toronto, Hanoi, Prague, Berlin, Budapest, London, Washington, Los Angeles, the list is endless …

To this day Thomas Anders remains the only international star to have performed twelve times at the historic Kreml in Moscow, the Russian equivalent of the Royal Albert Hall. It goes without saying that he sold out on each occasion.

Thomas Anders is a star who is able to present himself in a number of different ways. From powerful concert performer to confident show presenter, he is equally at home at galas or soirées where he is known for his elegant and personable appearances. He takes his audiences on an impressive musical journey through time by presenting the countless hits of Modern Talking and many other world famous pop classics. Yet no matter where Thomas Anders performs, he will always be the “Gentleman of Music”.

Thomas Anders has established himself as his own brand.

He is often invited to give speeches at business and marketing academies where he gives his expertise on how to build a successful career and work on corporate branding based on his own experience. Exemplified by the release of a book “Der Mensch als Marke” which can be translated as Human Brands, he is a living example of image building.

Despite his huge popularity and all the opportunities that came his way, one thing has never changed – the deep connection he has for his homeland. Although he has traveled the world, the city of Koblenz, where he has lived with his wife Claudia and son Alexander for many years, remains the absolute center of his life and the source from which he draws strength to achieve great and continuing success.

As a down-to-earth “Koblenzer”, he knows how to use his celebrity status in just the right way and has been acting as patron of the “Koblenz Child Protection Association” since 2008. He very much enjoys working with and for children. Although he is constantly receiving enquiries from all over the world to support other good causes, the Child Protection Association in his home city remains particularly close to his heart.

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„Riverboat“: Skurrile Po-Beichte von Thomas Anders sorgt für Gelächter

Am Freitag (15. Dezember) war bei „Riverboat“ der Popstar Thomas Anders zu Gast. Diese eine Aussage sorgt für eine Menge Lacher.

Dieter Bohlen: Seine Karriere

Er ist einer der erfolgreichsten deutschen Musiker und einer der polarisierendsten: Dieter Bohlen.

„Riverboat“: Ein Blick auf die aktuelle Sendung

Dazu zählen der Sänger Thomas Anders, die Schauspielerin Barbara Wussow und der Comedian Bastian Bielendorfer. Ebenfalls zu Gast sind der Sänger Florian Stölzel, der Comedian Helge Schneider, die Spieldosenherstellerin Kerstin Drechsel und der Opernstar sowie Moderator Gunther Emmerlich.

„Riverboat“: Thomas Anders sorgt für Gelächter

Der erste Gast, der auf dem „Riverboat“ seine Redezeit bekommt, ist „Modern-Talking-Star Thomas Anders. Der im Jahr 1963 geborene Sänger ist in diesem Jahr stolze 60 Jahre alt geworden, wie Kim Fisher in der Anmoderation erwähnt. Und genau auf diesen Aspekt geht Co-Moderator Wolfgang Lippert noch einmal ein. „Du hast dieses Jahr gerundet“, steigt er ins Thema ein. „Du hast scheinbar auch gesagt, ‚Ich hab‘ einen runden Po‘.“

Thomas Anders guckt lachend zu Kim Fisher und fragt, wer sowas über ihn schreibe. Die Auflösung kommt schnell. Er soll es im Podcast von Barbara Schöneberger selbst gesagt haben. Und: „Der fällt nicht auseinander.“ Der Popsänger insistiert und sagt, dass er so etwas niemals von sich behauptet hätte. „Wir können gerne meine Frau fragen, die wird das nicht bestätigen“, sagt der 60-Jährige zu seiner Verteidigung – und erntet damit eine Menge Gelächter aus dem Publikum. Zumindest im positiven Sinne.

Kim Fisher ist seit Langem ein Gesicht der Sendung. Sie führte bereits von 1998 bis 2005 durch das „Riverboat“ und kehrte 2014 zurück. In der Vergangenheit wurde sie von Jörg Kachelmann unterstützt, der von Januar 2019 bis Ende 2022 als Co-Moderator fungierte. Sebastian Fitzek war zwischen Oktober 2021 und August 2022 aus dem rbb-Studio Berlin dabei. Seit Anfang des Jahres teilt sie sich die Moderation mit Klaus Brinkbäumer, Wolfgang Lippert und Matze Knop.

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Photo Credit: The Poles were emaciated, lice-ridden, and diseased but still proud, as Anders found at his first review.

Fleeing to Fight

General Wladyslaw Anders led free Polish forces in their fight against the Nazis.

This article appears in: March 2010

By John Osborn Jr.

“They had lost their country but kept their honor,” future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said of General Wladyslaw Anders and the Polish II Corps, men in the strange position of trying to win the liberation of their homeland by fighting in Italy.

It is hard to imagine any other general of World War II having a more personally tragic odyssey than Anders: witnessing the devastation of his country, nightmarish captivity at the hands of the Soviet secret police, a trek to freedom across central Asia and the Middle East, and glory on the battlefield of Monte Cassino ending in a lifelong, bitter exile.

A Soldier in the Polish Army

Born in 1892 when Poland was still part of the Russian Empire, Anders deserted from the czarist cavalry during World War I to fight for independence in the Polish Legion of Jozef Pilsudski on the German side. Anders also fought under Pilsudski to defeat the Russian invasion of 1920, but then against Pilsidski when he overthrew the government in May 1926 and established a dictatorship. Pilsudski did not hold it against Anders, who was allowed to stay in the Army. When Pilsudski met him at a reception four years later and saw that Anders was still a colonel, he made a point of promoting him to brigadier general.

Anders was in command of a cavalry brigade just 13 miles from the border with Germany on September 1, 1939. During the opening minutes of World War II, he watched helplessly as Luftwaffe squadrons passed overhead on their way south to destroy the Polish Air Force on the ground and bomb the Polish capital of Warsaw.

In the chaos that followed, Anders had to waste precious days inching along roads jammed to a standstill with panicked refugees and disorganized soldiers under constant air attack while he was trying to reach a new command and then, almost immediately, another. He finally led a surprise counterattack near Warsaw, taking 1,000 German prisoners, before it fell apart because of communication failures.

Compounding the nightmare, on the 17th day of the German invasion, the Soviet Union “flung herself like a hyena,” in Anders’s words, on Poland as part of Stalin’s pact with Hitler. Trying to evacuate his men to Hungary, Anders was wounded for the eighth time in his military career and was captured by the Soviets.

Anders’ Army of Captives

“We are now good friends of the Germans, and together we will fight international capitalism,” the Red Army officer driving Anders away told him. A two-year ordeal with little hope then began for Anders—rat- and bedbug- infested cells, a slice of bread a day, beatings, endless rounds of interrogations, dysentery, and scurvy. In March 1940, he was placed in solitary confinement in Moscow’s dreaded Lubyanka Prison as a prisoner “of special interest to the Central Office of the NKVD.”

A Lubyanka guard seized Anders’s religious medal of the Virgin Mary and crushed it underfoot, saying, “Let us see if this harlot can be of any help to you in a Soviet prison!” When Anders did receive miraculous intervention, the inspiration was more satanic than divine.

Suddenly, on August 4, 1941, Anders was pulled from his cell and marched to the warden’s office. Squinting repeatedly in the unaccustomed light, he faced a bespectacled official who said simply, “Who am I addressing?” asked Anders. “I am Beria,” came the response.

Instead of the customary bullet to the brain he often meted out, the feared NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria informed an astonished Anders that he was to be the commander of a new Polish army composed of Poles imprisoned in the Soviet Union. In prison uniform and barefoot, Anders was then driven out of the Lubyanka in Beria’s own limousine and installed in a four-room luxury apartment with cook, maid, and ample stocks of caviar and vodka. Hitler had attacked the Soviet Union, and Stalin was desperately seeking allies anywhere he could find them—even the London-based Polish government in exile headed by Prime Minister Wladyslaw Sikorski.

Anders had to first determine just how many men he would have to fight with: “I tried to assess the real figure of Polish citizens deported in 1939-1941, but it was extremely difficult to do so. I questioned the Soviet authorities. Eventually I was directed to Fiedotov, an NKVD general who was in charge of this matter, and I had a few conversations with him. He told me in a most confidential manner that the number of Poles deported to Russia amounted to 450,000.… After many months of research and inquiries among our people, who were pouring from thousands of prisons and concentration camps spread out all over Russia, we were able to put the number at 1,500,000 to 1,600,000 people.” Behind those shocking figures were the horror stories of Soviet confinement—only 170 survivors of 20,000 at one slave mine, 3,000 to a man dying at another.

Tens of thousands of Poles, civilians including women and thousands of orphans as well as soldiers, trekked hundreds of miles to Anders’s camps along the Volga River. Several hundred started out from a camp above the Arctic Circle, and the only one who did not die on the 3,000-mile journey did expire the day after he arrived.

The Poles were emaciated, lice-ridden, and diseased but still proud, as Anders found at his first review. “For the first time in my life, and I hope for the last, I took the salute of a march-past of soldiers without boots,” he recalled. “They had insisted on it. They wanted to show the Bolsheviks that even in their bare feet, and ill and wounded as many of them were, they could still bear themselves like soldiers on their first march toward Poland.”

But, ominously, of the 17,000 Polish officers known to have fallen into Soviet hands, only 2,000, including just two of 14 generals, turned up. With Sikorski, Anders met Stalin on December 3, 1941, to press him on their whereabouts.

“They must have escaped,” answered Stalin. “Where could they have escaped to?” asked Anders. “Well, to Manchuria,” was Stalin’s feeble response. In fact, over 4,000 had been massacred by the Russians and were at that moment buried in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, awaiting discovery by the Germans in 1943. These would be the only ones ever accounted for.

“One of the Great Fighting Forces of the War”

Wladyslaw Anders

The Soviets reneged on their promises and delivered only half the food and medicine that Anders requested. Through the autumn and winter of 1941, the Poles lived in nothing more than canvas tents while dysentery, malaria, typhus, and hepatitis spread.

In the spring, the Soviets began demanding that Anders start sending troops west to the front. Knowing that in their still-weakened state such an order would lead to useless slaughter, Anders instead secured permission in April 1942 to ship 74,000 troops by rail 1,200 miles south to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Some 41,000 civilians followed.

An appalled Polish officer remarked, “A vast tide of human beings … were now flowing into the starving districts of Uzbekistan, to surge round an army organization which was itself undernourished and decimated by disease.”

In August 1942, Anders moved his people further on their exodus, to Krasnovodsk, Turkmenia. From there, he shipped them across the Caspian Sea to the port of Bandar Pahlavi, Iran. The civilians were sent east to camps outside Tehran while Anders and his troops continued west first to Iraq, then Palestine. There he began building his troops with other Poles already fighting in the Middle East in what was to become the 125,000-man Polish II Corps. Historian John Keegan called this storied unit “one of the great fighting formations of the war,” and its future would include international renown for assaults against Monte Cassino in May 1944.

Anders said, “We shall fight the Germans without respite because we all know that without defeating Germany there will be no Poland.”

Assault on Monte Cassino

The ruined abbey atop Monte Cassino was the key to the German Gustav Line, blocking the Allied approach to Rome. Attacks by French, American, New Zealander, then Indian troops had failed to take it. When General Oliver Leese, the commander of the British Eighth Army, proposed that the Poles try next, Anders later wrote: “It was a great moment for me.… I realized that the cost in lives must be heavy, but I realized too the importance of the capture of Monte Cassino to the Allied cause, and most of all to that of Poland, for it would answer once and for all the Soviet lie that the Poles did not want to fight the Germans. Victory would give new courage to the resistance movement in Poland and would cover Polish arms with glory. After a moment’s reflection I answered that I would undertake the task.”

In his order to attack, Anders declared, “We have long awaited the moment for revenge and retribution over our hereditary enemy.”

The Poles fought their way in a veritable shooting gallery of foxholes, pillboxes, bunkers, mines, wire, and devastating interlocking fields of fire defended by ferocious German paratroopers. “I noticed that the Germans very wisely stayed under cover at all times, whereas our men would suddenly stand up to hurl defiance at the enemy. They paid dearly for these and similar acts of bravado,” a Polish officer said.

During the first attack, the Poles took Hill 593, then defended it through four counterattacks until only one officer and eight men were left. They fought their way to the top of Phantom Ridge but could not reach the end of the heights. One Polish soldier described the relentless German shelling: “The explosions sounded like an enormous giant clearing his throat.” Polish phone lines were cut and most of the radio operators killed, making it almost impossible to relay commands and direct counterbattery fire.

“It soon became clear that it was easier to capture some objectives than to hold them,” Anders concluded. He broke off the first attack.

Leese found Anders in his trailer uncharacteristically disheveled and distraught. “What do we do now?” he asked Leese. “Stay where you are, but hang on to what you have. Don’t lose that whatever happens,” responded Leese. “But we must attack again,” said Anders.

“May Your Hearts be Those of Lions”

The Poles did attack again just two days later, with Anders telling his troops: “May your hearts be those of lions.” Cooks, drivers, and staff personnel were thrown in to fill the depleted ranks. The Poles took and this time held Hill 593 and Phantom Ridge.

On the second afternoon, Anders’s headquarters intercepted a German radio message to the defenders in Monte Cassino to evacuate at midnight. The Gustav Line was crumbling, and the abbey was facing encirclement. Anders immediately barreled in a jeep to his division commanders to tell them: “You must hold through tonight. Send patrols to keep up spirits at all the posts. Order your men to stay where they are at all costs.”

The next morning, the Poles cautiously inched up to the monastery to find it had been abandoned. At 10:20 am, May 18, 1944, the Polish flag flew atop Monte Cassino.

Anders described the battlefield: “Corpses of Polish and German soldiers, sometimes entangled in a deadly embrace, lay everywhere, and the air was full of the stench of rotting bodies.… Crater after crater pitted the sides of the hills, and scattered over them were fragments of uniforms and tin helmets, Tommy guns, Spandaus, Schmeissers and hand grenades. Of the monastery itself there remained only an enormous heap of ruin and rubble, with here and there some broken columns.… Priceless works of art, sculpture, pictures, and books lay in the dust and broken plaster.” The capture of Monte Cassino cost the Poles 860 killed and 3,000 wounded.

Monte Cassino earned Anders and the Poles international acclaim. He was awarded the Legion of Merit, the highest American decoration available to a foreigner, in a ceremony, appropriately enough, below Mussolini’s balcony in Rome.

Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, Viscount Alanbrooke, said, “The series of offensives carried out from Cassino onwards would hardly have been possible” without the Poles.

But as they fought north, one Polish soldier said what they all believed: “On the one hand, I was happy that I could bring freedom to these people who were welcoming me at that moment. But on the other hand, I was disappointed that this was not a Polish street that I was walking on, that I wasn’t bringing freedom to my people and my nation, that this was not the fulfillment of our dreams.”

Anders himself said, “We trust that our great Allies and friends—Great Britain and the U.S. —will assist us to make Poland rise again free and independent.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met Anders in Italy and assured him: “I and my friend President Roosevelt will never abandon Poland. Put your trust in us.”

However, according to historian Matthew Parker in Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II, “much of the rest of [Anders’s] account of the war records the progressive abandonment of the Polish cause by the Allies.”

Betrayal at Yalta

Anders advised against the Warsaw Uprising, accurately predicting the Soviets would stand back and watch the Germans annihilate the Polish Resistance for them. He tried to warn the naïve prime minister of the government in exile, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk (Sikorski had been killed in a plane crash in 1943), about Soviet intentions toward Poland but found “our conversation led to no understanding between us.”

The Yalta Conference, which took place between Allied leaders as the defeat of Nazi Germany approached, was the near breaking point for Anders. Poland was to be left a satellite of the Soviet Union. Thirty of Anders’s men committed suicide, and he requested that his corps be withdrawn from the fighting.

At a stormy meeting in London, Churchill now raged, “You can take away your division! We shall do without them!”

Anders coolly replied, “That is not what you said during the last few years.”

In the end, Anders ordered his men to continue fighting. Harold Macmillan, then British government liaison with the Allied forces in Italy, feared Anders’s men “will disintegrate into a rabble of refugees,” but later admitted, “I had underestimated the marvelous dignity and devotion of Anders and his comrades. They fought with distinction, in the front of the attack, in the last battles.”

The Poles ended the war by capturing Bologna, with Anders receiving the division flag of the German paratroopers who had fought them at Monte Cassino.

Defying Communism in Exile

It would be the last moment of triumph in Anders’s life. He became commander in chief of all Polish forces in the West; then, working out of a small London office, he ran the organization to resettle ex-Polish servicemen abroad. Stripped of his citizenship by the Polish Communists, the very mention of his name outlawed in Poland, Anders to his dying day, in 1970, never forgave Britain and the United States for what he considered the betrayal of his country.

General Wladyslaw Anders was buried with his comrades in the Polish cemetery at Monte Cassino, where an inscription reads:

We Polish soldiers For our freedom and yours Have given our souls to God Our bodies to the soil of Italy And our hearts to Poland.

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