Alice Habsburg () (18 December 1889 – 26 November 1985) was a Swedish-born aristocrat and member of the Polish Home Army during World War II.
Early life and first marriage
Born Alice Elisabeth Ankarcrona in Hölö, Sweden, she was the daughter of Oscar Carl Gustav Ankarcrona. She grew up in Sweden. In 1911, she married Count Ludwig Badeni, a diplomat working at the Austro-Hungarian legation in Stockholm. During their engagement, she converted to Catholicism. The couple had a single son, Kasimir Badeni, born 1912. Shortly after his birth, Ludwig Badeni started to suffer from mental illness and was taken to a mental hospital. He died in 1916.
Her son Kasimir inherited his father's manor house and estate in Busk, today in Ukraine. Alice was shocked by the poverty in Austrian Galicia and sold off most of her jewelry to invest in welfare and economic improvements at her Busk estates. At the end of World War I she was in Vienna. In the background of the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian state she witnessed first-hand the Polish–Ukrainian War and the Battle of Lwów, where she was impressed by the Polish Lwów Eaglets, and then rejoined her son at Busk which had been looted by Cossacks and Ukrainian peasants.
Life in Poland
At the end of the conflict, Alice became engaged to Archduke Karl Albrecht of Austria. As her Busk estate was devastated and still unsafe, she and her son spent some time at Karl Albrecht's family estate, the New Palace at Żywiec, in southern Poland. When the Polish-Soviet War broke out in April 1919, Karl Albrecht joined the Polish army and Alice and Kasimir again returned to Busk. Once more, fighting took place around the estate while they lived there.
On 18 November 1920, Alice married Karl Albrecht in the palace chapel at Żywiec, and soon afterwards the couple settled at the estate, where they lived together with the parents of Karl Albrecht, Archduke Charles Stephen of Austria and Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, as well as his brother Archduke Leo Karl of Austria and his wife Marie-Clothilde de Thuillières. Alice's husband worked with the administration of the estate. During these years, Alice Habsurg also spent part of her time and money trying to improve the estate at Busk.
The couple had two daughters, Maria Christina and Renata, and two sons, Karl Stefan (Karol) and Albrecht. The couple gave their children an essentially Polish upbringing, with Polish as their first language. Both parents also fully supported independent Poland. Her husband supported Polish organisations and donated money and machine-guns to the Polish Army. Alice Habsburg would later, to the Gestapo, state her nationality as "Polish". She has also stated that to give her children a Polish upbringing "was a simple act of loyalty to the country that had opened its borders to us and given us back our property and standing".
World War II
When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 Alice's husband joined the Polish army. Alice remained at the estate at Żywiec. On 3 September German soldiers reached the estate and began to use it as a barracks. Officers from the SS and Gestapo followed suit and interrogated Alice for the first time. She believed her husband and children were safe at the estate in Busk, but when the Soviet Union also invaded Poland she left Żywiec to try to find them.
Eventually her three sons managed to flee the country and later joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. Her husband was arrested by the Nazi German authorities and sent to prison. Both he and his wife were pressed to give up their loyalties to Poland and instead join or support the Nazi regime, but both refused. Because of this Karl Albrecht was kept imprisoned in Cieszyn until December 1941, when he was released due to health reasons and international pressure. Alice had petitioned the Swedish Government and Sven Hedin to work for the release of her husband, and several royal or ex-royal families in Europe had done the same.