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1944 - Warsaw Uprising

The Warsaw uprising began August 1, 1944, and ran through the middle of September of that year. Over 250,000 Polish citizens lost their lives defending against Nazi and Communist aggression. They withstood the cruelest annihilation because they stood in the path of two brutal aggressors. The Warsaw uprising lasted nearly 2 months. During the revolt, the Soviet Army stood on the east bank of the Vistula River and let the Nazi forces brutally destroy Polish resistance and reduce Warsaw, that nation's capital city, to rubble.

The Poles had planned for years to launch an uprising when the Germans were at the point of collapse, and there was a possibility of securing assistance from the western Allies. After the battle of Stalingrad, it was apparent that Poland's liberation would come from the East, not the West, and thus there was a great deal of discussion concerning what the policy of the AK (Polish Home Army) should be toward the advancing Soviets.

On July 22, the German commandant of the Warsaw garrison ordered the evacuation of women and auxiliary service help from the city. Large numbers of soldiers and police were stripped from the capital for service elsewhere, leaving for a time only SA units. The moment Varsovians had waited for for five years had finally arrived: the liberation of Warsaw. German residents sold their possessions for almost nothing and clogged the roads leading westward to their own country.

The Poles, caught between two terrible, destructive ideologies, put up a courageous effort for 63 days led by the Polish Home Army, the armed hand of the Polish Underground State, supported by elements of the Polish underground partisan groups, and the entire Warsaw population of ordinary people, men, women, and children. Although severely outnumbered and armed with only hand-held weapons and gasoline filled bottles, they fought valiantly against German Panzier Divisions. The resistance held major portions of the city against insuperable odds, and suffered extreme hardship, retribution and personal sacrifice.

The nations of the world, stood by without giving effective help at a time when Polish Army units were helping to liberate France, Belgium, and Holland. Appeals for food, arms, ammunition, and antiarmor weapons answered by Allied air drops, were all too late and ineffective--none at the proper time nor anywhere near the size of the need. The air drops were made at great cost to the human lives of the members of the Polish Squadron of the Royal Air Force, the Canadian Air Force and daylight flight of 110 United States Flying Fortresses.

After the revolt was crushed, under direct orders from Hitler to annihilate the capital, the German Army systematically destroyed the city of Warsaw. At the war's end, Warsaw, the center of the national life, culture, and religion, had nearly 70 percent of her buildings in ruins. The loss in Warsaw, which history must remember, was staggering. But due to the Communist takeover of that nation after the war, so much of their tragic history was suppressed. More people died in the Warsaw insurrection than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, and the destruction of Warsaw was more complete than either of those cities. During the war, Warsaw lost more dead than the total number of American soldiers killed on all fronts.

The Warsaw Uprising: Chronology

• September 1, 1939.--Germany invades Poland.
• September 16, 1939--Warsaw falls to German forces.
• September 17, 1939--Soviet forces cross eastern Polish border.
• October 5, 1939.--Poland surrenders to Germany.
• October 1940.--Germany establishes and seals Warsaw Ghetto. Over 100,000 die of starvation or disease before Ghetto uprising in 1943.
• April 19, 1943.--Warsaw Ghetto uprising begins. German forces attack the ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization). When uprising quelled on May 16, 56,000 in the Ghetto have been killed.
• June 7, 1944.--Russian forces invade German-held Poland. Over the next 6 weeks they push German forces back, despite some setbacks in northern Poland.
• July 28, 1944.--German officials in Warsaw call 100,000 Warsaw youths to duty to build ``fortifications'' around Warsaw against Russian forces. The call-up raises tensions in the city, with families recalling earlier instances in which those called were sent to concentration and labor camps.
• July 31, 1944.--Russian forces reach Warsaw suburb of Praga, on eastern banks of the Vistula.
• August 1, 1944.--Warsaw uprising begins. The lightly armed `Home Army'' of Gen. Komorowski succeeds in gaining of much of the city for a week. German forces counterattack, using the Luftwaffe to bomb sectors to the city beginning Aug. 4, then moving in the armored forces to level buildings and set neighborhoods on fire. Aug. 12-14 FDR and Amb. Harriman ask Stalin to allow U.S. bombers from Italy and France to bomb German positions, drop supplies to Home Army. Stalin refuses.
• September 1944.--Rebels' resistance steadily weakens. By mid-month Stalin allows a few US, British, and Soviet supply flights; in smoke over city, air drops often fall into German-held sectors. Mikolajczyk, desperate for Soviet help, agrees to give 14 of 18 cabinet seats to representatives from Soviet-controlled Lublin Committee.
• October 2, 1944.--Uprising collapses, and Germans regain control of the entire city. Home Army suffers 15,000 killed or missing in action; 250,000 civilians die. Germans lose 17,000 killed or missing in action.
• January 1945.--Russian forces enter the city as German forces retreat.
• February 1945.--Yalta Conference. US favors a ``free and independent Poland'', but recognizes Soviet control there. Churchill endorses western Polish border at the Oder-Neisse line. Big Three agree that Lublin Committee under Edward Osobka-Morawski, a Soviet puppet, should organize a government. But Stalin refuses US-British request to allow their observers into Poland. Final settlement or borders to be left to a peace conference and a resulting treaty.
• July 1945.--US, Britain withdraw recognition from London-based Polish government and recognize Osobka-Morawski's provisional government.
• January 17, 1947.--Elections take place in Poland. Supporters of Boleslaw Bierut, Osobka-Morawski's successor, gain 382 of 444 seats, US, Britain denounce the elections as neither free nor fair.