Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler and the Crushing of a City

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The traumatic story of one of the last major battles of World War II, in which the Poles fought off German troops and police, street by street, for sixty-three days. Warsaw tells the story of one of history's bravest revolts and of how this errant calculation ended in one of its greatest crimes. As Soviet soldiers turned back the Nazi invasion of Russia and began pressing west, the Underground Polish Home Army rose to fight and to liberate the city of Warsaw for themselves.

For more than sixty days, Polish fighters took over large parts of the city and held off the SS's most brutal forces. But the German retaliation was monstrous. Drawing upon a rich trove of primary sources including her father-in-law, a Polish combatant Alexandra Richie relates the terrible experiences of individuals who fought in the uprising, revealing the fraught choices of some of the war's most unsung heroes.

It is also the story of a city's unbreakable spirit in the face of unspeakable barbarism. The traumatic story of one of the last major battles of WW2, in which the Poles fought off German troops and police, street by street, for 63 days. The Nazi Officer's Wife. Grey Wolf, Grey Sea.

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The Home Army forces of the Warsaw District numbered between 20,, [3] [39] and 49, soldiers. The forces lacked equipment, [6] because the Home Army had shuttled weapons to the east of the country before the decision to include Warsaw in Operation Tempest. These people — emigrants who had settled in Warsaw before the war, escapees from numerous POW, concentration and labor camps, and deserters from the German auxiliary forces — were absorbed in different fighting and supportive formations of the Polish underground.

During the fighting, the Poles obtained additional supplies through airdrops and by capture from the enemy, including several armoured vehicles , notably two Panther tanks and two Sd. In late July the German units stationed in and around Warsaw were divided into three categories. The first and the most numerous was the garrison of Warsaw.

As of 31 July, it numbered some 11, troops under General Rainer Stahel. These well-equipped German forces prepared for the defence of the city's key positions for many months. Several hundred concrete bunkers and barbed wire lines protected the buildings and areas occupied by the Germans.

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Apart from the garrison itself, numerous army units were stationed on both banks of the Vistula and in the city. The second category was formed by police and SS under Col. During the uprising the German side received reinforcements on a daily basis.

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After days of hesitation, at In addition, although many units were already mobilized and waiting at assembly points throughout the city, the mobilization of thousands of young men and women was hard to conceal. That evening the resistance captured a major German arsenal, the main post office and power station and the Prudential building.

However, Castle Square, the police district, and the airport remained in German hands. However, several major German strongholds remained, and in some areas of Wola the Poles sustained heavy losses that forced an early retreat. In Praga , on the east bank of the Vistula, the Poles were sent back into hiding by a high concentration of German forces. After the first hours of fighting, many units adopted a more defensive strategy, while civilians began erecting barricades. Despite all the problems, by 4 August the majority of the city was in Polish hands, although some key strategic points remained untaken.

The uprising was intended to last a few days until Soviet forces arrived; [67] however, this never happened, and the Polish forces had to fight with little outside assistance. The results of the first two days of fighting in different parts of the city were as follows:. An additional area within the Polish command structure was formed by the units of the Directorate of Sabotage and Diversion or Kedyw , an elite formation that was to guard the headquarters and was to be used as an "armed ambulance", thrown into the battle in the most endangered areas.

The Uprising reached its apogee on 4 August when the Home Army soldiers managed to establish front lines in the westernmost boroughs of Wola and Ochota. However, it was also the moment at which the German army stopped its retreat westwards and began receiving reinforcements. On the same day SS General Erich von dem Bach was appointed commander of all the forces employed against the Uprising. Among the reinforcing units were forces under the command of Heinz Reinefarth.

Their advance was halted, but the regiments began carrying out Heinrich Himmler 's orders: The policy was designed to crush the Poles' will to fight and put the uprising to an end without having to commit to heavy city fighting. This did not succeed. Until mid-September, the Germans shot all captured resistance fighters on the spot, but from the end of September, some of the captured Polish soldiers were treated as POWs. This is the fiercest of our battles since the start of the war.

It compares to the street battles of Stalingrad. Despite the loss of Wola, the Polish resistance strengthened. On 7 August German forces were strengthened by the arrival of tanks using civilians as human shields. However, by then the net of barricades, street fortifications, and tank obstacles were already well-prepared; both sides reached a stalemate, with heavy house-to-house fighting.

Between 9 and 18 August pitched battles raged around the Old Town and nearby Bankowy Square, with successful attacks by the Germans and counter-attacks from the Poles. German tactics hinged on bombardment through the use of heavy artillery [80] and tactical bombers , against which the Poles were unable to effectively defend, as they lacked anti-aircraft artillery weapons. Even clearly marked hospitals were dive-bombed by Stukas. Although the Battle of Stalingrad had already shown the danger a city can pose to armies which fight within it and the importance of local support, the Warsaw Uprising was probably the first demonstration that in an urban terrain, a vastly under-equipped force supported by the civilian population can hold its own against better-equipped professional soldiers—though at the cost of considerable sacrifice on the part of the city's residents.

The Poles held the Old Town until a decision to withdraw was made at the end of August. On successive nights until 2 September, the defenders of the Old Town withdrew through the sewers, which were a major means of communication between different parts of the Uprising. Those that remained were either shot or transported to concentration camps like Mauthausen and Sachsenhausen once the Germans regained control.

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The Soviet army under the command of Konstantin Rokossovsky captured Praga and arrived on the east bank of the Vistula in mid-September. By 13 September, the Germans had destroyed the remaining bridges over the Vistula, signalling that they were abandoning all their positions east of the river. The artillery cover and air support provided by the Soviets was unable to effectively counter enemy machine-gun fire as the Poles crossed the river, and the landing troops sustained heavy losses. The limited landings by the 1st Polish Army represented the only external ground force which arrived to physically support the uprising; and even they were curtailed by the Soviet High Command.

The Germans intensified their attacks on the Home Army positions near the river to prevent any further landings, but were not able to make any significant advances for several days while Polish forces held those vital positions in preparation for a new expected wave of Soviet landings. Polish units from the eastern shore attempted several more landings, and from 15 to 23 September sustained heavy losses including the destruction of all their landing boats and most of their other river crossing equipment. Conditions that prevented the Germans from dislodging the resistance also acted to prevent the Poles from dislodging the Germans.

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Plans for a river crossing were suspended "for at least 4 months", since operations against the 9th Army's five panzer divisions were problematic at that point, and the commander of the 1st Polish Army, General Berling was relieved of his duties by his Soviet superiors. On the night of 19 September, after no further attempts from the other side of the river were made and the promised evacuation of wounded did not take place, Home Army soldiers and landed elements of the 1st Polish Army were forced to begin a retreat from their positions on the bank of the river.

The Poles were besieged in three areas of the city: In Warsaw had roughly 1,, inhabitants. Over a million were still living in the city at the start of the Uprising. In Polish-controlled territory, during the first weeks of the Uprising, people tried to recreate the normal day-to-day life of their free country.

Cultural life was vibrant, both among the soldiers and civilian population, with theatres, post offices, newspapers and similar activities. As the Uprising was supposed to be relieved by the Soviets in a matter of days, the Polish underground did not predict food shortages would be a problem. However, as the fighting dragged on, the inhabitants of the city faced hunger and starvation.

A major break-through took place on 6 August, when Polish units recaptured the Haberbusch i Schiele brewery complex at Ceglana Street. From that time on the citizens of Warsaw lived mostly on barley from the brewery's warehouses. Every day up to several thousand people organized into cargo teams reported to the brewery for bags of barley and then distributed them in the city centre. The barley was then ground in coffee grinders and boiled with water to form a so-called spit-soup Polish: Another serious problem for civilians and soldiers alike was a shortage of water.

In addition, the main water pumping station remained in German hands. On 21 September the Germans blew up the remaining pumping stations at Koszykowa Street and after that the public wells were the only source of potable water in the besieged city. Before the Uprising the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Home Army had set up a group of war correspondents.

Headed by Antoni Bohdziewicz , the group made three newsreels and over 30, meters of film tape documenting the struggles. Several previously underground newspapers started to be distributed openly. There were also several dozen newspapers, magazines, bulletins and weeklies published routinely by various organizations and military units. According to many historians, a major cause of the eventual failure of the uprising was the almost complete lack of outside support and the late arrival of that which did arrive.

The Polish government in London asked the British several times to send an allied mission to Poland. The only support operation which ran continuously for the duration of the Uprising were night supply drops by long-range planes of the RAF, other British Commonwealth air forces, and units of the Polish Air Force , which had to use distant airfields in Italy, reducing the amount of supplies they could carry.

The RAF made sorties and lost 34 aircraft. The effect of these airdrops was mostly psychological—they delivered too few supplies for the needs of the resistance, and many airdrops landed outside Polish-controlled territory. There was no difficulty in finding Warsaw. It was visible from kilometers away. The city was in flames but with so many huge fires burning, it was almost impossible to pick up the target marker flares. From 4 August the Western Allies began supporting the Uprising with airdrops of munitions and other supplies. Later on, at the insistence of the Polish government-in-exile [ citation needed ] , they were joined by the Liberators of 2 Wing — No.

The total weight of allied drops varies according to source tons, [] tons [] or tons [19] , over flights were made. The Soviet Union did not allow the Western Allies to use its airports for the airdrops [7] for several weeks, [] so the planes had to use bases in the United Kingdom and Italy which reduced their carrying weight and number of sorties. The Allies' specific request for the use of landing strips made on 20 August was denied by Stalin on 22 August.

American support was also limited. Roosevelt on 25 August and proposed sending planes in defiance of Stalin, to "see what happens". The planes dropped tons of supplies but only 20 were recovered by the resistance due to the wide area over which they were spread.

The aircraft landed at the Operation Frantic airbases in the Soviet Union, where they were rearmed and refueled, and the next day Bs and 61 Ps left the USSR to bomb the marshalling yard at Szolnok in Hungary on their way back to bases in Italy. Between 13 and 30 September Soviet aircraft commenced their own re-supply missions, dropping arms, medicines and food supplies. Initially these supplies were dropped in canisters without parachutes [] which led to damage and loss of the contents. The Soviet Air Forces flew re-supply sorties with small bi-plane Polikarpov Po-2 's, delivering a total of mm mortars, anti-tank rifles, sub-machine guns, rifles, carbines, 41 hand grenades, 37 mortar shells, over 3 mln.

No doubt Warsaw already hears the guns of the battle which is soon to bring her liberation The role of the Red Army during the Warsaw Uprising remains controversial and is still disputed by historians. This basic scenario of an uprising against the Germans, launched a few days before the arrival of Allied forces, played out successfully in a number of European capitals, such as Paris [] and Prague.

However, despite easy capture of area south-east of Warsaw barely 10 kilometres 6. At that time city outskirts were defended by the under-manned and under-equipped German 73rd Infantry Division which was destroyed many times on the Eastern Front and was yet-again being reconstituted. The Red Army was fighting intense battles further to the south of Warsaw, to seize and maintain bridgeheads over the Vistula river, and to the north of the city, to gain bridgeheads over the river Narew. The best German armoured divisions were fighting on those sectors. Despite the fact, both of these objectives had been mostly secured by September.

Yet the Soviet 47th Army did not move into Praga Warsaw's suburbs on the right bank of the Vistula, until 11 September when the Uprising was basically over. In three days the Soviets quickly gained control of the suburb, a few hundred meters from the main battle on the other side of the river, as the resistance by the German 73rd Division collapsed quickly. Had the Soviets done this in early August, the crossing of the river would have been easier, as the Poles then held considerable stretches of the riverfront.

The Poles were counting on the Soviet forces to cross to the left bank where the main battle of the uprising was occurring. Though Berling's communist 1st Polish Army did cross the river, their support from the Soviets was inadequate and the main Soviet force did not follow them. One of the reasons given for the collapse of the Uprising was the reluctance of the Soviet Red Army to help the Polish resistance. On 1 August, the day of Uprising, the Soviet advance was halted by a direct order from the Kremlin.

Also the destruction of the main Polish resistance forces by the Germans was of direct benefit to Soviet Union, since it significantly weakened any potential Polish opposition to planned and already started Soviet occupation. Halting the advance and taking Warsaw in January enabled the Soviets to say they "liberated" Warsaw. On 1 August , the underground Polish Home Army , being in contact with and loyal to the Polish government-in-exile in London, began offensive operations in Warsaw, in an attempt to free the city from the occupying German forces before the Red Army could secure the capital.

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