Warsaw Uprising: “… so that tomorrow the Germans will no longer exist”

It became clear that Germany would lose the world war it had unleashed after the devastating defeat at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942/43. The formation of the Second Front through the landing of the Western Allies in Normandy on June 6, 1944 and the advance of the Red Army brought Hitler’s Germany into increasing difficulties. On July 22, 1944, the Communist-dominated Polish Committee of National Liberation was formed on already liberated Polish territory near the city of Lublin. The Lublin Committee began to set up its own Polish administration and formed the Soviet-backed alternative to the bourgeois Polish government in exile in London.

In Warsaw, preparations were already underway for an uprising that turned out to be a desperate attempt to liberate the capital using its own resources. The Polish government in exile under the leadership of Stanisław Mikołajczyk wanted to use its underground army, the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), to welcome the Red Army approaching Warsaw as host and at the same time demonstrate its government’s claim to power in post-war Poland.

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Mikołajczyk had not given up on resuming diplomatic relations between the government in exile and the Soviet Union. These were canceled by Stalin on April 25, 1943, when Poland demanded an explanation for the mass graves of their officers discovered in the Katyń forest on April 13, 1943. The USA and Great Britain, worried by the Polish-Soviet conflict, did not want to endanger the anti-Hitler coalition and held back. Stalin already viewed Poland as a future Soviet sphere of influence. In a directive in July 1944 he ordered the disarmament of the Home Army in eastern Poland and then extended the order to the entire country.

The Warsaw Uprising began on August 1, 1944 at 5 p.m. under the command of Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski. The vote on this was close. In a secret meeting of local representatives of the government-in-exile with representatives of political parties and the leadership of the Home Army, a majority of one vote voted in favor of the uprising. The decisive factor was the announcement that the first Soviet tanks had reached suburbs in the east of the Polish capital. In addition, the German occupiers in Warsaw had begun evacuating their authorities and military depots. However, this was then stopped on orders from Berlin and the Wehrmacht was ordered to hold the Vistula line at all costs.

After five years of illegality, the fascist occupiers should finally be defeated. Despite fascist terror, the Polish state continued to exist underground, with its own education system and jurisdiction. On February 1, 1944, the underground movement succeeded in liquidating the notorious executioner of Warsaw, the SS and police leader Franz Kutschera. The partisan struggle was now to be followed by open combat until liberation. On August 1, 1944, 14-year-old Wanda Przybylska wrote euphorically in her diary: “The time has come! I am sitting on the balcony. It’s half past three and the uprising is supposed to start in 30 minutes. Yes, so that tomorrow there will be no more Germans. This morning the Bolsheviks were already in Warsaw, in Praga. In reality, it is only the vanguard. They pushed the Germans back.« Wanda was not to survive the uprising; on September 14th she fell to a German bullet.

The Warsaw Uprising was an extremely costly battle for Poland. The occupiers retained the upper hand. There were many small skirmishes. The old town and the center were fiercely fought over, and the inadequately armed insurgents were unable to conquer the Vistula bridges. The attempt of the 1st Polish Army, which fought alongside the Red Army, to come to the aid of its compatriots failed. On September 9th the Soviet Air Force intervened for the first time. Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky occupied Praga, the eastern district of Warsaw. Only the Vistula separated the Red Army and the insurgents. US pilots dropped containers containing equipment for the insurgents over Warsaw; 20 percent of the dropped cargo ended up in the hands of the Polish fighters. However, on October 2nd, the Home Army had to capitulate to German superiority.

The results were shocking: 15,000 insurgents were taken prisoner by the Germans, around 18,000 people were killed or missing, 25,000 were wounded, 100,000 civilians died, and survivors were deported to Germany for forced labor. Hitler gave the order to raze the Polish capital to the ground. When the Red Army liberated Warsaw on January 17, 1945, the city was a field of rubble and largely depopulated.

Our author is a member of the Speakers’ Council of the Historical Commission of the Left Party.