Warsaw Uprising Commemoration

.

.
Today (August 1st) marks the anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Uprising. On this date sixty-one years ago, the Polish underground, the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), aware that the Soviet Army had reached the eastern bank of the River Vistula, sought to "liberate" their capital city in the name of the nation. It was the first example to the world of full-scale urban guerrilla warfare.

The Polish Home Army at that time was Europe’s largest resistance movement. Its core consisted of professional army officers, but many of the fighters were young volunteers, women and even children.

The Germans knew in advance that the uprising was going to be launched and were well prepared for it. They used every method of mass terror and inhuman methods to suppress it. The task of crushing the uprising was given to SS General Erich von dem Bach - the Nazis' chief of "Anti-Bandit operations". His troops - a mixed force of German SS troops, Russians, Cossacks, Azeris and Ukrainians, backed by German regular army units - committed countless atrocities - killing up to 40,000 civilians in the first two days alone.

The Germans relied heavily on aerial bombardment and long-range artillery, which produced mountains of rubble - an ideal environment for urban guerrilla warfare. Soon exasperated, German commanders were drawing comparisons with the Battle of Stalingrad, two years earlier. Only this time, there would be no rescuing army.

Stalin, meanwhile, ordered his Soviet forces to wait on the opposite bank of the Vistula - a kilometre from the fighting - until the Germans had done their work. Because the last thing the Soviets wanted was to have to deal with an armed and victorious Polish non-communist military force. They remained on the opposite bank of the river providing no assistance or aid to the Uprising. Instead, they gave the Germans free reign to suppress it.

The insurgents were desperate for supplies, and constant pleas to the allies for help were broadcast publicly from Warsaw. Churchill, to his credit, tried to arrange some flights of food and supplies. But Stalin refused (except on one occasion in mid September) to allow allied planes to refuel on airfields under his control. Churchill cabled Roosevelt of August 25 to press him to get Stalin to change his mind. But the American president replied coldly:
“I do not consider it advantageous to the long-range general war prospect for me to join with you in the proposed message to Uncle Joe”.
This rendered the supplying of Warsaw from the air almost impossible and the British, despite their promises, made only a few air drops, most of which fell into the hands of the Germans.

The Polish Parachute Brigade, then stationed in Scotland, asked to be dropped into Warsaw to aid their compatriots. But the British authorities refused and sent them on the ill-fated Arnhem expedition instead.

One of the last desperate broadcasts from Warsaw gives an indication of the feelings of betrayal and abandonment felt by the insurgents:
“This is the stark truth: we are treated worse by the allies than the allies treated Hitler’s satellites. Worse than Italy, Rumania, Finland. May God who is just pass judgement on the terrible injustices suffered by the Polish nation, and punish accordingly all those who are guilty…..”

During the uprising, a quarter of a million people perished in the ruins of Poland’s capital. After 63 days of fighting, the Home Army had no choice but to negotiate a surrender. The city’s surviving civilian inhabitants were despatched to Nazi concentration and forced labour camps.

In revenge for the Uprising, Hitler gave orders that Warsaw was to be erased forever from the map of Europe. The city was systematically dynamited, house-by-house and street-by-street until nothing remained but rubble. 98% of the buildings were destroyed.

Nearly six months after the start of the uprising, on 17 January 1945, the Soviet army finally entered the capital and “liberated” an eerie, almost-deserted wasteland.

The Warsaw Uprising still remains controversial even today. Was it an act of political irresponsibility? Or was it a powerful statement that moral imperatives are not measured by temporal success? For the Soviets and their Communist protégés in Poland, the Home Army was a demon that had to be exorcised; and after the war, its former officers were hunted down, killed or imprisoned by the new Communist Polish Government

The decision to launch the Uprising was not undertaken lightly, and though the struggle was unequal, it did not look hopeless at the time. The Poles were fighting against the order later imposed upon them by the Allies at Yalta in February 1945. They were against totalitarianism: for democracy, for independence and for the right of self-determination. It was a struggle against extermination by one enemy and against domination by Soviet imperialism.

The Poles fought "for your freedom and ours" on many fronts, but freedom came only to the West. Poland was abandoned by her western allies had to wait almost fifty years for the light of freedom to dawn again. But once it did, it was the nation of the Poles that spearheaded the struggle for democracy and self-determination among the other occupied countries of the former Soviet empire.