[Destro]

The Warsaw Uprising broke out at 5 p.m. on August 1, 1944 at the order of the Home Army Headquarters. The Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK) was an underground organisation operating in the German-occupied Poland during World War II. It was a legal successor to the Polish Army, representing at the same time part of the Polish Armed Forces in the country. The Home Army's Commander-in-Chief was General Tadeusz Komorowski, pseudo Bór; the Commander of the Army's Warsaw District was Colonel, then General Antoni Chruœciel, pseudo Monter. The military goal of the uprising was to liberate German-occupied Warsaw with the Army's own forces and to save the city from destruction, and the inhabitants from mass extermination, at the moment of the front line passing through the capital. The political goal was to create conditions for the take-over of power in Warsaw by the legal authorities of the Polish Republic represented by the London-based government and president. The issue was very important given that the Soviet Union, whose army was, in the course of fighting with German forces, seizing Polish territory, did not recognise the London-based government, nor did it maintain any diplomatic relations with the Polish authorities after the Katyñ crimes had been disclosed by the Germans. Moreover, wishing to bring the liberated Poland under its influence, the Soviet Union supported the establishment of pro-Moscow Polish authorities, the Polish Committee of National Liberation. The Soviet Union also used various forms of repression, and even military actions, to crush the London-subordinated military troops and Polish local administration coming out the underground in the liberated parts of the country. ... Up to September 10, 1944, the Soviet armies, which were massed barely a few kilometres outside Warsaw, remained completely impassive, giving the Luftwaffe freedom of the skies to destroy the city with impunity. Soviet propaganda described the uprising as a fracas obstructing Red Army operations. Between September 3 and 6, the Germans pushed the insurgents out of Powisle, and the struggle for Czerniaków commenced on September 12. It was only on September 10 that the Russians began to move into action against the Germans in the Warsaw region. Some supplies were air dropped and Soviet fighter planes began to chase German bombers from the skies above Warsaw. ... This persuaded the Home Army leadership to discontinue the initiated capitulation negotiations. In the prevailing circumstances, the half-hearted Soviet aid to the Uprising helped to extend the struggle which was only weakening both the Germans and the Poles to Soviet advantage. In the period September 13 to 15, the Soviet armies and detachments of the 1st Polish Army subordinated to the Soviets, pushed the Germans out of the right bank of the city. After a long period of waiting for Soviet acquiescence, an air drop operation mounted by 107 American Flying Fortresses which then landed in the Ukraine, took place on September 18. Between September 16 and 19, 1st Polish Army detachments made landings in several points of left bank Warsaw but due to inadequate Russian support, these bridgeheads were unsustainable.

[Grzegorz 246]

How does it prove that I am wrong and you are right ?