The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Warsaw Uprising (Aug-Oct, 1944)

Of the many acts of resistance to the savage Nazi occupation of Poland, the 1944 Warsaw Uprising was the biggest. Almost sixty years on, the heroic, yet ultimately tragic, events of the autumn of 1944 remain firmly lodged in the national memory, at once a piece of history whose interpretation remains controversial and a potent source of national self-definition.

The immediate circumstances of the Uprising were dramatic. With Nazi forces reeling under the impact of the determined push west launched by the Red Army in mid-1944, a German withdrawal from Warsaw began to seem a possibility. The Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army) or AK as they were commonly known, the largest of the Polish resistance forces (indeed, with over 400,000 soldiers, the largest resistance force anywhere in Europe) were thereby confronted by an agonizing dilemma. On one side, they were being strongly urged by the Allies to co-operate actively with advancing Soviet forces in driving back the Nazis. On the other, news of the treatment being meted out to AK units in areas of eastern Poland already liberated by the Red Army served to confirm the long-held suspicion that there was little, if any, room for the AK or its political backing – the Polish government-in-exile in London – in the Soviet scheme of things to come, a fact chillingly symbolized in news of the Soviet detention of AK units in the ex-Nazi concentration camp at Majdanek.

Throughout the second half of July, AK Commander Tadeusz Komorowski, known as Bór, hesitated over which course of action to take. With the arrival of the first Soviet tanks in the eastern suburbs of the city (Praga), the decision to launch a single-handed attack on the Germans was taken and on August 1, the main Warsaw AK corps of around 50,000 poorly armed troops sprang an assault on the city centre. For the first few days the element of surprise meant AK forces were able to capture large tracts of the city centre. By August 5, however, the tide was already beginning to turn against them. Supported by dive bombers and hastily drafted reinforcements, Nazi troops under the command of ruthless General von dem Bach-Zelewski began the task of clearing out the insurgents. Partisans and civilians alike were treated as legitimate targets for reprisals by the fearsome collection of SS and Wehrmacht units – including three battalions of half-starved Soviet POWs, an "anti-partisan" brigade made up of pardoned criminals and the notorious RONA Red Army deserters brigade – assembled for the task. The Nazi recapture of the Wola district, the first to be retaken on August 11, was followed by the massacre of over 8000 civilians. Even worse followed in Ochota, where over 40,000 civilians were murdered. Hospitals were burned to the ground with all their staff and patients; during the initial attack, women and children were tied to the front of German tanks to deter ambushes, and rows of civilians were marched in front of infantry units to ward off AK snipers.

With German troops and tanks systematically driving the beleaguered partisans into an ever diminishing pocket of the city centre, the decision was made to abandon the by now devastated Stare Miasto. On September 2, around 1500 of the surviving AK troops, along with over 500 other wounded, headed down into the city sewers through a single manhole near pl. Krasinski – an event imprinted firmly on the national consciousness as much thanks to Wajda's legendary film Kanal, a stirring 1950s rendition of the Uprising, as to its symbolic depiction in the contemporary Warsaw Uprising monument. Fighting continued for another month in the suburbs and pockets of the city centre until October 2, when General Bór and his troops finally surrendered to the Germans, 63 days after fighting had begun. Heavy AK casualties – around 20,000 dead – were overshadowed by the huge losses sustained by the city's civilian population, with over 225,000 killed during the fighting.

Warsaw - Late September, 1944

With the AK and eventually almost the entire population of Warsaw out of the way, Nazi demolition squads set about the task of fulfilling an enraged Hitler's order to wipe the city off the face of the map, dynamiting and razing building after building until the city centre had to all intents and purposes ceased to exist, as confirmed in the photos taken when the Soviets liberated Warsaw in January 1945.

Of the many controversial aspects of the Uprising, the most explosive, in Polish eyes at least, remains that of the Soviet role. Could the Red Army have intervened decisively to assist or save the Uprising from defeat? Throughout the postwar years, the official Soviet line combined the (arguably accurate) claim that the Uprising was a mistimed and strategically flawed diversion from the goal of driving the Germans west in 1944 with absurd ideological denigrations of the AK as reactionary, anti-Soviet nationalists whose actions were a betrayal of the anti-Nazi cause. Certainly Soviet action, or lack of it, during August 1944 was fertile ground for subsequent Polish misgivings about Stalin's real intentions. The Soviet tanks that had reached Praga, for example, sat idly by throughout September 1944 as the Germans pounded the city across the river. Equally significantly, on several occasions the Soviet authorities refused Allied access to Soviet airbases for airlifts of supplies to the beleaguered insurgents, and the secret telegram correspondence between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the time reveals a Stalin deeply scornful of the whole operation, arguing on one occasion that sooner or later "the truth about the handful of criminals who started the Warsaw disturbance to take over power, will become known to all".

The remnants of the Home Army Surrender

Crudely stated, a common Polish interpretation of all this was that Stalin had simply allowed the Germans to do what his future plans for Poland would have anyway necessitated – the systematic annihilation of the sections of Polish society that formed the core of the AK forces with their uncompromising commitment to a free, independent postwar Poland. With sentiments like these around, it's not surprising that the Warsaw Uprising has remained, if no longer a taboo subject, then certainly a continuing area of disagreement in Polish–Russian relations.

Tensions surfaced visibly during the solemn fiftieth anniversary commemorations of the start of the Uprising, held in the city throughout August 1994. In a move widely criticized in Poland, particularly among older sections of Polish society, President Walesa invited his Russian and German counterparts to participate at the opening ceremony held in Warsaw on August 1. While the German President Roman Herzog accepted the invitation (reportedly under the mistaken impression that the 1943 Ghetto Uprising was being commemorated) and made a speech asking Polish forgiveness for the country's treatment at the hands of the Nazis, Russian President Boris Yeltsin declined the invitation, sending a lower-level aide instead, giving rise to the wry popular quip that the Russians had accepted the invitation but decided to stay in Praga instead.

Warsaw Uprising Memorial

The Warsaw uprising against German occupation broke out on August 1, 1944. It was started by 23 thousand poorly armed soldiers of the Home Army of the Warsaw district under the command of General Antoni Chrusciel, code named "Monter." Other underground units and Warsaw citizens joined the insurgents. Asserting control, civilian and military structures under the command of the Polish government in London began functioning openly, organizing administration, medical, services and rescue squads. A massive inflow of volunteers swelled insurgent ranks to 50 thousand troops. What began as an enthusuastic and spontaneous outbreak of fighting became a 63-day heroic struggle for liberation of the city by the home army's own forces before the Red Army, whose units had already reached the suburb of the Praga district, entered the capital.

The most poignant of all the statues in Warsaw is that of the Little Soldier, reminding us that young boys and girls fought alongside their older brothers.

To quell the insurrection, German troop reinforcements soon increased the 16 thousand-man local garrison to 50 thousand army, SS and police units, including units notorious for their cruelty and atrocities. The supremacy of the German military equipment was overwhelming. Air Force, Panzers and artillery were used against the insurgents' rifles, pistols, grenades and petrol bombs. High millitary technology and brutality battled hope and unswerving will to fight the enemy.

The Warsaw uprising monument. Detail of insurgent unit.

Fighting bravely, the insurgents captured the centre of the city with the Old Town and the Vistula embankment, as well as several other districts of Warsaw, including Powisle, Zoliborz, parts of Wola, Ochota, Mokotow and a few sites in Praga, but they failed to seize the bridges and the Okecie Airport. They succeeded in capturing some German arms and ammunition and some groups of insurgents went to the woods near Warsaw to continue their battle from there. But contrary to all expectations, the Red Army remained in their positions on the outskirts of Warsaw and did not assist the insurgents.

The second group of figures, "Exodus," represents a withdrawl by the canals

After 3 days of fighting, German forces seized initiative. Launching massive attacks by tanks and from the air, they started destroying insurgents' strongholds. They also began a program of mass extermination aimed at Warsaw's civilian population. Soon, the city was burning and the strength of the insurgent-held areas was weaker and weaker.

On September 14, the 1st Polish army, which formed part of the Red Army, entered the Praga distirict of Eastern Warsaw, its two battalions joined the insurgents and fought by thier side in the Czerniakow area, but attempts to seize bridgeheads in the Powisle and Zoliborz districts failed.

Lacking food and ammunition and weaking by the Red Army's failure to cooperate, the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army, General "Bor" Tadeusz Komorowski, surrendered on October 2, 1944. The insurgents became prisoners of war and the population of Warsaw was deported, some to labor and concentration camps. The deserted city was looted, destroyed and burned, and the Old Town, with its beautiful architecture was razed.

More than 40 thousand Polish insurgents and about 180 thousand civilians were killed or wounded. A large number of allied pilots flying air-drop missions were also killed. On the German side, an estimated 25 thousand troops were killed, wounded or missing in action.

The Warsaw uprising monument was unveiled on Krasinski Square, a site of fierce fighting, on August 1, 1989. It was designed by Professor Wincenty Kucma and architect Jacek Budyn and erected with donated funds. It consists of two groups of sculptures, a commemorative wall and an insurgent center. One group of sculptures depicts an attack by an insurgent unit and the other an "Exodus," and withdrawl by canals. The original entrance to the canal is marked by a commemorative plaque.

The monument is maintained by the Association of Warsaw Insurgents.

Additional Sources:

http://www.humboldt.edu
http://wings.buffalo.edu
http://www.polandinexile.com
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu
http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu
http://www.biega.com
http://travel.yahoo.com
http://panzer_web.tripod.com
http://www.allempires.com

The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 commenced on August 1. It was on that date that the Polish underground, the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), aware that the Soviet Army had reached the eastern bank of the Vistula River, sought to liberate Warsaw. Because the last thing the Soviets wanted to deal with was an armed and victorious Polish non-communist military force, they halted their offensive. They remained on the opposite bank of the river but provided no assistance or aid to the Uprising. Instead they gave the Germans free reign to suppress it. It is estimated that during the ensuing 63 days, 250,000 perished in the ruins of Warsaw. Eventually, the Home Army surrendered to the Germans. After the Germans forced all the surviving civilian population to also leave the city, Hitler ordered that any buildings left standing be dynamited. In the end, 98% of buildings in Warsaw were destroyed

Captured German prisoners of war being marched off under Home Army guard

Many Poles blame the failure of the uprising on the Russians. After the Tehran Conference Russo-Polish relations were believed to be improved. The AK on the eve of the uprising was aware that the Soviet Army was approaching Warsaw. They expected them to enter anywhere between August 1st and August 4th. Unfortunately, the Soviets did not enter Warsaw until January 1945, five months later.

Adults and children building a barricade at the corner of Dluga and Klinski Streets

Many Polish historians say that the Russians purposely waited until the AK was suppressed so that they would be able to enter and take Warsaw for themselves. While the Soviets probably did want to take Warsaw, this was a secondary objective. Their first objective was to drive the Germans as far west as possible and occupy as much Polish and German territory as they could in a short period of time. Therefore, it was an inconvenience for them to stop at the outskirts of Warsaw to wait for three months if they were physically able to advance.

The Russians claim that they were stopped by the German Army. By the time the Russians reached Warsaw the Germans had sent four extra tank divisions to stop the advancing Russians. General Heinz Guderian stated, "We Germans had the impression that it was our defenses that halted the enemy rather than a Russian desire to sabotage the Warsaw Uprising." It was the perception of the Russians that a military halt would allow the United States and England to seize the bulk of German territory. The Soviet gains would then depend upon the location of the Russian Army at the end of the war.

The Warsaw Uprising fell short of its goal. But the blame can not be focused on any one nation or group of people. The blame falls on everyone. Roosevelt could have taken more time and influence to negotiate the future boundaries of Poland instead of depending on the UN to settle the Polish question. The English, who would not take a stand on most issues without the approval of the United States, could have taken a firmer stand against Russian Diplomacy. The Polish government in London also failed to provide the AK with pertinent information. Because the main concern was weapons, ammunition and possibly ground support the Soviets would not have provided these due to their objective to take Warsaw. They opposed the Polish government in exile and they wanted to occupy as much territory as possible. They could not have accomplished this if they collaborated with the AK It was foolish to think that the Soviets would have provided the Poles with guns and ammunition which later could have been used against them. This is one reason why the Russians failed to recognize the AK as a combatant group. Independent national interest ultimately led to the failure of the Warsaw Uprising.

Moreover, I believe the Uprising was worthwhile, no matter that it failed. Unfortunately many people died during this rising, but many people would have died without the uprising. Some may ask, why not wait for the Soviets to liberate Poland? The answer is simple. Russia invaded Poland in 1939. They were hostile to them throughout the war killing tens of thousands of Polish officers. Only when Germany attacked Russia in 1941 did the Soviets look at Poland as an ally. After Germany was no longer a threat to Russia, Stalin once again began eliminating Polish resistance. The question should be why was the Polish government so naive as to depend so much on Stalin's Army? Under Soviet liberation Poland was allowed to keep its name but its soul was stolen from them.

The Uprising was worthwhile because it established Polish identity in a time when Poland was practically wiped off the map. Peaceful negotiations obviously did not accomplish the desired results, Resistance was the only option opened to the Poles. They wanted independence as they have always wanted it in the past and no one was able to give it to them or even help them achieve it. Poland gained its independence after World War I through the Treaty of Versaille. After World War 11, Poland was not afforded this luxury. I believe the resistance movement and every other act of independence throughout history, on the part of the Polish nation is an example that Poland exists and will always exist in body, mind and spirit. And it is in my opinion that these acts of resistance led to the liberation of Poland in the 1980's.

Martin Stankiewicz

Today's classic warship, USS Virginia (BB-13)

Virginia class battleship
Displacement. 14,980 t.
Length. 441'3"
Beam. 76'2 1/2"
Draft. 23'9"
Speed. 19.01 k.
Complement. 916
Armament. 4 12", 8 8", 12 6", 12 6", 24 1-pdrs., 4 .30-cal. Colt mg. ; 4 21 " tt.

The USS Virginia (Battleship No. 13) was laid down on 21 May 1902 at Newport News, Va., by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co.; launched on 6 April 1904; sponsored by Miss Gay Montague, daughter of the Governor of Virginia; and com missioned on 7 May 1906, Capt. Seaton Schroeder in command. After fitting out, Virginia conducted her "shaking down" cruise in Lynnhaven Bay, Va., off Newport, R.I., and off Long Island, N.Y. before she put into Bradford, R.I., for coal on 9 August. After running trials for the standardization of her screws off Rockland, Maine, the battleship maneuvered in Long Island Sound before anchoring off President Theodore Roosevelt's home, Oyster Bay, Long Island, from 2 to 4 September, for a Presidential review.

Virginia then continued her shakedown cruise before she coaled again at Bradford. Meanwhile, events were occurring in the Caribbean that would alter the new battleship's employment. On the island of Cuba, in August of 1906, a revolution had broken out against the government of President T. Estrada Palma. The disaffection, which had started in Pinar del Rio province, grew in the early autumn to the point where President Palma had no recourse but to appeal to the United states for intervention. By mid-September, it had become apparent that the small Cuban constabulary (8,000 rural guards) was unable to protect foreign interests, and intervention would be necessary. Accordingly, Virginia departed Newport on 15 September 1906, bound for Cuba, and reached Havana on the 21st, ready to protect the city from attack if necessary. The battleship remained at Havana until 18 October, when she sailed for Sewall's Point, Va.

Virginia disembarked General Frederick Funston at Norfolk upon her arrival there and coaled before heading north to Tompkinsville to await further orders. She shifted soon thereafter to the New York Navy Yard where she was coaled and drydocked to have her hull bottom painted before undergoing repairs and alterations at the Norfolk Navy Yard from 3 November 1906 to 18 February 1907. After installation of fire control apparatus at the New York Navy Yard between 19 February and 23 March, the battleship sailed once more for Cuban waters, joining the fleet at Guantanamo Bay on 28 March.

Virginia fired target practices in Cuban waters before she sailed for Hampton Roads on 10 April to participate in the Jamestown Tricentennial Exposition festivities. She remained in Hampton Roads for a month, from 15 April to 15 May, before she underwent repairs at the Norfolk Navy Yard into early June. Subsequently reviewed in Hampton Roads by President Theodore Roosevelt between 7 and 13 June, Virginia shifted northward for target practices on the target grounds of Cape Cod Bay, evolutions that lasted from mid-June to mid-July. She later cruised with her division to Newport; the North River, New York City; and to Provincetown, Mass., before conducting day and night battle practice in Cape Cod Bay.

Returning southward early that autumn, Virginia underwent two months of repairs and alterations at the Norfolk Navy, Yard, from 24 September to 24 November, before undergoing further repairs at the New York Navy Yard later in November. She subsequ ntly shifted southward again, reaching Hampton Roads on 6 December.

Virginia spent the next 10 days preparing for a feat never before attempted, an around-the-world cruise by the battleships of the Atlantic Fleet. The voyage, regarded by President Roosevelt as a dramatic gesture to the Japanese, who had only recently emerged on the world stage as a power to be reckoned with, proved to be a great success, with the ships performing so well as to confound the doomsayers who had predicted a fiasco.

The cruise began eight days before Christmas of 1907, and ended on Washington's Birthday, 22 February 1909. During the course of the voyage, the ships called at ports along both coasts of South America; on the west coast of the United States; at Hawaii; in the Philippines; Japan; China; and in Ceylon. Virginia's division also visited Smyrna, Turkey, via Beirut, during the Mediterranean leg of the cruise. Both upon departure and upon arrival, the fleet was reviewed at Hampton Roads by President Roosevelt, whose "big stick" diplomacy and flair for the dramatic had been practically personified by the cruise of the "Great White Fleet.

Following that momentous circumnavigation, Virginia underwent four months of voyage repairs and alterations at the Norfolk Navy Yard from 26 February to 26 June 1909. She spent the next year and three months operating off the eastern seaboard of the United States, ranging from the southern drill grounds, off the Virginia capes, to Newport, R.I. During that time, she conducted one brief cruise with members of the Naval Militia embarked and visited Rockport and Provincetown, Mass. For the better part of that time, she conducted battle practices with the fleet- evolutions only broken by brief periods of yard work at Norfolk and Boston.

Virginia visited Brest, France, and Gravesend, England, from 15 November to 7 December and from 8 to 29 December 1909, respectively, before she, as part of the 4th Division, Atlantic Fleet-joined the Atlantic fleet in Guantanamo Bay for drills and exercises. She subsequently operated in Cuban waters for two months, from 13 January to 13 March 1910 before she returned north for battle practices on the southern drill grounds.

Virginia departed Hampton Roads on 11 April, in company with Georgia (BB-15), and reached the Boston Navy Yard two days later. She underwent repairs there until 24 May before putting to sea for Provincetown. Over the next five days, Virginia operated with the collier Vestal, testing a "coaling-at-sea apparatus" off Provincetown and at Stellwagen's Bank, before she conducted torpedo practices. The battleship returned to the Boston Navy Yard on 18 June.

Virginia maintained her routine of operations off the eastern seaboard, occasionally ranging into Cuban waters for regularly scheduled fleet evolutions in tactics and gunnery-into 1913, a routine largely uninterrupted. In 1913, however, unrest in Mexico caused the frequent dispatch of American men-of-war to those waters. Virginia became one of those ships in mid-February, when she reached Tampico on the 15th of that month; she remained there until 2 March, when she shifted to Vera Cruz for co al. She returned to Tampico on 5 March and remained there for 10 days.

After another stint of operations off the eastern seaboard, ranging from the Virginia capes to Newport, a period of maneuvers and exercises varied by a visit to New York at the end of May 1913 for the dedication of the memorial to the battleship Maine (sunk in Havana Harbor in February 1898) and one to Boston in mid-June for Flag Day and Bunker Hill exercises, Virginia returned to Mexican waters in November. She reached Vera Cruz on 4 November and remained in port until the 30th, when she shifted to Tampico. She observed conditions in those ports and operated off the Mexican coast into January of 1914.

Returning to Cuban waters for exercises and maneuvers with the fleet, Virginia sailed for the Virginia capes in mid-March 1914. She maneuvered with the fleet off Cape Henry and in Lynnhaven Roads before she conducted gunnery drills at the wreck of San Marcos (ex-Texas) in Tangier Sound, Chesapeake Bay. Virginia subsequently held experimental gunnery firings on the southern drill grounds before she spent much of April drydocked at Boston.

The American occupation of Vera Cruz in April 1914 resulted in the sizable deployment of American men-of-war to that port that lasted into the autumn. Virginia reached Vera Cruz on 1 May and operated with the fleet out of that port into early Octob er, a period of time broken by target practice in Guantanamo Bay between 18 September and 3 October.

While war raged in Europe, Virginia continued her operations off the eastern seaboard of the United States, ranging from the southern drill grounds to the coast of New England and occasionally steaming to Cuban waters for winter maneuvers. She was placed in reserve on 20 March 1916, at the Boston Navy Yard, and was undergoing an extensive overhaul in the spring of 1917 when the United States declared war on Germany.

On the day America entered World War I, the United States government took steps to take over all interned German merchant vessels then in American ports. As part of that move, Virginia sent boarding parties to seize the German passenger and cargo vessels Amerika, Cincinnati, Wittekind, Koln, and Ockenfels on 6 April 1917.

Completing her overhaul at Boston on 27 August, Virginia sailed for Port Jefferson, N.Y., three days later, to join the 3d Division, Battleship Force, Atlantic Fleet. Over the ensuing 12 months, the battleship served as a gunnery training ship out of Port Jefferson and Norfolk; service interrupted briefly in early December 1917, when she became temporary flagship for Rear Admiral John A. Hoogewerff, Commander, Battleship Division 1. She subsequently became flagship for the 3d Division commander, Rear Admiral Thomas Snowden.

Overhauled at the Boston Navy Yard in the autumn of 1918, Virginia spent the remainder of hostilities engaged in convoy escort duties, taking convoys well over half-way across the Atlantic. She departed New York on 14 October 1918 on her first such mission, covering a convoy that had some 12,176 men embarked. After escorting those ships to longitude 22 degrees west, she put about and headed for home.

That proved to be her only such wartime mission, however, because the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, the day before Virginia set out with a France-bound convoy, her second escort run into the mid-Atlantic. After leaving that convoy at longitude 34 degrees west, Virginia put about and headed for Hampton Roads.

The cessation of hostilities meant the return of the many troops that had been engaged in fighting the enemy overseas. Similar in mission to the "Magic Carpet" operation that followed the end of World War II, a massive troop-lift, bringing the "doughboys" back from "over there," commenced soon after World War I ended.

With additional messing and berthing facilities installed to permit her use as a troopship, Virginia departed Norfolk eight days before Christmas of 1918. Over the ensuing months, she conducted five round-trip voyages to Brest, France, and back. Reaching Boston on Independence Day 1919, ending her last troop lift, Virginia ended her transport service, having brought some 6,037 men back from France.

Virginia remained at the Boston Navy Yard, inactive, until decommissioned there on 13 August 1920. Struck from the Navy list and placed on the sale list on 12 July 1922, the battleship, reclassified prior to her inactivation to BB-13 on 17 July 1920, was subsequently taken off the sale list and transferred to the War Department on 6 August 1923 for use as a bombing target.

Virginia and her sistership New Jersey were taken to a point three miles off the Diamond Shoals lightship, off Cape Hatteras, N.C., and anchored there on 5 September 1923. The "attacks" made by Army Air Service Martin bombers began shortly b efore 0900. On the third attack, seven Martins flying at 3,000 feet, each dropped two 1,100-pound bombs on Virginia, only one of them hit. That single bomb, however, "completely demolished the ship as such." An observer later wrote: "Both masts, the bridge; all three smokestacks, and the upperworks disappeared with the explosion and there remained, after the smoke cleared away, nothing but the bare hull, decks blown off, and covered with a mass of tangled debris from stem to stern consisting of stacks, ventilators, cage masts, and bridges."

Within one-half-hour of the cataclysmic blast that wrecked the ship, her battered hulk sank beneath the waves. Her sistership ultimately joined her shortly thereafter. Virginia's end, and New Jersey's, provided far-sighted naval officers with a dramatic demonstration of air power and impressed upon them the "urgent need of developing naval aviation with the fleet." As such, the service performed by the old pre-dreadnought may have been her most valuable.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.