by George Bruce
The 13th of August started with heavy shelling of the Old Town from the armoured trains in Gdansk station, as well as from artillery in the near-by Citadel, and from Praga, across the river. Mortar bombs were showered on the Stawki and Krasinski Gardens area. In the telephone station on Tlomackie Street the actual German orders to attack were heard. At 10 o’clock the Germans mounted their onslaught on the Old Town from Gdansk station and Stawki Street in the north, from the Ghetto in the west and the area of the Town Hall in the south.
Heavy mortar fire from all directions now drove the Poles from barricades and strongpoints. The Stawki warehouses were burnt out and the German advance was only halted further south at the edge of the Mura-now defences. Close-quarters infantry actions were fought here from midday. Salvoes of mortar fire which hit the Town Hall knocked down the tower, but despite very heavy casualties the Poles held on grimly. Several German tanks, an armoured car and four field-guns were destroyed.
In the evening the Poles suffered their first experience of a German booby trap. A light tank began to shell the barricades on Podwale Street. When it was attacked by boys from the Gustav Battalion the crew escaped and left the vehicle. A Polish flag was tied to it, everyone crowded round and to loud cheers it was driven behind the barricades near the Krasinski Palace.
Hearing the cheering in the square down below, Komorowski looked out of the window and with much pleasure saw the tank with its Polish flag. Suddenly a sheet of flame burst from it, there was a violent explosion and the blast threw him across the room amid a shower of glass and rubble. When he recovered after nearly a minute, he got up and staggered to the hole in the wall which had been the window.
Amid a cloud of dust was the tank, torn in pieces. Bodies and human limbs were scattered on roads, pavements and rooftops. Nearly a hundred people were found to have been killed and one hundred and fifty wounded; two houses were destroyed and part of the GHQ severely damaged. The tank had been packed with high explosive and detonated by a clockwork mechanism. Komorowski was mildly concussed and afflicted with acute sinus pain for some weeks afterwards.
At the same time, the attack went on without interruption and by the evening of 13 August the Polish defence outposts of both Stawki and Leszno had been lost. The Old Town was now completely surrounded, at the mercy of ceaseless bombardment. ‘The enemy continued attacking the Old Town area with the aid of powerful guns,’ the Home Army communiqué for that day reported. ‘Stawki, which is in enemy hands is ablaze… The enemy are using salvo repeater mortars and Goliath tanks widely. Attacks start just after a heavy rain of fire. Great losses in men. The enemy is losing many tanks and much artillery equipment…’
The Old Town was now besieged. Help was urgently needed.
Chapter Thirteen: Stalin changes his mind
Komorowski sent desperate messages to Home Army commanders throughout Poland ordering them to increase fighting the Germans to the limit. And to commanders in sectors within marching distance of Warsaw he dispatched on 13 August the following special order:
The battle in Warsaw is being prolonged. It is being fought against great enemy odds. The situation demands an immediate march on the capital. I order all the disposable well-armed units to be directed immediately towards the capital in order to fight the enemy on the outskirts and in the suburbs of the city and to enter the battle raging in the town.[231]
Warsaw could yet be saved if the commanders of the thousands of armed men in the regions liberated by the Soviets could reach the city. Home Army commanders were quick to obey, but the ideological split between the Soviets and the London Polish Government obstructed the plan. Major Zegota, for example, commanding the 37th Infantry Division which had fought in Volhynia, Eastern Poland, under Soviet tactical command and still operated under its orders, sought authority from the Russian command to go at once to Warsaw’s relief.
It was agreed that Zegota should take his division to the front facing the city, but instead his officers and men were ambushed, surrounded and disarmed by Soviet units. They were then directed to a new point of assembly, but when marching through a forest Zegota ordered his men to disperse.
Various other Home Army formations were stopped, the officers arrested and the troops forcibly mobilized into the Communist Polish forces. Soviet determination that all Polish men of age should be enlisted into the People’s Army to take part in the battles to encircle Warsaw killed the plan. Evidence for the part the Soviets played to prevent these troops infiltrating through the lines is contained in an order the 16th Soviet Infantry Regiment issued on 24 August. Quoting Komorowski’s appeal for aid and terming him the ‘commander of the Polish Nationalist Army’ supported by the ‘Polish Émigré Government’, it ordered that infiltration of Home Army units towards Warsaw must be stopped at all costs; and that arms, food and equipment should be seized. Home Army units were to be disarmed and marched to mobilization centres for transfer to the People’s Army.[232]
Meanwhile General von dem Bach had received more reinforcements. By 13 August what was called Korpsgruppe von dem Bach consisted of 25,700 troops, with no less than twenty-six tanks, thirty mobile guns, thirty-eight field-guns, three batteries of heavy artillery, six heavy mortars, two or three hundred flame-throwers, two armoured trains with heavy guns, an unknown number of Goliaths and the cooperation of 9th Army artillery and aircraft. As a further advantage, his command[233] was later transferred from Himmler to General von Vormann’s 9th Army.
Additional reinforcements continued to arrive and four thousand two hundred infantry with armoured cars were deployed to seal off Warsaw from troops in the surrounding forests.
On 13 August, having recently occupied the water supply station just north of Ochota the Germans cut off the city’s main supply, but despite repeated shelling and enemy attacks the Poles still held the power station on the Vistula embankment at Powisle.
In the Old Town the situation worsened. Shelling of the outlying defences, Muranow and Tlomackie, on 14 August, started numerous new fires. The dry old carved oak beams and the ancient buildings blazed like straw now there was no water to fight the fires. At 10 o’clock German infantry, attacking from Leszno Street through Tlomackie, overcame a barricade half demolished by the shelling, and stormed the street and the telephone exchange, where fighting with grenades was raging. But later the exchange, the near-by streets and others in the north which had fallen were retaken by costly counter-attacks.[234]
The Poles also launched night assault platoons across the Vistula to try to destroy the German guns, but they were seen in the reflected light of the numerous searchlights pin-pointing RAF aircraft on an arms-dropping mission and driven back.
Early on 15 August, the seventh day of the Old Town offensives, German attacks, preceded by heavy shelling were again launched between Krasinski Gardens and the Town Hall, Polish possession of which prevented enemy use of the Theatre Place route to the Kierbedz Bridge. Fires swept unhindered through this sector. The Krasinski Palace was razed. Mostowski Palace, taken during the day by the Germans, was retaken overnight after a long grenade battle inside. Captain Lukasiewicz, mournfully inspecting the damage within this historic place in the early hours, was shot dead by a German patrol wearing red-and-white Polish armbands which had crept in behind the lines.
By about 12 August, when the Germans had cut the Warsaw defence into three different sectors and were mounting their all-out attack on the Old Town the impression that the Russians had deliberately stayed their hand within sight of Warsaw was gaining ground among the Allies, thanks largely to the efforts of the London Polish Government. But first signs of a hardening in the Soviet attitude came in a Moscow communiqué. On 12 August Tass referred to hints in the foreign press based on Polish Government information that ‘those who rose up in Warsaw were allegedly in contact with the Soviet Command, that the latter did not render the necessary assistance.’ It went on:
Tass is authorized to declare these statements and hints in the foreign press either the re
sult of a misunderstanding, or else the manifestation of slander against the Soviet Command.
It is known to Tass that on the side of the Polish London circles who are responsible for what is happening in Warsaw, no attempt was made to inform beforehand the Soviet Military Command, or to coordinate with the Soviet Command any kind of action in Warsaw. In view of this, the responsibility for all that is taking place in Warsaw falls exclusively on the Polish émigré circles in London.[235]
On the same day Mr Churchill sent on to Marshal Stalin an urgent plea for aid for the Home Army, together with a report on the severity of the fighting in Warsaw that Deputy Premier Jankowski had sent to London. ‘They implore machine-guns and ammunition,’ Churchill wrote. ‘Can you not give them some further help, as the distance from Italy is so very great?’
Back from Moscow and anxiously awaiting the help Marshal Stalin had assured him he would give, Prime Minister Mikolajzcyk on 13 August also sent a plea to Stalin.[236] He said:
Referring to our last conversation in the matter of assistance to combatants in Warsaw, I appeal once more to you, Marshal, to give air-support to Warsaw. The following points are most important:
the bombing of airfields, armoured trains on the Warsaw ring-railway and other targets already specified;
day patrols by fighters to protect Warsaw from raids by the Luftwaffe;
the parachuting of huge quantities of arms and ammunition over Warsaw, most of which is now held by the Poles. This would make it possible for the fighting to continue until the arrival of your relief. The most important areas for parachuting are Krasinski Square and Napoleon Square.
Warsaw has kept up the fight by superhuman efforts in spite of an ever increasing shortage of arms and ammunition. It is both in your interest and in ours that you should reach Warsaw to liberate it, not just to clear up wreckage and bury corpses. Any assistance given by the USSR at this moment will be of great political importance in future Polish-Soviet relations.
Even accepting that Stalin had failed to send arms this message is remarkable for its one-sidedness and its lack of realism. Mikolajczyk blandly ignored the fact that only four days earlier he had received from Stalin an account of the Red Army’s setbacks and the severe battles it was then fighting with the Germans. Evidently, the British Government had not received a full account of Stalin’s report from Mikolajczyk, for on 14 August Churchill, in Italy inspecting General Alexander’s forces, telegraphed to Eden:
It will cause the Russians much annoyance if the suggestion that the Polish patriots in Warsaw were deserted gets afoot, but they can easily prevent it by operations well within their power. It certainly is very curious that at the moment when the Underground Army has revolted the Russian armies should have halted their offensive against Warsaw and withdrawn some distance.
For them to send in all quantities of machine-guns and ammunition required by the Poles for their heroic fight would involve only a flight of 100 miles. I have been talking to (Air Marshal) Slessor, trying to send all possible assistance from here.
But what have the Russians done? I think it would be better if you sent a message to Stalin through Molotov referring to the implications that are afoot in many quarters and requesting that the Russians should send all the help they can.[237]
The Russians had of course done a great deal, but they normally sent their Anglo-American allies military reports only after a battle had been won and operations successfully concluded. Therefore Churchill could not know what was happening on this sector of the Eastern Front apart from the reports of British Military Intelligence. At this time they were making the merest conjectures about a possible Soviet setback.[238]
On 16 August Stalin in a reply to Mikolajczyk[239] retracted the assurance that arms would be sent:
I received your letter about Warsaw. I feel obliged to let you know that after our conversation I issued orders to the Soviet Command to drop arms intensively in the Warsaw area. Moreover, a parachutist was dropped but was unable to fulfil his task because he was killed by the Germans.
After a closer study of the problem I became convinced that the Warsaw action, which had been started without the Soviet Command’s knowledge and without any contact with it, is a reckless adventure causing useless victims among the inhabitants.
It should be added to this that a slanderous campaign with allusions that the Soviet Command had misled the population of Warsaw, was developed in the Polish Press. In view of the foregoing the Soviet Command decided openly to disclaim any responsibility for the Warsaw adventure because it must not and cannot assume responsibility for the Warsaw affair.
It was an appalling breach of faith, but there was more to come. On the same day, Andrei Vyshinsky, Soviet Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, informing the United States ambassador in Moscow[240] that it was desirable to avoid misunderstanding, declared that the Soviet Government could not object to English or American aircraft dropping arms in the region of Warsaw. ‘But they decidedly object to American or British aircraft, after dropping arms in the region of Warsaw, landing on Soviet territory, since the Soviet Government do not wish to associate themselves either directly or indirectly with the adventure in Warsaw.’
Already the international atmosphere was overcast by British if not American suspicions that Stalin planned to sovietize Europe. Now the London Polish Government let loose all its fury for Russia’s past misdeeds in a diplomatic and press campaign charging her with deliberately staying her hand and letting Warsaw, the Home Army and the citizens be destroyed. ‘They are relentless felons,’ one Polish politician remarked, and it was typical of their feelings.
Mikolajczyk tried to pour oil on troubled waters and allay the harm that had been done. ‘I understand very well, Marshal, that the Soviet Command assumes no responsibility for the outbreak of fighting in Warsaw which, as it seems now, was premature, but the timing of which could not have been agreed upon jointly,’ he said in a reply to Stalin on 18 August.[241]
In connection with this it is quite understandable that a part of the Press, also of the Polish Press, should give vent to excitement because of the tragic fate of the inhabitants of Warsaw. I can, however, assure you that in accordance with the spirit of our friendly conversations in Moscow, I am counteracting this within the limits of my powers and opportunities, and I should like to reckon on cooperation on the part of Russia also in that matter…
Mikolajczyk concluded by reminding Stalin that Warsaw had fought unaided for eighteen days. He appealed fervently for aid, notably for permission for American aircraft to land on Soviet airstrips after arms-dropping over the city. But Stalin had already withdrawn his assurance that direct aid would be given to Warsaw. It marked another change in his attitude to the London Poles.
While the Soviet armies battled to relieve Warsaw, Stalin at the same time exerted physical and moral pressure on the Polish people and its Government to secure a political system in the country subservient to Soviet Russia.
Meanwhile, Slessor had authorized full-scale flights to Warsaw again. During the four nights 13 to 16 August a total of seventy-nine aircraft were assigned, sixty-two with British and South African crews, seventeen with Polish crews. Only twenty of the total won through to the city and made their drops. Five British, seven South African and three Polish air crews — more than one hundred highly specialized airmen — as well as fifteen aircraft were lost. One aircraft unloaded above Krasinski Square then crashed near by. Another three crashed on landing. Many of the airmen who returned were badly wounded.
By now the experienced crews used to visual navigation by night over German-occupied Europe had either been killed or were too exhausted after the demands these flights had made upon them to carry on. Replacement pilots and navigators lacking experience of visual flying went to their deaths all too quickly in the inferno of enemy aerial attack leading to Warsaw.
From the roof of his GHQ in the Old Town late one August night Komorowski watched fifteen women of the Polish Socialist Part
y militia each with a hurricane lamp lie down in the darkness and form the shape of a cross in the shadow of the tall old houses in the market square. About midnight German searchlights began to pencil the starry sky until they converged on one point. German anti-aircraft fire now began to pin-point the sky with flashes. Soon, like a great moth in the light the aircraft could be seen; and at the same time the women lit their hurricane lamps to guide it.
With a roar from its four engines, the first aircraft zoomed low over the rooftops, and six parachutes bobbed quickly down to the ground. More planes entered the silver halo of searchlights, flew on through the inferno of bursting shellfire and parachuted their containers. Then from one of them flame and smoke spurted. It lost height quickly as the flames grew, but somehow the crew parachuted the containers out near Napoleon Square before it flew lower and lower across the Vistula. A sheet of flame and an explosion told its end.
Attrition of crews had all but exhausted the air supply effort from southern Italy. Five British-crewed aircraft took off on 18 August, but none reached Warsaw, while out of forty missions Polish crews flew during the next twelve days three only reached it and all their containers fell into German hands. From 15 August onwards the insurgents received not a single container, though fourteen aircraft were lost.[242]
SS-Gruppenführer Reinefarth was meanwhile energetically carrying out General von dem Bach’s orders to deploy his troops for an all-out attack from all sides of the Old Town. Polish resistance was strong, yet on 16 August the Germans made small but significant gains. After tunnelling through rows of cellars they blew up a strongpoint in a block of flats on Pzrejazd Street, killing some fifty troops and widening their range of attack on Mostowski Square and the telephone exchange. The Monastery on Senators’ Street, north of the Saxon Gardens, fell to them and quickly fortified, it made another strongpoint along the route to the Kierbedz Bridge.