The Warsaw Uprising: 1 August - 2 October 1944 (Major Battles of World War Two)

by George Bruce

  Cautiously, with an advance guard of flame-throwers and grenadiers, the Germans moved in. Dirlewanger’s criminal troops aided by the Ukrainian Cossacks herded the civilians together and began an orgy of violence and shooting.[268] In the cellar hospitals insurgents too badly wounded to have been carried out through the sewer were shot, or their beds were sprinkled with petrol, and they were burned alive. In the Miodowa Street cellar hospital only the intervention of German wounded saved the Polish patients.

  Thirty-five thousand civilians were taken prisoner, according to German official records. More than thirty thousand had been killed, either during the fighting or when the Germans occupied the ruins.[269]

  For twenty-three days the Home Army’s Old Town troops had held both von dem Bach’s relief force and Stahel’s men at bay. Five thousand Polish troops had lost their lives. Having occupied the Old Town ruins and got access to the Kierbedz Bridge the Germans now held a wide segment of Warsaw. It stretched from Wola and Powazki in the west, through the Ghetto ruins to the Old Town and part of the Vistula embankment. Von dem Bach’s task was now much simplified.

  The Old Town’s battle had in fact been the battle for Warsaw. Apart from taking a few isolated buildings, the thirteen thousand troops in the City Centre stayed more or less passively on the defensive instead of stoutly attacking the German offensive against the Old Town from the rear. So they let von dem Bach implement his plan to crush the Uprising piecemeal, almost without interference. Nor were really effective efforts made to bring the Kampinos detachments in to the aid of the Old Town.

  The fault appears to have been lack of effective overall command. ‘The immeasurable sacrifices and anguish of its defenders and its people had gained thirteen days for us, Komorowski explained eighteen months later, when he had plenty of time to reflect. ‘Each day gained brought one day nearer the inevitable Soviet advance which would save Warsaw.’[270]

  But most of Warsaw was already a heap of rubble. And Home Army Intelligence must surely have known that the Soviet forces, far from holding back, were then still fighting fierce battles with the Germans. ‘The situation on the 9th Army front is intensifying,’ observed the German war diarist on 26 August 1944. ‘Renewed strong attacks by the enemy from two southerly bridgeheads, which were crowned with no small success.’

  And on 1 September: ‘The enemy continues attacks on both sides of the Radzymin-Warsaw road. Forty-seven enemy tanks destroyed. The enemy does not relinquish plans to get through to Warsaw… At all costs the enemy must be prevented from getting through to Praga until the Uprising is completely suppressed. Obstinate attempts to break through the front near Radzymin are connected with the situation in Warsaw.’ On 3 September: ‘The enemy are stubbornly attempting to capture Wolomin and the suburb of Praga. Information indicates the presence of parts of the 47th and 70th Armies and the VIII and IX Armoured Corps… The Germans must try quickly and completely to gain possession of the [western] bank of the Vistula so as to isolate the insurgents.’[271]

  Clearly the battles with the Soviets which were being fought on the Eastern Front were a source of much worry to the Germans. Nevertheless these actions did not seem to equal in strength and importance those of the Soviet offensive up to the end of July. In northern Poland the Soviet 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Front Armies were then involved in fighting a flanking manoeuvre from the south around East Prussia, while the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Front Armies were enflanking German forces in the Krakow-Sandomierz area. The town of Sandomierz, about a hundred miles south of Warsaw, fell towards the end of August.

  Having been pushed back with losses in their first attempt to take Warsaw by a frontal attack at the end of July, the Soviets were treating the German concentrations here with more respect. Notwithstanding the Uprising the liberation of the city was seemingly to be accomplished in due course by a pincer movement from north and south.

  Meanwhile, a fleet of more than a hundred heavy bombers of the USAF now stood ready for take-off for Warsaw, awaiting Stalin’s permission. Unofficial surrender talks had been going on for some time between the German command and the Bishop of Warsaw, but they came to nothing. In a message to London on 2 September, Komorowski reported: ‘I have decided to defend Warsaw to the limits of possibility. We possess food till September 7, bread till September 5, ammunition is near exhaustion, how long it lasts depends on the intensity of the struggle… The possibility of holding out does not depend solely on our own powers of endurance, but also on material help from you, or on speedy success in Soviet operations in our sector.’

  The Home Army leadership was thus on the one hand accusing the Soviets of doing nothing to help them and on the other declaring their intention of holding out until the ‘speedy success’ of Soviet operations drove the Germans out of the Warsaw sector. They relied for deliverance upon the Government and people they had accused of treachery. But only the vain hope that their troops could last until the Soviets drove the Germans out and they could install the London Government’s representatives made Komorowski and his Staff keep going. Offensive operations were given up in favour of defending positions that were to be held at all costs.

  Meantime, two events of importance took place. Despite the Soviet refusal, the British and United States Governments granted the Home Army combatant rights under the Geneva Convention, although these rights did not extend to the Communist People’s Army, upon whom the Germans were free to pass any sentence they wished. Secondly, the Soviet 47th and 70th Armies launched offensive actions to the north and east of the Praga district. Radzymin they took on the same day.

  The reaction of Generals von Vormann and von dem Bach was to speed the plan to clear the Vistula embankment of insurgents. In Marymont, between Bielany and Zoliborz, some of the weak insurgent detachments were quickly overcome and lower Zoliborz was cut off from the Vistula. The Germans now held the river embankment from this area in the north as far south as Powisle. They at once set up a defence line of about a dozen machine-gun nests along it.

  On 5 September von dem Bach began heavy attacks on Powisle. For two days aircraft and heavy guns launched a high explosive and incendiary bombardment, setting the entire district aflame. Heavy shells shattered the walls of one house after another. Machine-guns sprayed the streets. People lived in the cellars like rats. Children played in the filthy water that seeped into them from burst mains.

  Early on 7 September the Germans drove a crowd of women prisoners in front of their advancing troops. Seeing this crowd of women the insurgents held their fire, detecting the ruse only when it was too late. The women hurled themselves at the barricades and the Germans massed behind forced their way over too.

  Attacked from all sides, the Home Army troops were compelled to retreat. Panic spread among the civilians, who fled towards the City Centre. It was a precarious situation for the insurgents. Colonel Chrusciel, however, threw in his reserves and stopped the German advance along the fashionable north-south boulevard of Novy Swiat.

  The Germans were now masters of the whole river embankment except Upper Czerniakow, where the insurgents still clung to a small bridgehead, surrounded on three sides, with their backs to the river.

  The loss of Powisle was a disaster. Mass shootings of prisoners and the wounded followed. The electricity power station, which workers had kept running while under fire since the start of the Uprising, was destroyed by bombs and shells. Underground arsenals, most of which used electric power, went out of action. Refugees in underground rooms, hospitals in the cellars, faced darkness.

  Among the people morale deteriorated. Burials took place ever more often and with less ceremony. A deepening sense of tragedy possessed the wretched survivors. Losing hope they went about with set faces in helpless rage or deep despair.[272]

  Yet the troops clung on tenaciously, in firing posts located mainly in basement or attic windows, on rooftops or behind holes made in walls by shellfire, facing bombardments with amazing resilience. Each of the large buildings in the City Centre had its
own defence unit, quick to repulse enemy attacks, undaunted by the hail of fire. It seemed as if the men of this citizen army were now shorn of that basic human quality, the instinct for self-preservation.

  All this Komorowski saw in a tour of inspection. He realized how precarious was their situation and how near collapse were the civilian population, whose sufferings in their damp, dark cellars approached crisis point. But looking at the gaunt faces of the soldiers he believed he saw the capacity to go on fighting. And he therefore decided that the Home Army would not surrender, but would hold its positions despite the worst the enemy could do.

  This decision was by no means unanimous, for at least one of Komorowski’s senior colleagues on the Staff had earlier proposed that in view of the purposeless death and destruction they should either negotiate with the Germans or make terms with General Berling’s Polish Communist Divisions across the Vistula for combined action against the enemy. Komorowski called these proposals disloyal and indignantly refused them. ‘One thought alone held me to my decision to continue the fight,’ he wrote later. ‘The hope that the following day would bring a Soviet offensive and, with it, a complete change on the Russian front facing Warsaw…’[273]

  But Jan Jankowski, Deputy Premier, and the members of the Council of National Unity, were now too concerned to agree to go on fighting blindly while the population faced starvation and disease. The first case had already been reported with the death of two elderly women too weak from lack of food to leave their room in the City Centre to go out and beg for food. Horses had long since been eaten in the need for meat. Now it was the turn of the dogs.[274]

  Komorowski’s rigid insistence on continued fighting was opposed by the Council of National Unity, representing the four main political parties. At their insistence Jan Jankowski and the Council’s Chairman, Kazimierz Puzak, requested the Home Army command to start talks about laying down arms. It was a setback for his no-surrender policy which Komorowski had to accept.

  The trend grew stronger. On 7 September German officers with white flags approached a barricade to propose a short truce for the removal of the dead lying in the streets. The truce was agreed; and at the same time the Germans requested that Polish Red Cross representatives should meet them to discuss arrangements for allowing civilians who wished to leave the city to do so. Countess Tarnowska and Mr Wachowiak then met senior German officers who proposed that all civilians, as well as the sick and wounded, should leave the city at certain agreed points during a ceasefire, and go to German refugee and prisoner-of-war camps.

  Komorowski was inclined to reject the proposal, but the politicians felt it their duty to agree. The hours of the cease-fire and the places of assembly were published in the Press and on 8 and 9 September several thousand people withdrew from the city. It was a small response from among more than two hundred and fifty thousand, but people could not forget the August massacres.

  Now the Germans offered negotiations. General Rohr, commander of the German forces facing the City Centre, suggested that a Polish representative should meet him to discuss ‘certain proposals’. Komorowski sent Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Zyndram’ with orders that he should merely listen to the Germans without any discussion.

  Rohr, emphasizing that the Soviets were unlikely to help them, declared that Warsaw would be inevitably destroyed in the same way as the Old Town. He urged in the name of humanity that surrender negotiations should start. He asked for a reply that evening. Komorowski, still trying desperately to keep the flags flying and to fight on in the hope that a Soviet offensive would reach Warsaw, began to temporise. When the German officers approached the barricade for an answer they were told to come back the next day.[275]

  Meanwhile Komorowski sent the Prime Minister, Mr Mikolajczyk and General Sosnkowski, Polish C-in-C, a blunt account of the grimness of the situation and the possible alternatives. ‘Our situation… compels us to warn you of the possibility of a crisis and of our expectations in that event,’ he began.

  It is impossible to foresee whether the City Centre and the part north of Jerozolimska Avenue, which has been violently attacked during the last few days, can hold out. In the most favourable circumstances it may hold out even for another seven days, but the breakdown of the civilian population, which is suffering fearful losses, may compel the troops to withdraw south of the Avenue, and this may happen even within two to four days.

  After the fall of part of the City Centre, with the whole of the German forces now turned against it, it would be only a question of hours before the long-enduring defence of the southern part of the City Centre broke down. We cannot sacrifice the fate of the enormous number of inhabitants who have taken shelter here from all the remaining parts of the city, in order to gain so short an extension in time.[276]

  He went on to warn the Government that in the event of their losing the City Centre they were faced with two alternatives. The first was, after evacuating the civil population in agreement with the Germans, ‘to go on fighting to the end’ — that is to die in the ruins and flames of the city. The second, surrender by individual districts (southern City Centre, Mokotow in the south, Zoliborz in the north) in succession, according to the order in which the main German blow was launched against them.

  He added that the second alternative would ‘give a certain extension of time’ (i.e. for the Soviets to chase the Germans out) ‘though then inevitably the entire city would be destroyed. The choice of one of the above possibilities will depend on the powers of resistance and the conduct of troops and civilians, and on the state of ammunition and food.’

  Komorowski and Jankowski, the Government’s all too faithful servants, were determined to hold on to the midnight hour and beyond, whatever the cost — in the hope of installing the London Government. For this purpose the troops who had fought so well could either fight to the end and die in the bombs and the flames; or if still alive they could surrender when their district had been destroyed. It was a grim and sinister message.

  So after forty days’ fighting the Home Army was now poised between surrender and fighting to the bitter end. All depended upon Soviet mastery of the Germans on the Eastern Front, which was entirely beyond their control.

  Meantime, von dem Bach launched concentrated attacks to try to penetrate the City Centre perimeter defences. He was still carrying out his plan for overwhelming bombardment combined with requests for surrender negotiations. The whole weight of the German forces was deployed. Many avenues were under constant shellfire and set ablaze by Luftwaffe incendiary bombs. On his way to a meeting, Stefan Korbonski hurried along Pieracki Street, a sea of flames as far as the eye could reach. Bright Street and part of Hospital Street were burning. Flaming timbers hurtled through the air, while red-hot pieces of roofing rained down. Korbonski reached his destination smarting with heat and covered with soot and dust.[277]

  ‘The situation in the City Centre is deteriorating,’ Komorowski declared with marked restraint in a message to the London Government on 9 September.[278]

  The soldiers’ endurance is reaching the bounds of human endurance. A hopeless situation. We are losing extensive terrain, we are being compressed into smaller and smaller islands by the enemy’s mastery of Sikorski Avenue and the cutting through of our areas.

  If the defence of the northern part of the City Centre collapses there may be a slaughter of soldiers and civilians. Powerful and immediate help by bombing and dropping of supplies will prolong our defence. Without that we must capitulate.

  Now, when even Komorowski was on the verge of giving up, suddenly it seemed that the tide was turning at last. Late on 9 September Stefan Korbonski, member of the Council of National Unity for the Peasant Party, and throughout the occupation organizer of radio reception and transmission for the civil authority, received an urgent message from London: ‘Inform Government Plenipotentiary that today Marshal Stalin promised help for Warsaw.’[279]

  He ran through the pitch black streets, stumbling over the rubble to Mokotow Street, whe
re the civil authority had its headquarters. He delivered the message to Jan Jankowski, the Plenipotentiary, Kazimierz Puzak, the Council’s Chairman and their staff, who were lying in the corridor covered with blankets. Were the Soviets really coming? An excited discussion followed.

  The next day, 10 September, at the hour German aircraft began their raids, the sleeping Poles were awakened not by the frightening scream of the Stuka dive-bombers, but by the steady drone of Soviet fighters circling over the city in pairs, frightening away the enemy aircraft. At the same time came the sound for which Warsaw had waited for forty-two days — the rumble of heavy artillery from the east, in the direction of Praga. On people’s faces despair gave way to wild looks of incredulous hope.

  That same day, 10 September, Komorowski again sent Zyndram to see General Rohr to receive any concrete proposals he wished to make, but not to talk about them. Rohr handed Zyndram a letter for Komorowski which guaranteed combatant rights for the Home Army, together with safety and adequate help for civilians in exchange for laying down their arms.

  But Soviet aircraft patrolling the city skies, the approach of their armies and freedom from bombing for the first day since 1 August put fresh heart into everyone. Komorowski and his Staff saw again the likelihood of a Russo-German battle in the city’s ruins during which Deputy Premier Jankowski could proclaim the rule of the London Government. Thus, by a hair’s breadth, they could snatch triumph from disaster amid the ruins.

  The idea of surrendering faded into the background. Playing for time Komorowski sent General Rohr a message during the evening of 10 September requesting first that General von Vormann or General von dem Bach should confirm the surrender terms; and secondly, as a guarantee, that they should be world-broadcast over the Deutschlandsender radio station. Rohr refused, stating that there would be no further talks if the Poles turned down the terms he had offered.