On August 1, 1944, at 5:00 P.M., the 40,000-strong underground Home Army in Warsaw came out of hiding and attacked German positions, offices and patrols around the city. An uprising - an open struggle against the Germans at the conclusion of the armed underground resistance - had been the ultimate objective of the Home Army since its inception in Warsaw and before its fall during the last days of the 1939 campaign. Indeed, officers and men of the Home Army could not imagine ending the war without settling the score with the brutal and universally despised occupant. Had an order to start an uprising not been given, a series of spontaneous, uncoordinated actions against the Germans by individual Home Army units would have ensued with dire consequences for the insurgents. The uprising was to halt the implementation of German plans to convert Warsaw into a Stalingrad-like fortress, and also to prevent the Germans from killing or driving out inhabitants and razing the city to the ground. An uprising would demonstrate to the world the Polish resolve in fighting the Germans, particularly in Warsaw. It would also reassert Polish independence and the preexisting political authority of the legal Polish Government in London before the Soviet army had entered Warsaw. This was particularly important in view of Stalin's hostility towards independent Poland, as demonstrated by the hostile actions of the Soviets towards Home Army units helping Soviet troops against the Germans. On July 26, 1944, the Polish Government in Exile in London transmitted an authorization to its delegate in occupied Poland to decide the date and time of the start of the Warsaw Uprising. On the afternoon of July 31,1944, Colonel Monter, commander of the Home Army in the Warsaw district, notified General Bór, commander in chief of the Home Army, that Soviet tanks were approaching Warsaw on the eastern bank of the Vistula. General Bór issued an order for the uprising to begin at 5:00 P.M. on the following day, August 1, 1944.
On August 1, the Home Army had the following weapons at its disposal: one thousand carbines, three hundred submachine guns, sixty light machine guns, seven heavy machine guns, thirty-five special carbines and bazookas, seventeen hundred revolvers, and twenty-five thousand hand grenades. Some weapons were produced in secret shops by the insurgents themselves, prior to and during the uprising. The most common were "Lightning" submachine guns of Polish design, and "Filipinka" and "Sidolówka" hand grenades. Gasoline-filled bottles were used as anti-tank weapons. Ammunition was very scarce; there were one hundred ninety rounds per carbine, five hundred rounds per light machine gun, and three hundred rounds per submachine gun. The main source of additional weapons and ammunition would be the enemy.
Who were the insurgents, the Home Army underground soldiers who, for five years of German occupation, had been preparing themselves for the uprising? They came from all social strata: the rich and poor, university professors, teachers, high school and university students, artists, unskilled laborers and so on.
For the first two days, the insurgents attacked German positions around the town, but were not sufficiently well-armed to take them all. By the fifth day of the uprising, the Germans organized themselves and proceeded methodically, from block to block, annihilating insurgents, civilians (the Germans generally did not take prisoners), and destroying buildings.
At five o'clock this morning, the Germans threw in everything they had. Wave after wave of Junkers and Stuka dive bombers flew over, and Tiger and Panther tanks moved towards us along the surrounding streets. The din of bombs and shrapnel, the roar of engines, the thunder of tons of metal crashing down, all mingled with the rumble of falling walls and roofs, the rattle of machine guns and the shriek of bullets overhead, like a storm gone mad. Begrimed runners hurried along in the shelter of walls with messages from officers on the barricades. They all told what they had seen. On one street, tanks smashed through one of our barricades. Then, Captain Proboszcz appeared as though he'd risen out of the ground; he hurled a grenade at a tank and, immediately after the explosion, he leaped onto the tank, wrenched open the lid and shot the German driver at point-blank range from his revolver. Then, he grabbed the German's gun and hurried on. . . . The tanks on Rynkowa and Ciepła streets were moving along behind a crowd of civilians, who were being driven ahead to provide cover for the Germans. I gave the order to fire. Some of the civilians were hit and were left lying on the pavement. . . . Then, Major Zagończyk asked for me: I know you are in trouble; I'll do what I can to help with ammunition. But you have got to hold your street. You have got to. Can you do it?' I replied: 'We will hold out sir.' I started along the street. The smoke had died down a little. To my left was a deserted barricade; immediately below the corner block of apartments, the shell of a tank half-buried in a trench was smoldering. The firing had died down. I crossed the street and cautiously went up the barricade. I looked over the top and saw a powerful Tiger tank snarling halfway down Ciepła Street. But, I could hardly believe my eyes. It was retreating. Another tank stood near Krochmalna Street motionless. Its tracks had been ripped off. And near the barracks I saw a third tank dead with its cover open. . . . From across the battlefield two men appeared, clumsily scrambling past the smoldering tank. I hardly recognized Tadeusz and Puchacz, for they looked as if they'd dug themselves out of a heap of cement. Somehow they'd survived, hidden by the heavy balustrade of a balcony on the first floor immediately above the barricade. They'd let the tank come up to the barricade so they could not miss; for, although they were half-buried in rubble, their arms were free. . . . I reported back to Major Zagonczyk by telephone: 'We have held our street. The Germans are retreating. We ought to send patrols out after them and try to man the barricades again. We ought to bring the wounded and bury the dead. But there are only six of us left. We have not a single bullet or grenade.'
They went into battle with gusto, and by August 6 they had murdered more than forty thousand civilians, including women, children, hospital staff, priests, the wounded and the sick in the Wola and Ochota sectors.
The fiercest struggle took place in the defense of the Old Town, where the concentration of bombardment (the Germans used rail-mounted howitzers) was the highest encountered in World War II. Polish casualties were high, as were the German's. German losses exceeded fifty percent. German sources report that, on average, German casualties in the 33-day battle for Old Town amounted to one hundred fifty soldiers per day; insurgent casualties reached seventy-seven percent. Fifteen hundred armed insurgents, some lightly wounded, were evacuated to the city center through the sewers. Two hundred perished during the evacuation. Nearly twenty-five hundred of the gravely wounded who could not be evacuated were left behind in field hospitals, with hospital staff who, although facing certain death, chose to stay with their patients until the end. The commander of the Old Town sector, Colonel Wachnowski, also refused evacuation; only a direct order from Home Army commander General Bór compelled him to join his withdrawing soldiers. The ferocity of the fighting in the uprising, according to those Germans who also experienced Stalingrad, was far greater in Warsaw than that encountered in the Russian city.
There were air sorties from the west to drop essential supplies to the insurgents. But the Russians refused to grant landing rights for planes to refuel at Soviet bases. The air drops were not very effective, although they demanded great skill and heroism from the pilots. Only once, under the pressure of Western public opinion, did the Russians agree to allow the Allied planes to land on Soviet soil, on the airfield of Poltava in Ukraine.
I had just got back to my quarters at Pańska Street and was listening to Wisłański's report when the sentry at the gate gave warning of aircraft approaching. I went out to look. There, straight ahead to the north and very high up, I saw aircraft coming over. They looked like silver birds in a blue sky. I counted twelve of them, then more and more until I lost count. The roar of their engines grew, for they were coming straight towards us. Someone was counting them aloud: '102, 105, 108. . . . ' I looked through my binoculars. They were neither German nor Soviet. Then someone shouted: 'They are Liberators! And they are ours!' (In reality, they were Flying Fortresses and not Liberators, but for the insurgents the difference at that moment was immaterial.) Everyone ran out into the street and scrambled up into the rubble to get a better look. Then, dozens of small clouds appeared round the aircraft as the German AA opened fire. But they were out of range and the shells burst too low. Shrapnel began falling around us and I shouted to everyone to take cover, but nobody heeded. Then, three black dots fell away from the leading planes, to be followed at once by more and more, while little colored circles appeared over the dots - parachutes opening up. 'Parachutists!' Everyone went mad. They jumped up and down waving, hugging one another. . . . 'No, not parachutists - it's arms! They are dropping arms!' Now we could see the long metal containers more clearly, and the first fell directly in our sector. Suddenly, there was a roar from the German positions: rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortars, artillery, the lot! They were firing at us along the whole length of their line. With Ryś and Genek I ran out to the first container which had fallen fortunately in a deep hollow. The metal fasteners opened easily, and inside we found boxes fitted with straps, ready to be slung over the shoulders. They contained British machine guns with ammo, and a few minutes later they were ready for firing. The men brought in more containers, and company commanders started to report to me by telephone how many they had obtained. At the same time, they all told me they were going out in full force against fierce German attack. I asked if they needed any reinforcements, but no one did. Each officer said that today their men would go out against the devil himself. Then, we opened the other containers; they contained Sten guns and ammo, equipment for sappers, mines, anti-tank weapons, medical supplies, and food, including corned beef, chocolate and crackers. The hands of the ambulance girls trembled a little as we handed over phials of blood for transfusions; the phials bore labels in Polish, for the blood had been donated by Poles at the Polish hospital in Edinburgh.
The struggle went on for sixty-three days. On September 29, the sixtieth day of the uprising, there was only food left for three more days. Repeated offers from the Polish Home Army to cooperate with the Soviet army remained unanswered. Towards the end of the uprising, Soviet aircraft dropped some supplies for the insurgents, but it was a token gesture: the drops were executed without parachutes and the weapons were so damaged by the impact that, in most cases, they were unusable. When the Home Army finally was forced to surrender, the Germans agreed to extend combatant status to the insurgents - meaning that the insurgents were to be treated as prisoners of war in accordance with the Geneva convention. By and large, this was adhered to by the Germans. Throughout the uprising, the Poles' treatment of German prisoners, including the wounded, was in conformance with the Geneva convention. The Warsaw civilians - those who had not been murdered or had not managed to escape - were sent to labor camps in Germany.
The combatants' strength was nearly equal at forty thousand men on each side, though in equipment and armaments the Germans had devastating superiority. The Germans lost 26,000 men in the fighting, the insurgents 22,200 men. A quarter of a million Polish civilians were murdered or killed. German materiel losses comprised 310 tanks, armored cars and self-propelled artillery (including 22 75-millimeter artillery pieces), and 340 trucks and cars. Afer the fighting, those civilians who had not been taken to labor camps were driven out of the city; and, at the personal order of Hitler, who decreed that Warsaw be erased from the maps, special German army units equipped with flamethrowers were brought in to destroy those houses which were still left standing after the fighting. Ninety percent of the city was destroyed. Although it would have been cheaper and easier to rebuild the city somewhere else, the Poles were determined to rebuild it in exactly the same spot where it had been before. To replicate and revive its pre-war charm and architectural beauty, reconstruction of the Old Town was painstakingly modeled after old paintings, sketches and photographs which had survived the war.
The following statistics illustrate the degree of Warsaw's depopulation and the subsequent restoration effort: before the war, Warsaw had 1.2 million inhabitants; from the beginning of October 1944, when the uprising ended and the entire population was driven out of the city by the Germans, until January 1945, when the Soviets finally came, the city had zero inhabitants; today, the population of Warsaw has reached 1.6 million.
But what became of the Soviet army, which was only a few miles away from Warsaw when the uprsing began on August 1, 1944? It halted its advance. The Polish 1ST Division units (from the Polish army formed in the Soviet Union), on their own initiative, established a bridgehead in Warsaw on the western side of the Vistula to help the insurgents. The Division held it for eight days, sustaining 5,600 casualties, without any help from other Soviet units in the area. Not until January 1945, long after the uprising had been suppressed, did the Soviets finally move, and by then they were merely "liberating" uninhabited ruins. It is now certain that Stalin, who forcibly introduced communism to Poland after the war, wanted to eliminate Polish patriots who opposed his communization plans. Ultimately, the Germans killed and murdered for him many of those patriots in Warsaw.
In eastern and central Poland, the Soviet army was glad to accept help from the Polish Home Army partisan units operating against the Germans. The cooperation most often ended once the Germans were defeated and the Poles were no longer needed in the area. The usual Soviet tactic was to invite a Polish commander and all officers to the Soviet headquarters, ostensibly for "consultation"; once there, the Soviets disarmed them, surrounding and disarming Polish partisans who were left without officers. The officers and those partisans who refused to join the Soviet army or its Polish counterpart were sent to Gulags.
