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The Warsaw Uprising
was the greatest armed uprising by underground Europe against
the German occupant during the course of the Second World War
.
It was begun by 20
thousand soldiers of the underground Home Army (AK), fewer than
half of the total forces of the organisation in Warsaw at the
time. They were subsequently joined by several hundred soldiers
of the National Armed Forces (NSZ) and the communist People’s
Army (AL).
Almost from the start
the Soviet Union showed an openly hostile attitude to the
uprising. The roots of this attitude lay in the Soviet dictator,
Joseph Stalin’s idea of Poland’s future, which was totally
contrary to that of the Polish government-in-exile led by
Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. With backing from the western powers,
Great Britain and the United States, Mikolajczyk’s intention
was to rebuild an independent Polish Republic. Stalin’s idea
posed a threat to this, his aim being to impose a communist
regime on Poland while maintaining a semblance of the country’s
sovereignty. Standing in the way of the Kremlin’s plans were
not just the activities of the Polish government’s diplomats
in Western capitals but also the strength of the Polish
underground state with its military wing, the Home Army, which
counted nearly 300 thousand people at the peak of its
development in 1944.
As soon as he had
broken off diplomatic relations with the Polish government in
April 1943 Stalin pressed on with the formation of Polish
communist political and military structures in the USSR, the
idea being that at his behest these would in the future take
control in Poland. An additional factor in arousing Moscow’s
hostility were the military actions of the Home Army in the
eastern regions of Poland, which the USSR had occupied in the
years 1939-1941 and still laid claims to. The British Foreign
Minister, Anthony Eden, realised this during the Moscow
Conference when on 29 October 1943 he asked his Soviet
counterpart, Viacheslav Molotov, whether he thought the Home
Army should receive their support. The answer was negative, even
though it was the same Home Army which was providing the
Russians with vital intelligence information, relayed via
London, regarding the military potential of the Third Reich. The
Home Army also conducted sabotage, which included disrupting
German lines of communication with bases on the eastern front.
This did not prevent
Stalin from making an even more violent attack on the Home Army
during the course of the Teheran Conference proceedings
(28.11.-1.12.1943). His unfounded accusations against the Home
Army of collaboration with the Germans were not challenged by
either the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill or the US
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, even though they were fully
aware of the facts. During this time the Soviet staff
headquarters was giving orders for its divisions to move into
the eastern regions of the Polish Republic, at the expense of
its fight with the Germans, with the aim of driving out the
"bands of Polish nationalists", thus provoking
conflict with the Home Army.
The Warsaw Rising was
the culmination of the ‘Burza’ (‘Tempest’) operation,
the aim of which was the liberation of Poland from German
occupation by the Home Army and the gaining of control by the
representatives of the Polish Government-in-Exile. As a result
of Soviet counter-operations these actions in the Eastern Border
Regions in the spring and summer of 1944 ended in failure. Home
Army detachments took part in the liberation of Wilno (Vilna)
and Lwow (Lvov), but following initial cooperation in the fight
against the Germans, the Russians proceeded to arrest and deport
the Polish troops into the interior of the USSR. There were
occasional armed clashes as Poles resisted in self-defence. The
openly hostile actions on the part of Moscow against an
organisation which, after all, was on the same side as the
western allies, met with no meaningful reaction in either London
or Washington. They considered that the true test of Soviet
intentions would be the conduct of the Red Army only to the west
of the so-called Curzon Line, that is, in the territories the
USSR laid no claims to.
However, Stalin did
not intend to allow for the legal Polish government in London
ever to return to Poland. With this aim he formed a puppet
government, giving it the misleading title ‘Polish Committee
of National Liberation’ (PKWN), announcing its formation on 22
July 1944. In order to allay the doubts of Churchill and
Roosevelt, who were now growing worried by the new development,
the Soviet dictator agreed to receive the Polish Prime Minister
Mikolajczyk, who arrived in Moscow on 30 July 1944.
The Warsaw Uprising
broke out on 1 August 1944 at a moment when the Soviet armies
were approaching the suburbs of Praga, the right bank district
of Warsaw, and it seemed they would soon enter the city. One of
the aims of the Red Army offensive, begun on 23 June 1944 in
Byelorussia, was, indeed, the taking of Warsaw and the formation
of a bridgehead on the left bank of the Vistula river. The
outbreak of the Uprising, however, coincided with the German
counter-attack, which temporarily halted the Russian advance on
the suburbs of Warsaw, which later gave Soviet propaganda the
pretext when explaining the inactivity of its troops during the
uprising.
The insurgents, at
this stage, had gained control of most of the most important
districts of Warsaw on the left bank of the Vistula. However,
they did not manage take the bridges over the river, even though
they did succeed in paralyzing the main German supply lines on
the other side of the river. The fate of the Polish capital was
now in the hands of Stalin. It was left to Mikolajczyk to seek
from him help for the uprising, the very success of which
threatened the political aims of the USSR. There was not much
time left, though the Germans, fighting as they were on two
fronts, no longer had sufficient reserves, and in trying to
quell the uprising at the start they hastily sent in groups of
police formed ad hoc.
During the course of
his talks with the Polish Prime Minister on 3 August 1944 Stalin
voiced his doubts as to the military potential of the Home Army
to liberate their capital. That same day bad weather prevented
allied planes, taking off from airfields in distant Italy, from
airlifting arms to the insurgents. Churchill personally appealed
to the Russians to help, but on 5 August Stalin replied that the
reports coming from the Poles were vastly exaggerated and that
the Home Army comprised merely several detachments, inaccurately
calling themselves divisions, which were not capable of taking
the city. When four days later Stalin saw off Mikolajczyk he
seemed better informed of the situation in Warsaw and promised
help, though in reality his intention was to make sure the
uprising ended in failure. The Red Army offensive in the
approach to Warsaw stopped in its tracks. Throughout the whole
of August and the first part of September not once did Soviet
airplanes fly over Warsaw, thus allowing several German Stukas
to fly out of the nearby Okecie airport to bomb Home Army
positions unimpeded. At the same time Polish, British and South
African airmen flew from Italy across half of Europe, sustaining
heavy casualties, in order to deliver supplies of arms and other
provisions to the insurgents. They were not granted permission
to land on the Soviet side of the front, even in cases of
aircraft damage.
Halfway through August
Stalin laid bare his hostile opposition to the uprising, when
Soviet diplomats denied the Americans permission to start an
airlift by 100 American bombers which were to take off from
bases in Great Britain with the purpose of dropping containers
of arms over Warsaw and then landing at airfields in the
Ukraine. A Soviet note received by the US embassy in Moscow
stated: "the uprising in Warsaw, which has drafted in the
civilian population is a reckless and irresponsible adventure
and the Soviet government cannot lend it its support."
However plausible it
was to explain the passive stance of the Red Army on the ground,
Stalin’s position regarding the issue of airdrops left no
illusion that he wished the uprising ill. Stalin had thus
revealed his intentions somewhat prematurely and risked conflict
with his western allies, and in particular with Britain. His
fears were exaggerated, since supplies delivered by air, without
ground support, could not radically alter the constantly
deteriorating military situation of the insurgents.
Churchill wished to
come to the aid of the insurgents and attempted to persuade the
Americans to support his efforts in Moscow. But the idea of
adopting a very firm stand against the USSR did not gain the
support of the White House. The British Prime Minister was only
able to persuade Roosevelt to send a joint letter, dated
20.8.1944, to Stalin with a request for his consent for a fully
concerted airlift. The Kremlin’s response was once more
negative. Churchill’s next idea was for the western powers to
present Moscow with a fait accompli and send planes with
supplies for the insurgents, landing, if necessary, on Russian
airfields without their formal consent; this idea was opposed by
Washington. By the end of August 1944 the American president had
concluded that the western allies were no longer in a position
to do anything about airborne support for the insurgents. The
information about the Uprising, and Stalin’s view of it, which
reached Roosevelt was first handled by his adviser Harry
Hopkins, who sympathised with the USSR and was even suspected by
some of secret collaboration with the Russians.
Washington did agree,
however, to issue on 30 August 1944 a joint declaration with
London, which recognised the status of the insurgents as
military combatants. From the start Churchill had had no doubts
concerning this matter, and the nearly month’s delay was above
all a result of waiting for the US decision. Moscow, setting as
its aim the elimination of the Home Army, never intended to
comply with this declaration.
The hostile attitude
of the Kremlin towards the Warsaw Uprising gave rise to sharp
criticism of the USSR at the 4 September session of the British
war cabinet. The Ministers issued a direct letter to Stalin in
which they expressed their concern over his policies, which they
regarded as at variance with the spirit of the anti-German
alliance. Churchill even considered halting the supply convoys
to the USSR in retaliation, but was prevented from this course
of action by the Foreign Office. Similar views to his were
expressed in American circles by a promising young diplomat,
George Kennan. Roosevelt was nevertheless far from sharing the
outrage of the British, and next day sent a curious telegram to
the British leader, in which he stated, quoting information
supposedly supplied by American intelligence, that the
insurgents had left Warsaw and the problem had thus solved
itself.
Angered by the Soviet
position the British government encouraged the press to report
on the causes of the lack of support by the western allies. For
the first time since the Katyn affair, which had been
effectively censored, the British newspapers wrote openly of the
discord within the alliance over the Polish question. The voices
of the most important dailies echoed the very real worries of
the British politicians and diplomats over Stalin’s intentions
and ever greater concern for future postwar relations. In the
end the Warsaw Uprising did not threaten the relations between
the western powers with the USSR. Under pressure, Moscow
reluctantly agreed on 9 September 1944 to allow allied planes to
drop air supplies, but their basic position remained the same as
before.
Soviet propaganda left
one in no doubt about this. Moscow Radio threatened the leaders
of the uprising, including the overall head of the Home Army
Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, with trials and the death penalty once
the Red Army entered Warsaw. With his western allies, though,
Stalin conducted a game of illusions. On 10 September he ordered
the taking of Praga – the right bank district of Warsaw –
which took the Russians four days, and instructed the Soviet
airforce to commence air supplies for the insurgents. These were
carried out by night by PO-2 planes, small bi-planes, which,
moreover, dropped the arms and ammunition while flying low and
without parachutes thus ending frequently in their destruction.
Till then it had been entirely the work of allied planes taking
off from Italy, which had supplied the insurgents with around
100 tons of provisions, in the process losing some 250 airmen.
Not until 18 September
1944 was it possible for more than 100 B-17 American flying
fortresses to appear by day above Warsaw to drop 1330 containers
of arms, ammunition and other provisions, and then proceed to
land on the Soviet side of the front. This help came too late,
however, and the effect was limited (only about 400 containers
were recovered by the insurgents) due to the fact that the areas
of Warsaw in the hands of the Home Army had diminished
significantly when compared with the first half of August.
The actions by the
Soviets on the right bank of the Vistula caused the leadership
of the uprising to break off talks begun with the Germans on the
terms of capitulation. The hope that help was at hand proved
groundless, however. From 15-19 September several regiments of
the so-called First Polish Army formed by the USSR as the
initial armed forces
of a communist Poland,
attempted to seize the bridgeheads of Warsaw’s left bank, but
these suffered heavy casualties, about 2000 killed and lost, as
a result of which the operation ended in fiasco. The numbers of
men assigned for it had been too small and they were deprived of
suitable artillery support.
The Soviet airdrops
for the insurgents, their agreement to the allied airlift,
attempted landing operations across the Vistula, all these could
have given rise to the impression that the USSR had changed its
mind about the uprising and was now wanting to help. However,
this was far removed from the truth. The PKWN representative in
Moscow, Stefan Jedrychowski, was soon to realise this. On 23
September 1944 he was trying to come to agreement with Molotov
over the guiding principles for communist propaganda regarding
the uprising. The PKWN representative had, till then, been
mistaken in thinking that the attitude of the USSR had changed.
This is what he heard from Molotov: "People’s Commissar
Molotov asked at the start whether I was familiar with the
Soviet government’s view of the events in Warsaw (ie. the Home
Army’s anti-soviet provocation). I answered that I knew this
view and judged it to relate to the first phase of the Warsaw
Uprising. To this I received the reply that the original view
had not altered." These words were uttered by Stalin’s
subordinate just a few days after the survivors of the First
Army’s disastrous operation returned to Praga, the right bank
district of Warsaw.
Deprived of hope for
material assistance, the insurgents were forced on 2 October
1944, to sign the surrender agreement after 63 days of fighting
in isolation against the Germans who proceeded in the following
months to undertake the systematic devastation of Warsaw. The
Red Army did not commence its next offensive in the territory of
central Poland until January 1945, as a result of which the
Germans were forced to leave the ruins of Poland’s capital
city on 17 January 1945.
The absence of
practical help from the Soviet side for the Warsaw Uprising was
a result of a consistent realisation by Stalin of his masterplan,
which basically amounted to the formation of a vassal government
in an apparently independent Poland. The destruction by the
Germans of the biggest Polish centre of fighting for
independence created a dream scenario for Stalin and his PKWN
dependents, who, on 31 December, the last night of 1944, were
re-formed in accordance with the plan into the so-called
Temporary Government.
Jacek Tebinka,
Gdansk
Translated
from Polish: Barbara Kościa