Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (106 page)

Even ten years earlier, such an inscription had been unthinkable.

By now, former taboo themes had lost their spell; and it was possible to think of memorials to the victims of communism to match those to the victims of fascism. The largest of these, depicting the dreaded cattle wagons on a mangled railway track, was raised in 1995 to the vast tides of innocent people deported to Siberia. It was located to the north of the Old Town not far from another monument to the former
Umschlagsplatz
, whence other trains took other human cargos to other destinations. But for many ex-insurgents, a much less demonstrative assembly on a bleak suburban site was specially moving. It consisted of a tall, simple cross, four or five granite boulders strewn by the wayside, and a twisted remnant of prison bars. It is the Monument to the Victims of the Stalinist Terror, and it stands on the place to which were brought the unidentified bodies of executed political prisoners:

Traveller!
Lower your head; hold your step awhile.
Every grain of this earth is soaked with martyrs’ blood.
This is [Sluzheviets], this is our Thermopylae.
Here lie those who chose to fight to the very end.
No funeral way conducted us to this spot.
No one received a wreath or a salvo of honour:
Just a quick shot in the neck in [Mokotov] Jail
And a pony cart to carry us to this forsaken ground.
We marched with [Wolf] . . . with Her name on our lips,
To conquer or to die, to the walls of the Old Town
To Narvik, to Tobruk and to Monte Cassino,
Only to end our soldiers’ journey in this sand.
⁷⁷

Half a century’s backlog could not be made good in a day. Every company from 1944 demanded its tablet. Every Underground workshop deserved its marker. Every ill-starred plate from the 1940s and 1950s would preferably be replaced. As always, the womenfolk were the least demanding. But finally, on the fifty-eighth anniversary of the Rising, in 2002, they received their memorial like everyone else. The statue to the ‘Girl Couriers’ of the AK, was unveiled in a small town near Warsaw. It was a fitting tribute to all those thousands of ‘Evas’, ‘Halinas’, ‘Sophies’, ‘Maryshas’, and ‘Magdas’ without whom the Rising could not even have been started.

After the political fall of Wał
sa, and a number of years when Polish politics was dominated by the ex-Communists, the Government returned to more open support for the Rising and its memories. In 2000, ceremonies were held in Warsaw under the patronage of the Prime Minister, the last president of the former Government-in-Exile, and the ex-insurgent Foreign Minister, ‘Teofil’. On 31 July, a meeting was held at the Gloria Victis Monument in the Military Cemetery; and at L-hour on 1 August a Mass was celebrated before the Rising Monument in the presence of the Papal Nuncio. The homily was delivered by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Vrotslav:

Today, the anniversary of the Warsaw Rising, is historically beautiful: and not only beautiful but very important. For when L-hour struck, Varsovians rushed to armed conflict, most properly, in the cause of national freedom.
⁷⁸

The only thing missing was a permanent museum to the Warsaw Rising in Warsaw.

There remains the question of the ‘lost generation’. Little doubt surrounds the contention that in normal circumstances the class of youngsters decimated by the Warsaw Rising would have emerged as the core of the post-war elite. They were the best educated, the best motivated, and the most dedicated element in the population of the country’s capital. No peaceful ending to the war could possibly have held them back. As it happened, their birthright was taken over by a counter-class of opportunists, time-servers, and political sectarians who owed their first allegiance to a foreign power and who maintained their monopoly for nearly half a century. So the query arises whether, when communism collapsed, the ‘lost generation’ might not have recovered the reins of power. The answer, alas, must be in the negative. For too many lives had been lost; too many personalities had been broken; too many years had been squandered. The Third Republic, which emerged in 1990, was not a simple reversion to the Second Republic of 1939. It could only be run by a diverse range of people who, all in their different ways, were the products of the intervening half-century. Like many of the other crimes of Hitler and Stalin, the effects of the Warsaw Rising were largely irreversible. The damaged and discriminated could not be suitably compensated. The elderly could not be restored to their youth. The dead could not be resurrected. The hope was for one thing alone: that the Rising be properly remembered.

The Class of ’44 in Poland was exceptional in many respects. Its members were the sons and daughters of patriotic families who had reaped the benefits of their country’s independence only a quarter of a century before the Rising. They were kids who had something very valuable to lose, something larger than themselves, something for which they did not hesitate to fight. They were rightly convinced that their fledgeling republic, for all its faults, was infinitely preferable to the totalitarian regimes in Germany and Russia that threatened them from either side. Like the British generation of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, and Edith Cavell, who were cut down in 1914–18, they were exceptionally motivated, exceptionally dedicated, exceptionally unselfish. Their country has not seen their like before or since.

Nearly sixty years had passed since Warsaw rose and fell. The great majority of the survivors were nearing the natural terms of their lives. The sixtieth anniversary in August 2004 would be the last major occasion when they would be able to pay their respects to their fallen comrades. It was high time that the rest of the world, which sets such rhetorical store on Freedom, should also pay its respects to a matchless generation of men and women, whose devotion to the cause of Freedom had few equals. Old political wrangles should be forgotten. For everyone who values the free world of today owes the Varsovians of 1944 a deep debt of gratitude. They set a worthy example of the old-fashioned values of patriotism, altruism, steadfastness, self-sacrifice, and duty. Like the Spartans of Leonidas at Thermopylae, magnificent in defeat, and like the Ghetto Fighters of 1943, they merit a similar, admiring epitaph:

Go, passer-by, and tell the world
That we perished in the cause,
Faithful to our orders.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, the Warsaw Rising was finally passing into history. The Nazi Reich, which had suppressed it, was long since dead. The Allied Coalition, which had failed to render effective support, had been superseded by new organizations and by fresh political combinations. The Soviet Union, which had stood idly by, had recently died on its feet. The totalitarian ideologies of fascism and communism, against which the insurgents had staked their all, had totally lost their credibility. The soldiers of 1944 had largely passed on. The survivors of the Rising, who in 1944 had been little more than children, were now in the autumn of their lives.

Nonetheless the Warsaw Rising still needs to be considered seriously in any overall assessment of the Second World War in Europe. Britons and Americans both share the tendency to praise the war as an unconditional success, as a wonderful enterprise which ended with the liberation of the world from Evil. They forget that some of their partners in that enterprise did not necessarily enjoy the same sense of a good job well done. In the eastern half of Europe, one foul tyranny was driven out by another; and Liberation was postponed for nearly fifty years. By the yardstick of Freedom and Democracy as proclaimed by the Western powers, this outcome must be judged an abject failure. It tarnishes the overall balance sheet of apparent success. It shows that victory was somewhat limited, that the Western powers were not all-powerful, that evil was not banished. Indeed, Poland’s misfortune was not exceptional. It is a sobering thought to realize that in 1944–45 exactly the same number of European countries were subjugated by communism as were reclaimed for democracy.

As viewed from Warsaw and elsewhere, the Second World War can be seen to have been a three-sided struggle, in which the centrepiece was provided by the duel of two totalitarian monsters, fascism and communism, and in which the Western democracies frequently featured as a third party of only moderate importance. Whether one likes it or not, the Soviet Union made the largest military contribution to the defeat of Nazi
Germany. But it was not interested in the least in the ideals of Freedom, Justice, Self-determination, and Democracy that inspired the West. As a result, the Western powers could not fairly claim to have been the all-conquering liberators of their own legends. In reality, they were repeatedly obliged to pander to Stalin’s ambitions in order to keep the Coalition intact. But that is not the whole story. For in the process of cosying up to Stalin, many Westerners assumed a strange state of self-deception, a form of near-mesmerization, where principles could be forgotten and loyal friends could be deserted. The smouldering ruins of Warsaw illustrated the consequences.

The Warsaw Rising also played a prominent role in the origins of the Cold War. When Westerners looked back in the 1950s and 60s and asked themselves when relations with the Soviet Union had started to go wrong, they would invariably point to 1944. And when they analysed the events in which Stalin had shown evident malice and Westerners could have employed greater wisdom and resolve, they put Warsaw high on their list. The Rising did not cause the Cold War by itself. But it was a major step in that direction.
¹

The Warsaw Rising has gained a permanent place in military history. It is the archetypal model of urban guerrilla warfare. It shows how the determination of the warriors is the most vital factor in combat, how skill and bravery can hold out against the heaviest weapons, how men and women devoted to their cause can put professional armies to shame.

Equally, the Warsaw Rising stands as a warning against coalitions of convenience. It demonstrated that great powers may have democracy on the tip of their tongues but not always at the top of their priorities. Anyone who joins such a coalition should not expect to be treated as an equal, or to see their interests fully defended. Coalitions are rarely organized for the common benefit of all participants.

Finally, the Warsaw Rising carries a deathless moral message. There are some things in life that are dearer than life itself. Like the heroes of the Ghetto Rising, who had fought the same enemy in the same doomed city only one year earlier, the most devoted insurgents of 1944 faced death willingly – not gladly, but by choice. They could not regret the prospect of death, therefore, but only the circumstances that made it necessary. They would have preferred to win, but would not have been defeated by defeat. They would only have asked that their cause and their sacrifices be not forgotten.

So much is certain. As for the rest, since several parts of the picture remain hidden, historians can only write an interim report.

Gut reactions to the Warsaw Rising are still divided. Stalin described the Rising as ‘an escapade’ or ‘a prank’ that was run by ‘a gang of criminals’, and this quickly became the conventional view within the Soviet Bloc. It contained no hint of compassion, let alone of admiration. So one might not have expected such an opinion to win much currency in the outside world fifty or sixty years later. Yet one can be surprised. Of three senior Oxford dons of Polish descent opining on the subject in 2002, two did not hesitate to characterize the Rising as ‘criminal’. One, who had actually served in the Rising as a youngster, was particularly bitter: ‘If I had my way,’ he said, ‘I would have had them lined up against a wall and shot.’
²
He may have been speaking metaphorically.

Other critics give a more pragmatic tone to their judgements. They often quote an elementary principle taken from military manuals: ‘If an operation is impossible at the outset, it should not even be attempted.’ A number of high-ranking officers, including the then Minister of Defence, had shared this opinion in 1944. According to the Minister, the Rising was an ill-begotten attempt ‘at waging war without having political and military authority in the same hands. War is simply not conducted in that way . . . It could never have worked in our terrible conditions.’
³

There are historians a-plenty to agree. One of the prominent specialists on this subject adds his own voice to the chorus of disapproval. ‘The Warsaw Rising was our day of blood and glory,’ he writes, ‘but it was not capable of becoming our day of victory.’ In other words, the Rising was not merely a failure. It was a reckless undertaking, that never had a chance of success. ‘Through the overrating of the available forces and the neglect of the requirements of the international situation,’ the same historian adds, the Rising was ‘a great day of warning.’
⁴
He goes on to compare the dreadful tragedy of 1944, when the call to arms failed, with the marvellous success of 1989–90 when the Communist regime was overthrown without a shot being fired. People of this persuasion are apt to assume that the case is closed. Not surprisingly, they attract a fair amount of opprobrium, especially from ex-combatants. If they happen to be ex-combatants themselves, they are likely to be accused unceremoniously of ‘fouling their own nest’. Feelings are still raw.