Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (35 page)

The defeat of September 1939, however, had discredited the
Sanacja
regime. In consequence, the wartime exiled Polish Government was largely set up by the democratic opponents of the
Sanacja
, who, like Gen. Sikorski, had often stayed clear of state politics in the 1930s. It embraced the four main democratic groupings – the Peasant Party (PSL), the Socialist Party (PPS), the National Democrats (ND), and the Christian Democrat Labour Party (SP) – which, having escaped the impositions of the
Sanacja
, were now immediately cast into the infinitely harsher environment of the German and Soviet Occupations. These four parties formed the backbone of the political Underground. Each of them sprouted a paramilitary wing actively engaged in resistance.

Oddly enough, the mild adversity which Poland’s best democrats had faced before 1939 did not prove to have been the worst training school for the extreme ordeal which awaited them. They were already wary of police surveillance; they knew how to beat the censors; and they were past masters at holding secret meetings and covering their tracks. As soon as the September Campaign was lost, therefore, they went to their secret work with gusto.

The position of the Polish Government in London reached its
optimum in 1942. Its base in Britain was secure, and its alliance with the British was thriving. Its contribution to the pool of trained manpower in all three armed services was greatly appreciated, especially by the Ministry of Defence; and its role in the field of intelligence was outstanding. What is more, its standing in the Allied coalition was high. Gen. Sikorski was judged to have shown great statesmanship by putting resentments aside and by signing the treaty with the Soviet Union. His relations with Churchill and Roosevelt were cordial, and markedly superior to those of the Free French. For the time being, while the Soviets fought for their lives, he was not yet confronted by a Soviet partner that could treat him unreasonably.

The institutions of the exiled Government were growing to match the growing list of its competences. The Presidency was not challenged. Sikorski’s joint functions as Commanderin-Chief and Premier, though not above criticism, were working well. The Cabinet was supported by all four of the main democratic parties, who shared the ministries between them. An exiled ‘parliament’ of appointed representatives began work in an advisory capacity.

Once central organs were established in Britain, the principal task lay in forming, strengthening, and maintaining contact with parallel civil and military organs in the occupied country. Civilian structures were already in place in December 1940, when two Government ‘Delegates’ were appointed – one in Poznan for the lands annexed by the Reich, and the other for the General Government. The military structures took longer to coalesce. Yet the Home Army was formally constituted on 14 February 1942. From then on, the tentacles of the exiled Government reached out from Sikorski’s HQ at the Rubens Hotel in London to every town and village and to almost every clandestine formation in Poland.

Initial attempts to organize the political Underground were hampered by the deaths or arrest of many prominent figures. The Government’s first choice as ‘Home Delegate’, a National Democrat, was killed by the Gestapo before he could take office. Sikorski’s first personal emissary died in Auschwitz. The PSL leader and former Speaker of the Parliament was shot at Palmiry; the editor of the socialist daily, the
Worker
, was also shot, but not before he had been granted a personal interview with Himmler. ‘What do you want from us?’ the
Reichsführer-SS
asked. ‘What do you expect?’ ‘From you, I neither want nor demand anything; with you, I fight.’ It cost him his life.
¹⁶

Much confusion was caused by lingering rivalries from the pre-war
period. The military leaders, almost inevitably, were ex-Pilsudski-ites. The political representatives tended to be their former opponents. More than one political coordination committee came and went before a measure of unity emerged. Yet the principles, as described by one of the would-be coordinators in 1940, were always clear. Firstly, ‘the Poles will never agree to collaborate with the Germans. Quislings are to be eliminated at all costs.’
¹⁷
Secondly, the plans of the Underground administration were to be synchronized with the exiled Government.
¹⁸

The Peasant Party addressed the largest social constituency in Poland, but it was never quite able to realize its potential. Warsaw was not its natural habitat. Its paramilitary Peasant Battalions (BCh) came into their own in 1942–43, when they contested the Nazi resettlement scheme in the Zamost district.

The Socialist Party, which had close links with the Jewish Bund, ‘had the richest and most unbroken tradition in the fight for independence’. Once led by Pilsudski himself, it later became the most spirited opponent of the
Sanacja
. It never had any truck with the Communists, whose tyrannical methods and ambivalent attitude to national sovereignty put them beyond the pale in socialist eyes. Adopting the collective pseudonym of ‘Freedom, Equality, Independence’, it took a combative stance from the start. Its first military organization, the Workers’ Committee for the Defence of the Capital, was formed in Warsaw in the early days of September 1939.

The spirit of the wartime PPS was evident in a flysheet prepared for May Day 1940, and distributed amongst others to the passengers of the Warsaw–Cracow express (the Nazis as well as the Soviets celebrated May Day):

The socialists were regaining the role which they had pioneered before 1918 – namely the avant-garde of national independence.

The National Democrats occupied the right wing of Polish politics and enjoyed a strong following throughout the country. They stood for ‘Poland for the Poles’ and for a vision that all too often linked an intolerant brand of nationalism with a particular brand of mystical Catholicism. One of their press organs was called, revealingly,
Polakatolik
. Another faction professed a more secular brand of nationalism. At all events, their mood was incorrigibly truculent, not least because they never gained the political power which they believed was theirs by right. They were always complaining of conspiracies cooked up either by the Pilsudski camp or by one or other of the national minorities. Indeed, they were forever seen by their rivals as a negative force.

In wartime, however, the National Democrats had a particular disability. They had a long tradition of belittling Poland’s insurrections. Hence, though they could be found everywhere in the Resistance movement, they were not the natural advocates of militant action. This explains why an important section of right-wing opinion joined a radical offshoot of the National Democrats, the ONR, which had been banned before the war but which from 1940 onwards patronized a militant Underground formation calling itself the National Armed Forces or NSZ. The NSZ did not mix well with anybody. But its determination to fight the occupying forces cannot be doubted.

The Christian Democrats formed the more moderate brand of conservatism. Their party, which propagated modern Catholic views on social justice, was called, somewhat misleadingly, the Labour Party (SP). Their stronghold lay in Upper Silesia, which formed an integral part of the Reich, rather than in the General Government.

In 1939–41, there was no Polish Communist Party. The pre-war movement’s leaders had been murdered by Stalin, and the Nazis’ segregation of the Jewish community eliminated the constituency from which it had drawn its largest single pool of recruits. The KPP’s replacement, the PPR, did not start to function until 1942; and the PPR’s military wing, the People’s Guard (GL), was a marginal force in the Underground until the victory of the Soviet Red Army loomed. Some would say that its ferocity made up for its lack of numbers.

In the early years of the war, all these groups were engaged in unilateral and often localized acts of resistance. Bringing them together in the dangerous surroundings of the occupation was no easy matter. And some individuals preferred to act on their own:

Keeping track of the mushrooming Resistance movement poses as many headaches for historians as it no doubt did for the Gestapo. But one list of the paramilitary organizations current in Warsaw in 1943, and their diverse political connections, shows the nature of the problem. By July 1944, many of the earlier organizations had merged, or multiplied, leaving a much larger body consisting of far fewer components:

Home Army (AK): Warsaw District, 860 platoons	40,330 men
National Armed Forces (NSZ)	1,000
Polish People’s Army (PAL)	500
People’s Army (AL) – Communist	800
Polish Syndicalist Union (ZSP)	1,000
Polish Socialist Militia (PPS)	500
State Security Corps (PKB)	500

The figures are estimates, but the proportions are self-evident. The Home Army was ten times larger than all the other formations put together.
²¹

A later analysis of the geographical distribution of the Home Army units within the Warsaw region also brings some interesting results:

Different historians give different totals, but the breakdown is informative. The largest single concentration was in Praga. The only districts to possess concentrations of similar size were in the City Centre and Mokotov. If communication with the suburbs could be maintained, the city could draw on considerable reserves located within the Greater Warsaw County.