Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
From the Western standpoint, it was important that Stalin had not rebuffed Churchill’s approach outright. Great hopes were riding on the Moscow talks, whose result was not yet known.
It is perhaps worth repeating that the Western leaders were still headed on the path of ‘compromise’ with Stalin over Poland and that they had left the Premier in no doubt about ‘compromise’ being absolutely essential. What is more, they had made no bones about the fact that, in their view, the ‘compromise’ would have to be rather one-sided. Stalin’s demands could not be minimized. Major concessions were unavoidable. The Soviet Union had gained a position of strength. The exiled Government could not hope to hang on to its pre-war frontiers intact; and sooner or later it would have to share some power with the Communists. Yet if reasonable steps were taken, the accompanying assumption held that Stalin, too, would be reasonable. Such, after all, was the Westerners’ idea of a political deal.
PROFESSOR
A German law professor, conscripted by the Wehrmacht, discovers the realities of Nazi warfare
I regarded our mission to Warsaw with immediate mistrust. We did not know exactly what had happened there, but we could guess. I already knew more than enough about SS terror. We did not want to be dragged into brutality at five to midnight.
It must have been early in the morning on 5 or 6 August 1944, when, after travelling through Kutno–Lowitsch (names famous from 1939), we reached Warsaw West Station. A thick smoke rose above the city. Artillery fire could be heard. The station was virtually empty. Polish railwaymen were still working under German supervision. No one knew what to do with us. It was extremely difficult to find Colonel Schmidt from 608, with whom we were supposed to work. We were transported to a suburban station [in the direction of Sohachev-Vlohy]. There, far from the centre, it seemed that life continued almost as normal. Except that a very large army was present, and lorryloads of police from Azerbaijan . . .
We commandeered a large farm [near Vlohy] for the artillery troop, a few small houses for our HQ, and a humble dwelling designated for women of German descent, for the Major and myself. Finally we drove into the unlucky city. Policemen blocked the approach road. In the middle of the cemetery on Lodz Street stood an Orthodox church, quite modern, solidly built and beautifully furnished. Plundered suitcases, clothes, beds, and other things lay scattered outside, but where were the people? I walked around the church to one of the family vaults. This is where the people were! Men, women, children, and old people – obviously innocent refugees who had been rounded up and shot, every last one of them. Flies swarmed round the corpses and the pools of blood. Other bodies were piled up on barrows . . . During the first three or five days of the Rising they shot all Poles, on the personal order of Hitler, without regard to age or gender. Now they had changed tack. But not for humanitarian reasons. They were still shooting men. They had ordered them to go to the wooden fence and tear out a railing. Then they shot the whole line, poured petrol over them, and set them on fire. The railings were to make people burn better. I had never seen anything like it.
We continued in the direction of the city centre, but travelled only a few metres, because of the intense fighting . . . A never-ending column of miserable people shuffled by. It was the most shocking sight. Women, children, old people. Deadly tired faces without a shadow of hope, eyes swollen from smoke and tears, faces covered with soot, a picture of despair and doubt. Policemen with machine guns walked
beside them. It struck us, unlike in Russia, that these were not impoverished or marginal people. They were from our own social level: women in fur coats, and beautiful children, who two days ago were still being well cared for.
The Azerbaijan Battalion was engaged in battle – together with ‘Kaminski’s infamous bandit brigade’, which was made up of wild individuals, who inflicted their rage on civilians. A terrified woman ran up to us from a family house [in the respectable suburb of Vlohy]. She had been attacked by two thugs wearing just shirts and trousers and brandishing revolvers. I went there with a few men and took the thugs with me. First I came across an SS officer. I told him that we should be ashamed of such an auxiliary army in front of the Poles. He replied that it was very good for the Poles to see what would have happened had we not saved them from the Asiatics. Then I led them to ‘Colonel’ Kaminski, who slapped them in the face and led them away. What a bizarre individual for a Caucasian!
At Hitler’s command, Warsaw was to be razed. All movables were to be taken away. We carried off a large amount of eggs and sugar that could be put into sacks, and my office was equipped with a new typewriter, which Major Weiss lifted from an abandoned house. Lieutenant Johann ‘acquired’ a huge brand-new six-lamp Telefunken radio for himself, and he wore a gold signet ring, which could only have been stolen. He got drunk with his sergeant,
Owm.
Muhle, and some Polish ‘ladies’, with whom they had spent the night . . . Hitler’s permission to loot, issued to all the units fighting in Warsaw, was spreading demoralization.
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In Washington, both the Polish Mission and the US Government were taken unawares by news of the Rising, which, thanks to the time difference with Europe, was already announced in the morning papers of 2 August. The director of the mission said that everyone was ‘thunderstruck, bewildered, and depressed’. He reported one of his colleagues saying, ‘This is capital stupidity.’ He also maintained that according to Gen. Tabor’s
statements to them in June no one had expected Warsaw to be the scene of fighting. ‘The surprise of the Combined Chiefs of Staff and of the American Staff’, he would recall, ‘was no less than our own.’
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For many reasons the initial Soviet reaction to the Warsaw Rising was characterized by caution. On the ground, as is now known for certain, the Soviet Army was running into a determined German counterattack to the east of the Vistula, and the High Command would not have been able to tell how quickly the front might be stabilized. Certainly in the first week of August, there was little chance that Rokossovsky could easily have crossed the Vistula in force. On the diplomatic front, the key talks with the Polish Premier were yet to take place. It was not yet clear what proposals he would make or how resolutely he would be backed by Churchill and Roosevelt. Above all, Moscow was in acute need of accurate intelligence. Stalin would have wanted to know who was running the Rising, how it might affect his Polish protégés, and how long it could be expected to last. If the insurgents were likely to surrender before Rokossovsky could think of helping them, there would be nothing to worry about. Hence on 2 August, in an order later concealed, Stalin called the First Byelorussian Front to a halt. He had decided to wait and see. As Boor informed London on 2, 3, and 4 August, there were no signs of a Soviet attack developing. [
SEWER I
, p. 269]
Neither the British nor the Soviets had intelligence officers in Warsaw. The British were to find that an RAF POW, John Ward, had escaped German detention and had joined the Home Army. And the Soviets, too, would find that one of their own men was in a similar position. Capt. Konstanty Kalugin had found his way into Warsaw after evading his German captors, and, with the help of the Home Army, was desperate to contact his superiors. The irony was, though Rokossovsky’s forces were only a few miles away, there was apparently no means of communicating with them except by radio via London and Moscow. On 5 August, Kalugin sent a personal message addressed to Stalin and tapped out on the airwaves to Barnes Lodge:
I have established personal contact with the commander of the Warsaw garrison [Monter], which is conducting the nation’s heroic battle against the Hitlerite bandits . . . I have come to the conclusion that the following deliveries need to be made . . . in order to ensure victory over the common enemy – automatic weapons, ammunition, grenades, antitank guns. Drop the weapons in Wilson Square, Napoleon Square, the Ghetto . . . Reception points can be recognized by their red-and-white marking. . . . Direct the artillery against the main German positions on the Vistula bridges, in the Saxon Garden, and Jerusalem Avenue . . . The heroic population of Warsaw believes that you will provide effective armed assistance
within the next few hours. Please arrange a link-up for me with Marshal Rokossovsky.From the Black Group, Kalugin Konstanty, Warsaw 66804
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SEWER I
Lieutenant ‘Marten’, an engineer, organizes the Home Army’s network of sewers
By 6 August, a project had been set up to make use of the sewers. Among the Jews liberated from the Goose Farm Camp, there was a man who knew the sewers from the battle in the Ghetto; and he gave us the first valuable instructions. On 6 August, two messengers arrived in the City Centre via the sewers from Mokotov. By the 15th, a telephone line had been laid from the City Centre to the Old Town . . .
The Warsaw sewerage system was based on three main drains. Drain A ran along Commodity and Trench Streets, Drain B ran under Marshal Street, and Drain C under New World Street and the Cracow Faubourg. They all joined up near the Danzig Station and then ran on north to Jolibord. The main drains collected effluent from side sewers, whilst storm-channels led excess water off to the Vistula.
I became acquainted with the battle in the sewers [later in the month], when I received orders to go from the Old Town to Jolibord. It was supposed to be a short expedition to replenish antitank ammunition, but fate decided that I would remain permanently on sewer service. In Jolibord I sought out employees of the Warsaw sanitation department, who instructed us how to move through the smaller sewers on all fours, holding a wooden stick against the sides for support. The principal sewer route from Jolibord to Ohota measured 5–6 kilometres.
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Commander ‘Ela’ opens up the route from the City Centre to Mokotov
The bitter smell of hydrogen sulphate, mixed with that stagnant odour of rotting slime and mouldering plants assaulted the nostrils. The yellow, concentrated light of the lanterns fell a few metres before us, sliding along the lichen-covered oval vault. The surface of the mud shone in the light like black, shiny metal. The height of the sewer did not exceed one and a half metres. We had to bend our legs at the knees, to stoop even lower . . . and to rest our arms on the slippery wall.
It was not hard to guess that we were under Crossroads Square. To the left stretched Jerusalem Avenue, to the right was Schuch Avenue with its dense concentration of SS men . . . The sewer there became narrower and lower . . .
Crunch! Crash! With the jarring of iron and the cracking of crushed stones, a tank was moving over the top of us . . . But then it passed! . . . ‘It isn’t even worth trying under Pulavy Street,’ my companion remarked . . . The whole area could have remained in enemy hands . . .
The mud stuck to our legs. Sultry weather, lack of expertise, and failure to conserve our strength intensified the exhaustion . . . We had to crawl. We groaned from fear . . . It would only take a shower of rain to block the exits and drown us . . . We had to slither on elbows and knees, holding our breath.
A catchment chamber. We could sit on the bottom, straighten our backs, and rest. [But] the manhole above was closed . . . Where were we? At the next chamber it was the same story. The sewer stretched on and on. Our strength was spent. We could not get out and we would not make it back!
There was no way of understanding how it happened. An imperceptible draught of cool air revived us; and we noticed a pale glow like a half moon in the sky. Swiftly we made for the metal climbing irons! Up and up we climbed. I raised my head gingerly above the surface . . . No light, not a living soul.
‘
Stoi!
Hands up!’
My tension eased. They are ours!
‘From the City Centre,’ I cried. ‘From Commander Monter.’
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Eighteen-year-old ‘Rake’, a future literary critic, went in the opposite direction
I entered the sewers seriously wounded and feverish . . . Our platoon no longer existed . . . I spent the most horrendous day of my life down there . . . The Germans were throwing in carbide gas. They waited by every manhole with grenades . . . People could not cope psychologically; they were constantly stepping on corpses . . .
Yet, after a series of hallucinations caused by gas poisoning, the strangest thing happened. With the use of my one arm, I managed to scramble out of a manhole, only to be grabbed by the neck by two SS men. If they had shot me, it would have been fully expected. I was almost unconscious and totally indifferent. But seeing that I was wounded, they lifted my shattered arm from the board to which it was tied, washed it with water from a flask and led me to a dressing station. I guess that the meeting was rather untypical.
3
The enthusiastic reaction of the Communist propaganda organs contrasted strongly with the caution of the Soviet High Command. On 3 August, Moscow Radio’s Polish Service announced: ‘The Red Army is approaching Warsaw. Polish units are located in the immediate vicinity of Warsaw.’
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The Polish Communist station went further:
The People’s Army has taken to arms in Warsaw. German blood is flowing on the streets . . . The German garrison is threatened from the front and from the rear. Battles are in progress at Anin between German units and the People’s Army.
A great battle is raging at Bielany and on the right bank of the Vistula, where Polish units are opening the way for the Red Army that is attacking Warsaw. Fierce fighting is taking place on the Cracow Faubourg. The capital’s population is assisting the People’s Army.
Soldiers of the Polish Home Army have joined up with the action of the People’s Army.
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