Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (58 page)

Whoever penned this choice piece of prose was convinced of two things: the Rising was definitely in progress, and the Soviet Army was going to arrive any day.

Back in London, the Foreign Office officials charged with monitoring these developments were none too happy:

Imputing sinister motives to the Russians was clearly bad form. Impugning the motives of the Poles, in contrast, was fair comment.

At this juncture, both the NKVD and
Myers
were hard at work filtering the population of the Soviet Army’s rear areas. Lt.Gen. Serov was already in Lublin. Judging by the mountain of paper which he sent back to Beria, and which Beria summarized for Stalin, he can only have been aghast at the size of his task. Supporters of the Home Army apparently filled every town and village. Every woman, every priest, every boy scout whom they interrogated was firmly in favour of the exiled Government. Thousands upon thousands of arrests were barely scratching the surface. Stalin could not have been given the impression that it was specially safe to risk an immediate advance in that sector.

The prospect of invading the Balkans, in contrast, offered many rich rewards. In the larger strategic game, it was extremely attractive. It would put a stop to Churchill’s dreams about winning Europe’s ‘soft underbelly’ for the West; and it would open up an alternative route into the Reich via Budapest and Vienna. It did not preclude an offensive against Berlin at a later stage. Hence, at some point in mid-August Stalin gave orders for Marshal Tolbukhin to storm into Romania on the 20th. All other operations would have to fit in with this priority. Rokossovsky’s and Zhukov’s plan was shelved.

By reading the implications of numerous small shifts and signs, historians have reached the conclusion that Stalin issued Warsaw’s death warrant on 13 August.
⁷⁹
The deduction is not necessarily invalid, but it is unlikely to be accurate in all respects. In particular, the decision may not have been quite as final as has been suggested. It may have left the possibility open for a further change of tack. What is certain: Stalin dismissed the opportunity to help the Rising when assistance would have been most effective. What is more, after a long period of silence, he chose to condemn the Rising in the most callous terms. On 13 August, the TASS agency issued an authoritative communiqué:

In recent days, information has appeared in the foreign press . . . regarding an armed insurrection launched in Warsaw on 1 August on the orders of Polish émigrés in London and continuing to the present time. The press and radio of the Polish émigré Government have made allusions whereby the insurgents are said to have stayed in contact with the Soviet Command and whereby the Soviet Command has denied them suitable assistance.

TASS is authorized to state that these allusions are either the result of a misunderstanding or else are a foul insult against the
Soviet Command. TASS is informed that no attempt was made by the London Poles to inform the Soviet Command of their intentions in good time or to coordinate their actions in Warsaw. In consequence, full responsibility for the events in Warsaw will fall exclusively on Polish émigré circles in London.
⁸⁰

This communiqué clarified the negative position, which Moscow had now taken and which was reflected in the language of subsequent correspondence both with Churchill and with the Polish Premier. Stalin lost all his inhibitions, ranting openly about ‘the reckless adventure’ in Warsaw and ‘the gang of criminals’ who started it.

More surprisingly perhaps, the Kremlin permitted its underlings to show their teeth to Western representatives. On the night of 15/16 August, in their meeting with Vyshinsky, the British and US Ambassadors in Moscow were treated to a performance of savage delight such as they had never before witnessed. Harriman’s telegram reported: ‘the Soviet Government’s refusal [to help Warsaw] is not based on operational difficulties, nor on a denial of the conflict, but on ruthless political calculations.’ George Kennan, the US chargé d’affaires in Moscow, recalled the moment:

I was personally not present at this fateful meeting with Stalin and Molotov; but I can recall the appearance of the ambassador and Gen. Deane as they returned, in the wee hours of the night, shattered by the experience. There was no doubt in any of our minds as to the implications of the position the Soviet leaders had taken. This was a gauntlet thrown down, in a spirit of malicious glee, before the Western powers. What it was meant to imply was: ‘We intend to have Poland, lock, stock and barrel. We don’t care a fig for those Polish underground fighters who have not accepted Communist authority. To us, they are no better than the Germans; and if they and the Germans slaughter each other off, so much the better. It is a matter of indifference to us what you Americans think of all this. You are going to have no part in determining the affairs of Poland from here on out, and it is time you realized this.’
⁸¹

Of course, none of this was known at the time in Warsaw.

Yet the story was worse than even Kennan knew. For, unbeknown to the Western Allies, Soviet policy towards the Rising had moved from a passive to an actively hostile stance. On 22 August, the NKVD was ordered to arrest and disarm all captured insurgents who fell into its hands.
⁸²
In
the last week of the month, after Rokossovsky had rebuffed the German counterattack, he was not merely ordered to resume defensive positions, he was ordered to transfer his Forty-Eighth Tank Army to the neighbouring sector facing East Prussia. Henceforth, unless new dispositions were made, he would find great difficulty in storming Warsaw, even if he had wanted to do so.

Some of the tensions of the moment were reflected in an off-the-record interview which Rokossovsky gave to a Western correspondent on 26 August:

‘And do you think’, Rokossovsky concluded, ‘that we would not have taken Warsaw if we had been able to do it? The whole idea that we are in any sense afraid of the AK is too idiotically absurd.’

Such was the Soviet attitude towards the workings of the Allied coalition. No one in the outside world had ever suggested that the Home Army was something of which the Soviets might be afraid. [
WARD
, p. 324]

The inconclusive operations in Warsaw in August were largely determined by the contrasting objectives of the combatants. The Germans’ top priority was to prevent the insurgents from interfering with the front. The Home Army’s only priority was to keep going for as long as possible until relief arrived.

One reason why von dem Bach took so long to mount a concerted assault on the insurgent enclaves lies with his protracted failures to close down attacks on the west–east thoroughfares. In one particular spot on the Jerusalem Avenue, for example, a company led by Capt. ‘Roman’ repeatedly invested a strategic building which overlooked the traffic on the boulevard. Roman, who was one of the very few people to have escaped from Auschwitz, was an unusually determined soldier. Almost every day during the first two weeks of the month, he captured, lost, and recaptured this building. Repeatedly driven out, he repeatedly returned and with deadly cunning repeatedly expelled the German defenders. He lived to fight elsewhere. But so long as he threatened this one vital pressure point, the German command was constantly made to feel insecure. One is tempted to suggest that a single company could have won the Rising a fortnight’s reprieve.
⁸⁴

Having exceeded the Rising’s expected duration by 200 per cent, Gen. Boor then called in his reserves. On 15 August, he summonded all Home Army units within reach of Warsaw to march to the capital’s aid.
⁸⁵
It was a tall order. For no one could join Gen. Boor without first crossing either the German lines or the Soviet lines or both.