Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
Several such groups were already on the march, retreating as best they could from the East. Others were located in the province of Lublin or to the south in the Holy Cross Mountains. None of them made the perilous journey all the way to Warsaw, though a few got as far as the Kampinos Forest. The 30th Infantry Division of the Home Army, which hailed from the district of Pinsk, followed a familiar course. Under its commander, Maj. ‘Thunder’, it had recently participated with the Soviet Sixty-Fifth Army in the siege of Brest, and had crossed the River Bug undisturbed. In mid-August, it moved off with about 150km (90 miles) to cover. It reached a point within sight of the Vistula. There it was trapped by the Soviets, and disarmed.
Few accounts of those turbulent days care to mention the fact that some Home Army units continued to put Operation Tempest into effect wherever possible, even in the immediate environs of the capital. An overhead snapshot taken in mid-August in the Warsaw District would have shown the main element of the Home Army engaged with the Germans in the city, a second element being interned by the NKVD, and a third element still battling alongside Rokossovsky in the fighting for several small towns.
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Inside the city, the Battle of the PAST Building was one of slow, dogged, hand-to-hand fighting. The multistorey tower of the State Telephone Company (PAST) was, after the Prudential, the second highest structure in Warsaw, and in pre-war terms counted as a skyscraper. It was one of the places where a substantial German garrison, though cut off and surrounded since 1 August, had refused to surrender. The Home Army had none of the heavy artillery the Germans would have used, so they had to storm the lower part of the building, then fight their way up, room by room, floor by floor. The action moved from an indecisive siege to the terminal attack on 20 August. Headed by Maj. ‘Leliva’ of the Kilinski Battalion, it was systematically prepared. The captured diaries of German soldiers, trapped on the upper floor, gave proof of extreme privation. First, the surrounding streets were reinforced with units which could block the forays of German tanks that had been bringing food and ammunition for the besieged. But then the attackers took serious measures. A team of women sappers – the famous
minerki
– placed explosives in the basement; and the building was set alight with flamethrowers. An early example of the ‘towering inferno’ ensued. Germans jumped from the upper windows, were killed attempting to descend the staircases, or simply shot themselves. A white flag finally emerged on 22 August. 115 prisoners were taken. If
anyone on the German side had thought that the Home Army was simply holding out, they could think again. [
PAST
, p. 303]
Monday 28 August marked the end of the fourth week, and the Rising was still going strong. In the previous days, as noted with dismay by the Ninth Army Command, the insurgents had launched some local counterattacks both in the north and in the south. A verse written on the 28th by a soldier of the Kilinski Battalion bore witness to their unbroken spirit:
Remember, you cannot doubt in Freedom
Whatever comes, even if you fail.
Remember that the whole wide world Is watching you in wonderment.
Though all assistance crumble And hunger and pain set in.
We shall not lose our wager – / The wager of honour.
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The Wehrmacht Command was well aware of the insurgents’ success. The entry for 29 August in the Ninth Army’s log stated that the Home Army was maintaining its strength in critical sectors by the brilliant use of the sewers and other underground passages. The besieging forces were unlikely to make decisive progress without the addition of another whole division of experienced infantry. ‘The crushing of the Rising is becoming a very difficult task,’ it concluded; ‘and its completion is ever more doubtful with every day that passes.’
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Attrition
By the end of August, both sides in the struggle for Warsaw were sensing the sour smell of failure. Von dem Bach’s hard-pressed men must have been painfully aware that their colleagues in the Wehrmacht were smirking at their inability to finish off a gang of bandits. Gen. Boor’s subordinates were sick with anxiety that their stupendous sacrifices might yet be in vain. Their anxiety was fuelled by the realization of three bitter truths: that the Old Town would soon have to be abandoned; that the Western allies could not supply effective assistance; and that the silence of the Soviet Army could no longer be due to practical difficulties.
Warsaw’s Old Town consisted of a maze of narrow, ancient streets clustered round St John’s Cathedral, the Royal Castle, and the stately Old Town Square. Surrounded by medieval battlements and defended by some 8,000 insurgents, it had provided a secure base for the guerrilla fighting in
which the Home Army excelled. But it was a sitting duck for the mass bombardments which were directed against it by Gen. Rohr from the last week of August onwards, and against which there was no satisfactory defence. The toll both in fighters and civilians was becoming intolerable. When the number of defenders dropped to one quarter of their original strength, the AK Command knew that the remainder would somehow have to be evacuated into the City Centre, perhaps a kilometre to the south. They also knew, if the defenders left, that the vulnerable civilian population would be left to the tender mercy of the Nazis.
The Old Town, moreover, was an important symbol of the city’s history and heritage. The figure of King Sigismund III stood atop his marble column in Castle Square much as the figure of Admiral Nelson stands above Trafalgar Square in London. In late August, the Sigismund Column was still standing proudly intact among the ruins. If it should fall, the hearts of the defenders would inevitably sink with it. [
BATTLE
, p. 329]
The British airlift from Italy, which had resumed on 8 August and extended on Churchill’s orders from the 13th, persisted against all the odds. Losses were disproportionate to the benefits. Many planes were shot down before reaching Warsaw. Many were unable to make their drops in the designated areas. Many failed to return to base. But every crate of Sten guns, of ammunition, or especially of PIAT antitank weapons was worth its weight in gold. It raised morale, as well as the insurgents’ armoury. Yet doubts inevitably multiplied. From the insurgent side, it was not hard to calculate that military, medical, and food stores were declining faster than they could be replaced. From the standpoint of the aircrews, it was extremely difficult to understand why they should risk so much to deliver so little when their Soviet allies, virtually on the spot, were not lifting a finger. And another sickening puzzle arose. Reports grew not only about the Soviets refusing to cooperate but also about them actively firing on British planes.
Throughout August, many explanations had been tendered about Soviet inactivity on the Vistula front. The Wehrmacht’s Panzer force had delivered a devastating counterattack. Rokossovsky’s soldiers were disoriented and had been obliged to withdraw and regroup. Soviet reserves had been transferred from the Vistula to the Balkan front. Yet by the end of the month, all these arguments were wearing thin. When the German Ninth Army was forced to retreat in early September to the line of the Vistula, preparing new defences, it was crystal clear that Rokossovsky had fully recovered. There was no military reason why he could not at least establish radio contact with the insurgents or why Soviet aerial and artillery support could not come into play. There could be little question that all further lack of urgency must be due to Stalin’s politics, not to military setbacks.
BATTLE
A German journalist, correspondent of
Das Reich
, sees for himself the efforts required to overcome insurgent resistance
Flamethrowers, Schmeissers, and heavy ordnance shattered the walls of reinforced concrete into thick pieces. Intensive bombing from the air destroyed the courtyards, whilst unmanned Goliaths, long-distance shelling, and antitank artillery drove the defenders from the upper floors with murderous fire. But in the labyrinthine cellars, vaults, and passages, battles raged on, even when large buildings were reduced to heaps of rubble emitting clouds of smoke and dust. It was only when divisions of Wehrmacht soldiers, police, and gendarmerie advanced into the final attack with a battalion of flamethrowers that grenadiers managed to enter the underground labyrinth, and the commander of Colonel Schmidt’s section could report on the capture of these splendid ruins.
1
A Polish journalist working for an Underground socialist paper assesses the effect of different weapons
[. . .] ‘The bellowing cow’ – a horrendous machine throwing out a series of incendiary and demolition missiles spread devastation. We felt its hellish breath in our editorial office. Two or three of its rockets fell into a room on the first floor, one of the offices of the Department of Information. In the wink of an eye everything burst into flames. A messenger, who happened to be in the office, was turned into a living torch. Admittedly the fire was overcome by the immediate emergency aid of a PPS militia division, quartered on the ground floor, but the girl died after a few hours of awful suffering.
The ‘bellowing cow’, also known as the ‘musical box’, could provoke a stampede. The sound, which it emitted before it threw a missile, made an incredible impression . . . That machine’s actions always evoked a picture of some kind of monster from before the Flood, which had come out of its lair for food making its presence known in the wilderness and its desire for blood and fresh meat. At the sound of it, blood froze in the veins, and all the animals escaped in panic. In the same way people fled at the sound of the ‘bellowing cow’, so that after the explosion, which followed, people emerged again with a latent feeling of relief that the monster had found its victim elsewhere.
Other machines of destruction were deployed. The Big Bertha was introduced. This huge rail ordnance emitted enormous missiles almost a metre long, which could
shatter a house; on explosion, they threw into the air the most powerful reinforced concrete constructions . . . On the edges of the junction point with the surrounding German army, Goliaths appeared – demolition mines, on wheels like small tanks, which the Germans had directed from a distance towards the barricades or houses on the banks of the river which had been turned into fortresses; they exploded on contact with any obstacle.
Neither the Tigers nor the Big Berthas, not even the Goliaths, however, could overpower the insurgent city. Petrol bombs and other missiles fell upon the Tigers. The missiles of the Big Bertha, as unexpected as bad luck, fortunately rarely met with success. The ‘bellowing cow’ destroyed houses, but mainly the higher floors, it was possible to survive on the ground floor or in the basements. The soldiers built shields against Goliaths from the street pavements. They were a few metres long and located in front of defended positions. These shields, which the Goliaths smashed into, far from the barricades or houses, gained the fitting name of ‘Little Davids’.
However, there was no help against planes, no way of fighting. [. . .] Therefore planes systematically threw missiles on one block of houses after another, with no chance of reply.
2
Z. Zaremba
As a result, both the German and the Home Army Commands began to reflect on a possible escape route. In German calculations, progress against the Rising was so slow that the insurgency could continue for weeks and seriously obstruct plans to turn Warsaw into a frontline fortress. In Polish calculations, the cost in lives and suffering was so high that endless resistance could not be justified, unless Rokossovsky made a move. So both sides put out feelers for a capitulation by agreement. The Germans would not agree to a settlement if the entire population were not removed. The Home Army would not settle if their people were not guaranteed a safe passage. General Rohr formally proposed negotiations on 7 September. On the 8th, General Boor accepted. Meanwhile, for week after week, the war of attrition persisted.
In September 1944, the German High Command had more to think about than the festering battle in Warsaw. Ever since Rokossovsky’s obliteration of Army Group Centre, the Soviet Army’s presence on the central stretch of the Vistula continued to pose a threat pointing directly at Berlin. Yet Soviet movement on that front was strangely sluggish, even when the Panzers’ counterattack had been neutralized. Moscow was diverting much greater resources to the northern front in the Baltic and to the southern campaign in the Balkans. At the same time, France had fallen to the Anglo-Americans; the Low Countries were under attack: and Operation Market Garden, the attack on Arnhem, though abortive, suggested that Allied strategists were cooking up a series of knock-out blows. The prime task in mid-September, therefore, was to calculate the most likely contours of the Allies’ grand offensive and to deploy the Reich’s dwindling defences accordingly.
German military planners did not fail to notice the odd situation that had developed round Warsaw. They were no less mystified by the failure of the SS to crush the Rising than by the Soviets’ apparent inability to join up with the insurgents and to create a truly menacing stance on the Vistula’s western bank. German thoughts on this matter did not entertain the possibility that Rokossovsky was deliberately holding back. Indeed, the log of the Ninth Army on 2 September interpreted the Soviet attack on Radzymin as an attempt to break through and to relieve the impending collapse of the insurgents in the Old Town. So a solid defence of the front to the east of Warsaw was an essential corollary to the operations against the Rising, and von dem Bach was to receive the requested reinforcement. The battle-hardened 542nd Grenadier Regiment was to be transferred to Warsaw from the Fourth Army on the River Biebra. The overstretched Wehrmacht was only meeting its needs with difficulty. Even the
Waffen-SS
had been forced to make concessions. Its recruitment policy, for example, had been completely transformed. An elite formation that in its early days had screened all applicants for the purest ‘German blood’ was now accepting volunteers with no German credentials at all. Indeed, the point was approaching when non-Germans would numerically predominate. In a speech to the SS Latvian Legion in September 1944, Himmler presented his new vision of a multinational Europe, whose world mission would be to stem the threat of the black and yellow races.
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Yet, in essence, the ultimate aim remained German domination or nothing.