Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
Even so, in the present, deficient state of documentation, it is impossible to say for certain whether the Kremlin’s apparent change of heart in mid-September was genuine or merely cosmetic. But, given the blatant obstructionism which had prevailed during the preceding weeks, it behoves the Soviet apologists to produce some hard evidence.
On the question of the Frantic missions, for instance, the USAAF were definitely counting to keep the shuttle flights to Warsaw in operation. But after the flight of 18 September, they had to wait on Soviet clearance which did not materialize until the 30th. In other words, when the fate of the Rising hung on a thread, it took Moscow eleven or twelve days to react to the American request. This looks like deliberate stalling. Bad weather prevented the flight on 30 September. But the very next day the Soviets changed their line yet again. The Americans were told at ESCOM that no further flights were necessary, because ‘the Warsaw partisans have been evacuated’.
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This information, as provided by the Soviets on 1 October, was false. They seemed to have returned to their old tactic of ‘Rising! What Rising?’ [
SISTERS
, p. 382]
The crossings of the Vistula by Berling’s Army were surrounded by similar suspicions of half-hearted Soviet support and confused instructions. One cannot accept the argument that Berling took the decision on his own initiative. The Soviet system simply did not permit commanders to act without the prior approval both of their military superiors and of their political minders. Equally, one cannot accept the view that Rokossovsky stood aloof and let Berling go ahead at his own risk. After all, the crossings were supported by Soviet artillery, by Soviet sappers, and – if the Soviet-sourced statistics are not exaggerated – by no less than 2,776 air strikes. Yet the most important fact remains unchallenged. Rokossovsky did not attempt to use any Soviet combat troops; and the First Byelorussian Front did not alter the essential defensive stance which it had been ordered to assume in late August. For whatever reason, the Kremlin did not approve a general offensive in the Vistula sector, even though a general offensive was the only way of breaking the German grip.
SISTERS
A medical orderly decides to rescue the wounded regardless of the consequences
Lt. ‘Felix’’s unit was guarding an outpost on Duck Street in the so-called ‘Alcazar’ district. After an unsuccessful foray, three seriously wounded soldiers had been left out in the open. The brother of one of the soldiers and a nurse called ‘Bashka’ went to collect them. But they too were wounded by German fire and were lying with others on the battlefield. My friend Sophie and I were then summoned, and we made it to the outpost. But there was a problem. ‘Felix’ thought that we nurses should retrieve the wounded, whilst his deputy ‘Igor’ said that we had no chance. In the end Felix decided that we must choose, that he would issue neither order nor recommendation.
Sophie and I were determined to go. First, we crawled over a small brick wall, in front of which logs had been stacked as a shield. But beyond that there was nothing but grass. So we crept along on our stomachs, very slowly, pushing our medical kits in front of us. We were fired on all the time, but not hit. With perhaps a dozen metres to go, we heard a girl’s voice: ‘Keep still, for God’s sake! Don’t move!’
We stopped in the grass and lay immobile, completely flat. After a time the Germans ceased firing. They probably thought that if we were not moving, we were dead. We lay there for hours. Our mission could not restart until evening, when intensive firing from our own side could cover our movements. Only then were we able to extricate the wounded and to retreat from that no-man’s-land.
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A nun, ‘Sister Teresa’, is also kept busy
We looked at the stretchers with dread. The half-charred figures of small children lay there with black, swollen, suppurating faces. It turned out that the Germans, having captured a street, were driving people into mined shelters or were shutting them in cellars, into which they hurled grenades. Some of their victims stayed alive under the rubble for days, until they were found by a patrol, and brought to the hospital.
Soon there were no beds left. We packed the wounded side by side on pallets both in the corridor and the hall. Sheets and blankets were lacking . . . The weather was sweltering. An unbearable stuffiness reigned and we feared an epidemic. We were invaded by insects . . . We were all on the edge of death . . .
On Sundays all the lightly injured, the hospital staff, and the whole ‘Mokotov
Square army’ walked in line to the chapel of the Sisters of St Elizabeth, where Father Z. celebrated Mass. Father Z. went about in a flying suit and beret, just like the boys. He dug ditches like the boys. There was something very moving about the sight of a chapel filled with young people, listening intently to his fiery sermon . . .
The food situation was deteriorating. Even black bread was meagrely rationed Our hearts ached at the thought that the sick, and particularly the boys, were hungry, at a time when they needed intensive care. We carried dinner for the sick from the main building through a huge clearing in the wall dividing the villa from the hospital garden. But ever more frequently we had to wait a long time for the firing to calm down . . .
2
Behind the scenes, a furious row was raging between Berling and the Lublin Committee. Even though the Committee had issued yet another public manifesto about the imminent liberation of Warsaw, they were privately incensed by Berling’s apparent lack of consultation with them. It is anyone’s guess what really caused the row. According to one suggestion, the Committee feared that Berling was plotting to seize Warsaw for himself and, in conjunction with Boor, to exclude them from power.
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At all events, Berling was sufficiently disturbed to take the desperate step of denouncing the Committee as Trotskyists and demanding a personal audience with Stalin (which was not granted).
As usual, Soviet policy must be judged, among other things, by the activities of the NKVD and
Smyersh
. For as soon as Rokossovsky entered Praga, Gen. Serov and his special regiments moved in to start up the usual purging of the rear areas. Ex-Soviet archivists are still peculiarly reluctant to produce documents on this subject. But there is no reason to think that the NKVD behaved differently in the Warsaw district than in other neighbouring areas, for which documents have been released; and
eyewitness accounts from people who were on the receiving end are not hard to find. The NKVD had been rounding up ‘illegals’ ever since the Red Army crossed the Polish frontier in January, and since July they had specific orders to target members of the Home Army. In September, they were emboldened by the decree from the Lublin Committee which gave their repressions a pseudo-legal justification. Wherever they went, mass arrests, interrogations, deportations, and shootings ensued. In their eyes, the men and women of the Home Army were not to be viewed as allies or even as partners in the fight against Fascism. In the mass of NKVD reports, captured insurgents were classified as anything from ‘White Poles’ and ‘fascist rebels’ to common ‘bandits’ or ‘persons carrying unlicensed weapons’.
Few historians have cared to describe the shocking state of affairs that prevailed in the Warsaw district in the last two weeks of September. In the centre of the city, on the perimeters of three shrinking enclaves still controlled by the Home Army, fierce fighting with German forces persisted day by day, as the lot of the surviving civilians went from very bad to terminal. In the western suburbs, long controlled by the German authorities, civilians were being evacuated, suspected insurgents were being shot, men and women were being shipped out either to concentration camps or to forced labour in the Reich. In one part of the eastern suburbs, on the right-bank foreshore, the men of the Berling Army together with some Soviet logistical units were risking their lives, and dying in their droves, to relieve the Rising. In other parts of the eastern suburbs, especially in the sprawling streets and estates of Praga, the NKVD was engaged in operations virtually identical to those in which the SS was engaged only two or three kilometres away. Nazi and Soviet repressions were proceeding simultaneously, in one and the same city. The methods of these simultaneous violations were essentially the same. Ever since 1944, the more courageous sort of historians have repeatedly stated that the Soviets watched passively as the Germans destroyed Warsaw and its inhabitants. This is not an adequate description of the scene.
In the third week of September, a series of meetings took place in Praga between Maj. ‘André’, the commander of the hidden remnants of the Home Army’s District VI, and the frontline Soviet units. These meetings would be a crucial test of Soviet intentions, and in particular of the optimistic proposition that Warsaw would be treated more generously than cities further to the east.
Maj. André was understandably cautious. He had been told that his counterpart in the nearby town, having guided the Soviet spearheads into the town, had promptly been arrested. So when going out to meet the oncoming Soviet soldiers, he concealed his identity. Having hidden behind a wall as the last German troops retreated, he caught sight of a Soviet infantryman carrying a radio-telephone, and waved to him. ‘
U vas akovtsy yest?
’ was the Russian’s very first question: ‘Do you have any Home Army people here?’ A noncommittal reply was followed by: ‘Because I’d happily finish those SOBs off!’ This one soldier’s opinion is not necessarily conclusive. But it strongly suggests that the political department had instructed the men to treat the Home Army as enemies.
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Some of André’s subordinates had better luck with the soldiers of the 1st Division of the Berling Army, whom they led to the Vistula shore.
Already on 14 September, Berling’s deputy, a Pole from Polesie with a similar career to Rokossovsky’s, was appointed Commandant of Praga. His first decree was to ban all underground organizations, including the Home Army. One of André’s colleagues, Maj. ‘Louis’, immediately reported to him that the Home Army’s intentions were neither to recognize the ban nor to permit its men to join Berling.
On 18 September, however, André decided that he should respond to a summons to meet the Commandant in person. He set off in the company of his medical chief and his chief intelligence officer. Walking along Market Street, he was accosted by a man dressed in a Polish uniform. ‘I know that you are the Home Army’s district commander,’ the stranger said, ‘and that you are heading for a conference with the Commandant. But before doing that, you have first to register with me.’ In response to the question, ‘And why should I register with you?’, the answer came: ‘Because I am the Director of the Security Office in Praga: my name is “Light”.’
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Light was working for Gen. Serov. André did not oblige, but noticed that he was being shadowed. [
ANGER
, p. 386]
It turned out that the point of the meeting with the Commandant was to agree the text of an appeal for all AK soldiers to join the Berling Army. André agreed a text, which he signed. But he did not recognize the text which was published the following week in Lublin and which stated that
all
the AK soldiers of District VI (Praga) had already joined.
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André spent two days with Gen. Berling in talks at a villa some miles to the east of Praga. Berling offered him a commission as second-in-command of the 4th Infantry Division. André would have preferred to form a separate infantry regiment consisting exclusively of AK men. No decision was reached. André then announced in writing that he was going to cross the river to consult his superiors in Warsaw. Instead, he took off in the opposite direction, and went into hiding in one of the nearby villages. Almost two months would pass before Light found him.
ANGER
In the later weeks of fighting, the mood of some civilians turns ugly
5 September
, Tuesday. The Germans are storming, burning, and murdering, and there’s no resistance from our side, because there can’t be any. There are no units here, no aeroplanes, no grenadiers. What can you do with bare hands? Many people have left Warsaw. Yesterday’s communiqué gave 100,000 as the number of those detained in Prushkov, where they are suffering from hunger and destitution. It’s also hard to get about, because of the risk of death or internment, and because of the certainty that . . . your compatriots will loot your own home.
Today, when strength is running out, the mood is changing, and attitudes towards the Rising are changing, too. Almost everybody has lost the will. Almost everybody is asking the same questions: how could it have happened like this, and what for? It’s clear it has taken place without agreement between the Allied governments and the Soviet government. Our Premier [Mick] in his speech on 1 September declared that the London government takes responsibility. But what comfort can this declaration bring to those who are dying in the cellars? The fact is that the Allies are giving us no help because they cannot. What next? The Bolsheviks have been standing outside Warsaw for five weeks. There has been no sound of a larger battle, and the only possible conclusion is that they don’t want to advance . . . But in that case it would have been better not to have begun the Rising until these matters were sorted out, instead of consigning the city to destruction, to massacre – because this
is
a massacre. It seems to me now that there’s no way out. The Rising has lost its strength to drive the Germans out. We can only suppose either that the Bolsheviks will come to an agreement or change their behaviour, or that the Germans will retreat westwards of their own accord. But who knows if a result will come about?
Meanwhile, we are literally dying from hunger, filth, exhaustion, and bombardment. We haven’t slept for weeks . . . For lunch today we had boiled potatoes and tomatoes, but apparently daytime cooking is going to be banned, so that smoke doesn’t give us away to the planes. Even the insurgents have lost their dream. Three times I have had to take shelter in their bunkers. They give me to understand that they had envisaged the action quite differently, and that they have little hope left.
9 September
, Saturday. Yesterday’s communiqué [from London] was completely empty. The article that followed was full of declarations about having to ‘hold out’, with no word about the Bolsheviks’ intentions. Nothing much can be made of the
reference to Stalin rejecting a proposed agreement between the London government and the Committee for National Unity. A few days ago that agreement was supposedly signed and sealed . . . That’s why it’s so hard for us . . . What are they telling us to wait for? . . . All these protestations of sympathy, all these ‘hearts beating with yours’, and ‘thoughts going out to you’, merely elicit contempt . . . coming as they do from people who for the last six weeks have been eating, drinking, and sleeping in clean sheets . . .
1
Our struggle is only a fragment in the life of humanity. In whose name is it being pursued? Is it for power, as our increasing doubts suggest? Is it for Ideas? A Revolt against Oppression? A Fight for Freedom? Or something else entirely? How is one to explain the fact that . . . on Long Street . . . amongst those driven forward as human shields in front of German tanks was Father T. That priest was a keen anti-Semite and saw Hitler as the founder of the struggle against international Jewry. He may have given the appearance of spiritual closeness [to us] but in reality he was distant, opposed, and alien. Yet at the end, half dead and bleeding from his wounds . . . he has found a place in Polish sympathies . . .
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