The Warsaw insurrection

World War II began with the 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany shortly followed by a Soviet attack across the eastern Polish border. Although overwhelmed within a month, the Polish army fought ferociously, setting a standard which no other German-conquered nation was to equal.

In the subsequent wartime years the Poles showed great determination in continuing the struggle. No other nation suffered as much at the hands of its occupiers as did Poland. No occupied nation resisted as tenaciously as Poland. The Polish government, made up of centrist political figures and excluding Communists, re-constituted itself in London, where it raised a very large and tough army from Poles abroad.

Within occupied Poland, a secret underground army was also created. Known as the “Home army” (Armia Krajowa or AK), it eventually grew to a strength of almost 400,000 persons. This clandestine force, gathered in the face of a horrifying German occupation, was larger than that of any other occupied country.

Recognizing that the AK was too lightly armed to succeed in a general uprising, the exiled Polish government decided to husband its underground army and to await the moment when it could strike most effectively. By mid-summer 1944 it appeared that the moment was arriving. That moment, together with its prologue and its painful aftermath, is the subject of Norman Davies’ “Rising ‘44.”

Allied armies had landed at Normandy and the Soviet army was driving the German invaders out of Russia. The end of Hitlerite Germany was clearly only a matter of months away.

However, the Polish government did not believe that a German defeat would necessarily restore their nation’s independence. It was obvious that the Red army could soon occupy Poland as it crashed through into Germany. The Polish government foresaw

that the USSR would take over and hold onto the eastern third of Poland, which it had seized in 1939.

It was anticipated that the Soviets intended to install their own Polish puppet government and transform the nation into a docile satellite Communist state, to serve as a military barrier against any future resurgent Germany. That is what the Polish government feared, and this was not simply Polish paranoia. It was precisely what Joseph Stalin intended to do.

The Polish government-in-exile looked to the Western Allies, and especially Britain, to protect them against the Soviet menace. They believed that their significant contributions to the anti-Hitlerite cause merited them special consideration from those whose staunch friends they had, indeed, proved themselves to be.

But at the same time the Poles were fully determined to do everything possible in their own defense. Polish military planners developed a scheme by which Poland could both strike at the German enemy as well as preserve its own independence from Soviet takeover.

This plan, named “Operation Tempest,” called for the AK to rise up and attack the rear echelons of the German army as they battled the Soviet forces advancing into Poland. It predicted that the German defense would thereupon collapse and that the Red army, moving forward, would find that the Poles had quickly and firmly reestablished themselves as the sovereign government and military commanders in the region. The Poles would not allow themselves to be displaced in these roles by the Soviets, and would use force of arms if necessary.

Clearly, the “Tempest” plan required almost perfect timing. If the AK insurrection began too soon then the more heavily armed Germans might crush it before the Red army could break through the front. The chance for “Tempest” to work (if it would work at all) pretty much depended on it taking place in large cities where the AK was strongest.

Warsaw, the Polish capital, obviously offered the greatest chance of success. The Home army forces in Warsaw totaled about 50,000 men and women. Additional AK fighters were making their way to the city from outlying areas.

In the last week of July 1944 the Soviet armies were deep into Poland. They had come very far and fast against a German army front which appeared to be on the point of collapsing.

Red army patrols were probing into a suburb located just across the Vistula River from Warsaw. Inside the city the German occupiers were burning their papers and evacuating their dependents. Radio messages, in Polish, were being broadcast from Moscow urging the population to rise up.

Story Continues →