Jesteśmy, jeśli pamiętasz // We are here if you remember
Thank you, Warsaw
The Warsaw Uprising of August 1, 1944 is one of the most important events in modern Polish history.
The Warsaw Uprising was a heroic and tragic 63-day struggle to liberate World War II Warsaw from Nazi/German occupation. Undertaken by the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK), the Polish resistance, it was a part of a nationwide uprising, Operation Tempest, and lasted until October 2.
The Warsaw Uprising was probably the largest single operation organized and executed by a partisan organization in WWII. It lasted two months, and when it was over, 200,000 people were dead, and the entire city was in ruins. In trying to achieve its goals, the uprising was a terrible failure. It was a remarkable success in showing the Polish nation's courage and dedication. Largely sidelined in history books and often confused with the Ghetto Uprising of 1943, the 1944 Warsaw Rising was a pivotal moment both in the outcome of the Second World War and the origins of the Cold War.
The uprising failed due to global politics played by Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was intended to last only a few days until the Soviet Army reached the city. The Soviet advance stopped short, however, on the other bank of the Vistula River. Stalin condemned the uprising as a criminal adventure (even though Russian radio broadcasts called for an uprising) and refused to cooperate.
Initially, the German garrison of about 20,000 ill-equipped soldiers was outnumbered by AK fighters. However, out of more than 30,000 men & women, less than 3,000 were properly armed. Many only had pistols or antique hunting rifles, and many were armed with knives or swords! On the first day of fighting, over 2,000 Poles were lost, while only 500 Germans were killed. When Hitler heard of the Uprising, he ordered Himmler (head of the SS) to wipe Warsaw off the face of the earth. Thousands of heavily armed German reinforcements were rushed into Warsaw. By mid-September German troops were reinforced up to 50,000 men under SS general Erich von dem Bach. German tanks & Stukas (dive bombers) leveled entire blocks of the city at a time.
In 63 days of savage fighting and brutal reprisals, the most memorable was the Wola massacre, which took place in the first days of the uprising. On August 5th, German forces, notably subunits of the Sicherheitspolizei security police and notorious force of amnestied criminals SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, rounded up and indiscriminately executed many of the people in the Wola district, including the elderly, women and children, as well as the insurgents taken prisoner. Mass executions in the district also included the mass murders of patients and personnel of the local hospitals, some of them burned alive. By August 8, some 40,000 civilians had been killed, though some estimates cite numbers as high as 100,000.
Polish losses amounted to 18,000 soldiers killed and 25,000 wounded. German casualties totaled over 17,000 soldiers killed and over 9,000 wounded. From Warsaw’s civilian population, approximately 550,000 were sent to a concentration camp at Pruszkow, and another 150,000 were used as slave labor while over 200,000 died.
Following the surrender of Polish forces on October 2, German troops systematically burned the city block by block. 93% of the city became uninhabitable and featureless of landmarks. By January 1945, when the Soviets finally entered the city, Warsaw had practically ceased to exist.
