Warsaw Uprising
The Polish Home Army rose against the German garrison of Warsaw on 1 August 1944 and fought for sixty-three days. The rising was timed against the Soviet advance, which had reached the eastern bank of the Vistula, and its object was political as much as military: to liberate the capital before the Red Army arrived, so that the government in London rather than the Soviet-sponsored committee at Lublin would be in possession. Some 40,000 insurgents began with weapons for about a tenth of them. They took most of the city centre in the first days and could not take the bridges, the airfield or the German-held quarters. The Soviet advance then stopped. Whether it could not have continued — the front had outrun its supply after a 600-kilometre advance — or would not, is the question that has been argued for eighty years; Stalin refused landing rights for Allied aircraft flying supplies from Italy for six weeks, which is harder to explain in logistical terms. The Germans committed police and SS units to the suppression, and the Wola massacre in the first week killed some 40,000 civilians in two days. The insurgents moved through the sewers between districts as the city was reduced house by house. They capitulated on 2 October with combatant status recognised. Around 16,000 fighters and up to 200,000 civilians died, and Hitler ordered the city demolished; some 85 per cent of it was destroyed. The Red Army crossed in January 1945. The political object failed completely. The Home Army was destroyed as a force, its surviving officers were arrested by the Soviets, and the government the rising was meant to install never returned; the monument to the insurgents went up in 1989.
- Year: 1944 CE
- Category: Military
