by George Bruce
Warsaw drew its water supply from the Vistula, through the water works between Ochota and the City Centre. The power station dominated the Vistula embankment between the Poniatowski and Kierbedz bridges. Gas came from a works in southern Wola. All three of these public utilities swiftly became targets for attack and counter-attack by Poles and Germans alike.
A lifeline for the Poles as the struggle for the city grew in intensity was the dark and labyrinthine sewerage system, built as much as a hundred years ago to carry rainwater and sewage to the river. The outflow reached the Vistula north of the city in the Bielany area, where the two main sewerage tunnels met, both running in a north-south direction. The tunnel running from central Mokotow in the south, beneath the City Centre, the Old Town and Zoliborz to Bielany was used by the men and women of the Secret Army as a subterranean communications route.
Other smaller systems, still more frightening, made roundabout circuits like rabbit warrens before reaching the main collector systems. The larger tunnels varied from about five to seven feet in diameter, the smaller from about two feet to four feet. The rush of drainage water sometimes filled these completely. Pitch black, foetid, twisting and turning for miles, choked with sudden niagaras of water, the sewers were to become the Secret Army’s only means of communication between beleaguered districts.
This, in brief, was the city with its 1,200,000 inhabitants which Komorowski’s Secret Army was now to try to wrest from the Germans, in the belief that the Russians were about to fight their way in from the east. All was now to be staked on seizing control of it before the Soviets entered, in an effort to forestall a communist takeover.
What kind of operational plan had the Secret Army? How was this force of mostly untried and poorly-armed soldiers to set about overthrowing the German garrison? Generals Rowecki and Sikorski between them had drawn up operational plans for the intended Uprising in 1942-3, and this included Warsaw; its role in this plan became substantially the plan for 1 August 1944.
Airily, the plan ordered the destruction of all German security and administrative units, the disarming or, if necessary, annihilation of German army and police units; the capture of military stores and warehouses; the occupation of the city and its immediate surroundings, especially communications centres, railway stations, Vistula bridges, radio stations, telecommunications centres and public utility buildings. It was a task that would have tested a well-armed force of two or three divisions, let alone a citizen army short of bullets and guns.
No less ambitiously the plan ordered that defence lines were to be organized on two perimeters, the first on the eastern outskirts of Praga, the second on the west bank of the Vistula, from Bielany to Siekerki, so as to seal off the city in the east and stop the entry of more German forces. At the same time the Secret Army was to secure the safety in the capital of the London Government’s provisional administration, which would start to function at once.
Rowecki counted on Anglo-American aid when he drew up the plan, as well as the participation of Polish forces in the west. With this in mind, he stated in detail how the above aims should be achieved, ordering that the most important tactical objectives as well as secondary nests of resistance must be destroyed by simultaneous surprise attacks. ‘Strongly defended objectives, on the other hand, should be isolated,’ he commanded.
The manoeuvre must be carried out in such a way, that after the reduction of the primary objectives and the capture of arms, the stronger positions may be annihilated with the help of better armament. The central and skirting railway lines must be sealed off so as to prevent German movement into or out of the city.
Strong pickets must be placed at the end of all the main communication arteries out of the city, as well as the most important routes on the outskirts so as to hinder and prevent any troop movements by the enemy in any direction.
As the main forces finish their fighting within the capital, they must be used to organize the defence of Praga and of the western bank of the Vistula, while a reserve must at the same time be assembled in readiness for action to the north or west of the city.
On the basis of this plan Komorowski’s staff worked out their own more detailed operational instructions, including orders for the erection of adequately manned anti-tank barricades at all important road junctions and city access roads to stop German forces entering the city after the start of the fighting.
Strangely, they entrusted organization of the western defence perimeter to the commanders of the Zoliborz, City Centre and Mokotow forces ‘at the moment when the forces of these sectors are freed from the initial fighting’. Commanders of the City Centre and Zoliborz sectors were also, with the cooperation of the Praga forces, on the Vistula’s east bank, to capture the all-important road and railway bridges across the river. The chances of their being free to help set up the western defence perimeter to stop the Germans entering from that quarter seemed a little remote.
The Praga sector was to organize the defence of the east bank, but in the event of heavy German attack, to cross the river into the City Centre and there form a reserve for the defence of the river’s west bank. To the independent Okecie sector was given the heavy task of capturing the strongly garrisoned airport and Luftwaffe base, after which it was to organize its defence and prepare for the landing of British, American and Polish aircraft.
The commander of the forces in the suburban sector of Marymont, north of Zoliborz, was to capture Bielany airport and Raszyn radio station, then capture and mine all the railway stations and bridges in this sector. In addition, his forces were to erect anti-tank defences and strong-points on all city access roads in their sector and be permanently ready to march to the City Centre with reserve troops should they be needed.
To the Sappers was given the task of laying mines in the hours before X-hour along the railway lines to be blown at the outset of the Uprising. A special plan dealt with the destruction of the Warsaw railway system, vital for stopping both German troop movements and shelling by heavy artillery from armoured trains. The Sappers were also to send three platoons to Praga to build anti-tank defences on the approaches to the bridges: and to allot the remainder of their units to the City Centre, Wola and Zoliborz districts to help in strengthening the defences along the surrounding railway lines.
Comprehensive though the plan tried to be it was nevertheless unrealistic to a marked degree, conceived as though the Germans were weak and the Poles strong and well-armed; and indeed, for the operational tasks allotted them they would need to be.
Of course, before he was persuaded otherwise, Komorowski had made German collapse in the Warsaw sector of the front a condition of the Uprising. Now he was about to attack a strong, well-armed, well-disciplined force of seasoned troops with an untried army devoid of heavy weapons, weak in small arms and with ammunition for only about five days.
All therefore hinged on the men of the Secret Army being able to overwhelm the German units and arm their unarmed comrades with captured weapons. Just as in the Trojan War, about 1250 BC, it was vital not only to kill or disarm the enemy but also to seize his weapons. Thus, the Uprising was first and foremost an ‘equipment action’; and only secondly a battle for vital objectives. Even the best operational plan was little more than provisional in face of this.
Colonel Chrusciel received the order for the insurrection at 6 o’clock on 31 July, but to take it to his headquarters from Komorowski’s headquarters, then to code and prepare orders for dispatch to the group commanders was impossible that evening before the 8 o’clock curfew. Distribution of the order to start fighting at 5 o’clock began at 7 AM the same day, thus leaving commanders less than ten hours to inform their workaday troops — even if they themselves received the order at once, which was impossible.
Under the eyes of SS and police patrols scores of messenger girls arrived at the headquarters one after the other and somehow without attracting attention were sent off on their vital errands. At this point Chrusciel’s timetable came to grief.
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br /> Warsaw subsector commanders received the order at about 8 AM on 1 August, the district commanders at about 10 o’clock, commanders of the fighting formations at midday; their platoon commanders at about 2 o’clock, or three hours before it was due to begin, and suburban commanders only an hour before, or even later.
The outcome on this first vital day was incomplete mobilization. In some platoons, even though the troops were standing by in a state of readiness, as much as half the strength failed, for one reason or the other, to rendezvous on time. Many decided to leave work and make one final visit home to their wives and families and were trapped there by premature outbreaks of fighting. Suburban commanders with important perimeter defence tasks received their orders last of all and had the poorest turn-out. Even in the highly trained ‘Radosław’ and ‘Bastion’ groups, both of whom had crucial assignments, the turn-out was not much more than half owing to late orders.
On the way to the Home Army Staff GHQ in the early afternoon, Komorowski walked through streets full of young men and women carrying rucksacks and bulky parcels. ‘Overcoats bulged with hand-grenades, or did not quite conceal from my eyes a tommy gun or a rifle. Though I knew that only a person in the street would notice these things, I could not repress an irrational anxiety. I passed German patrols at every few paces, and armoured cars were moving ceaselessly through the streets.’[143]
As well as the intermittent rumble of artillery on the Russo-German front, the deep crump of detonations near at hand could be heard as the Germans blew up railway equipment near Praga.
Still looking like ordinary civilians, the Secret Army men entered their posts in houses, offices or factories commanding German barracks, vital street crossings, railway stations or bridges, all of which objectives they were ordered to seize in their first surprise attacks. For upon surprise greatly depended whatever chance of victory they had.
They barricaded entrances and posted sentries. From out of deceptive wrappings or from under their clothing they took their scanty weapons. They put on their red and white arm bands, the proud badge of Polish troops on their native soil.
Then they awaited the moment for which they had longed so devoutly for five grim years, when together they would hurl themselves at the Nazis. And by the tragic delusion that the Red Army had cracked the German defences and soon would fight its way into Warsaw to aid them they gained courage and hope.
Chapter Nine: The Uprising flares
On that hot morning of 1 August 1944 when tree-lined, grassy Warsaw already looked parched and yellow, the German authorities were sharply divided about the likelihood of a Polish uprising in the city at that time. Colonel Geibel, commander of SS and Police, had learned of the possibility owing to the conscientious savagery of his SS torturers in their interrogation of Secret Army men and women in the corridor of cells on Szuch Avenue. On 15 July he began fortifying all the city’s main objectives more strongly with concrete and barbed-wire and brought in his outlying police pickets. He also reported to his superiors that owing to lack of troops he would not be able effectively to oppose an uprising.
At 11 o’clock on 1 August, convinced now that something was afoot, he tried to persuade Dr Fischer, Governor of Warsaw, to withdraw into the strongly fortified police headquarters in Szuch Avenue in the City Centre. Fischer did not agree that an uprising was likely and refused.
Lieutenant-General Reiner Stahel, appointed by Hitler on 27 July to command the Warsaw garrison Wehrmacht troops because he was reputed to be a commander especially reliable in time of crisis, arrived in the capital on 31 July and went straight to the Wehrmacht HQ in Brühl Palace, Theatre Square. There in rude and unmannerly fashion he took over command from Major-General Rohr.[144] He then shut himself up inside this charming Empire-style residence with its walled-in courtyard facing the city’s most beautiful square; he could not therefore sense the highly inflammable atmosphere outside in the streets.
He had observed that the city seemed calm on his arrival, but his intelligence department was less confident, for recently, believing that the Poles had been subdued, Himmler had seriously cut down the garrison strength. The Germans, it must be remembered, had not thought it necessary to draw up a defence plan against an uprising in Warsaw. For internal defence they had simply divided the city into five sectors, each with its own supplies and forces, and had instituted an alarm system with three degrees of urgency, the first two for disturbances and riots, which the Police and the SS would handle; and the third for an insurrection when the Wehrmacht would take over.
For this purpose Stahel should have had a force of fifteen thousand Wehrmacht troops, thirteen thousand Luftwaffe troops, four thousand Waffen SS and four thousand armed police, apart from about four thousand station and factory guards, a total of forty thousand men.[145] He discovered, however, that on 9 July Himmler had transferred a battalion of the ‘Hermann Goering’ SS Regiment to Grodno, thus weakening the garrison by several hundred first-class troops specially trained in street fighting, while to protect the German Governor of Poland, Hans Frank, in Cracow, he had drafted a police battalion. Worst of all, the army and air force had ordered to the collapsed Eastern Front nearly all the good fighting units available.[146]
Examining his fighting strength in the Brühl Palace on 31 July Stahel was dismayed to find it little more than a quarter of what it ought to have been. He had in all only about 5,500 good fighting troops, 4,300 SS and Police units, 1,300 Luftwaffe anti-aircraft troops, 800 Hermann Goering SS and two companies of Pioneers, about 12,000 troops all told, included among whom were about 900 renegade Ukrainians, Cossacks and Turkomen, former Soviet prisoners of war of doubtful value.[147]
He ordered into Warsaw at once several batteries of anti-aircraft guns from Okecie airport just outside the city.
Meantime, on 1 August, the Secret Army’s poor communications, combined with the desperate haste with which Komorowski and his staff had triggered off the rising, quickly led to misfortune. About one-third of the already scarce arms were not issued because the underground conspiracy rules allowed only two men to know where the caches were hidden. The order to fight arrived at a group command some time during the day and had then to be taken to those in charge of the arms even before the problem of distribution could be solved. For this reason, and their proximity to enemy strongpoints which became involved in premature outbreaks of fighting, some caches were never even uncovered.[148]
In the almost unbearably hot and sultry afternoon both excessive zeal and carelessness caused the Poles at some points to start fighting too soon. In the northern suburb of Zoliborz at about 2 PM Secret Army troops were more or less openly carrying arms from the caches to the distribution centres. A carload of German gendarmerie drove up. The Poles opened fire and in the streets surrounding Wilson Square fighting broke out. The Germans sent in reinforcements, including several armoured troop carriers of parachute grenadiers, SS men and gendarmes. The Poles were crushed with heavy losses after three hours’ combat.[149]
Lesser outbreaks flared too soon elsewhere in the city as well: in the district of Czerniakow at 3 PM; at 4 PM in Napoleon Square and Kercely Square; about half past four in Mirowski Square and Chocim Street, Wola, round Komorowski’s GHQ.
Geibel ordered all police units in the city to stand-to immediately. Surprise, upon which the Uprising so much depended, was completely lost. But the insurgents still had a tactical advantage, for Stahel had not yet imposed the third-degree alarm. Having with savage vigour helped the police to put down the isolated outbreaks in the city, he did nothing more, displaying a characteristic lack of insight.[150]
Then at 4 o’clock one of those human incidents happened which sometimes influence in greater or lesser degree the course of history. An officer of the Luftwaffe telephoned Geibel to tell him that his Polish woman friend had a little earlier implored him to leave Warsaw at once because the whole city was to rise against the Germans at 5 o’clock. This warning, and what he already knew, finally convinced Geibel beyond any
shadow of doubt.[151]
He notified General Stahel, Dr Hahn, the security-police chief, and Dr Fischer, again pleading with Fischer to come to the police zone and when he again refused sending him a crack police battalion.[152]
Alarmed, Stahel at once imposed the third-degree regime and took command of the whole garrison, army and police. Before 5 o’clock all the Germans were standing by throughout the city.[153] Stahel was clearly surprised. ‘The appearance of the streets was quite normal, to anyone not aware of the events,’ he wrote with rare simplicity a little later, ‘when suddenly at about 16.30 the uprising flared up almost simultaneously in many places.’[154] Within an hour Stahel’s GHQ in the Brühl Palace became the target of a headlong Secret Army attack. His communications were cut and he was pinned down. Worse still he lost all control of the fighting.[155]
Komorowski found himself in an almost equally dangerous situation. Originally, the Secret Army GHQ was to be situated in the Mokotow district on the city’s southern outskirts because it was near to the radio station there, near to Okecie airport and handy for communications with Secret Army detachments in the west needed for attacks on the German rear. But on 29 July he and his staff decided to move to Wola, a working-class district right next to the City Centre, so that they would be in the heart of the strategic area.
In mid-afternoon on 1 August Komorowski made his way to the new headquarters in the Kamler tobacco factory, facing a narrow cul-de-sac named Pawia Street closed by the wall surrounding the Ghetto and its grim ruins. This headquarters was oddly situated next door to a building on the Ghetto side of the wall housing German troops and guarded by concrete pillboxes facing each of two access streets. According to the plan these troops were to be put out of action promptly at 5 o’clock by Colonel Radosław’s group of Secret Army shock troops, but they were not mobilized in time.
