The Warsaw Uprising: 1 August - 2 October 1944 (Major Battles of World War Two)

by George Bruce

  Waclaw Zagorski had just finished printing leaflets for the Home Army on how the Soviet Army was to be greeted when it entered Warsaw. It was half past four when he heard the first shots, while helping his friend Staszek count the leaflets. They left the entrance door of the house stealthily because the air was now alive with bullets. A carload of German officers flashed past them, chased by a car from which young Home Army men in black raincoats fired with revolvers at the enemy.

  On the other side of the street was a German factory where fuses for explosives were made and behind the closed gates were about twenty well-armed enemy troops. Zagorski and his friends went back into the workshop, armed themselves with hand-grenades and revolvers from their secret store, then with their weapons concealed beneath their clothes went out into the now silent and empty street.

  A squad of about a dozen Home Army men walked quickly towards them, most of them wearing the distinctive armband but only about half of them armed. Zagorski pointed to the gates. ‘There are some Germans in there,’ he warned. Those Poles with arms began shooting, then all of them combined to break down the gates, rush the yard, and the guards standing there with hands up, seize their rifles and lock them up in the guardroom. One of the Poles was hit and his wounds were dressed by Wanda, a tall dark girl who lived near by.

  Soon it was dark and the street was empty. A civilian said that the police in Ciepla Street were walking out of their barracks dressed in plain clothes. Some of the Home Army men ran off to seize their arms. Machine-gun fire and heavy explosions echoed from all sides of the city.

  Nobody knew what was happening, or even if the command to start the Uprising was given. But everyone was aware that after five years of enemy occupation freedom was sweeping through the city like a storm.

  The rule of the Nazis was ending. A red glow shone in the dark western sky, but people looked to the east, from where hundreds of Soviet tanks were coming. Had they reached the western side of the Vistula yet? But before they came the Home Army would take control of Warsaw in the name of the Polish Republic.[166]

  Stefan Korbonski, a Peasant Party leader and member of the Council of National Unity, saw his wife Zosia, his closest collaborator in the underground for five years, walking quickly along Marshall Street to meet him. Before she said a word he realized from the look on her face that she had something urgent to say.[167]

  She blurted it out. A close friend of both of them had called on her at 11 o’clock to say goodbye. He had said that the Uprising would begin at 5 o’clock that afternoon, and that he was taking part in an attack on the cavalry barracks.

  Korbonski could not believe it and accused his wife of talking nonsense. Did she think he wouldn’t know if it were true? Yet he felt a little uncertain, so leaving Zosia waiting in the street he hurried to the secret office of the Directorate of Civil Resistance, of which he was the director.

  His deputy, Mr Krajewski, was on duty there and Korbonski asked him whether he had heard anything about the Uprising starting that day. The answer was brief. ‘Of course. I was waiting for you, to talk it over with you. I heard about it from friends in the “Bastion” regiment. Action will begin today.’

  ‘Have we received official notification of the matter?’

  ‘No. I have just looked through today’s mail, but found nothing about it. But you can take it from me that the rising will begin today.’

  Korbonski was furious, unable to understand why this vitally important department of the underground had not been informed. It was now 1 o’clock and he had made no preparations. Arranging with Krajewski that they should meet every day in the DCR hideout he left quickly to meet his wife in the street again. He signed to her from a distance that the report was true.

  They separated and went to find their radio operators, who were due to call up London that afternoon. Korbonski searched until after 2 o’clock before he found Jan, his operator, and told him that the day and almost the hour had come. Jan had to get quickly to Peacock Street to pick up their secret transmitter. They arranged to meet at the corner of Basket Street and Marshall Street, after which they would go on to the special hideout ready for when the Uprising would begin.

  Korbonski reached the rendezvous shortly before 5 o’clock. Walking down Basket Street he saw a youth and a girl emerge from a doorway. They embraced each other passionately. As Korbonski passed the boy gave him a nod of tacit understanding. Korbonski nodded in return, showed the boy his watch and said, ‘It’s time.’ The boy kissed his girl once more then jumped on a passing tram and went off to join his unit.

  Soon after Jan arrived, staggering under the weight of a heavy bag on his back containing both the transmitter and the transformers for the radio station. Shortly after him came Zosia. By then they could hear the bursts of firing coming from the direction of Mokotow Field so they entered the house in Marshall Street, where in a loft on the top floor their secret radio station was to be accommodated.

  A bleak reception had awaited Prime Minister Mikolajczyk on his arrival in Moscow late on Monday, 31 July, with the Foreign Minister, Count Romer, and Russian-speaking Professor Grabski, Speaker of the Polish Parliament. The next evening at 9.30 his meeting with Foreign Minister Molotov to discuss the agenda for the talks with Marshal Stalin had been even bleaker. Neither Mikolajczyk nor Molotov knew then that the Uprising had already started. According to Molotov, Soviet forces were then about six miles from Warsaw. ‘We’ll take it soon,’ he had remarked airily.[168] The surprise German counter-attack was to begin that very night.

  Mikolajczyk was told of the Uprising by the British Embassy and had plenty of time to study Komorowski’s almost frantic appeals for help, which were passed on to him by the Embassy. ‘I spent a distressing forty-eight hours scanning reports from the Warsaw Underground,’ he wrote.[169] These were, of course, calls for arms, and appeals that their fateful expectation of an immediate Soviet attack on the city should at once be made solid fact.

  For Mikolajczyk they were poignant days, kicking his heels awaiting Stalin’s pleasure, tortured by the knowledge that his fellow-countrymen, citizens as well as the ill-armed Home Army troops, were facing alone the savage might of the Wehrmacht.

  Komorowski, who had apparently let himself be pushed into launching the Uprising against his better judgement was now, as the battle raged, face to face with the forbidding shortage of arms and ammunition that had earlier held him back. Waiting to hear on 2 August how the troops had fared in their vital initial attacks upon which the seizure of the city depended must have been a nightmare, though neither then nor later did he admit it.

  His anxiety took form in two more radio messages to London, dated 1 August, sent 2 August. The first read: ‘Arrange immediately for arms and ammunition to be dropped… in the squares given on to the city: Filtrowa, Kerceli Square, Saxon Gardens, Avenue of the Polish Soldier, Pulawska, Belwederska Streets.’[170]

  The second, also signed by Deputy Premier Jan Jankowski, showed how desperately he was waiting for the Soviet attack, Chrusciel’s report of which had triggered off the Uprising: ‘In view of the fact that fight to capture Warsaw has begun, we ask for Soviet help to be supplied in the shape of an immediate attack from outside.’[171]

  Soon Komorowski and the Home Army leaders would know whether the tremendous zeal of his under-armed troops could outweigh the greater fire-power and training of the Germans.

  In the headquarters in Cracow of Hans Frank, German Governor-General of Poland, General Stahel’s report early in the evening of 1 August of an apparent insurrection by the Polish Secret Army caused some alarm, though mainly for the security of the 9th Army’s supply routes through Warsaw and across the Vistula to the battleground east of Praga.

  At about 6 o’clock SS and Police Chief General Wilhelm Koppe, also Secretary of State for Security Affairs in the General Government, telephoned Colonel Geibel from Cracow for more news, but the Colonel had taken shelter in the basement and could only say that his men were then fighting off a furious at
tack.[172]

  General Koppe said that he would order reinforcements of heavy tanks and artillery to make for Warsaw immediately. Geibel informed General Stahel, who said that in order to conserve his forces he would go on to the defensive until these units arrived. He then threatened over the city loud-hailer system to raze to the ground every house that contained a sniper. In Cracow meantime a state of alarm was called and the garrison was reinforced in expectation of a similar uprising.

  Hitler’s General Staff took the matter very seriously indeed. Characteristically, the Führer at first decided upon a total withdrawal from Warsaw and a blanket bombing of the city to flatten it completely. But this plan was dropped because many Germans were already pinned down there. He therefore gave the order to Heinrich Himmler for a relief force to be sent instead.[173]

  Himmler’s first reaction in his headquarters in East Prussia was easy to guess; he wanted blood, to appease his sense of outrage. He chose the man he believed to be the main creator of the Secret Army. General Rowecki was shot at dawn at Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 3 August.

  Himmler then assembled a relief force under the command of Lieutenant-General of SS and Police, SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth, a lawyer who had made a lightning career in the Nazi Party and the Wehrmacht. He ordered SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger’s antipartisan brigade of two battalions of 865 released criminals, three battalions of former Soviet war prisoners, two companies of gendarmes and a police platoon, with eight flame-throwers and a five-gun battery of artillery, some 2,500 men, to entrain at once for Warsaw. Supporting it was SS-Brigadeführer Kaminski’s Rona Brigade of Ukrainian collaborationists, 1,585 men with a battery of four guns. Both left for Warsaw on 3 August.

  The next day Himmler flew from East Prussia to Poznan, where he assembled directly under Reinefarth’s command a combat group of some 8,000 men equipped with thirty-seven assault guns, four heavy mortars, 150 flame-throwers and including a motorized battalion of incendiary police and a company of heavy tanks. In support was Colonel Wilhelm Schmidt’s group, 2,000 strong, consisting of three battalions of Schmidt’s 603 Regiment, a battalion of grenadiers, a police battalion, two platoons of No 500 SS Assault Battalion, a detachment of artillery, eight flame-throwers, armoured train No 75 and fifteen heavy mortars. Total strength of Reinefarth’s group was about twelve thousand men.[174]

  On 3 August General von Vormann sent another 1,000 East Prussian Grenadiers to Praga to help hold the Poniatowski bridge and another three battalions of this regiment to reinforce the SS ‘Hermann Goering’ Regiment, which was assigned the task of clearing the route through Warsaw to the Kierbedz bridge. Meantime Colonel Geibel obtained a company of tanks from the ‘Viking’ Division, consisting of four ‘Tiger’, one ‘Panther’, four medium tanks and an assault gun to reinforce his militarized police units.

  Command over all of these and the other German troops in Warsaw was apparently on 3 August given to General of SS and Police Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, a Prussian Nazi and an ardent supporter of Hitler, whom Himmler had in January 1943 appointed Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units. Von dem Bach, chosen for the task because of his experience and his ruthlessness, was on 1 August 1944 near Gdansk, supervising the building of fortifications on the Vistula. Immediately after Himmler telephoned and gave him the appointment he set out for Cracow to organize more reinforcements with the aid of General Koppe. He was therefore not to arrive in Warsaw until 5 August.[175]

  Himmler meantime, in a special decree of unparalleled barbarity, ordered that not only every insurgent but also every inhabitant of Warsaw was to be killed. No taking of prisoners was to be allowed. Rape, torture, looting, murder — nothing was forbidden. Warsaw was going to be razed to the ground to set a terrifying example to the rest of Europe.[176]

  Chapter Ten: First Days

  From the outset the Polish Home Army was faced with the problem of street fighting between units without radio links cut off from each other by intervening buildings. Each battalion, company or platoon fought independently, Polish and German positions formed a chessboard of hundreds of separate battle actions. These actions the Home Army launched with all the fervour of a revolutionary uprising in the fifteen kilometres of the city and its suburbs stretching from Bielany in the north to Mokotow in the south, and the ten kilometres from Praga in the east to Wola in the west.

  Never before in history had insurgents tried to take over so big a town or city; nor had the difference in military power between the two sides ever been so marked.

  Weapons apart, success in these conditions depended greatly on the capabilities, courage and leadership of junior commanders. On these levels the Poles proved themselves superior. In the first days of the Uprising, before the arrival of German reinforcements, their aggression, resilience and speedy action enabled them to outweigh the heavy armament as well as the rigidity of the German military hierarchy. Unfortunately, Polish junior commanders too often lost their lives owing to courage or impetuosity amounting to foolhardiness; but when one fell another spontaneously replaced him.

  The Germans managed to maintain constant radio links between their commanders and units out in the city, whereas at some time or other during their assignments the Polish messenger women — the sole means of communication — were pinned down by heavy fire from enemy tanks or machine-gun posts, or killed.

  But a way was at once improvised to allow freedom of movement from one district to another. Aided by the citizens, Home Army sappers blasted entrances in the cellar walls from house to house and created sign-posted subterranean routes. Through them voluntary traffic wardens directed the flow of wounded, arms, ammunition and messenger women. This underground system lasted until heavy bombing blasted the houses into rubble down to the very cellars.

  Late in the afternoon of 2 August reports of the ebb and flow of the fighting began to reach Komorowski in his GHQ in Wola, the north-western bastion of the insurrection, where he was to spend the first six days. Wola, a working-class district, was captured early on 2 August, thus closing one of the east-west routes to the Germans for the time being. The important main Post Office building had been captured and later the water filter station and the gas works.

  The fight for the vital electric power station, facing Good Street on the Vistula embankment, which guaranteed the electric power needed among other things for manufacturing weapons in the underground workshops went on for nineteen hours. Some weeks before the Uprising the Germans had strengthened the defences of this extensive plant along the river with barbed-wire, trenches and pillboxes and brought up to 150 the strength of the troops holding it inside and outside.

  Just before 5 o’clock its telephone links with Stahel’s and Geibel’s headquarters were cut and a few minutes later a mine laid beneath one of the German pillboxes had signalled the Uprising by blowing it to pieces. Among the white-hot furnaces, the throbbing steam turbines and the whirring dynamos kept running by a skeleton staff, a battle began between Polish technicians and workers against the police, or Werkschutz, as the Germans called them.

  At the same time Home Army detachments launched an attack outside from Leszzynski Street, which joined Good Street at right angles opposite the main plant entrance. Fighting was fierce and casualties were heavy on both sides before the Germans gave up when the Polish director called on them to surrender after seventeen hours’ fighting. Although the cranes which carried the coal to the furnaces were shattered by German 88-mm artillery fire after the capture, so that wheelbarrows had to be pressed into service, the dynamos and other equipment were intact and the production of current went on without interruption.

  The night sky on 2 August was lit by the angry red glow of many huge fires which raged despite the rain. Two-thirds of this inferno were occupied by the Home Army, including the Stare Miasto (Old Town) of narrow streets and tall medieval houses and churches, the districts of Powisle and Czerniakow along the bank of the Vistula, and most of the City Centre. The Germans still held the Brühl Pala
ce, which was Stahel’s GHQ, the Szuch Avenue Gestapo HQ, the importantly situated Bank of National Economy, the Parliament building and other strongpoints.

  The attack on Okecie airport, possession of which was vital for the aid Komorowski and his staff hoped would fly in from the west, began with confusion. Major Wisczowski, whose assault group was to make the attack, countermanded it at the last moment because he was too far below strength. His order failed to reach all the units in time; and at 1700 hours some of his units attacked the airport perimeter defences. They were mown down by machine-gun fire in open ground.[177]

  A Polish officer then rushed up with the countermanding order and the units began to pull back, but an enemy armoured car sped up to this confused scene and shot down more than 120 insurgents, including practically all the officers. The remainder were scattered throughout the area, some retreating to Mokotow, others were killed in further battles.

  Attacks on the Vistula bridges from the Praga embankment also failed. The Kierbedz Bridge was defended by strong German forces in the city park. The insurgent attack was thrown back with heavy losses. No more successful was the attack on the Poniatowski bridge, carried out by an under-strength and under-armed unit which was destroyed by fire from the bridge turrets. Home Army troops also failed to occupy the near-by city park, from where they could have harassed the German defenders. The western entrances to the bridges changed hands in fierce fighting several times within the first thirty-six hours before they were finally held by the Germans.

  In Praga itself strong German tank units met the initial fierce Home Army onslaughts launched by mostly understrength battalions. One battalion, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Stefan, in its attack on a German barracks where Home Army units were to assemble after destroying the enemy, was repulsed by tank units stationed there. Desperately, the Polish commander ordered another attack, but even heavier losses forced him to give up and take cover.