Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 had started WWII in Europe, but by 1943, the tide was turning.

Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 had started WWII in Europe, but by 1943, the tide was turning. 

The Soviet Red Army was advancing from the east and Nazi Germany’s armies were in retreat. All the while, the Soviets were picking up territory, liberating millions from Nazi-occupation. 

The further Russian advances in June and July 1944 had succeeded beyond all expectation, and they eventually began moving into more disputed ground, beginning with the eastern Poland territory that Stalin had taken as part of his prewar deal with Hitler and that was now under German control.

The Soviet advance presented the Polish resistance and the Polish government-in-exile with a terrible problem. 

They knew that Stalin had already massacred tens of thousands of Polish officers and officials. Stalin had even set up his own puppet Polish government in the liberated city of Lublin. 

Cutting a deal with Stalin would mean surrendering national sovereignty and accepting the massacre of their citizens.

On the other hand, the Polish resistance in Warsaw - known as the Home Army - had some 40,000 fighters but a terrible shortage of weapons and ammunition. 

An uprising against the Germans - with the Soviets still far away - was doomed to failure, but waiting too long could enable the Soviets to take credit for the liberation. It also wasn’t clear how the Soviets would relate to a successful Home Army effort. 

So they needed to seize control of the city before it was occupied by the advancing Soviet army, but not too early that outside support could not reach them before a German counteroffensive crushed them.

As Soviet advance units finally entered Warsaw’s suburbs on the east bank of the Vistula River, the Home Army began its revolt on August 1, 1944.

It did so on the river’s west bank, in Warsaw itself. Against all odds, the Home Army seized control of much of the city, but it could not hold out for long against the Germans. 

Stalin’s troops made it to the east bank of the Vistula River - but they stopped. Ever since, an argument has raged about Stalin’s intentions. 

The Soviet troops had advanced some 300 miles in a month and a half, and badly needed reinforcements and supplies to get across the Vistula in the face of German resistance.

On the other hand, Stalin certainly had every incentive to let the German army exterminate Polish resistance. Stalin even made it more difficult for aid to get to the Polish rebels. 

The British and the Americans wanted to fly one-way missions from the west to drop supplies in Warsaw and then land inside the Soviet Union. 

In a series of telegrams, the United States government requested permission to use Soviet airfields to refuel after making airdrops. Stalin flatly refused each time. 

He went even further on August 22 in a telegram denying Roosevelt and Churchill’s efforts to supply the Poles, calling the resistance fighters “criminals.”

As Soviet troops watched from the east bank of the Vistula, Hitler’s forces ground down the Polish Home Army, systematically levelled Warsaw, and massacred the civilian population. It was brutal. German artillery thundered nonstop while their planes rained down death from the sky.

Heinrich Himmler decided he was going to make Warsaw an example to other cities that dare challenge Nazi authority. Burning buildings to the ground, acts of torture, and the slaughtering of men, women, and children were policy. 

“People were massacred in cold blood. The SS simply stormed into the hospitals, turned all the patients out onto the street, and machine gunned the defenseless civilians.” (Norman Davies)

It would take the Soviets another six months to cross the Vistula and liberate the shattered remains of Warsaw.

The Warsaw Uprising came a year and four months after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the Jewish ghetto area of the city. 

That revolt led to the SS killing 20,000 Jewish men, women, and children; and then sending the 50,000 survivors to the death camps. In the 1944 uprising, 225,000 Polish civilians would be liquidated; along with around 30,000 Home Army forces. 

“This is probably the worst atrocity - the worst single atrocity - of the war. The only thing really close to it is the Japanese rape of the Chinese city of Nanking.” (Dan Carlin)

The uprising’s failure allowed the pro-Soviet Polish administration, rather than the Polish government-in-exile in London, to ultimately gain control of Poland. 

And when Nazi Germany surrendered on VE Day in May, 1945, Poland would pass to Soviet rule and would be part of the Warsaw Pact countries - trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

45 years later, in 1989, Poland would become the first country to rebel and break away from Soviet control. Warsaw would be one of the two major cities leading the rebellion once again. 

Contemnit procellas, which means, “It defies the storms,” remains the motto of the city to this day - for good reason.

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