On this day in 1944, the citizens of Warsaw, Poland are finally crushed after launching a massive city-wide uprising against the Nazi German occupiers that lasted 63 days.

On this day in 1944, the citizens of Warsaw, Poland are finally crushed after launching a massive city-wide uprising against the Nazi German occupiers that lasted 63 days. 

The Poles had suffered brutally under German occupation since 1939, and, until June 1941, also Soviet occupation. 

The Nazi regime intended to wipe out the Polish nation utterly, replacing the native Poles and Jews with German colonists in the name of Lebensraum, “living room.” 

The Soviets had deported hundreds of thousands of Poles to Siberia, murdering tens of thousands in the infamous Katyn Massacre of 1940. Both regimes engaged in a policy of “decapitation,” killing all the Polish elites they could find in order to inhibit the Poles’ capacity to resist. 

But despite these hardships, the Polish people continued to resist. They had set up one of the largest and most extensive resistance movements in occupied Europe: an entire underground government, complete with schools, courts, a postal service, and a large underground army of resistance: all loyal to the Polish government-in-exile. 

They had conducted sabotage and subversion against the occupational regimes, provided essential intelligence to the Allies, saved many Jews from the camps, and often fought pitched battles against the occupiers in defense of Polish civilians.

Above all, the Polish Home Army (the Resistance changed its name several times, but “Home Army” was its last and most famous name) sought to launch a national uprising as the Germans were being defeated. 

Initially they hoped to link up with Western Allied forces in this goal, but by 1943 it became obvious the Soviets would arrive first. Here a clash of interests became obvious. The Home Army wished for a pro-Western democratic Poland, while Stalin wanted to set up a Communist puppet regime. 

The severing of relations between the USSR and Polish government-in-exile in 1943 over the Katyn Massacre revelation made the situation more urgent, as the Polish underground realized that if they did not act soon, they would be considered irrelevant in deliberations over Poland’s fate. 

Thus, in late 1943 they began planning for the general uprising, codenamed “Operation Tempest;” against the advice of the exiled leaders, who wanted to wait until relations had been restored with the USSR.

In early 1944, Soviet troops crossed the pre-war Polish border, and uprisings against the Germans began in earnest throughout the countryside and cities. 

But something was wrong. Unbeknownst to the Home Army, Stalin had convinced the Western Allies to let him take over the entire eastern half of Poland; which he had seized in concert with Hitler in 1939. 

Thus, Home Army commanders across the region were systematically imprisoned and interned by the Soviets with their lower ranks being conscripted into the Soviet-allied Polish forces: sometimes after cooperating to take various towns and cities. 

By mid-July, the Home Army high command realized that liberating Warsaw was their best bet for legitimacy, and they began massing underground forces and arms in that region. 

On August 1, 1944, at “W-Hour” (17:00), the uprising began. Polish guerillas, supported by the civilian populace, erupted from hiding places all over the capital city, taking the Germans by surprise. 

Unleashing every manor of deadly and unusual weapons—from homemade grenades to improvised rifles—the Polish forces drove the Germans back, as ordinary civilians piled rubble and furniture into the streets to set up barricades. 

By the end of the uprising’s third day, practically all traces of German occupation were gone, and the Home Army had gained control of most of the city. 

But something was still wrong. The Soviet Army, which had been driving the Germans to the west nonstop for the previous three months, came to an abrupt halt just east of Warsaw. 

While the Soviet Army’s dithering has often been explained as simple exhaustion from their long march west, it remains a fact that Stalin was opposed to any non-communist government in Poland, and harbored nothing but contempt for the “White Poles.” 

It was in his interest to see the men and women of the Polish Resistance butchered by the Nazis, in order to ensure the Soviets’ future control of Poland.

Efforts by the Home Army to make contact were ignored, while Stalin forbade Western Allied planes supplying the Poles from landing on Soviet airfields to refuel and the Soviet Air Force abandoned the skies of the city to the Luftwaffe. 

The Germans in the meantime unleashed a savage rampage of murder and violence upon the citizens of Warsaw; more than 10,000 citizens were slaughtered in one neighborhood on August 5 alone. 

The Poles still fought back heroically, despite mounting casualties, but were gradually driven further and further back in ferocious street battles. 

The British government tried to supply aid to the desperate resistance fighters, but faced with Stalin’s intransigence and US President Roosevelt’s indifference, they were ultimately not able to provide much help. 

Thus, after sixty-three days of heroic, brutal fighting, the battered remnants of the Home Army finally surrendered on October 2. 

More than 200,000 Poles had been killed in the uprising: possibly more civilians than the combined death tolls of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The city was systematically destroyed afterwards on an enraged Hitler’s orders, with more than 85% of its buildings leveled. 

The remaining population was expelled, with many going to concentration camps. The rest of Poland would remain under occupation until January and February 1945, when the Soviets drove the remaining Germans out. 

After “liberation,” many members of the Polish Resistance would be rounded up arrested, and often executed by the new Soviet-backed Communist regime, often sharing the same jails as Nazi collaborators. 

Poland would remain a Soviet satellite state until 1989, after which some justice was finally done for the Uprising’s heroes.