Warsaw "Tempest" rises up against Nazi German occupiers 73 yrs ago
Exactly 73 years ago, at W-hour (1700 hrs), on Tue, Aug 1st,1944, Poland's underground Home Army, led by Gen. Tadeusz "Bor" Komorowski, initiating the Warsaw leg of Operation "Tempest", rose against German occupiers in what became known as the Warsaw Uprising.
The insurgents held on for 63 days, leading a lonely and heroic struggle for an independent Poland, free from German occupation and Soviet dominance.
The Warsaw Uprising became the largest armed operation by underground forces in German-occupied Europe. Planned for a matter of days, it lasted two months. Its military aim was to free Poland's capital from the brutal clutches of the Germans, who had controlled it since September 1939.
The Home Army (see: NOTE) command made several calculations. First, it assumed the approaching Soviet Army would strive to capture Warsaw as soon as possible, for strategic reasons. Second, it expected the Uprising to be completed within a few days, before the arrival of the Soviets. Third, it counted on support from the allies.
AK wanted to recapture the city before the advancing Soviets, to strengthen Poland's position vis-a-vis its big Eastern neighbour. It was also important to install a civil administration, linked to the Polish government-in-exile, as the Soviet-controlled communists had already set up their own political authority.
Poland's then prime minister in exile, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, thought the uprising would strengthen his hand in impending negotiations with the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
AK was also, to some extent, provoked into action by Soviet propaganda, which claimed its command had fled the country and urged the Polish people to rebel against the Germans. Thus the AK chiefs feared the resistance effort would be hijacked by the communists.
Moreover, the timing seemed favourable at least in the sense that the Germans' morale was low after recent losses and the failed attempt on Adolf Hitler's life. In late July the occupiers had in fact started to evacuate some of their civilian population and military forces. In addition, the Germans wanted the Varsovians to help them defend the city against the Soviets; at the same time, violence and oppression against the people intensified, as did prisoner executions.
All those factors led to general Komorowski's decision (approved by a representative of the London-based government-in-exile) to open hostilities on August 1st.
The insurgent forces numbered 40-50 thousand fighters, only a fourth of whom, however, were armed, at least at the start of the fighting.
At the news of the uprising, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the German army to "kill every Varsovian, take no prisoners, to set a terrifying example for the whole of Europe".
After a 63-day, lonely and heroic battle, with defeat looming, in Ozarow near Warsaw, on October 2nd, the AK chiefs signed an agreement to cease overt warfare.
The AK soldiers and support forces were to be treated as prisoners of war, in line with the 1929 Geneva convention. The Germans also promised not to use collective responsibility, nor to persecute the Varsovians, including those who fought or otherwise took part in the resistance effort, before or during the Uprising.
In turn, all of the residents were to be evacuated, although the Germans promised to do it "in a humane manner", as well as "secure private and public property left behind in the city".
According to eminent historian of the Uprising, professor Norman Davies, "the Germans kept their word, at least at the beginning". Eventually, however, it turned out "over 100,000 Varsovians were sent to labour camps in Germany", and further "several tens of thousands to concentration camps, including Ravensbrueck, Auschwitz and Mauthausen", professor Davies assessed.
During the Uprising, around 18,000 insurgents were killed and a further 25,000 injured. The casualties also comprised 3,500 regular Polish Army soldiers from the Kosciuszko division.
Civilian losses totalled 180,000 lives. What's more, 500,000 of those who survived were hounded out of Warsaw, which was later almost totally destroyed, in a methodical operation lasting 3 months.
Over 15,000 insurgents, including general Komorowski and other AK chiefs, as well as 2,000 women, were taken prisoner.
Following the capitulation, the Uprising's political command issued a bitter statement, saying "the Uprising failed because it did not receive adequate support, even though at the same time, the Polish forces were helping liberate France, the Netherlands and Belgium". The Polish authorities added they would "leave it to the fair God to assess the terrible injury done to the Polish nation, and punish its perpetrators adequately".
The exorbitant costs, human and otherwise, of the Uprising mean it remains a controversial issue, even to this day. (PAP)
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NOTE 1: The Home Army (AK) was the main resistance movement in Poland when it was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II. It was formed from the Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ) (see: NOTE 2), which in turn evolved from a clandestine organisation called the Polish Victory Service (SZP).
The SZP was launched on the night of Sept. 26, 1939 by a group of senior officers led by Gen. Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, with the participation of Warsaw Mayor Stefan Starzynski. It became the nucleus of a nationwide resistance movement known as the Polish Underground State.
The Home Army, whose allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile, was one of the largest and best organised resistance movements in Europe, with the total number of fighters put at anywhere from 200,000 to 600,000.
In his book God's Playground. A History of Poland, prominent historian Norman Davies said that "the Home Army could fairly claim to be the largest of European resistance [organisations]".
The so-called Polish Underground State, which operated from 1939 to 1945 and by many was looked up to as a model of conspiracy administration, was subordinated to the Polish government-in-exile, which was first based in France and subsequently in Great Britain. In Poland the government-in-exile had an impressively developed administration with secret courts and prosecutors, underground schools and universities, publishing houses.
The Home Army was the armed wing of the Polish Underground State. Along with various combat activities, the AK was also widely involved in rescuing Jews, among others, by means of the famous 1942-founded Council to Aid Jews (Rada Pomocy Zydom) codenamed 'Zegota' - the only organisation in Europe and a unique one on a global scale established to defend and provide help to Jews in ghettos and elsewhere.
The successive commanders of the AK were generals Stefan Rowecki (until June 30, 1943) Tadeusz Komorowski (until Oct. 2, 1944) and Leopold Okulicki (until Jan. 19, 1945).
The culmination of the AK's armed struggle came with the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The AK's wartime losses totalled about 100,000 soldiers killed in fighting or murdered, and about 50,000 taken to the Soviet Union and imprisoned.
In early 1942, the Home Army had about 100,000 soldiers; by the summer of 1944 the number had risen to 380,000. These included 10,800 officers. Poland’s famous Silent Unseen elite special-operations paratroops were also part of the Home Army.
The Home Army's activities did not end with the end of WW II. After 1945 the AK's so-called Enduring Soldiers (see: NOTE 3) fought the Soviet regime.
Under communism AK soldiers were persecuted by Poland's authorities, especially during the Stalinist period. Many of them were handed death penalties; others spent many years in prison.
NOTE 2: The Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ) was an underground force formed in Poland following the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939. On February 14, 1942, it transformed into the Home Army
NOTE 3: After World War II, many soldiers of the Polish anti-German underground refused to lay down their arms and continued fighting against Poland's Soviet-imposed communist regime, winning the name "Enduring Soldiers". They are also sometimes called "Cursed Soldiers" for being treated as outlaws and forced into oblivion by the communist state. Jozef Franczak, known as the last Enduring Soldier, perished in an ambush as late as 1963.
However, on June 13, 2017, in the village Poplawy-Rogale in southeast Poland's Lublin province, the teams from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in the course of ongoing countrywide exhumations of communism victims unearthed remains believed to belong to Antoni Dolega, a member of the post-World War II anticommunist resistance said to have remained in hiding until his death in 1982.
In 2011, the Polish parliament established March 1 as Enduring Soldiers National Remembrance Day upon a motion by the late Polish President Lech Kaczynski.(PAP)
