Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (60 page)
There can be few cases where the Nazis condemned one of their own leading thugs to death on the grounds of ‘perpetrating excesses’.
Such, however, was the fate of
SS-Brig.Fhr.
Kaminski, whose troops had been running wild in Warsaw for a month without achieving any notable military successes. The chief of the RONA Brigade paid with his life for von dem Bach’s failures. In the eyes of the Nazis, he was a low-grade Slav who had overstayed his welcome in the ranks of his German masters. The decision to dispose of him was taken at the end of August. He was out of Warsaw on leave. A fake car accident was staged near Lodz either to kill him or to cover the traces of his earlier execution. A delegation of his own men were taken to the site to pay their respects. After the war, von dem Bach claimed this action as proof of his own moderation and humanity.
The Ninth Army’s plan of 2 September held off the Soviets for barely two weeks. By the 13th, German sappers were blowing up the four remaining bridges in Warsaw. By so doing, they severed the supply lines to the east by their own hand, and demonstrated to the world that the Wehrmacht was about to abandon all its positions beyond the Vistula.
Much German effort and ingenuity was put into schemes for persuading the civilian population to pack their bags and leave. Clouds of leaflets were dropped from the air: ‘Do you wish to live or die?’ Anyone who left, other than active insurgents, was promised fair treatment and medical aid. The
Delegatura
countered by urging people not to believe German promises, but rather to reflect on the fresh news of mass murders. Gen. Boor was in two minds. He did not wish to concede to German demands. On the other hand, he accepted that he had no means of mitigating civilian distress and that the evacuation of civilians would leave the Home Army more space to fight.
Negotiations proceeded, therefore, between German representatives and the Polish Red Cross. And on 8, 9, and 10 September, three consecutive evacuations took place involving 20–25,000 persons.
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The majority who left were women, children, the elderly, and the poor. In some cases, AK men escorted their wives and families to the assembly point. Scuffles broke out between soldiers and healthy youths who were observed leaving. The Red Cross reported that men were being separated from the rest at Prushkov, and that the women and children ‘were being sent west’. [
HOSPITAL
, p. 333]
With the evacuations underway, Gen. Rohr pressed hard for a swift capitulation. Boor responded with a request for clarification on three points: the recognition of full combatant rights for all Home Army soldiers; the destination of civilians remaining in the city; and German intentions regarding the Underground’s non-military personnel. Rohr replied immediately, conceding ‘combatant rights’ and promising ‘no reprisals’. But he also demanded instant capitulation by 4 p.m. on the same day. This ultimatum could not be met.
HOSPITAL
Patients and practitioners of the medical services both show their mettle
After the death of Lieutenant ‘Girder’ I took command of 1147 Platoon, an assault unit in the central district. I took part in the attack on the PAST Building . . . led by Captain Kontrym (who was murdered after the war in the Mokotov prison).
As I was wounded in the leg, I was carried to a dressing station and then to a hospital, where the ward head was Professor K. They wanted to amputate my leg, which had two shattered bones. I did not agree. Not surprisingly the Professor was angry. He was a wonderful man and said that
he
was in charge and knew what to do. I replied that it was my leg and that I was in charge. Since I was still wearing my revolver, I could stop them giving me an intravenous injection. I was afraid they would anaesthetize me completely. At every procedure, I ordered the sister to lift me up from behind, so that, pistol in hand, I could watch what they were doing. The doctors laughed – what a patient!
Thanks to the run-in with Professor K., I sent word to my colonel [‘Radvan’], requesting to be transferred elsewhere. They sent me to the Home Army infirmary on Marian Street, formerly a National Health Service clinic, where the commander was Dr P. Naturally it was a temporary hospital. Beds had been collected from neighbouring houses and local people assisted in its organization.
The medical staff were immensely skilled. After the war, many of us worked in the health service. But never did we see such a high level of sterilization, or care over cleanliness as in those insurrectionary conditions, where everything could be contaminated by the constant explosions. There was a whole group of nurses trained in the Underground, who carried out the bleakest work with a smile. I take my hat off to those girls, but above all to the medical staff, who performed the most difficult operations in madly difficult circumstances. Decisions had to be taken instantly. Skull trepanations, eye removals, and limb amputations were routine. Even so, the death rate was relatively low. Throughout my stay on Marian Street, a dozen or twenty patients at the most died from the 500 or so who passed through.
The Home Army authorities concluded that the hospital, in accordance with international convention, should be clearly marked on the roof with a Red Cross. It precipitated an immediate bombardment by German Stukas and by extremely heavy rocket fire. The hospital began to burn, the upper floors to collapse . . . Immediate evacuation was essential.
My platoon was directed into emergency action . . . We had to jump with our
stretchers into an area where missiles were exploding. The evacuation parties were being strafed from the air . . . We loaded up the injured then waited a moment for the end of a salvo and rushed to the safe area. Unfortunately, there were many casualties . . .
Whenever an approaching missile could be heard, we did not lie down but stood the stretchers on their legs and knelt beside them, so that the patients did not feel worse than we did. None of my colleagues left their stretchers, even though we had wounded men who were now wounded for a second time . . . I saw truly awful things, especially people set alight by incendiaries.
Of those present, I best remembered the commander of the AK medical service in Mokotov, Professor L., who held the rank of colonel and had served in the Polish Army in 1920. He was an exceptionally heroic person, I must say. His self-control, energy, and authority were astounding . . . Everyone carried out his instructions unquestioningly. Alas, he did not long survive the evacuation of his hospital.
Still, I did rescue people. It was worthwhile; and everything that I survived after the Rising somehow seemed less important.
1
J. J. Lipski
Sometime in early September, the
Reichsführer-SS
returned to the subject of the Rising, and issued one of his infrequent pronouncements. ‘For five weeks we have been fighting for Warsaw . . .’ he complained. ‘It is the hardest battle we have fought . . . This Gen. [Boor] has been betrayed by the Russians, for they have not relieved him; and they are now pretending they would like to capitulate. He was egged on and set up by the English.’
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The stresses and strains of the Warsaw Rising had a demoralizing effect on the exiled Polish Government in London. Splits and recriminations broke out at various levels, and they were not ameliorated by the climate of mistrust generated by the ill-informed reporting in the British press. When the Premier returned empty-handed from Moscow, his declared policy of seeking Soviet cooperation through Western support was inevitably called into question. But there was no ready alternative. Bitter
frustration at the impossibility of relieving Warsaw’s distress was joined by deep resentment both at the empty promises of the Western Allies and at the cruel intransigence of the Soviets.
The Commanderin-Chief was the principal target of these tensions. A close associate of Marshal Pilsudski in the victory over the Red Army in 1920, he was the bête noire of Soviet propaganda. A firm opponent of the Rising, who had been overruled by his colleagues in July, he was nonetheless held to be responsible by virtue of his office. He was now being blamed, both by the Soviets and by Soviet sympathizers, for developments to which he had been long opposed. Absent in Italy in early August, he was accused of dereliction of duty by allowing his subordinates to engineer a supposedly premature outbreak. He came under pressure from all sides to resign.
The Premier, meanwhile, had been patiently working away to sell his plan for reconciliation with the Soviets, first to his own Cabinet and (via radio) to the Underground leaders in Warsaw. It was finally unveiled on 30 August:
- The post-war Government would be reconstructed to offer the Communist Party (PPR) the same number of representatives as each of the four main democratic parties: Peasant, Socialist, National, and Christian Democrat.
- Diplomatic relations would be re-established with the USSR.
- All foreign troops would leave Poland at the end of hostilities.
- Early elections to a constituent assembly would take place by secret and universal suffrage, and a new Constitution would be passed.
- Social, economic, and especially agrarian reforms would be implemented.
- A Polish–Soviet alliance would be concluded on the basis of the respect for sovereignty and for non-interference.
- On the territorial issue: ‘Poland, which has made so many sacrifices, cannot emerge diminished in territory. In the east, the main centres of Polish cultural [and economic] life shall remain within Polish boundaries. A final settlement . . . will be made by the Constituent Assembly in accordance with democratic principles.’
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The last clause implied concessions to the USSR, although the ‘Curzon Line’ was not mentioned. The British Foreign Minister was said to be satisfied, although he also said that Stalin would probably ‘play for time’.
The Premier would have been aware, however, that his plan did not meet the approval of the leaders of the Rising. Gen. Boor, when consulted, made his views very plain:
The plan is tantamount to total capitulation, and anticipates a whole series of political moves based on the goodwill of the Soviets, without any prior guarantees from the USSR and the Allies . . . At such a momentous time, . . . I consider it my duty to state, in the name of the Home Army which I command, . . . that Poland has not been fighting the Germans for five years, bearing the greatest losses, just to capitulate to Russia . . .
Our fight against the Germans has shown that . . . we love freedom more than life. If necessary, we shall repeat that manifestation for anyone who wants to destroy our independence . . .
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The very next day, 1 September, on the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of war, the Commanderin-Chief cast prudence to the winds and spoke his mind. His Order nr. 19 to the Home Army was an open, unrestrained indictment of the Allies’ complacency and ingratitude:
Five years have passed since the day when, encouraged by the British Government and its guarantee, Poland stood up to its lonely struggle with German might. For the last month, the soldiers of the Home Army and the people of Warsaw have again been abandoned in another bloody and lonely fight. This is a tragic and repeated puzzle which we Poles cannot decipher . . . We hear arguments about gains and losses. But we remember that in the Battle of Britain Polish pilots suffered over 40 per cent casualties, whilst the loss of planes and aircrew in the flights to Poland is 15 per cent . . . If the population of our capital is to be condemned to perish in mass slaughter under the rubble of their homes through [Britain’s] calculated passivity and indifference, the conscience of the world will be burdened by this terrible and unparalleled sin.
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With the exception of
The Times
, no London newspapers repeated the Commanderin-Chief’s order in full, or mentioned his statistics. But British opinion was outraged. Britain’s good faith was being openly questioned. From that day on, the C-in-C’s days in office were numbered.
As it happened, 1 September 1944 also saw the publication of the most trenchant, and probably the most insightful, article ever written in Britain about the Warsaw Rising. Its author was Eric Blair, alias George Orwell.
At the time, Orwell was writing
Animal Farm
, an allegorical fiction about totalitarianism that would soon make him a household name around the world. But he was also the literary editor of
Tribune
, an independent socialist journal to which he contributed a weekly column called ‘As I please’. The previous week,
Tribune
had published a long, carping letter from Geoffrey Barraclough, a young Cambridge historian who had special interests in Central Europe and a part-time job with the Foreign Office. Orwell decided to take Barraclough apart, and thereby to expose everything he thought wrong about ‘the British intelligentsia’.
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Barraclough had made four basic charges: the Warsaw Rising was not ‘spontaneous’; the order to rise was given without consultation; the Polish Resistance movement was as divided as its counterpart in Greece; and the
soidisant
Polish Government precipitated the Rising in order to get hold of Warsaw before the Russians arrived. Orwell took these arguments to be symptomatic of the ‘mean, cowardly and slavish’ attitude of the British press in general and set out to demolish them. He attacked the biased language. He pointed to the lack of proof. He deplored the intellectual dishonesty: ‘once a whore, always a whore.’ And he argued that ‘Anglo-Russian friendship’ would never be attained without ‘plain speaking’. It was a passionate tour de force.
Orwell’s most telling point concerned the dubious motives of Stalin’s admirers, who mimicked his slogans ‘like a troop of parrots’ and who defended them ‘if at all, solely on grounds of power’:
[The] attitude . . . is not ‘Is this policy right or wrong?’ but ‘This is Russian policy; how can we make it appear right?’ . . . The Russians are powerful in Eastern Europe, we are not; therefore we must not oppose them. This involves the principle, of its nature alien to Socialism, that you must not protest against an evil which you cannot prevent.
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