Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (75 page)

Soviet political reports of the high Stalinist period were evidently written in accordance with formulas for which historians of the Warsaw Rising have not yet discovered the key. It may be, given the terrible purges of the late 1930s, that the authors were so petrified by the deadly consequences of expressing honest opinions, that they deliberately resorted to writing nonsense. It is more likely that they were constrained to operate within rigid political and ideological conventions, and that all individual or divergent comments had to be cloaked in phrases and devices whose purpose remains largely unintelligible to the uninitiated. What on earth was Comrade Telegin doing, one might ask, when he told Moscow that Gen. Berling had once been in the Home Army and that his commission had been arranged by Stalin? At one level, he was talking patent claptrap, even if he had mistaken the Home Army for the pre-war Polish Army. Yet at another level, simply by associating Berling with the great Stalin, he was doing Berling a huge favour; and by throwing the Home Army into
the package, he could have been hinting that the AK was not too bad either. In the context of Berling’s dispute with the Polish Communists, it does begin to look less idiotic. In the meantime, one may be sure that nothing written by Telegin or Serov was conducive to a more magnanimous stance towards the outside world. Nothing they said would have speeded a compromise with Premier Mick. International negotiations were not within their remit.

In the best of times, it is no simple matter first to arrange the separation of two bitterly bloodied armies and then to negotiate an orderly surrender. To do so in the middle of a ruined city full of desperate civilians, and in conditions where one party had been committing mass atrocities for months, required supreme nerve and judgement.
SS-Ogruf.
von dem Bach seemed to assume that the Home Army negotiators would simply click their heels and accept his dictates. They did nothing of the sort. They might well have submitted to exhaustion, to the apparent hopelessness of their plight, to the strains of bilingual exchanges or to the hostile environment of von dem Bach’s headquarters. Instead they performed as resolutely at the bargaining table as on the barricades.

The start of proceedings was necessarily ragged. In two or three places, AK commanders had been forced into a local truce or surrender, which Monter was then obliged to disavow. And the first round of general talks, on 29 September, got nowhere. Von dem Bach chose to present his terms in the form of an ultimatum. If they weren’t taken up immediately, he blustered, the city would be annihilated together with everyone in it. Since he had been failing to do this for weeks, he cut no ice. [
CEASEFIRE
, p. 424]

That evening, a decisive meeting of the Home Army Command was convened in the wrecked General Telephone building on Pius XI Street. The chief negotiator, Lt.Col. Zyndram, reported on his earlier exchanges with von dem Bach. Gen. Monter summarized the state of his troops with maximum optimism – ‘morale exemplary’, ‘defensive positions good’, ‘ammunition and weapons generally satisfactory, sufficient for several days’ intensive fighting’, ‘food supplies critical’. He foresaw that his soldiers would only lose heart if the civilian population were evacuated without them.

There followed a powerful speech from the Chief Government Delegate, offering the opposite opinion:

The phrase ‘the biological substance of the nation’ passed into legend.

Summing up, Gen. Boor concluded that negotiations should resume, especially on civilian issues, but that no final commitment should be made. (Shortly afterwards, the large AK group in the Kampinos Forest surrendered unilaterally. On the 30th, the northern enclave followed suit.) Yet, from the purely military point of view, much remained that could be defended. A quarter of the Home Army’s personnel was still active. They could be counted on to obey orders to the last. The principal insurgent enclave, in the City Centre, though much diminished, was still 2 or 3 miles square. Even if the German attacks were redoubled, and German progress
were accelerated, the last insurgent strongpoints were not going to be reduced in a couple of days or even a couple of weeks.

One such strongpoint was typical of scores of others. Set up in mid-August by Capt. ‘Roman’, the hero of the battle for the east–west throughfare, it occupied the former post-office building in a corner of the main station. For six weeks, it had defied all German attempts to storm it. It was only going to be knocked out if and when a special task-force armed with heavy equipment, explosives, and flamethrowers could find the time to give it their undivided attention.

The resumption of talks took place in two stages. First, one group of negotiators arranged a truce that came into effect after the 1st. During this meeting, a witness reported how Gen. Källner, the commander of the 19th Panzer Division, had ‘barked as only a Prussian can bark’.
¹⁷⁷
Finally, at 8 a.m. on the 2nd, the Home Army’s main delegation under Col. ‘Anthony’ headed off to the crucial confrontation with their German counterparts. Bargaining lasted all day. Von dem Bach started a long monologue, describing himself as ‘an incurable optimist’ for judging the Poles capable of making a realistic agreement. He was more convincing when he announced that no assistance could be expected from Rokossovsky. The Germans were most concerned to prevent the insurgents from going back on any arrangement agreed. They demanded immediate disarmament, demolition of barricades, and destruction of ammunition. They would not budge on their demand for the complete removal of the entire population.

Col. Anthony’s team, in contrast, were most concerned to close all the loopholes whereby the German side might evade their obligations. So, point by point, hour by hour, the text was hammered out. Anthony insisted, for example, that if all civilians were to leave, they must be properly cared for and not be subject to any form of collective punishment. He also held out until the right of combatant status, which was being offered to the Home Army, had been extended to all insurgent formations, including the AL, the PAL, and the NSZ. In short, the capitulation agreement was to exclude all Nazi-style discrimination. It was finally signed at 2 a.m. on 3 October – in the early hours of the sixty-fourth day of the insurgency.

Even before the capitulation was signed, Gen. Boor had made his dispositions. He sent his last report by radio to London. He then addressed his subordinate commanders throughout the country:

The last shot of the Rising was fired in the evening of 2 October. German sources recorded it at 20.00 hours Berlin Time. The Home Army, which had been running since 1939 on pre-war Warsaw Time, put it at 19.00 hours. Nothing introduced by the Nazi occupation, not even the clocks, was regarded as valid.

Many tears were shed, and many bitter lines composed, on the news of Warsaw’s fall. ‘The fate of the world’, ran one such line, ‘has been written in the fate of one city.’
¹⁷⁹
[
VERSES
, p. 428]

Almost all accounts of the Rising say that it lasted for sixty-three days. Historians conventionally count the period from the outbreak on 1 August to the final shot on 2 October.

Yet the story did not end there. Though firing had stopped, several organs of the insurrectionary authorities continued to function. On 3 October, the Homeland Council of Ministers published its final appeal
To the Polish Nation
. It bitterly denounced the lack of effective aid from abroad. Parallel statements were issued by Gen. Boor, by the Warsaw Command of the AK, and by the Chaplain of the Warsaw District. A German transmitter, masquerading as the AK’s Radio Lightning, sowed confusion in a broadcast which proposed that the Home Army’s biggest mistake was to have put their trust in the Soviets. ‘The Home Army entered agreements with those Asiatics quite unnecessarily,’ it declared. There had been no such agreements. On 4 October, Gen. Monter issued his orders to the Special Battalion, which was to stay behind to keep order during the evacuation. Radio Lightning made its final broadcast; and the last issue of the
Information Bulletin
, nr. 102, appeared. ‘The battle is finished’, it wrote. ‘From the blood that has been shed, from the common toil and misery, from the pains of our bodies and souls, a new Poland will arise – free, strong, and great.’ On Thursday 5 October, the order to leave was then given to the Home Army’s 36th and 72nd Infantry Regiments, together with the staffs of the AK Command, of the Warsaw District, and of the Warsaw Corps. Gen. Monter took the salute at a farewell parade amid the towering ruins. Sixty-six days had passed since ‘L-Hour’ on ‘V-Day’. ‘L’ had stood for Liberation. There was no Liberation.