In 1939, Poland had the Soviet Union and the Third Reich as enemies. Both had invaded Poland in that year. Britain and France remained as allies. The complication was that after Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, the latter joined the Allied camp, teaming up with the western powers.

So Poland was faced with having an enemy and an ally in the form of one country. Was it possible to treat the USSR as both a friend and a foe simultaneously? This was not resolved and probably defied resolution.

Summer of feverish expectation

By July 1944, the political temperature was rising in Warsaw. The Normandy front was collapsing and Paris was on the point of being liberated. Maybe Warsaw could be too, but from the West?

The Soviets launched the gigantic Operation Bagration in June 1944 and destroyed the German armies on the Eastern Front. This brought the Red Army to the very gates of Warsaw. Would they enter as ally or enemy?

The USSR had broken off diplomatic relations with the Poles in 1943 after the discovery of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers taken as POWs in 1939 by the Soviets – collectively known as the Katyń forest massacre. This freeze in relations allowed the USSR to promote their client Polish communist government, which they did on the newly conquered territories in Poland, as the Bagration tide surged westward.

On 20 July, there was an assassination attempt on Hitler, and Germany seemed to be reeling, under pressure from east, west and within.

Could this be a chance to wrest Poland from the German occupier and plant the Polish flag in the capital, proclaim a free Poland to the world, and forestall a sovietization of the country that seemed ever more likely?

Pressure mounts on Home Army

The Poles had no margin for error. It was all in the timing – too early and the Germans would liquidate them; too late and the Soviets would do the job.

The Poles had formulated “Operation Tempest” whereby Poland’s underground military movement, the Home Army (often abbreviated to AK), would cooperate with the Soviets in their drive west but receive them as hosts of a free Poland rather than conquered subjects.

But the Soviets arrested these Poles, disarmed their units and executed their officers as Polish forces cooperated in the USSR’s liberation of cities such as Vilnius.

Tadeusz Komorowski, the commander of the Home Army, was on the horns of this dreadful dilemma. His command staff was divided – some egging him to start the uprising; his operations and intelligence chief against. The vote was cast and passed but by a fine margin. He ordered the uprising. Its start, “W” hour, was set for 1700 on August 1.

The Home Army prepared their well-organized but woefully ill-equipped units.

The punishment of a city

The Germans recovered with their astonishing and customary swiftness. They halted the panic and moved panzer forces to counter attack the oncoming Red Army in the area around the east bank of the Vistula River in one of the war’s largest armored battles.

They stabilized the front and the city and assembled a punitive force composed of criminals and renegades to liquidate the population and raze the Polish capital in accordance with orders from Hitler and Himmler. Warsaw was to be a demonstration of what Europe would have to pay for defiance.

It was just a matter of time, ammunition and savagery, all of which the Germans possessed in abundance.

‘W Hour’

The first day of the Warsaw Uprising set the pattern. Lightly armed insurgents mounted suicidal attacks on German strongpoints, sustaining losses of 2,000 out of a strength of around 20,000. Only about 10% had been armed.

The Germans counterattacked west to east. Working in the insurgents’ favor, Warsaw was a city akin to a system of ravines, relatively easy to throw stout barricades across narrow streets, cover them with sniper fire, and then utilize that favorite weapon of the street fighter, the molotov cocktail.

The German advance was blood drenched. Wola, the western working class district, was massacred in the first week, “Black Week”. The Germans were given full rein. Their advance was characterized by murder, mass execution, rape, corruption and all forms of abuse. It resembled more a sadistic orgy rather than any disciplined military operation.

The Germans made full use of the heaviest weaponry: heavy mortars, Goliath remote controlled demolition vehicles, round-the-clock Stukas, and riverboats to pound the city.

The civilian population was caught between the insurgents and the Germans, and spent a troglodyte existence in their cellars, often being buried alive. Periodic rushes under fire to make the tortuous journey for water or ever-decreasing food were often fatal.

It took the Germans a couple of weeks to reach the Old Town, the dominant feature overlooking the river. This was captured at the end of August and what followed was a customary massacre of civilians and wounded lying in hospitals.

September saw the Germans retreat westwards across the river and the Soviets, now having captured the right bank, launched a series of doomed river crossings made by Polish units fighting in the Communist banner.

Warsaw’s districts had been split and that month they were captured and destroyed in detail.

Acme of airmanship

Throughout this, Allied aircrews made astonishing 13-hour flights from Italy to drop supplies. They braved enemy fighters and anti-aircraft fire on the way in. Burning Warsaw could be seen on the horizon. It was easy to aim for. The city was burning so fiercely that it was difficult to hold a steady course at ultra low altitude. Aircraft struck church spires and crashed into the streets.

Insurgents and civilians made their way from district to district as they fell. Sewers were the main means. Hundreds died in the fetid air and filth of their own city.

The Western allies could not help Poland. The Cold War suspicion had started. The USSR had hundreds of divisions poised to reconquer Poland and Eastern Europe, which they did the following year.

The Uprising’s leaders signed their surrender at the beginning of October and their troops marched out into captivity. The entire population of Warsaw was evicted and sent on a harrowing journey via transit points to concentration camps or merely dumped in other parts of the occupied country. Many never returned.

The Polish capital was looted systematically and then burnt or blown up. Warsaw was left a ghost city, with only a few hundred or so remaining to live in the ruins. The plunder was sent in thousands of trains back to the Reich. Priceless artwork and archives were incinerated.

The Red Army and Polish units entered Warsaw in January 1945.

The capital had ceased to be. The final death toll of the uprising was estimated to be 15,000 insurgents, around 200,000 civilians and 16,000 Germans.

The question is: was it worth it? This lies at the heart of a current debate, often acrimonious, about the uprising.

On August 1, however, Poles perhaps rightly focus on the heroism, the pathos and the tragedy.