[Zbyszek]

[ excerpts from the fascinating book of Norman Davies „EUROPE. A history". ]

..... Germany’s immediate neighbours in Poland and France were both eagerly awaiting their
freedom. The Soviet army was approaching the eastern suburbs of Warsaw. The American army was working its way round the western suburbs of Paris. Both cities were filled with various groups of resistance fighters directed mainly from London; both were straining at the leash to rise against The Nazi oppressor. In Warsaw they were led by AK, in Paris by the Free French.
Paris rose on 19 August [1944]. Despite poor intelligence, the idea was to mount attacks inside the city and accelerate the Americans’ final push. Parts of the French Resistance worked with the American Command, which had recognized their value in the battles since Normandy landing. Assailed from all quarters, the German garrison pulled back- and the Americans struck. General Leclerc’s French armoured division, fighting under American command, was given the honour of spearheading the advance. The German garrison surrendered, having ignored the Fuhrer’s order to leave no stone standing. On 25 August, with snipers still active, General de Gaulle walked magnificently erect down the Champs-Elysees. The cathedral of Notre-Dame celebrated a great Te Deum. Despite the heavy loss of civilians, the population rejoiced. France’s pre-war Third Republic was restored; Paris was free.

Warsaw had risen on 1 August, three weeks before Paris. The plan was to co-ordinate attack inside the city with the Soviets’ final push. But the Varsovians were not to share the Parisians’ success. The intelligence of the Polish Resistance was poor; and they found too late that the Soviet Command was not going to help. The Soviet generals had used the Polish Underground in all the battles since crossing the Polish frontier. But Stalin did not recognize independent forces; and he had no intention of letting Poland regain its freedom. Assailed from all quarters, the German garrison had began to withdraw. But then the Soviets suddenly halted on the very edge of the city. Foul treachery was afoot. Moscow Radio, which had called on Warsaw to rise, now denounced the leaders of the rising as ‘a gang of criminals’. Two German panzer divisions moved forward; and the garrison was given time to receive massive reinforcements from the most vicious formations of the Nazi reserves. General Berling’s Polish army, which was fighting under Soviet command, was withdrawn from the Front for defying orders for defying orders and trying to assist the rising. Berling himself was cashiered. Western attempts to supply Warsaw by air from Italy were hamstrung by the Soviets’ reluctance to let their planes land and refuel. Street by street, house by house, sewer by sewer, the insurgents were shelled, gunned, and dynamited on one bank of the Vistula, whilst Soviet solders sunbathed on the opposite bank. In one of several orgies of killing, in the suburb of Mokotów*, Nazi troops massacred 40,000 helpless civilians in scenes reminiscent of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in the previous year. Weeks after the liberation of Paris, the Warsaw insurgents were still fighting on. They surrendered after sixty-three days, on 2 October, when their commander General Bór, walked into German captivity. Their only consolation was to be granted combatant status. Despite the sacrifice of 250,000 of its citizens, Warsaw remained unfree. Poland’s pre-war Republic was not restored. There was no Te Deum in the destroyed cathedral of St John. The remaining population was evacuated. In his fury, Hitler ordered that no stone of the rebel city was to be left standing. The demolition proceeded for three months, whilst the Soviet army, with its committee of Polish puppets in tow, watched passively from across the river. They did not enter Warsaw’s empty, silent, snowbound ruins until 17 January 1945.

Now, my comment..

Communists made us think that heroic Soviet troops liberated Warsaw on Jan. 17, 1945. Having the above in mind you can guess what sort of liberation it was. Warsaw had 1 250 000 inhabitants before the war (1939). When Soviets crossed the frozen Vistula river and reached its right bank, there was no one to greet them because the town was e m p t y. Can you imagine the empty Phoenix or Pittsburgh? This drama was increased by the fact that many good soldiers of the Polish Army which had been organized in Soviet Union and moving along with the Red Army were aware they were a few months late with this liberation.
The fate of my family, including my 14 years old mother (mother’s side) was no less dramatic than that of thousands innocent civilians, kicked out of their burning city.

* Mokotów is a lovely, green quarter of Warsaw where I have been living through all my childhood and youth. The name originates from Mon Coteau, a French term that means My Hill. I can add that Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose memoir was filmed by Roman Polanski temporarily worked in Mokotow after the Ghetto uprising with a group of his Jewish friends and then he has been hiding in the ruins of Mokotow for months before a day of January Seventeen 1945, which was so lucky to him. Anyone watching the film or reading the book remembered his grotesque liberation.