Festung Warschau - 1944

1944

By 1944 the German Eastern Front's situation became hopeless. Adolf Hitler who took over personally many duties in the OKW and OKH ordered the no step back policy in an attempt to halt the Soviet offensives which could not be contained by open field battle anymore. Following this policy, several cities were declared Festungen (Fortresses) and were to be held by the German army at all cost, even if surrounded and with no hope to break the siege. Examples of this policy were the Festung Stalingrad and Festung Kiev.

Later in the war, the "Festung" concept that was to be illustrated by the propaganda film Kolberg which reminds of that city's defense against Napoleon in 1807, was also applied to German cities like Königsberg, Breslau, Frankfurt (Oder) and Berlin. Often even the civil population was supposed to support the rather suicidal attempts of defense, as the cities were largely destroyed in the course of the fights.

On July 27, 1944 Adolf Hitler ordered the Festung Warschau to be created and defended at all cost. The same day the governor of the General Government, Hans Frank, called for 100,000 Polish men between the ages of 17–65 to arrive at several gathering places in Warsaw the following day. They were to be employed at construction of fortifications for the Wehrmacht in and around the city. This move was viewed by the Armia Krajowa as an attempt to neutralize the underground forces, and the underground urged Warsaw inhabitants to ignore it. Fearing that the city would be turned into ruins and share the fate of Stalingrad and Kiev, General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski ordered Operation Tempest to be started in Warsaw, which resulted in the Warsaw Uprising that lasted from August through September.

After the Uprising, during which the Soviets troops had arrived near the Vistula, the Germans razed the city to the ground and continued the construction of concrete bunkers that were to defend Festung Warschau against the Red Army for four months. However, when the Soviets finally crossed the Vistula on January 17, 1945, the city was captured in several hours with little resistance from the remaining German garrison. The Chief of the Operational Branch of the German Army General Staff (Generalstab des Heeres), Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin gave permission to the retreat of German Heeresgruppe A from Warsaw on January 16, 1945 throughout the Soviet Vistula-Oder Offensive and was imprisoned on January 19, 1945 by the Gestapo at Flossenbürg concentration camp and Dachau concentration camp as he rejected a direct command of Adolf Hitler by this action.