History of Warsaw - World War II

World War II

The first bombs felt on Warsaw already on 1 September 1939. Unfortunately, the most important representatives of civil and military administration (along with the Army’s Commander-in-Chief, Marshall Edward Rydz-Śmigły) escaped to Romania, taking with themselves lot of equipment and ammunition. To stop the chaos, President Starzyński seized full civil power, although he had no entitlement to do this. To prevent public order, he appointed the Citizen Guard. All time he supported the people’s spirit in radio speeches. On 9 September, the German tank divisions attacked Warsaw from south-west, but the defenders (with a lot of civil volunteers among them) managed to stop them in the district Ochota. But the situation was hopeless – the Germans threw so many divisions that sooner or later they would conquer the city anyway, all the more so because on 17 September the Soviets invaded the east part of Poland. Three days later the German encirclement around Warsaw closed. On 17 September, the Royal Castle burnt down, on 23. – the power plant. On 27 September Warsaw surrendered and on 1 October the Germans went into the city. Generally, in September 1939 died in Warsaw ca. 31,000 people (among them 25,000 civilians) and 46,000 was injured (20,000 civilians). 10% of buildings were destroyed. On 27 October, the Germans arrested President Starzyński and deported him to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died in 1943 or 1944 (the exact date is still unknown).

During the Second World War, central Poland, including Warsaw, came under the rule of the General Government, a Nazi colonial administration. Germans planned destruction of the Polish capital before the start of war. On 20 June 1939 while Adolf Hitler was visiting an architectural bureau in Würzburg am Main, his attention was captured by a project of a future German town – "Neue deutsche Stadt Warschau". As early as 1939 Hitler approved of a plan known as the Pabst Plan which envisaged changing Warsaw into a provincial German city. All higher education institutions were immediately closed. Since the first days the German authorities had arrested and executed the Poles or had taken them to the concentration camps. The executions were being carried out mainly in the forests around Warsaw (e.g. in Kampinos Forest or Kabaty Woods), but later – publicly on streets (today, there’s a lot of small monuments in Warsaw, commemorating those crimes). Since the beginning of the occupation, the Nazis had organized so-called łapanka`s: it consisted in sudden and accurate surrounding of a chosen place (for example, a railway station) and arresting all of the people who by accident were there (passing by or living; in Polish “łapać” – to catch). Such actions were being carried out also in the other occupied European countries, but not on such scale as in Poland. The arrested people were being deported either to the concentration camps or on forced work to Germany. From 1943, a concentration camp existed also in Warsaw – KL Warschau. Until August 1944, about 200,000 Poles died in gas chambers.

Since October 1940, the Germans had been deported Warsaw's entire Jewish population (several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city) to the Warsaw Ghetto. They herded ca. 500,000 people on the area of ca. 2.6 square kilometres (1.0 sq mi). The Jews were dying not only because of executions but also hunger (the daily food ration for one Jew was only 183 kcal). Since October 1941, every Jew who had left the Ghetto as well as the Pole who had been helping in any way the Jews (e.g. threw food over the Ghetto wall), had been punished with death.

When the order came to annihilate the Ghetto as part of Hitler's "Final Solution" on April 19, 1943, Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered, the Ghetto held out for almost a month. When the fighting ended, almost all survivors were massacred, only few managed to escape or hide. Almost all the leaders of the uprising committed suicide – including the principal, Mordechaj Anielewicz (only one survived – Marek Edelman). The commander of Verbrennungs und Vernichtungskommando ("Burning and Destruction Detachments"), Jürgen Stroop, destroyed the Ghetto so completely that even the house walls did not remain and after the war Poles did not clean the ruins but “filled up” them with soil and smoothed, making small mounds, on which they could build houses. Nowadays it’s very well noticeable.

By July 1944, the Red Army was deep into Polish territory and pursuing the Germans toward Warsaw. Knowing that Stalin was hostile to the idea of an independent Poland, the Polish government-in-exile in London gave orders to the underground Home Army (AK) to try to seize the control of Warsaw from the Germans before the Red Army arrived. Thus, on 1 August 1944, as the Red Army was nearing the city, the Warsaw Uprising began.

The Poles believed that Stalin would help them in a common struggle against Nazism but it did not happen. Despite that the Red Army approached the right bank of Vistula (on 14 August it conquered Praga), at the news of the uprising it stopped. Admittedly, Stalin sent two tank divisions which established a bridgehead on the left bank, but the soldiers had no experience in street fights and did not manage to keep the positions; sending intentionally the inexperienced troops, Stalin did not give help the insurgents – because he had not intended to do so - but could later repel the charges that he had not help the uprising.

The armed struggle, planned to last 48 hours, went on for 63 days (till 2 October). Eventually the Home Army fighters and civilians assisting them were forced to capitulate. They were transported to the PoW camps in Germany, while the entire civilian population was expelled.

The Nazis then essentially demolished Warsaw. Hitler, ignoring the agreed terms of the capitulation, ordered the entire city to be razed to the ground and the library and museum collections taken to Germany or burned. Monuments and government buildings were blown up by special German troops known as Verbrennungs und Vernichtungskommando ("Burning and Destruction Detachments"). About 85% of the city had been destroyed, including the historic Old Town and the Royal Castle. In the uprising, ca. 170,000 people died, from among which only 16,000 were insurgents. The civilians (ca. 650,000) were deported to the transit camp in Pruszków (Durchgangslager Pruszków).

On January 17, 1945 - after the beginning of the Vistula–Oder Offensive of the Red Army - Soviet troops entered the ruins of the city of Warsaw, and liberated Warsaw's suburbs from German occupation. The city was swiftly taken by the Soviet Army, which rapidly advanced towards Łódź, as German forces regrouped at a more westward position. In general, during the German occupation (1939–45) ca. 700,000 people died in Warsaw, i.e. more than all Americans and Brits. The material looses were about 45 billion dollars.

Those soldiers of the Home Army, who had survived the war, were arrested by the Soviet secret police (NKVD), then either executed or deported to Siberia.