The Road to Berlin (58 page)

While Mikolajczyk made his way to Moscow, and as Soviet armour began to fight its way to the approaches of Praga on the eastern bank of the Vistula, in London Count Raczynski sounded out Eden on the possibility of direct British aid ‘with regard to the support of military operations in the Warsaw area by the Royal Air Force’: though prepared to listen, Eden pointed out that Warsaw lay outside the range of British bombers while flights by Allied aircraft terminating on Soviet airfields were exclusively an American operation. The next day (28 July) a formal British reply absolutely precluded the type of assistance the Poles
had requested ‘to further a rising in Warsaw’; to fly the Polish Parachute Brigade across Germany might involve ‘excessive losses’; dispatching
RAF
Mustangs and Spitfires to Polish airfields would need prior Soviet agreement, and since Warsaw lay beyond the normal operational range of
RAF
bombers ‘bombarding Warsaw airfields’ (which could be more efficiently executed from Soviet airfields) did not seem feasible.

Amidst all this diplomatic squirming, and with the leading personages of the Polish government in exile widely dispersed (the Prime Minister on his way to Moscow, C-in-C Sosnkowski absent on a singularly ill-timed inspection trip to Italy), the preparations for a rising in Warsaw were now moving into an advanced stage. A warning order to the ‘Home Army’
(Armija Krajowa)
from the Home Commander, General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, went out on 19 July, alerting ‘home units’ to
BBC
transmissions bearing on the opening moves of a rising; a stand-by order, operative as from 25 July, went out on 21 July, accompanied by General Bor-Komorowski’s own estimate of the situation—‘the Soviet westward movement on this sector will be quick … [and will] continue in the westerly direction after crossing the Vistula’, while the Germans will be unable to ‘offer any effective resistance’, having lost the initiative on the Eastern Front, thus demanding of the Poles that they be ‘constantly and fully prepared for a rising’. Before leaving for Moscow, Mikolajczyk in consulation with his colleagues invested General Bor-Komorowski with full authority to decide in the light of local conditions on whether to order a rising and when to do so; the Home Commander had already submitted his ‘operational and political conclusions’ to the Delegate of the Government in Poland (and to the main commission of the Council of National Unity), obtaining in turn a decision that the moment for the rising would be fixed by mutual agreement.

‘We are ready to fight for the liberation of Warsaw at any moment. … Be prepared to bomb the aerodromes round Warsaw at our request. I shall announce the moment of the beginning of the fight:’ so ran General Bor-Komorowski’s signal to the Polish C-in-C on 25 July, the signal which also intimated that the presence of the Polish Parachute Brigade promised to be of ‘enormous political and tactical significance’. Signals now flew thick and fast (though some not fast enough, in particular C-in-C Sosnkowski’s own dispatches, documents of no small importance). The Polish government in London decided on 25 July to empower its Delegate (Mr Jankowski) in Poland to take all decisions ‘required by the progress of the Soviet offensive’ without reference to London ‘if the need arises’; Mikolajczyk’s own specific delegation of authority, transmitted to the Delegate on 26 July, read quite simply: ‘I authorize you [the Delegate] to proclaim the rising at the time chosen by you.’ At once Count Raczynski plied Eden with requests for British assistance and the transfer of the parachute unit requested by the Home Army commander: on 29 July the Polish National Defence Ministry made a formal submission to General Sir Hastings Ismay for ‘support’—the bombing of aerodromes, the dispatch of the Parachute Brigade and a Polish
fighter wing: this
aide-mémoire
stressed that German armoured reinforcements were moving up to the city; the
SS
Division
Hermann Göring
had been identified and everything now pointed to a protracted struggle between the Germans and the Russians for possession of Warsaw.

A protracted fight: that was the course of events anticipated in the Polish paper of 29 July (to which the British returned a largely negative answer on 2 August, pleading that bombing operations were ruled out because they would come ‘within the Russian tactical sphere’ and rejecting any movement of paratroops or fighters since this presented ‘an almost insuperable operational problem’ as well as posing ‘grave political implications’). C-in-C Sosnkowski expressed his implacable opposition to any ‘general rising’ and on 30 July—in a dispatch that took much too long to arrive in London—he stressed that the Parachute Brigade could scarcely be counted on since it was at the disposal of the British, the aircraft of the Polish Air Force could only serve limited purposes, and therefore that
‘the support of the rising depended on British assistance’
. By the time these papers reached London the decision to attack the Germans in Warsaw had been taken and the rising was in full swing.

‘For Warsaw, which never yielded and never gave up the struggle, the hour of action has now struck… : this unmistakable call to arms went out on the morning of 29 July to the people of Warsaw, who could at that moment
‘hear the guns of the battle which is soon to bring liberation’
—transmitted not from the
BBC
in London and its Polish station
‘Swit’
, but from Radio ‘Kosciuszko’ in the Soviet Union broadcasting to occupied Poland in the name of the Union of Polish Patriots. The sound of the guns thudded away to the east and north where Bogdanov’s 2nd Tank Army crashed into the German XXXIX
Panzer
Corps. But amidst this distant rumble, the clatter of German armoured reinforcements and the roar of lorries moving into the city grew louder by the hour; inside Warsaw, where General Stahel had taken command, German tank patrols were much in evidence, assault guns stood at crossroads with crews at the ready and the loudspeakers in the streets summoned Poles to report for work on more defence positions. That appeal from Radio ‘Kosciuszko’, based as it seemed to be on enormous and ever rising optimism, coupled with what the German command was embarked upon inside Warsaw and the presence of Soviet armour not many miles from Warsaw, all combined to impel the Home Army command to take action. Not to act meant being stigmatized a virtual collaborator with the Nazis or else being written off as the nonentity which Stalin insisted the Polish underground was. But a general rising meant taking an enormous risk, the risk written into General Bor-Komorowski’s decision to fight in any case, whether the Germans withdrew or elected to stand and fight. Polish resistance in any event would either help to shorten the struggle or it would install the Home Army as the men to come out and meet the advancing Red Army.

With Soviet tanks battling on the eastern edge of Warsaw on 31 July, two meetings held that day each in their own way vitally affected the fate of the city
(and, with it, the fortunes of all Poland). Inside Warsaw, on an afternoon which seemed to hold so much promise when the Inner
HQ
of the Home Army assembled to consider the situation, Colonel Chrusciel (the Warsaw district commander known as Colonel ‘Monter’), in the presence of the senior civilian and military command of the Polish underground, presented details of the Soviet breakthrough and submitted the latest reports on the Soviet capture of the outlying posts of Radosc, Milosna, Okuniew and Radzymin. General Bor-Komorowski then made his final decision committing the Poles to battle; with the Delegate to the Government, Deputy Prime Minister Jankowski, looking on, the Home Army commander instructed ‘Monter’ to go over to the attack at 5 pm on the afternoon of 1 August, whereupon ‘Monter’ set about transmitting orders to the
AK
men deployed throughout the city. General Bor-Komorowski did not err in thinking that the rapid capture of Warsaw was of immediate and important significance to the Soviet command. The capture of the Polish capital meant major political and operational gains. Soviet armour battering at the eastern walls of the city seemed to presage such a move and impelled the
Armija Krajowa
to urgent action, all on the basis that the morrow must be decisive.

But on and after 25 July, four days after General Bor-Komorowski submitted his optimistic assessment to London of an impending German rout, the situation had begun to change substantially, for all the disasters that befell three German armies. During their fighting retreat the remnants of these armies—more than a dozen divisions all told—were stiffened with German units brought up from Field-Marshal Model’s area and from the Baltic command, with fresh formations at their back—armoured divisions moving in from western Europe and the Balkans, among them
Panzer
divisions in sufficient strength to give the German command no less than fifteen divisions to utilize along a much-shortened front. Model, who was no novice at dealing out punishing counter-blows, already planned to mount a skilful attack, using the three
Panzer
divisions available to him to slice into the Soviet columns forming Rokossovskii’s flank and thus threaten Soviet communications running through Siedlce and Brest-Litovsk. Late in July part of that attack went in, but Model left it just too late to recapture Siedlce The pressure ultimately became so heavy, however, that Siedlce was quickly transformed by the Soviet command into the centre of its defensive front. It was presumably from such a general survey of the front that the Polish National Defence Ministry in London was talking just at this time (late July) of a protracted battle for Warsaw. In and around Warsaw the German command was not simply hanging on to a communications centre (for Model took the precaution of shifting his line of movement to the bridges at Modlin), but was safeguarding its entire right flank.

As ‘Monter’ sent out his orders to
AK
units on the evening of 31 July, Mikolajczyk finally met Molotov in Moscow for another talk which vitally affected the Poles. Molotov tried at once to steer Mikolajczyk into the arms of the Polish Committee for National Liberation, with whom Mikolajczyk should come ‘to an
agreement … in the first place’. The Polish Prime Minister did not ‘discard’ Molotov’s suggestion, but thought he should have ‘an exhaustive discussion with Marshal Stalin in the first place’. Molotov parried; ‘of course’, what Stalin said to Churchill about meeting Mikolajczyk was ‘valid’, but Stalin was preoccupied with ‘military matters’, so that a meeting must wait three or four days. Mikolajczyk then pointed out that he was in possession of ‘direct, exact and up-to-date information from Poland’, having met three delegates recently arrived from the country; to the mention of ‘measures to be taken in connection with the outbreak of a general rising in the Warsaw area’, Molotov returned a vague, almost noncommittal reply to the effect that Soviet troops were now ten kilometres from Warsaw. The conversation ended with Mikolajczyk pressing once more for an interview with Stalin and obtaining Molotov’s undertaking to arrange one, but not before the lapse of three days. And so while Mikolajczyk kicked his heels in Moscow the Warsaw rising was passing through its first fiery stage.

At five o’clock on Tuesday, 1 August, Polish underground units poured down fire on German patrols and units inside Warsaw. From windows, doors and street corners small-arms fire caught the German troops in the open; Polish insurgents captured strong-points and installations that were thinly held or insufficiently guarded, with the fighting going on through the night to storm positions that did not fall in the first furious assault. For the next two days the
Armija Krajowa
threw itself into continuous attacks on the strong-points still held by the Germans, who had been split up into several groups fighting inside the city, cut off from each other. General Stahel, with a strong force of troops and
SS
men, held out in the Bruhl Palace in Plac Teatralny; in the suburb of Praga the Germans managed to contain the
AK
attacks and were holding on to the Citadel, the airfields at Okecie and Bielany, as well as the radio station at Bornerowo. The Poles—armed with sufficient light infantry weapons to equip only a quarter of the fighting men available—at once found themselves at a grave disadvantage in dealing with fixed defences without heavy weapons of any kind. With stocks of ammunition for seven days, they had planned to expand their supplies with captured German material, and they did during the first forty-eight hours seize quantities of arms and ammunition, only to expend more and more ammunition as the fighting grew very fierce and German resistance stiffened. Beyond the confines of Warsaw, German reinforcements speeded to the relief of the city under categorical orders from Himmler. Within twenty-four hours Hitler appointed a fearsome commander for the German units engaged in stamping out the rising,
SS Obergruppenführer
von dem Bach-Zelewski, a ‘specialist’ in partisan operations in the east, who was to have at his disposal not only regular army, police formations and the
SS
, but the brutish fellows of the
‘Dirlewanger
brigade’—drawn from the prisons—and additional brigades of ex-Soviet soldiers who had defected to the Germans. Behind this human flail came a train of heavy guns, multiple mortars, flame-thrower units and finally deadly refinements such as the miniature cable-steered tanks packed with explosive, the ‘Goliaths’. The German command
fused ingenuity with bestiality to fight one of the ghastliest battles of the war.

As the first Polish onrush which cost many dead began to fall away, the rumble of the battle on the eastern bank of the Vistula grew all the while fainter. Marshal Rokossovskii reports that it was only on 2 August that Soviet intelligence received information about a proposed Polish attack on the German occupation forces in Warsaw—‘this news put us in a great state of alarm’. The Belorussian Front staff at once set about trying to establish the scale and the nature of the rising, even working on the assumption that the Germans were the source of these rumours, which further set the Soviet command wondering. If it was a Polish decision, the Marshal was appalled at the timing. Two armies, 48th and 65th, were fighting about fifty miles east and north-east of Warsaw; the whole Soviet right flank, weakened by the
Stavka
pulling out two armies into reserve, was still under orders to go for the river Narew and seize a bridgehead on its western bank; 70th Army had just taken Brest-Litovsk and was clearing the area; 47th Army was fighting to the north of Siedlce; 2nd Tank Army—at the outskirts of Praga—was beating off fierce German armoured counter-attacks; while the left-wing armies (1st Polish, 8th Guards and 69th) set about forcing the Vistula at Magnuszew, their main operational task. The capture of Warsaw needed a full-scale offensive operation at a time when Rokossovskii’s right-flank armies, almost at the end of their tether, were being pressed to carry out
Stavka
orders to cross the Narew and the left wing was seriously embattled—all at the end of a 300-mile supply line. With a group of officers Rokossovskii went up to a forward observation post with 2nd Tank Army. From this post, sited in a factory chimney, he looked out over a Warsaw covered with rolling clouds of smoke; the burning houses were clearly visible; the city was flecked with bomb bursts and evidently under shell-fire.