The Warsaw Uprising
The Home Army rises against the Germans in Warsaw; the Red Army halts across the river, and after 63 days the city is crushed and then razed.
- Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw — Norman Davies, Macmillan (2003)
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
The Home Army (Armia Krajowa), the underground army loyal to the Polish government in London, was one of the largest resistance movements in occupied Europe. As the Red Army approached Warsaw in summer 1944, its commanders decided to free the capital themselves, so that a Polish government, not Stalin’s puppets, would greet the Soviets.
- Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw — Norman Davies, Macmillan (2003)
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
The rising began on 1 August 1944. Poorly armed insurgents, many of them teenagers, seized much of the city. But the Soviet advance stopped at the Vistula, and Stalin at first refused Allied supply planes permission to land on Soviet-held airfields. German forces, including SS and police units, retook the city district by district; in the Wola massacres in the first days of August they murdered tens of thousands of civilians. After 63 days the Home Army surrendered on 2 October.
- Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw — Norman Davies, Macmillan (2003)
About 15,000–18,000 insurgents and, by most estimates, 150,000–200,000 civilians were killed. Hitler ordered the city destroyed; by January 1945 most of Warsaw lay in ruins. Under communism the insurgents were often persecuted. Only after 1989 could the Uprising be fully commemorated, and the Warsaw Rising Museum, opened in 2004, is now one of the most visited in Poland.
- Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw — Norman Davies, Macmillan (2003)
- Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom — Brian Porter-Szűcs, Wiley-Blackwell (2014)
A fight for freedom and dignity by a generation that would not wait to be "liberated" by Stalin, betrayed by the Soviets, who watched from across the Vistula, and let down by the Western allies.
- Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw — Norman Davies, Macmillan (2003)
A tragic miscalculation by the Home Army command that cost some 150,000–200,000 civilian lives and the destruction of the capital, for political aims that could not be achieved.
- Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw — Norman Davies, Macmillan (2003)
- Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom — Brian Porter-Szűcs, Wiley-Blackwell (2014)
An adventure launched by the London government for anti-Soviet political reasons, without coordination; the Red Army, exhausted after its summer offensive, could not cross the Vistula in time.
- Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw — Norman Davies, Macmillan (2003)
- Russia's War — Richard Overy, Penguin (1998)
Why it matters today
At 5 p.m. every 1 August, "W-hour", sirens sound and Warsaw stops: drivers get out of their cars and pedestrians stand still. The Uprising is a symbol of courage and of abandonment by allies, and Poles still argue over whether it should have been launched at all.