Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (76 page)

T
HE CAPITULATION OF
W
ARSAW
was a vast and terrible event performed in a surreal setting. In the western half of the city, largely ruined, a residual community of half a million people were being forced to surrender themselves to Nazi captivity, whilst in the eastern half, the largest army in the world pretended not to be there. In all other sectors of the Eastern Front, the Germans and Soviets were still engaged in a savage war, where the Soviets held the distinct advantage. But, here, on the Vistula, the two armies were acting in silent, unwritten connivance. They were divided only by a broad but shallow and eminently fordable river, low in water in the summer heat, more of a demarcation line than a major obstacle. New Yorkers might grasp the enormity of the scene if told that Manhattan was being emptied by the Nazis of its entire population, whilst the Soviet Army stood watching from the other end of a derelict Brooklyn Bridge. Londoners would have grasped what was happening if told that everyone was being systematically deported from districts north of the Thames, whilst across the river in Battersea, Lambeth, and Southwark nothing moved, no one intervened. No shot was fired; no help was offered; no word of sympathy was expressed.

The Capitulation Treaty had been hammered out by German and Home Army negotiators in day-long, tortuous discussions on 2 October. Though it could not mask the horrendous disaster that was unfolding, the final text was far more favourable to the insurgents than they could have earlier expected. On paper at least, it guaranteed that the Varsovians would be decently treated. The Germans recognized that Home Army soldiers were legitimate combatants and that henceforth both they and their auxiliary units would be dealt with, like other captives from Western armies, as POWs protected by the terms of the Geneva Convention of 1929. This was a step which the Nazis had consistently refused to apply to Soviet prisoners, and which the Soviet Army was never to take with respect to prisoners in its own care. The Germans had tried to exempt Communists from the Treaty, to extend the capitulation to all AK units outside Warsaw, and to split the civilians from the military. They failed
on all three scores. But they were absolutely unmoveable in their determination to clear the capital of its inhabitants. In the end, they conceded that civilians would not be charged with previous offences against German regulations and that civilian evacuation would not begin until the withdrawal of the Home Army had been safely completed. Common measures were to be taken for the orderly dismantling of barricades and the maintenance of policing. The terms caused considerable elation. At last, they showed the insurgents a measure of respect, thereby ensuring acceptance. But they could not conceal the prospect that Warsaw itself was doomed.

Not surprisingly, the capitulation talks had sparked some fierce exchanges. A German staff officer complained that six parleyers sent with white flags to arrange the truce had all been killed. An AK major, who had been parachuted into Poland by SOE, vented his anger on Gen. von dem Bach in person. ‘You, the nation which gave Goethe and Schiller to the world,’ he said, ‘have tried through terror to take the rights of freedom and existence from us.’ Von dem Bach responded, ‘This is war.’
¹
The Nazis did not believe that established international norms applied to them.

Nonetheless, the final product displayed considerable attention to detail. Home Army soldiers, who wore no regular uniform, were to be accepted as lawful combatants if they possessed red-and-white armbands or White Eagle badges. Personal documents made out on the basis of pseudonyms were also to be accepted on condition that prisoners revealed their full identity on surrender. Women soldiers were to be given the option either of going to separate POW camps for females or of accepting civilian status. All Polish POWs were to be guarded and transported by members of the German Wehrmacht, and not by personnel of other formations or nationalities. One thing could not be guaranteed. No one could say whether an agreement signed in good faith by representatives of the Wehrmacht would later be honoured by the SS and the Gestapo.

The evacuation, when it began on 3 October, made a brave sight. Home Army units formed up four or six abreast, and marched off in long columns to the prearranged entry points to the German lines. They marched proudly, with grim faces but with heads held high. They had done their duty, and more; and they were the ones whom Providence had chosen to survive. They were all wearing their red-and-white brassards and their White Eagle badges for the very last time. The men had their weapons shouldered – anything from captured
Panzerfausts
to Sten guns, rifles, and revolvers. The women were carrying their first-aid kits, postbags,
and radio equipment. They were nearly all overpoweringly, sensationally, young. Having reached the German lines at Filter Street, Napoleon Square, or Vola Street, they passed groups of German soldiers and officials, who watched in silent amazement or took photos. Having deposited their arms at agreed sites, they entered streets that were lined with curious onlookers. In some places, they saw men and women fall to their knees in a gesture which in Catholic Poland is generally reserved to honour the dead. Their columns moved off in a constant stream through the daylight hours of 3, 4, and 5 October. In all, 11,668 soldiers surrendered in this way, including some two thousand uncounted women. [
ADMIRATION
, p. 481]

As the evacuation proceeded, members of the Underground awaiting their turn to leave performed the last rites. In some instances, when officers broke the news of the Capitulation to their men, soldiers turned their guns on themselves. But most acquiesced calmly in a decision that had been long foreseen. On Tuesday 3 October, the Home Council of Ministers published its final declaration, which echoed the Commanderin-Chief’s statement of 1 September:

We received no effective support . . . We have been treated worse than Hitler’s allies in Romania, Italy, and Finland . . . [Our] Rising is going under at a time when our armies abroad are helping to liberate France, Belgium, and Holland. We restrain ourselves from passing judgement on this tragedy. But may the God of Justice pronounce a verdict on the terrible wrong which the Polish nation has encountered, and may He punish the perpetrators.
²

The Home Army Commander issued his last order, thanking both the soldiers and the civilians who had supported them. ‘We all remain soldiers and citizens of independent Poland,’ he concluded, ‘believing in the ultimate victory of our rightful cause, believing in our beloved country.’
³
After the last broadcast by Radio Lightning, the precious transmitter was smashed with a sledgehammer.
⁴

The last to leave were members of AK’s High Command. The GOC (General Officer Commanding) of the Warsaw District, Gen. Monter, took the salute at a final march-past of the 78th Infantry Regiment. Gen. Boor, dressed in a civilian coat and trilby hat, joined five generals as they walked to surrender, to be driven away in German staff cars. Most of them would never see their native country again.

Once the military evacuation was nearing completion, the appearance of the civilians, the sick, and the wounded made an equally moving but
more sombre sight. Two vast streams of humanity, each several hundred thousand strong, wound their weary way towards the two German transit camps. Dirty, exhausted, starving and bewildered, they had 15 to 20km (nine to twelve miles) to walk without assistance. Women clutched babies and children. Men carried the aged and infirm on their backs. Faltering helpers supported faltering dependants. Emaciated, blinded, bleeding, bandaged, or limping, the walking wounded clung to each other. Improvised carts and shaky stretchers bent under the weight of the immobile, the paralysed, and the dying. Hour after hour, day after day, this mass of suffering humanity shuffled slowly forward under the watchful guns of the German guards. Some, who took a back route or simply wandered off, were able to escape. Others, who broke away, were hunted down. Most of them had no thought but to keep going till they reached their uncertain destination. They were leaving countless killed and loved ones behind. These were the scenes which critics of the Rising would find hardest to forgive. [
EXODUS
, p. 476]

Exactly as planned, the anonymous mass of civilians provided excellent cover for the Home Army’s reserve command, whose members had been held back for this eventuality. Undetected by the watching Germans, Gen. Bear Cub and his deputy Nile got clean away, heading for south-west Poland, where they were to establish the new resistance HQ. Together with other civilian leaders, the Chief Delegate, Sable, passed unnoticed through the transit camp on false papers, and was duly released on grounds of age. Contrary to appearances, the great Polish conspiracy had not yet been crushed.

Certainly in the first phase, the Germans were as good as their word. There was no recurrence after the Rising of the atrocious massacres which had occurred during it. There was no attempt to weed out Jews or other ‘undesirables’; and, generally speaking, evacuees at the transit camps were not beaten, or starved, or otherwise abused. Many thousands contrived to evade the net or were summarily released. The great majority of Home Army prisoners were sent, as agreed, to regular POW camps run by the Wehrmacht. At Murnau (Bavaria), Sandbostel (Saxony), or Woldenberg (Brandenburg), they joined their comrades from 1939, and like other POWs from Western countries were treated tolerably well. Women POWs, as agreed, were sent to separate camps, notably to Erfurt (Thüringen) or to Oberlangen on the Dutch frontier, or were simply given their freedom.

Even so, as time wore on and the sheer crush of numbers diminished, the more unsavoury parts of the Nazi machine reasserted themselves.
When the final reckoning was made, it was found that well over 100,000 Varsovians had been sent as slave-labourers to the Reich, in contravention of the Capitulation agreement, and that several tens of thousands had been sent to SS concentration camps, including Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen.

As expected, the
Führer’s
reaction to the fall of Warsaw was one of elation but also of merciless revenge. The demolition of west-bank Warsaw proceeded methodically for more than three months. Despite a critical military situation, in which every last soldier of any age was being impressed into service for the defence of the Reich, thousands of German troops were employed in the ruins of Warsaw, fulfilling the
Führer’s
orders for its total razing. Some of the units were brought in daily from billets in the countryside; others camped out in the eerie wasteland, huddling round their braziers as the nights grew ever colder.
Brandkommandos
or ‘fire squads’ attacked the empty, desolate, and largely roofless houses with flamethrowers. Demolition teams used dynamite and heavy equipment to bring down the larger buildings and monuments. Gangs of impressed peasants collected scrap metal and other usable building materials, and carted them off. The operation proceeded without a break, day by day, street by street, district by district. The Soviets watched impassively, making no move. If the work was undertaken energetically, there was a good chance that it could be completed before the next Soviet offensive.

Lt.Gen. Telegin stayed in his post in Praga until mid-October, and probably longer. His reports of 5, 6, and 10 October provide a post-mortem on the Rising as seen through Soviet or proSoviet eyes. Capt. ‘Oleg’ was debriefed, and explained that the Rising was launched ‘to capture Warsaw before it was captured by the Red Army’, and to hand it over to the exiled London Government. Telegin’s grasp of basic facts was rudimentary in the extreme. He questioned whether Gen. Boor was ever in Warsaw, and stated that the identity of the Delegate and other political leaders sent by London could not be established. Yet he did not hesitate to repeat the wildest gossip. For example, he charged the Home Army’s Security Corps with murdering all the Ukrainians, Jews, and Soviet POWs in the city. ‘You shot us at Katyn,’ he reported an insurgent officer as saying, ‘so now we are going to shoot you.’
⁵

Telegin’s description of the Capitulation derived from two members of the People’s Army Security Corps.
⁶
His description of civilian attitudes to the Rising derived from a left-wing journalist who had worked for the
Democrat
, and who was at pains to stress that his circle (unlike others) had promoted ‘the idea of friendship between Poland, the USA, Britain, and the USSR.’ The outbreak of the Rising was received with enthusiasm, he reported, but the mood soon changed, especially after the failure of the Premier’s talks in Moscow. The Home Army leadership discriminated against the AL and the PAL, fomented lies against the Lublin Committee, and by the end had earned ‘the hatred of the Nation’.
⁷

Comrade Telegin had been collecting information in Warsaw for a month or more. Judging by his reports, he did not once interview an informant connected with the Home Army, and he did not once tell Moscow about the views and motives of the dominant insurgent force. Fair-minded reporting was not part of his brief.

In the interval when Warsaw was being obliterated, the small provincial city of Lublin served as the focus for reviving Polish life. It must have been a strange place to be. The town was full of Soviets and of Polish soldiers, who had marched out of Russia. Many of them had terrible stories to tell, not only of the fighting but also of Soviet camps and prisons. It was equally the centre for a ruling political committee which was made up of almost completely unknown politicians, many with false names, which was packed with Russians pretending to be Poles, and which was subordinated to droves of agents, informers, and secret policemen. On 7 October the Committee announced the creation of the Citizens’ Militia, a new-style police force that was subordinated to the security organs (UBP). A flood of decrees followed, especially on judicial and criminal matters, confirming that the Committee had every intention of overthrowing the established laws of the Republic. On 3 January 1945, in his capacity as Chairman of the National Homeland Council, Citizen Bierut, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party, publicly stated with breathtaking gall: ‘I am not associated with any party.’
⁸