Восстание в Варшаве: 63 дня борьбы и жертв.

The Warsaw Uprising began with simultaneous coordinated attacks at 17:00 hours on August 1, 1944 (W hour). The uprising was intended to last a few days until Soviet forces arrived; however, this never happened, and the Polish forces had to fight almost without any outside assistance. Initially the battle raged throughout most of Warsaw, but after a short time it became confined to districts in the West of the town. The key factor in the battle was the massive imbalance of weapons between the two sides. The German side was extremely well equipped whilst the Polish side had, initially, barely enough ammunition for a few days. The policy of one bullet, one German allowed the Polish fighters to sustain the uprising for many weeks at the cost of their own lives. Some areas fought for a full 63 days before an agreed capitulation took place. The losses on the Polish side amounted to 18,000 soldiers killed, 25,000 wounded and over 250,000 civilians killed; those on the German side amounted to over 17,000 soldiers killed and 9,000 wounded. Although Stalingrad had already shown the level of danger which a city can pose to armies which fight within it and the importance of local support to armies, the Warsaw uprising was probably the first demonstration that in an urban terrain, a vastly under equipped force supported by the civilian population can hold its own against far better equipped professional soldiers— though at the cost of vast sacrifices on the part of the city's residents.

"W hour" (from the Polish wybuch, "outbreak"), the moment of the start of the uprising, had been rescheduled for 1 August at 1700 during a briefing on 31 July around 1730. The change of "W hour" from 2400 (in earlier plans) to 1700 proved to be a costly strategic decision, reducing the chance of surprising the Germans, especially since many of the Polish partisans were not trained for prolonged day fighting. The order to start the uprising did not reach all of the units (around 23,000 personnel) due to the technological and logistic limitations of the underground movement.

The Uprising reached its apogee on August 4 when the Home Army soldiers managed to establish frontlines in the Wola and Ochota districts. However, they failed to secure the bridges over the Vistula or bridgeheads on the other side of the river. Also, there were still several German pockets of resistance inside the Polish controlled territory, most notably the PAST skyscraper, the bridgeheads, and Headquarters of the police. On that very same day SS general Erich von dem Bach was appointed commander of all the forces fighting the uprising and began concentrating the newly arrived troops. These included Units of Dirlewanger, Schmidt and Reinefarth. The main aim of the German forces was to break through to the German bridgeheads and then cut off the Uprising from the river by attacking both southward and northward.

On August 5 the three German groups started their advance westward along Wolska and Górczewska streets toward the main East West communication line of Aleje Jerozolimskie Av. Their advance was halted, but the Reinefarth and Dirlewanger regiments started to carry out orders of Heinrich Himmler: behind the lines special groups of SS, police and Wehrmacht went from house to house shooting all inhabitants and burning their bodies. The aim of this policy was to crush the will to fight and put the uprising to an end without having to commit to heavy city fighting. In mass executions approximately 40,000 civilians were slaughtered. At the same time the Zośka and Wacek battalions managed to capture the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw concentration camp. The area became one of the main communication links between the insurgents fighting in Wola and those defending the Old Town. On August 7 the German forces were joined by tanks, with civilians being used as human shields. After two days of heavy fights they managed to cut Wola in two and reach the Bankowy square. Until mid September, the Germans were shooting all captured resistance fighters on the spot. The main perpetrators were Oskar Dirlewanger and Bronislaw Kaminski, who committed the most cruel atrocities. After von dem Bachs arrived in Warsaw (August 7), it became clear that atrocities only stiffened the resistance and that some political solution should be found, considering the small forces at the disposal of the German commander. The aim was to gain a significant victory to show the Home Army the futility of further fighting and make them surrender. This did not succeed, but from the end of September on, some of the captured Polish soldiers were treated as POWs.

Simultaneously with the German attack on Wola, the Kaminski Brigade started its onslaught on the Ochota district. The forces defending the area consisted of only two ill equipped battalions, while the Germans were aided by tanks, artillery and Goliath self propelled mines. However, the morale of German troops fighting in the area was low, and the main aim of the soldiers fighting there was to loot and rape rather than to attack enemy positions. As a result, the two battalions of the Home Army were able to defend the area with heavy casualties until August 11, when they retreated toward Mokotów.

The city sewer system became an important communication network for the insurgents, who used the sewers to move under the areas occupied by Germans, thus allowing contact between surrounded positions (insurgents had almost no radios). Sewers were also used as a means of evacuation of areas that couldn't be defended any longer. Hand to hand fighting took place in the pitch blackness, the Germans throwing grenades and gas bombs down manhole covers.

In September the eastern part of Warsaw had been captured by the Soviets. In the Praga area Polish units under command of general Zygmunt Berling (thus sometimes known as 'berlingowcy' 'the Berling men'), the 1st Polish Army (1 Armia Wojska Polskiego) were in position. On the night of 14/15 September three patrols landed on the shore of Czerniaków and Powiśle areas and made contact with Home Army forces. Under heavy German fire only small elements of the main units made it ashore (I and III battalions of 9th infantry regiment, 3rd Infantry Division). At the same time the commanders of the Red Army declined to support the Polish troops with artillery, tanks or bombers. The Germans intensified their attacks on the Home Army positions near the river to prevent any further landings, which could seriously compromise their line of defence, but weren't able to make any significant advances for several days, while Polish forces held those vital positions in preparation for new expected wave of Soviet landings. Polish units from the eastern shore attempted several more landings, and during the next few days sustained heavy losses (including destruction of all landing boats and most of other river crossing equipment). Other Soviet units limited their assistance to sporadic and insignificant artillery and air support. Shortly after the Berling landings, the Soviets decide to postpone all plans for a river crossing in Warsaw "for at least 4 months", and soon afterwards General Berling was relieved of his command. On the night of September 19, after no further attempts from the other side of the river were made and the promised evacuation of wounded did not take place, Home Army soldiers and landed elements of Wojsko Polskie were forced to begin a retreat from the positions on the bank of the river. Out of approximately 3,000 men who made it ashore only around 900 made it back to the eastern shores of Vistula, approximately 600 of them seriously wounded.

From 4 August the Western Allies begun supporting the Warsaw Uprising with airdrops of munitions and other supplies. Initially the air supply operations were carried out mostly by Polish bomber units (Polish Special Duty Squadron 1586) stationed in Bari and Brindisi in Italy. Later on at the insistence of the Polish government in exile they were joined by South African and British units. The drops continued until 21 September. The total weight of allied drops was 104 tons. The Soviet Union did not give permission to the Allies for use of its airfields for those supply operations; thus the planes were forced to use distant bases in the United Kingdom and Italy, which reduced their carrying weight and number of sorties. The Allies' specific request for the use of landing strips made on 20 August was denied by Stalin on 22 August (he referred to the resistance as 'a handful of criminals'). United States planes did not join the operation. After Stalin's objections to support for the uprising, Churchill telegrammed Roosevelt on August 25, proposing to send planes in defiance of Stalin and 'see what happens'. Roosevelt replied on August 26: 'I do not consider it advantageous to the long range general war prospect for me to join you in the proposed message to Uncle Joe'. The remainder fell into enemy hands or was lost.

At 8 pm on 2 October General Tadeusz Bór Komorowski signed the capitulation of remaining Polish forces in Warsaw (Warszawski Korpus Armii Krajowej or Home Army Warsaw Corps) at the German headquarters in the presence of General von dem Bach. According to the capitulation treaty the Home Army soldiers were to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and the civilian population was to be treated humanely.