Distributed by the Polonia Media Network

PART 9 - "WARSAW IS WAITING"

After the dreadful losses suffered in the battle for the Old Town. Bor- Komorowski could no longer guarantee to continue the uprising without outside help. In the first few weeks of September he seriously considered giving in to the Germans’ continual demands for surrender. At this stage it would have been honorably possible, despite resistance from some Polish NCOs. From August 30, 1944, all offers of terms by the German Ninth Army gave an absolute guarantee to treat the rebels as regular prisoners of war.

Any objections to this that Hitler and Himmler might still have raised were forestalled by the declaration made in the House of Commons of the British Parliament on August 30, when Eden declared that the Allies would carry out reprisals against German paws in England, if the Poles were not treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. When Ninth Army Command learned that the Poles (understandably) mistrusted the SS and did not wish to negotiate with them they agreed with this, too. All demands for surrender were signed by the Supreme Commander of Army Group Center. General Rohr, given charge of the negotiations, was known to the Poles as one who had been bitterly opposed to the atrocities committed by SS troops under Dirlewanger and Kaminski during those bloody days in Wola and Ochota. The President of the Polish Red Cross, Countess Tarnowska, visited Rohr once on September 4 and again on September 8. She told him frankly that General Bor did not reject the offers of surrender completely out of hand, but did mention two main difficulties. Firstly, several Polish officers wanted to fight to the last, regardless of losses, and secondly the Polish Command in London had said "no" to Bor’s signal mentioning the possibility of surrender.

After this exchange the Countess was taken to Bach-Zelewski’s command post. As a direct result of this meeting the rebels themselves first sent, on the following day, a few delegates to Rohr. They went only to clarify the situation, having been given no authority to take decisions.

At this juncture something happened which emphasized Warsaw’s tragedy anew: on September 10 a major Soviet attack on the German held suburb of Praga began. Bor, who had still not completely given up on the idea of Allied aid, tried once again to delay the German advance a little. Accordingly, the Poles broke off all negotiations with the enemy. Now began one of the most interesting and controversial stages of the uprising. It was controversial because, after six weeks total silence, the Russians decided overnight to help the Poles after having earlier so definitely wiped their hands of the affair politically and militarily.

To understand how this remarkable event came about, let us recall what the Soviet attitude was before this fateful day.

On the third day of the uprising Stalin had shattered all Polish hopes of help. When, on August 3, the Polish President, Mikolajczyk, went to Moscow in person to ask Stalin to help the Warsaw rebels and the Home Army, he turned the request down brusquely, saying cynically "Well, what is a Home Army anyway? What sort of an army has no artillery, no tanks, no air force? They don't even have sufficient small arms. They are minor partisan units, not regular forces. I’ve heard that the Polish Government has ordered these detachments to drive the Germans out of Warsaw, I don't know how they propose doing that … these folk don’t normally fight the Germans, but hide in the forests--they can't do anything else." That stated the Soviet attitude clearly enough. The first official commentaries were even harsher and more definite. For the first few days, Soviet reports denied that an uprising had broken out at all. Renewed Polish requests were turned down again, this time they pointed out the Russians’ own difficulties east of Warsaw. These did in fact exist, but had been settled by August 4.

In one of their last major victories on the Eastern Front (between July 31 and August 4) the Germans had wiped out a Soviet tank corps near Volomin. But, it had not even been advancing towards Warsaw, being engaged in attempting to break through into East Prussia. In any case, the Russians had completely stabilized the front again by August 4. A communiqué issued by the official news agency Tass on August 13 made the Russian attitude perfectly clear. The Soviet Government dissociated itself completely from the Warsaw rebels. They laid the responsibility for Warsaw’s fate onto "émigré circles in London," and called the rising itself "criminal."

Clearly the Russians did not wish to help Warsaw because they wanted a communist Poland. This desire could easily have been disputed by a victorious Home Army in Warsaw; therefore the Russians decided to let the Home Army bleed to death.

The Poles were not the only ones to suffer because of this decision; the Western Allies, too, paid a price when they tried to comply with the continuing and ever more pressing Polish demands for air support.

Such air support in practice could only take the form of dropping supplies and specialists and bombarding the German Stuka air-bases and main positions. A third Polish demand, that whole parachute brigades and airborne divisions should be flown in, was clearly unrealistic--indeed out of the question--even without what the Germans had learned in Crete and what the Allies had suffered at Arnhem. However, supplies and bombs sounded plausible. As it turned out, all Polish proposals were turned down in both London and Washington within the first few days of the uprising because of technical and operational difficulties for the USAAF and RAF. What is more, Sir John Slessor, the British Air Marshal maintained that the help the Poles wanted could easily and much more conveniently be supplied by the Russians.

This is so. For the period in question German air-reconnaissance had established that the Russians had sixty airfields with 2,400 machines in the area around Warsaw and in front of German Ninth Army. In those first critical weeks the Russians did not send a single plane to support the Warsaw rebels.

From August 4 onwards, Churchill took up the affair personally, only to have Stalin snub him again. Churchill had in fact already ordered British machines to make drops over Warsaw, weather permitting and "as soon as possible." The RAF pilots, however, had to take off and land from Italy and only a few reached the Polish capital at all. On August 12 Churchill telegrammed Stalin again in an attempt to soften the Russian attitude: "The Poles request machine guns and arms. Could you give some aid, because the distance from Italy is so great."

At first Stalin did not reply to this cry for help at all. Then, between August 13 and 15 the RAF managed to reach Warsaw from Italy in long haul planes borrowed from the Americans. It appears that some damaged machines landed on Russian territory. In the middle of the night of August 16, Vyshinsky requested to see the American Ambassador in Moscow and read the following ghastly declaration to him "to avoid any misunderstanding" (and this in the middle of their common all-out war against Hitler's Germany): "The Soviet Government cannot of course object to English or American aircraft dropping arms in the area of Warsaw since this is an American or British affair. But, they decidedly object to American or British aircraft, after dropping arms in the region of Warsaw, landing on Soviet territory since the Soviet Government does not wish to associate itself either directly or indirectly with the adventurers in Warsaw."

In the end Churchill received the answer to his telegram: ‘… Further, having familiarized myself more closely with the Warsaw affair, I am convinced that the Warsaw action represents a reckless and terrible adventure which is costing the population large sacrifices. This would not have been if the Soviet command had been informed before the beginning of the Warsaw action and if the Poles had maintained contact with it. In the situation which has arisen, the Soviet command has come to the conclusion that it must disassociate itself from the Warsaw adventure, as it cannot take either direct or indirect responsibility for the Warsaw action."

This exchange developed from the refusal to support the Poles into a sharp rebuff to Churchill and the Western Allies as a whole. It was not the first in this war, but was one of the clearest, and for this reason it has been called one of the first skirmishes in the Cold War.

In order to lend weight to his arguments with Stalin, Churchill now tried to reach agreement with Roosevelt on future action. In a letter to the American President he correctly estimated that after the Russian refusal "consent to U.S. air support for the heroic rebels in Warsaw … would be a step of deep and world-wide gravity." This would be intensified by the Russian refusal to give air-borne help themselves although they were only "a few yards away."

After this, on August 20 a message signed by Roosevelt and Churchill was sent to Stalin: "We are thinking of world opinion if the anti-Nazis in Warsaw are in effect to be abandoned. We believe that all three of us should do the utmost to save as many patriots there as possible. We hope that you will drop immediate supplies and munitions, or will you agree to help our planes in doing it very quickly? We hope you will approve. The time element is of extreme importance."

But, in his reply, Stalin kept to his stubborn refusal and must have relished his Allies’ powerlessness and enjoyed the whole situation: "Sooner or later the truth about the group of criminals who have embarked on the Warsaw adventure in order to seize power will become known to everybody."

Churchill was soon to find that in this matter Roosevelt was not the best of allies. The American President dodged the issue, hesitated, became resigned and in the end finally agreed basically with the Soviet standpoint.

Then came September 1 and with it the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of war in Poland. The Home Army had held out in Warsaw for 31 days, fighting and starving without receiving any decisive outside aid. No one in Warsaw knew of the political tug of war behind the scenes--even the Polish Command in London only gleaned hints—-for, of course, the Allies tried to cover up the breach in their alliance. It was hardly surprising that none of the Poles even began to understand why the Allies did not send help. It was also hardly surprising that the Poles’ trust in the Allies waned fast and their morale sank to a new low.

One article published in the Warsaw paper "Gazeta Warszawska" [Warsaw Gazette], which appeared during the uprising captured the attitude of the Poles at that time. It was entitled "We apologize for living." The writer pointed out that the Polish people obviously stood in the way of all their neighbors and the major powers. They hindered the Germans in their drive eastwards, the Russians in their advance to the West, and Britain and the U.S. in their alliance with Moscow. Thus, he said, the Poles had no choice but to beg the whole world’s pardon for the fact that they were alive at all. But that done, the article concluded, the Poles had done enough for good manners and now they would fight on.

Even more explicitly, more bitterly and with more effect, the Supreme Polish Commander, General Sosnkowski, brought the whole affair into the open: "Five years have passed since Poland entered the lonely struggle against the might of Germany, after being encouraged by the English Government and receiving their guarantee … The Autumn Campaign in Poland gave the Allies those vital eight months which enabled them to replenish their arms-deficiencies to such a degree that they could win the air battle over London and the British Isles … the turning point of the War. For a month the heroes of the Home Army with the people of Warsaw have been bleeding to death--alone. That the people of Warsaw stand deserted on the front line of the battle with Germany, is a tragic and monstrous mystery--in view of the Allies’ technical strength--a mystery which we Poles cannot solve. We have not lost our belief that moral right rules the world, we are unable to believe that human opportunism could prevail over physical strength to such an extent, that people can look indifferently upon the death of the capital of that country whose soldiers are defending so many other capitals.

"Experts try to explain why Warsaw has received no aid from technical grounds. They put forward arguments about losses and the rate of success. It would mean nothing to the Allies to lose 27 planes over Warsaw in one month, for at present the Allies have tens of thousands of planes of every shape and size. But, if we’re counting, then don’t let us forget that the Polish air force lost 40% of its total strength in the Battle of Britain in 1940--while only 15% fell during the occupation of Warsaw. For five years the Home Army have been fighting the Germans under terrible conditions--unimagined by the Western world.

"Warsaw is not waiting for empty words of praise, for expressions of recognition, not for assurances of sympathy. Warsaw is waiting … Warsaw is waiting … for weapons and ammunition." This famous order of the day was published in the "Dziennik Polski," [Polish Daily] which appeared in London and was available to the whole world. First the English press and then papers the world over took up the story. The attitude of the Russians was known publicly throughout the world.

Eden tried to deny the situation but public opinion had been mobilized. Stalin, crafty as ever, understood at once what he had to do. He had now to help the rebels in Warsaw as demonstratively as he had once refused his aid.

On September 4, when the British war cabinet tried. once again to obtain permission for Allied planes to land in Russia, they referred directly to the "shock to public opinion." The Tsar of the Kremlin finally changed his mind. A somewhat stupid telegram from Roosevelt to Churchill, based (deliberately?) on false information, could no longer change the situation.

The cable was dated September 5, just when Stalin was contemplating how best to show the world his "forgiving kindness" towards the "frivolous adventurers." It read: "Replying to your telegrams, I am informed by my Office of Military Intelligence that the fighting Poles have departed from Warsaw and that the Germans are now in full control." The problem of relief for the Poles in Warsaw had therefore unfortunately been solved by delay and by German action, and there now appears to be nothing we can do to assist them.

"In order not to lose ‘face,’" Stalin let his allies wait a few days for his final decision. Suddenly on September 10 he declared that he agreed to Anglo-American planes landing on Soviet airfields. He maintained that the Russians had already attempted to fly in weapons themselves--but "unfortunately" these had fallen into German hands. This was a fabrication; the Russians tried such drops only after September 13 and, in fact, met with only minor success.

Nevertheless, the Soviet leader’s about turn meant that the besieged garrison had a last hope of rescue. Now, hopefully, air supplies could begin on a large scale, there no longer being any excuse for Stalin and Rokossovski not to come to the Poles’ aid.

That day Soviet artillery salvos bombarded German positions in Warsaw for the first time, and in the air German Stukas first clashed with Soviet fighters. It remained to be seen how real Stalin’s aid would prove in the long run.