November 20, 2004
THE HIGH COST OF TRUSTING FDR:
Remembering the Warsaw Uprising: Sixty years later, a look back at the longest and bloodiest urban insurgency of the Second World War. (Maciej Siekierski, Fall 2004, Hoover Digest)
The Home Army offensive began in the afternoon of August 1, 1944. The uprising was expected to last about a week and was seen largely as a “mopping-up” operation. This turned out to be a miscalculation. The Germans decided to make a stand and defend “fortress” Warsaw as the Soviets halted their offensive. The uprising lasted not one but nine weeks, turning into the longest and bloodiest urban insurgency of the Second World War. Despite an initial success in liberating most of the city from the Germans, the tide soon turned against the Home Army. The strength of the two sides was disproportionately in favor of the Germans. The Home Army had at its disposal about 40,000 fighters—including 4,000 women—but no more than 10 percent of them were armed, mostly with light weapons. The Germans had roughly the same number of soldiers, but they were heavily armed, with tanks, artillery, and planes.The civilian population suffered the most. On August 5–6 alone more than 40,000 inhabitants of the district of Wola—men, women, and children—were slaughtered. The mass killing was the work of the SS, police, penal battalions, and units of the Russian People’s Liberation Army, made up mostly of Russian collaborators. Altogether, the Polish losses during the uprising included 150,000 civilian dead and about 20,000 Home Army casualties. The German forces lost about 10,000. Fighting ceased on October 2 with the formal capitulation of the Home Army forces. The remaining civilian population of 650,000 was deported to a camp south of Warsaw. During the next three months, the Germans proceeded to demolish much of what was left of the city; when the Soviet troops “liberated” Warsaw in January 1945, Poland’s capital was a vast desert of hollow-shelled buildings and rubble.
The Warsaw Uprising failed because of lack of support from the Soviets and British and American unwillingness to demand that Stalin extend assistance to their Polish ally. The Soviet advance in Poland stopped on the Vistula River, within sight of fighting Warsaw. Stalin had broken off diplomatic relations with the Polish government in exile when, in the spring of 1943, it asked the International Red Cross to investigate the killing of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn. The Polish officers were prisoners of the Soviets following its 1939 invasion of Poland in collaboration with Hitler. The Soviets tried to pin the blame on the Germans and did not admit the April 1940 summary executions of at least 21,000 Polish prisoners until some 50 years after the fact.
Simply put, the Soviets had no interest in assisting the Home Army to liberate Warsaw. The Soviets were planning to annex the eastern half of Poland, first occupied in 1939 under the provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, and to exercise control over the rest. The Western Allies had secretly agreed to these points at the conference in Teheran in December 1943. The Poles suspected the worst from Stalin, but they had confidence that their British and American allies would keep Soviet ambitions in check. This turned out to be a complete miscalculation. When the Home Army requested airdrops of arms and supplies into Warsaw, the Soviets refused permission for Allied planes to land and refuel on airfields under their control. In the end, the Allies did virtually nothing. FDR even turned down Winston Churchill’s suggestion for a strongly worded joint request to Stalin for help.
And then, FDR having betrayed the Poles it became necessary for New Deal historians to demonize them for the next several decades. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 20, 2004 9:17 PM
FDR even turned down Winston Churchills suggestion for a strongly worded joint request to Stalin for help.
Wow. I knew FDR liked Stalin, but that's just awful. It makes no sense to me, either: Was he really so cold-hearted and calculating that he would sacrifice thousands of Poles to the Germans and delay the end of the war so he could stay on Stalin's good side? Why not send a cable saying the Murmansk run is canceled unless Stalin helps the Poles?
Posted by: PapayaSF at November 21, 2004 1:54 AMGee, I wonder how much influence Soviet spies like Hiss in our gvt had over these policy decisions?
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at November 21, 2004 2:24 AMThe Russians wanted payback for when the Poles invaded during their troubles. They wouldn't have listened.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at November 21, 2004 4:06 AMFDR wanted victory in Germany, with the fewest American casualties as possible. (more Russians casualties could be considered the other part of the equation and that would entail co-operating with Stalin)
Poles were a minor detail, not even on the radar screen as it were. Sounds pretty disgusting 60 years later, but that is the probably the way he looked at it.
No he didn't visualize the coming Cold War and Yes "Jim in Chicago" is giving an accurate picture of the times. The question though for us is that if Roosevelt had benefit of our hindsight would he have made the same decisions. I think not but....
Posted by: h-man at November 21, 2004 4:12 AMThe record of the pre-1939 Polish government which the British wanted to install is a fact. No 'demonization' is required for what is already diabolical.
The sad part is that the rebels in Warsaw had no viable choice but to revolt as they did. A Soviet tyranny for them was no better than a Nazi tyranny, and they were stuck. It wasn't as if Poland was crawling with Jeffersonian liberals.
Posted by: Bart at November 21, 2004 6:40 AMGoes to show how ridiculous it is for people now to expect Iranians or North Koreans to just up and revolt, doesn't it.
With modern weapons being what they are, an unarmed populace would be even more helpless than were the Poles.
Posted by: Randall Voth at November 21, 2004 9:08 AMBart:
Yes you've demonstrtated repeatedly how unquestioningly you absorbed the orthodox propaganda of the New Deal historians.
Posted by: oj at November 21, 2004 9:14 AMWhat's more is that we are still punishing the Polish people.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at November 21, 2004 9:49 AMM. Ali, supra, seems to come across something in post-WWI history that hasn't made it into any of the many books on the subject.
Soviet Russia made a vain attempt to to expand to the West and to retake the territory they had given up to the Germans and Austrians. They were defeated by Poland, almost at the gates of Warsaw, in 1920, and pushed back through the Ukraine. Poland fought almost alone, with some minimal French technical support and crucial close air support from a unit of American volunteers in JN-4's. The Russo-Polish War of 1919-1920 is little-studied in the West, but its climax in the Battle of Warsaw is sometimes included in military history anthologies among the decisive battles of the world. It was only the Ukraine's anti-Polonism that necessitated that nation's losing its freedom for the next 80 years.
Posted by: Lou Gots at November 21, 2004 11:07 AM
M. Ali, supra, seems to come across something in post-WWI history that hasn't made it into any of the many books on the subject.
Soviet Russia made a vain attempt to to expand to the West and to retake the territory they had given up to the Germans and Austrians. They were defeated by Poland, almost at the gates of Warsaw, in 1920, and pushed back through the Ukraine. Poland fought almost alone, with some minimal French technical support and crucial close air support from a unit of American volunteers in JN-4's. The Russo-Polish War of 1919-1920 is little-studied in the West, but its climax in the Battle of Warsaw is sometimes included in military history anthologies among the decisive battles of the world. It was only the Ukraine's anti-Polonism that necessitated that nation's losing its freedom for the next 80 years.
Posted by: Lou Gots at November 21, 2004 11:08 AM
Lou:
Which is why Poland and Spain are the two most hated nations for New Dealers--they had the foresight and backbone to resist the Bolsheviks and Nazis.
Posted by: oj at November 21, 2004 12:28 PMoj: So have you read the recent book by Norman Davies on this topic? Any thoughts?
Posted by: brian at November 21, 2004 3:54 PMOJ,
Nonsense.
Just because historians don't enjoy Vatican imprimatur doesn't mean they are divorced from reality. You may want to live your life believing that the Catholic Church can do no wrong, but those of us who actually study history are under no such delusion. At some point, you really need to give it a rest,lest you become a bad comedy routine.
Posted by: Bart at November 21, 2004 6:19 PMBart:
If you never question what your teachers told you, you'll never learn anything of value.
Posted by: oj at November 21, 2004 7:47 PM"Jeffersonian Liberals" seems a code word for
modern secular humanists.
It is obvious why "New Deal" historians distain
the Poles pre-1939 and post-1939.
Harry Hopkins in on this?
Posted by: genecis at November 22, 2004 10:37 AMAccording to Richard Watt ('The Kings Depart'), the Allies had to leave Germany an army in 1919 so the Poles wouldn't take it over.
If the Poles were demonized, it wasn't the New Deal historians who did it. By the end of the Paris peace conference, the Poles were the most distrusted 'nation' in Europe.
With good reason.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 22, 2004 9:21 PM