The Warsaw Commune: Betrayed by Stalin, Massacred by Hitler. Zygmunt Zaremba 1947
Allied help for our uprising appeared to be a matter of course. We were fighting Hitlerism; so consequently we had the right to expect that all the nations united in this great struggle would render us effective aid. Since we were directly engaged in battle, and had liberated two-thirds of the area of the capital, we hoped that help would immediately come. We had the right to expect this, not only on the part of our distant Western Allies, but above all from the USSR. It is true that in 1943 the latter had broken off diplomatic relations with the London Polish government. [1] There was, however, a like precedent. Were not Great Britain and the United States arming Tito’s brigades in Yugoslavia? Yet these two powers did not recognise Tito, but gave their political support to General Mihailović. [2] Mr Churchill uttered these significant remarks at the time:
Here, as elsewhere, we hold the principle of being faithful to those who remain faithful to us. Without prejudice to our political sympathies, and without taking account of them, we are trying to help those who are fighting for freedom against Hitlerite domination, and so inflicting great losses on the enemy.
Unfortunately, our armed activity came up against a whole tangle of international intrigues which revealed the sordid aims and crafty preparations directed against Poland. German propaganda, and Russian, tried in the same way to maintain silence over the Warsaw Uprising. Russian-inspired propaganda represented it to world opinion as an act of reactionary sedition by the supporters of ‘the colonels’ regime’ who wanted to play into the hands of the colonels with a short-lived armed agitation. It made out that the Home Army was a Fascist organisation.
Nazi propaganda was no less deceitful. After a silence of several days, it announced that the uprising had been completely snuffed out. It was only 10 days later that the sheer force of the insurrection obliged it to admit the truth. For the uprising held its own against the German army. The first European capital invaded by Hitler was well and truly liberated by the tremendous effort of its united population. That was obvious.
However, behind the hostile propaganda lay the whole power of the USSR. And this is how the problem of aid, which was limited to providing weapons and anti-aircraft defence, quickly became the nub of the bargaining between the Allies and the Russians. The USSR referred to the secret Teheran agreements that recognised Polish territory as a clear field for military operations. [3] Since Warsaw belonged to this zone, Russia refused our Western Allies the right to intervene directly. It even declared itself officially against the uprising, and decided to abstain from any help in favour of it. The Russian reasoning was, firstly, that the uprising took place without prior consultation with the USSR; secondly, that the uprising served the political interests of a reactionary clique; and thirdly, that Generals Sosnkowski and Bór assumed sole responsibility for the insurrection, which they had launched off their own bat. [4]
Communist propaganda at a lower level added a marvellous argument: that if Russia did not come to the help of the uprising, that is because she was never asked.
What are these arguments worth? We talked above about the Polish-Soviet conflict. It was the USSR that had broken off diplomatic relations with Poland in 1943. The attempts of our government and its representatives in the country with a view to an agreement, at least in the military sphere, broke down as a result of Russia’s intransigent attitude. Neither our London government nor its Polish organisations had the possibility of discussing the plan of battle with the Soviet authorities. Should we therefore, on that account, have called off the struggle? Would the USSR have approved of the uprising if it had been carried out with the knowledge of the NKVD (GPU) or of the Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs? Should the uprising not have broken out, solely because it had not been previously announced in a Russian government department?
Strange arguments! For had not the Allies and the USSR, for some months, been launching continual appeals for direct action? If we had not proceeded in this way, would they not have rightly reproached us with having wavered and passively awaited being liberated by others? [5]
However, we had not been spared these slanders before. In fact, in spite of requests from the USSR and its agents working in Poland, we did not want to rise in desperate circumstances when the Soviet troops were still fighting on the other side of the Dnieper. At that time, the Home Army and the groups leading it were being criticised for biding their time, if not for ‘collaboration’. Were we not scorned for our decision to remain prepared, arms at ready?
But come the appropriate moment, we therefore had the right and the duty to count on external aid.
Moreover, as witnessed by the declaration from Polish official sources published in the London Times: ‘On 31 July, on the eve of the outbreak of the rising in Warsaw, the Polish Prime Minister, M Mikołajczyk, informed Mr Molotov during their first conversation in the Kremlin that this action was to be expected soon.’ [6]
In the same declaration we find references to several other dates and confirmations of the steps taken by the Polish government and the Home Army command with a view to coordinating the operations of the Polish and Soviet armies. We quote the Times:
On 2 August the British authorities forwarded to Moscow a telegram from General Bór, dated 1 August, in which he said: ‘As the struggle for Warsaw has begun, I ask you to bring about immediate assistance from the Soviet side by means of an immediate thrust from the outside.’ [7]
On 3 August M Mikołajczyk officially informed Marshal Stalin that the battle for Warsaw had broken out. Having addressed him personally, he received this short reply: Soviet liaison officers will be sent to Warsaw.
M Mikołajczyk transmitted this reply to his government in London on 9 August. A telegram was sent to Moscow the next day via the British military mission in the USSR. It contained a list of places proposed for the parachuting of arms and munitions, and a list of objectives to be bombed by the Soviet air-force around the capital.
On 12 and 16 August still more detailed information was transmitted to Moscow, likewise through the intermediary of the appropriate British authorities.
On 5 August the Soviet Captain Kalugin arrived in Warsaw, and presented himself to the Polish General Staff. Using them as an intermediary, he addressed the following telegram to Marshal Stalin, which was transmitted to Moscow by the British authorities on 8 August. [8]
On 9 August the British authorities once more transmitted to Moscow a telegram from the Home Army addressed to Marshal Rokossovsky [9] in which it proposed coordinating action with him and asking for help. Immediately on his return to London, M Mikołajczyk asked Marshal Stalin on two occasions by telephone to speed up the help promised.
These facts speak for themselves. They cast light on both the alleged lack of liaison with Russia, as well as the so-called absence of any request for help. As for the arguments concerning the reactionary character of the uprising and the responsibility of Generals Sosnkowski and Bór for it, they are no more valid.
The entire population of Warsaw took part in the uprising. The political parties represented in the Council of National Unity had nothing in common with the semi-Fascist regime of ‘the colonels’, whom they had already fought before the war. [10] On the contrary, many of the members of the Union of Polish Patriots set up in Moscow had been supporters of this regime (for example, Stefan Jędrychowski, Dr Sztachelski, A Witos). [11] The Home Army, being a national army, closely linked with the people, had been formed under the authority of the Polish Socialist Party and of the Peasant Party, who had entrusted to it the best elements of the working-class and peasant youth. The activity of one party alone would never have been so powerful and so long-lasting.
Was the date of the uprising, 1 August, when the Russians were at the gates of Warsaw, well chosen? This cannot be judged without being in possession of documents on the military operations of the Russians, who at this precise moment halted their advance there for a month and a half. [12]
We have insisted at great length on the USSR’s attitude towards the insurrection, for this attitude determined the development, the duration and the tragic ending of the uprising. As a result of the hostile position taken up by the USSR, we found ourselves without the requisite weapons or sufficient munitions, the prey of the German forces, which became more numerous every day.
An enormous task then arose for the Polish government and the leadership of the insurrection: to arouse world opinion as rapidly as possible, to obtain a decision from the British and American governments, independently of the USSR, in order to receive indispensable military equipment. Our government in London did not cease its representations to the British cabinet. The Poles who were living in Great Britain and the United States set to work to make these countries favourable to our struggle. The Committee of the Polish Socialist Party abroad carried on an untiring activity within the powerful working-class movements of Great Britain and the United States, as well as all the other Allies.
It was the working class that reacted first, and its reply was an encouraging one. The Labour Party as well as the American trade unions were on our side, demanding immediate help to Warsaw. The Socialist (Second) International in the person of its President, Camille Huysmans, [13] expressed itself along the same lines. Pressure upon the Allied governments grew, and the British cabinet, overcoming technical difficulties, organised help. Our Comrade Kwapiński, [14] the Council’s Vice-President, was in a position to declare: ‘We think that the decisive day will come soon.’
1. This occurred after the Nazi authorities broadcast information about the mass graves of the Polish officers at Katyń, when the Polish exile authorities agreed with the Nazis’ explanation (now generally accepted as correct) that accused the Soviet authorities of being responsible for their deaths. [Editor’s note]
2. Draža Mihailović was a career army officer and an ardent Serb nationalist. Appointed by the exiled Yugoslav government as Minister of War in 1942, he led the Serb Cetniks. However, although the Allies backed the government-in-exile, Churchill recognised that Tito’s Partisans had a better chance of organising pan-Yugoslav anti-Axis military activity, and thus supplied them with far more military aid. Mihailović was shot after a show trial in 1946. [Editor’s note]
3. The Teheran conference, held on 28 November to 1 December 1943, was the first of the ‘Big Three’ meetings between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. It was followed by the Yalta conference (4-11 February 1945) and the Potsdam conference (17-25 July 1945), the latter also being attended by Attlee, who had taken over from Churchill as British Premier during the conference, and by Truman, who had replaced Roosevelt upon his death in April 1945. It was at these conferences that the ‘Big Three’ attempted to deal with the problems that the defeat of Germany would present them in Europe. Here, Zaremba is referring to the decision made at Teheran that the main Anglo-American thrust against Germany would be made in France, and thus Poland was to be freed from German occupation by Soviet forces, and not by Anglo-American ones, as the London Government-in-Exile had somewhat unrealistically hoped. [Editor’s note]
4. Kazimierz Sosnkowski (1885-1969) had been active in Polish paramilitary organisations in Galicia when a student in Lemberg, and was an associate of Piłsudski. A career officer in the Polish army, he was also Minister of Defence during 1920-25. In command of the Southern Front in September 1939, he escaped to France, then to Britain, where he became Commander-in-Chief of the Polish armed forces after General Sikorski’s death in 1943. Eased out under British pressure in 1944, he emigrated to Canada. Tadeusz Komorowski (1895-1966), pseudonym Bór, was a career cavalry officer in the Polish army, and led a cavalry group in September 1939. He became the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the AK in 1941, and then the Commander-in-Chief in 1943. He settled in London, and was Prime Minister in the Polish Government-in-Exile during 1947-49. [Editor’s note]
5. On the eve of the insurrection Radio Moscow was urging an armed uprising on the population of Warsaw. Thus on 29 July at 8.15 in the evening, we heard the following appeal: ‘The hour has come for Warsaw, which never gave in, and never will halt the struggle. The Germans obviously want to defend themselves in Warsaw, making fresh ravages and new victims... They will transform the city into a mass of ruins, condemning the whole population to death. Therefore, a hundred times more than ever, do not forget that a direct struggle in the streets, apartment blocks, factories and shops will not only bring forward the moment of final liberation, but will save national property and the lives of our brothers.’ On 30 July, two days before the insurrection was due to take place, Russian Radio Kościuszko launched the following appeal several times over: ‘Soviet troops, who are rapidly advancing, are approaching Praga. They are bringing you freedom. The Germans, pushed back from Praga, are attempting to fight them in Warsaw. They are going to destroy everything. They devastated Białystok for six days. Use every means to prevent them from doing the same to Warsaw! Let the whole population range itself behind the Council of National Unity and the Home Army. Smash the Germans! Thwart their plans for the destruction of public buildings! Help the Red Army to cross the Vistula. Let Warsaw’s million inhabitants become a million soldiers for chasing out the invader and winning freedom!’ Warsaw’s population became a million soldiers, but Russia refused to help them...
6. The Times, 12 September 1944. Stanisław Mikołajczyk (1901-1966) was a leader of the Peasant Party, and was a deputy in the Sejm from 1928. He became Prime Minister in the Government-in-Exile following the death of General Sikorski in July 1943, and resigned the post in November 1944, being succeeded by Tomasz Arciszewski, a PPS leader. He left Poland in October 1947. Vyacheslav Molotov (Scriabin) (1890-1986), an Old Bolshevik, became Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union in May 1939. On hearing about German troops entering Warsaw that September, he called the German Ambassador in Moscow, and said: ‘Please convey my congratulations and greetings to the German Reich government.’ Removed from positions of power after Stalin’s death, he remained a devoted disciple of Stalin until his death. [Editor’s note]
7. The Times, 12 September 1944. [Editor’s note]
8. The radio telegram of Red Army Captain Kalugin was as follows: ‘Comrade Marshal Stalin, Moscow. 5 August 1944. I entered into personal contact with the commander of the Warsaw garrison that is leading the heroic struggle of the Polish nation against the Hitlerite henchmen. I have taken note of the general military situation. I have concluded that in spite of the heroism of the army and of the entire population, difficulties remain to be overcome before victory will be hastened over our common enemy. Their needs are the following: they need motorised weapons, ammunition, grenades and anti-tank guns. Places for dropping weapons: Wilson Square, Invalides Square, the old Ghetto, Krasiński Square, Iron Gate Square, Napoleon Square, Mokotów Square, the Light Horse Barracks, etc. Recognition signs: a red and white awning. The German air force is devastating the town and the population. We need aerial bombing of the Vistula bridges in the Warsaw area, the Saxon Gardens, the Jerusalem Alley and Wolska Street, where the enemy troops are concentrated. Bomb Okęcie and Bielany airfields. The population of Warsaw is hoping that you will very shortly come to its aid. Help me to make contact with Marshal Rokossovsky. Captain Constantine Kalugin, Group Tsarny. Warsaw, 66.804.’
9. Konstanty Rokossovsky (1896-1868), a Pole, joined the Red Army in 1917, and became a Marshal in June 1944, and Commander of the Second Byelorussian Front in November 1944. A member of the Politbureau of the ruling Polish United Workers Party after the Second World War, he became the Minister of National Defence and Deputy Prime Minister in 1949. He lived in the Soviet Union after 1956. [Editor’s note]
10. Whilst Zaremba is correct to describe the Sanacja regime as ‘semi-Fascist’, the National Democrats, who along with the Polish Socialist Party, the Peasant Party and the Labour Party made up the Council, were not much different. [Editor’s note]
11. Stefan Jędrychowski (1910- ) was in fact a member of the Polish Communist Party in Vilna prior to the Second World War, and was jailed for four years by the Sanacja regime in 1937. He was a member of the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian SSR, was in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, and was a prominent leader of the Union of Polish Patriots and the Polish Committee of National Liberation. He held many important ministerial posts in the postwar Polish regime, and was a member of the ruling party’s Politbureau during 1956-71. Jerzy Sztachelski (1911-1975) was a member of the League of Communist Youth in Western Byelorussia in the 1930s, and headed the Department of Health in the Soviet regime in Vilna during 1939-41. He held various responsible ministerial posts in the postwar Polish regime. Andrzej Witos (1878- ) was the brother of Wincenty Witos, the leader of the Peasant Party in prewar Poland. He was a deputy in the Sejm during 1922-28. He was in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, was a prominent leader of the Union of Polish Patriots and the Polish Committee of National Liberation, and was active in the Stalinists’ Peasant Party in the late 1940s and the late 1950s. Only Andrzej Witos can be said to have been a supporter of the Sanacja regime, having made his peace with it during the 1930s. It should, however, be noted that the commander of the Stalinists’ underground forces in Poland, General Michał Rola źymierski (1890-1989), had been an officer in Marshal Piłsudski’s legions and a high-ranking official in the prewar Ministry of War, but was dismissed on charges of corruption on account of his involvement in a fiddle concerning the sale of gas masks. [Editor’s note]
12. We now have a document that confirms our suspicions that in the first days of August the Red Army was to have made a direct attack on Warsaw. The account transmitted by President Mikołajczyk on 10 August from Teheran to the President of the Polish Republic in London says in particular: ‘On the evening of the 9th instant, in the course of a very amicable farewell address, M Stalin made a great show of interest as regards the battle of Warsaw, of which I had yet again spoken to him with a great deal of insistence. Stalin had originally reckoned that Soviet troops would enter Warsaw on the 6th instant. A counter-attack of four recently arrived armoured divisions in the Praga Sector had held up his plans... In spite of this unexpected hold-up, Stalin had no doubt as to the final result. He took note of the disastrous consequences of our struggle inside Warsaw, and promised the support of aircraft as far as possible. In the meantime, he asked us to provide details such as a firm declaration on our part as to the truth of the character of the uprising and its extent. I was able to satisfy this request. Given the urgency of the situation, last night I telegraphed via the British Ambassador some practical measures designed to establish direct liaison.’
13. Camille Huysmans (1871-1968) joined the Belgian Workers Party in 1887, and was the Secretary of the Second International during 1905-21 and both Secretary and President during 1939-44. An MP from 1910 to 1965, he supported the First World War, served afterwards in the Belgian government, and was Prime Minister of Belgium during 1946-47. [Editor’s note]
14. Jan Kwapiński (Piotr Chałupka, 1885-1964) was a leading member of the PPS and Mayor of łódź at the start of the Second World War. Imprisoned by the Soviet regime, he was released in 1941, made his way to London, and became a member of the Polish Government-in-Exile.