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The Warsaw Uprising, August 1 to
October 2, 1944
Timeline
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Aug 1 |
The Polish underground Home Army
launches an uprising in Warsaw. The Poles expect the Allies,
including the Soviet Red Army, to support them in a quick liberation
of the city. |
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Aug 3 |
Polish fighters
hold the city center and several other districts on the left bank of
the Vistula River but fail to capture bridges and airports.
Warsaw soldiers |
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Aug 5-7 |
Germans counterattack with planes,
tanks and artillery to open west-east corridor through the city.
Following Himmler’s order to shoot every man, woman and child, the
Germans mass execute about 65,000 civilians in Vola and Ochota
districts.
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Aug 5 |
Using two captured German tanks, the
elite Home Army battalion Zoska leads an assault on the notorious
Gesiovka prison, freeing about 350 Jews. |
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Aug 20-25
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Stalin rebuffs Churchill and
Roosevelt’s pleas of help for the “handful of criminals in Warsaw”.
Allied troops liberate Paris. |
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Aug 14-30
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Poles capture several German strongholds in the city but major
efforts to connect center and northern districts and to break the
Old
Town siege fail.
Battle for the Old
Town |
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Sep 2
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Vicious 18-day house-to-house battle
for the Old Town ends with insurgents retreating to the city center
via sewers and with more mass executions of civilians by the Nazis. |
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Sep 3-10
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Germans capture the main riverside
district, Powisle, and effectively cut off insurgents from the
Vistula River.
Polish fighters used the sewers to avoid the German lines. |
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Sep 15-22 |
Red Army moves
at last and captures the right bank Praga district. Polish 1st
Army units under Soviet command establish bridge-heads on the left
bank but without support, Czerniakov district falls with heavy
losses. |
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Sep 18 |
A massive mission by US Air Force
B-17 Flying Fortresses brings supplies after Soviets relent this one
time and grant clearance for refueling at their airfields.
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Sep 24-27 |
The Battle of Mokotov, the southern
district, ends with a capitulation after Germans offer to observe
the Geneva conventions and treat insurgents as POWs instead of
executing them on the spot. |
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Sep 30 |
Capitulation of the northern
district of Zoliborz. |
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Oct 2 |
After 63 days,
all fighting ceases at 8 pm on Oct 2, 1944. A capitulation treaty is
negotiated and the Home Army under Gen. Komorowski surrenders to
Gen. von dem Bach.
After
63 days, the Polish Underground fighters agreed to surrender. |
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Oct 3-8 |
15,000 insurgents go to POW camps,
5,000 wounded soldiers to hospitals. All remaining inhabitants are
expelled from the city. In two months of fighting and mass murders,
about 17,000 insurgents and over 200,000 civilians have been killed. |
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Oct-Dec 1944
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Breaking the
terms of the capitulation treaty, the Germans destroy the entire
city by dynamiting and burning house by house, street by street. By
January, Warsaw is but a sea of ruins.
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