18. Total casualties of the Warsaw Uprising will never be known for a certainty
The number of casualties inflicted on all sides during the Warsaw Uprising have always been based on estimates, which themselves have been based on estimates of the numbers of fighters involved and those of the civilians present in the city when the fighting began. The only certainty is that 360 Allied airmen were killed in action or missing and presumed dead as a result of attempting to airlift supplies to the Polish resistance fighters. The Polish Home Army had over 15,000 killed, and Soviet persecution following their occupation of Poland ensured that many survivors of the fighting died in Soviet prisons. The Germans lost an estimated 17,000 killed and missing, though many of the missing were likely deserters by that stage of the war.
The Polish 1st Army, fighting under the control of the Red Army, suffered about 5,600 casualties. The civilian population of Warsaw, which included a substantial German presence, suffered between 150,000 and 250,000 killed, though the number has never been agreed upon by historians. How many were transported to forced labor camps or concentration camps as a result of the uprising and died there later is one reason for the disparity of numbers. The number of civilian dead is usually estimated without considering the number of Germans who were in the city as bureaucrats and administrators in the service of the Reich. Some of the casualties assigned to the uprising were actually the result of Soviet actions after taking the remains of the city in January, 1945.
