20. The impact of the Warsaw Uprising on the war and the years following
The Warsaw Uprising had little impact on the remainder of the war, and after the war the Polish government and the Soviets did what they could to suppress the facts of the event. Both claimed that the uprising had been of little significance, and that it was an insurrection conducted by criminal elements. By the end of combat operations in Europe, Poland was firmly ensconced within the Soviet sphere of influence and within weeks Churchill was defeated at the polls, and the firmest opponent to Stalin over European affairs was removed from the stage. FDR was by then dead, and the attention of the United States turned to rebuilding Europe and defeating Japan.
Not until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the examination of declassified Soviet documents was the extent of Stalin’s opposition to the Home Army and the Warsaw Uprising revealed to the world. By that time several scholarly and popular works describing what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War supported the view that the Soviets were unable, rather than unwilling, to support the Polish Home Army in the insurrection. The declassified documents established that the Soviets actively worked to ensure that the uprising failed, both to weaken Polish ties to the government in exile in London, and to bleed the German army in Poland before launching their final assault on the Third Reich. Once that assault began the Soviets did all they could to destroy the evidence of the Warsaw Uprising and the courageous Poles who fought in it.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“The Polish Underground State: A Guide to the Underground 1939 – 1945”. Stefan Korbonski. 1981
“The Warsaw Rising of 1944”. Jan M. Ciechanowski. 2002
“Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw”. Norman Davies. 2004
“War and the City”. G. J. Ashworth. 1991
“The Polish Army 1939 – 1945”. Steven J. Zaloga. 1982
“The Second World War Volume 6 Chapter XI, The Martyrdom of Warsaw”. Winston S. Churchill. 1951
“Destroy Warsaw! Hitler’s punishment, Stalin’s revenge”. Andrew Borowiec. 2001
“Story of a Secret State”. Jan Karski. 2014
“The Warsaw Uprising of 1944”. Wlodzimierz Borodziej. 2006
“Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939 – 1953”. Geoffery Roberts. 2007
“Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East”. Stephen G. Fritz. 2011
“Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944 – 1945”. Max Hastings. 2004
“Warsaw 1944: Poland’s bid for Freedom”. Robert Forczyk. 2009
“The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation”. Richard C. Lukas. 1986
