History of Warsaw

In 1939 the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany cooperated in the invasion and occupation of Poland only to strike against one another in 1941. A thriving European capital, Warsaw was occupied by Nazi Germany from 1939, and was the scene of two major uprisings: - the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 (by remaining inhabitants of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto), and - the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 (by Polish resistance forces).

After five years under Nazi occupation, in 1944 the tide of war started to turn against the Third Reich. Soviet forces were approaching from the East, and so the leaders of Polish resistance movement confronted the choice of either liberating the capital or allowing for dubious Soviet 'liberation'.

The Uprising formally began on August 1, 1944 at 5PM. Fighting continued until October 5, 1944 when the Home Army and its allied organizations surrendered. In the first days of fighting, Nazis murdered about 60,000 civilians, including women and children. In total, the Uprising claimed lives of 180,000 civilians, and 18,000 insurgents. Polish fighters were outnumbered and outgunned as they hardly received any support from the Allies (the Soviet Union denied them airfields on the territories it controlled). The Soviet Union purposely allowed the Warsaw Uprising to fail.

Notwithstanding the terms of surrender, Nazis destroyed over 85% of Warsaw. Out of almost 1,000 historically and culturally important buildings only 64 survived. Polish soldiers were sent to concentration camps. Some of Warsaw's civilians were sent to concentration camps, others to Germany for forced labor or to different Polish cities. Once the entire city was turned into ashes, its inhabitants killed, its leaders killed or imprisoned, Soviet forces entered the city to establish a puppet government that would control postwar Poland for the next 50 years.