How the Red Army liberated Warsaw from German occupation

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

75 years ago, units of the Red Army and the Polish Army liberated Warsaw, which had been under German occupation for more than five years.

The expulsion of the Nazis from the Polish capital made it possible to launch an intensive offensive in other directions. By February 3, almost the entire territory of Poland was cleared of Wehrmacht units. The USSR paid a high price for this victory - about 600 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers were killed in the battles with the Nazis. The campaign for the liberation of the country, carried out by Moscow and the Polish Army, is called by historians "a manifestation of real heroism." Meanwhile, the authorities of modern Poland refuse to recognize the important role of the Red Army in the de-occupation of the state.

On January 17, 1945, units of the 1st Belorussian Front and 1st Army of the Polish Army completed the liberation of Warsaw, which had been under Nazi occupation since September 1939. The city was cleared of Nazis in three days, and the expulsion of Wehrmacht units from all over Poland ended in early February during the Vistula-Oder offensive. As the commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, noted in his report, about 600 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers were killed in the battles for the independence of Poland.

Residents of Poland greet Soviet tankers © Archive of the Ministry of Defense of Russia

The Germans realized that their front was broken

Initially, the command of the Red Army (RKKA) intended to launch an offensive on Polish territory on January 20, 1945. However, in connection with the failure of the Anglo-American forces in the Ardennes and the request of the head of the British government Winston Churchill for help, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered to postpone the start of the Vistula-Oder operation to January 12.

Fighting on the outskirts of Warsaw broke out on 14 January. The 61st Army of Colonel General Pavel Belov attacked the capital of Poland from the south, and the 47th Army of Major General Franz Perkhorovich from the north. An important role in eliminating the enemy grouping was played by the 2nd Guards Tank Army of General Semyon Bogdanov, operating from a bridgehead on the left bank of the Pilitsa River.

The documents of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, published on January 17, 2020, say that the battles for Warsaw were "large-scale and bloody." The offensive of the Red Army was actively supported by the 1st Army of the Polish Army under the command of Soviet General Stanislav Poplavsky. On January 16, the Poles crossed to the western bank of the Vistula. It was the units of the Polish Army that were the first to break into Warsaw. These were soldiers of the 4th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Division of Jan Rotkevich.

The battles on the streets of the city began on January 17 at eight in the morning and ended by three in the afternoon. Despite the fact that the Nazi troops were in a tight circle of encirclement, they tried to resist. The battles for the main city station were heavy. However, all attempts by the Wehrmacht to contain the offensive were unsuccessful.

The liberation of Warsaw was of great strategic importance. It allowed the Red Army to expel the occupiers from the rest of Poland and create a staging ground for an offensive against Germany. In addition, the support of local Polish resistance forces had a positive effect on Soviet-Polish relations after the war.

On the part of the Red Army, in addition to infantrymen, tankmen and artillerymen, soldiers of the USSR Navy and NKVD officers took part in the operation to liberate the Polish capital. In total, more than 690 thousand soldiers and officers received the medal "For the Liberation of Warsaw".

In an interview with RT, the head of the scientific department of the Russian Military Historical Society, Yuri Nikiforov, noted that the operation of the Red Army and the Polish Army was prepared at the highest level. The advancing forces outnumbered the enemy in the number of tanks, artillery and aviation.

“The Nazis practically did not defend the city itself. The outcome of the operation was decided on the approaches to Warsaw. The Germans realized that their front was broken and that they were threatened with encirclement. For this reason, they began to retreat to the west in order to save forces for further resistance, Nikiforov explained.

During the years of occupation, Warsaw suffered enormous damage. In addition, the Nazis, retreating, mined the Polish capital. The report of the chief of staff of the 1st Belorussian Front, Colonel-General Mikhail Malinin, said that Soviet soldiers had cleared more than 14 tons of explosives, 5,412 anti-tank and 17,227 anti-personnel mines, 46 land mines, 232 "surprises" (a type of mine) in the Polish capital, about 14 thousand shells, bombs, mines and grenades.

In an interview with RT, Czeslaw Lewandowski, who lived in occupied Warsaw, said that the peak of the Nazi terror came in 1942-1943. According to him, the Germans hanged and shot people right in the streets.

“It was awful. It was scary to go out into the street, because cars drove up and took anyone away. It was scary to go by tram, because it is not known where he will be stopped and taken away. This was one period. Scary. He took the life of Warsaw,”Lewandowski said.

He also recalled that the Germans organized a ghetto for the Jews, in which about half a million people were settled. According to Lewandowski, there were “many dying children” on the streets of the ghetto.

Lewandowski did not immediately find out about the liberation of Warsaw on January 17, 1945, as he was in a concentration camp.

Map of the strikes of the Red Army on the Wehrmacht groupings in Poland © Archive of the Ministry of Defense of Russia

The author of the Warsaw-Poznan offensive operation, during which the Polish capital was liberated, the commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Georgy Zhukov, recalled that before the offensive of the Soviet-Polish troops, the Germans killed tens of thousands of people, consistently destroyed residential areas, urban facilities and major industrial enterprises.

“The city is dead. Listening to the stories of the inhabitants of Warsaw about the atrocities committed by the German fascists during the occupation and especially before the retreat, it was even difficult to understand the psychology and moral character of the enemy troops - this is how Zhukov described the situation in liberated Warsaw.

Nevertheless, the rapid offensive of the 1st Belorussian Front, according to Zhukov, prevented the Nazis from destroying the remaining "industrial enterprises, railways and highways, did not give them the opportunity to hijack and exterminate the Polish population, to take out cattle and food."

After the defeat of the Warsaw grouping of the Wehrmacht, the formations of the Red Army and the Polish Army continued to develop an intensive offensive in other directions. On February 3, Soviet units reached the Oder, stopping 60-70 km from Berlin.

Two camps of resistance

It is worth noting that post-socialist Poland is dominated by a negative assessment of the Vistula-Oder and Warsaw-Poznan operations. In particular, the authorities of the Polish capital refused to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the city by the Red Army and pro-Soviet formations. Modern Warsaw equates the policy of the USSR in the pre-war period with the actions of Nazi Germany.

Adherence to this course is bewildering in Moscow.

“If we talk about an obvious trend, then I cannot understand how you can mark the date of the start of the war and at the same time practically ignore the dates of liberation. At the same time, the prerequisites for the outbreak of the war and the pre-war situation are completely distorted,”said Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry on January 13.

At the same time, the Polish authorities are actively heroizing the Warsaw Uprising, initiated by the country's government in exile, which was located in London. The rebels launched hostilities on August 1, 1944. But the strategy proved to be a failure: the uprising ended on October 2 with a German victory. As it is believed in Warsaw, the Soviet leadership did not provide the rebels with the necessary assistance and thereby doomed them to death.

However, in modern historiography, the Warsaw Uprising is considered one of the most controversial episodes of the final phase of World War II.

It is worth recalling that during the period of occupation, the Polish resistance consisted of several armed formations. The London government relied on the Home Army (AK), while Moscow actively helped the Polish Army and the Army of Man.

Relations between these two Polish resistance camps were very difficult. Thus, the Home Army command intended to liberate Poland and the western regions of the USSR without the support of the Red Army. The key political goal of the AK and the Polish government in exile was the re-establishment of the Polish state within the borders until September 1939. Thus, they intended to "return" Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.

The leadership of the AK and the government, located in London, counted on the support of Western states, however, as stated in the materials of the Russian Ministry of Defense, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin Roosevelt "were realists" and understood the inevitability of Poland's liberation by the Red Army.

The uprising in Warsaw was also organized unilaterally by AK and the Polish government in exile, without consulting Moscow. Only the UK has been informed of these plans. The USSR was notified only on August 2, a day after the AK's speech. At the same time, despite the previous defeats, the rebels hoped to knock out the Germans in a few days.

On the evening of July 31, the Commander of the Home Army, General Tadeusz Komorowski, ordered the Warsaw underground workers to start an uprising against the Nazi invaders on August 1 at 5 pm. The rebels hoped, using the factor of surprise, to seize over 400 key objects in the city / Wikimedia commons

However, the occupation commandant's office in Warsaw was aware of the plans of the rebels. Already on August 1, 1944, Reich Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler, following Hitler's instructions, ordered the brutal suppression of the uprising, razing the city to the ground. Units of the SS, Ukrainian nationalists and Soviet collaborators, including supporters of General Andrei Vlasov, who defected to Hitler's side in 1942, were sent to eliminate the rebels.

Despite serious political differences, the troops of the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian fronts, as well as armed formations loyal to Moscow, provided assistance to the Home Army. However, the Soviet and Polish units, due to the lack of aviation and heavy equipment, advanced slowly and with heavy losses.

Meanwhile, the Germans strengthened their reserves and grouping on the approaches to Warsaw. The Western allies could not help the rebels either. For their own safety, British pilots were forced to drop cargo with weapons over Warsaw from a height of 4 km. Often such "parcels" fell into the hands of the Germans.

Stalin called the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 "a reckless gruesome adventure." At the same time, the Soviet leader noted that "the Red Army will spare no effort to defeat the Germans near Warsaw and liberate Warsaw for the Poles."

Czeslaw Lewandowski calls the Warsaw Uprising one of the most dramatic periods of the occupation of the city. According to him, it was then that “it came to the understanding of the entire Polish society, especially Warsaw, that it was necessary to do everything to harm the occupier”.

“Therefore, the work was sabotaged, deadlines were violated, and conspiratorial movements developed. During this period, there were most of those who joined various underground organizations and created the army,”Lewandowski said.

The materials published on January 17 by the Ministry of Defense say that the Warsaw Uprising was poorly prepared and carried out for political purposes, "not taking into account the expectations and hopes of the majority of the Polish population."

An Inconvenient Truth

Commenting on the situation at the fronts, Yuri Nikiforov noted that as of July - August 1944, the USSR did not have the resources for a successful attack on the capital of Poland due to the recent heavy fighting for the liberation of Belarus. Nevertheless, the Soviet units and the Polish Army made attempts to break through to the city and divert the enemy forces, which at that time were destroying the Warsaw rebels.

“The Red Army did everything it could in that situation. It was a manifestation of real heroism. It is also necessary to pay tribute to the courage of the rebels. They resisted stubbornly and desperately. In response, the Germans and Ukrainian nationalists mercilessly destroyed both AK soldiers and civilians, Nikiforov emphasized.

The expert is convinced that the government in London bears full political responsibility for the failure of the Warsaw Uprising. However, such a view does not fit into the framework of the ideology of post-socialist Poland, which is based on denying the contribution of the USSR and pro-Soviet forces to the defeat of the Nazi occupiers, the historian says.

Captured German soldiers in Poland © Archive of the Ministry of Defense of Russia

A similar point of view is shared by the Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of Moscow State University Alexander Kobrinsky. In an interview with RT, he stated that the history of the liberation of the territory of Poland by the Red Army became a victim of political Russophobic manipulations of the ruling elite.

“Official Warsaw refuses to acknowledge the apparent lack of resources to liberate the country without large-scale assistance from the USSR. This is an inconvenient truth for today's authorities. Of course, our countries have a very complex and contradictory history of mutual relations, but it is criminal to deny the huge positive significance of the liberation of Warsaw and the whole country by the Red Army, Kobrinsky said.

The expert recalled that the Soviet Union paid a huge price for the Vistula-Oder offensive. Kobrinsky also stressed that the USSR actually saved the Polish people not only from extermination, but also from hunger. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, from March to November 1945, to support the sowing campaign, Warsaw received from Moscow food and fodder worth more than 1.5 billion rubles. in 1945 prices.

“Anti-Soviet assessments of modern Poland and barbarism in relation to monuments to the Red Army evoke a feeling of deep disgust. Warsaw varnishes historical reality, crossing out positive pages related to the Soviet Union, as well as the facts of the complicity of the Poles with the Germans, which Vladimir Putin spoke about. Poland received independence from the hands of the Soviet state and should be grateful for that,”Kobrinsky summed up.