"Operation Tempest" - an organized adventure of the Poles against Stalin

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

On August 1, 1944, an uprising began in Warsaw, organized against the Germans and Russians by armed supporters of the Polish government in exile, hoping with the help of the Red Army to create an anti-Russian regime in Poland …

The Warsaw Uprising (August 1 - October 2, 1944), initiated by the Polish government in exile in London, is unique for the last war. Because militarily it was directed against the Germans, and politically - against the Russians. The adventure of the Home Army (AK), which sought to restore in Poland the regime that was there before World War II and, together with the Nazis, was preparing a failed attack on the USSR, ended naturally. Not coordinated with the Red Army, unable to force the Vistula on a wide front immediately after the completion of the epic offensive in Belarus, Eastern Poland and Western Ukraine, it led to the complete destruction of Warsaw during the battles of the rebels with the Wehrmacht and SS troops, the death of tens of thousands of rebels and civilians.

What were they counting on?

The Polish government in exile in London, as is generally characteristic of the Poles, stubbornly refused to come to terms with reality. And it was as follows. Back in 1943, in Tehran, the USSR, the USA and Great Britain agreed that Poland would be in the Soviet zone of influence and be liberated from the Germans by the Red Army. Western "democracies" made this deal with Moscow not out of a good life - they could not defeat Hitler without Stalin. Moreover, Poland for them was just a pawn on a large chessboard.

There are indirect signs that US President Franklin Roosevelt deliberately assigned the Poles, without asking their consent, to the Soviet camp, knowing that they would be the weakest link there and would one day ruin it. This is exactly what happened, and partly, by the way, is being repeated now with the European Union. Stalin did not foresee the future so clearly, but he was not going to allow any initiative in Poland, hoping to make her an ally of Moscow thanks to generous territorial donations at the expense of Germany. In order to this also exclude a future joint German-Polish campaign to the East.

Polish political prisoners in London and non-communist partisans operating in Poland, especially the Home Army, had their own small-town plans for the future. They wanted to independently liberate some part of Poland, preferably a large city like Vilna, Lvov or Warsaw, present their partisan formations as a regular army and become the new government, graciously allowing the "Soviets" to shed their blood in battles with the Germans on Polish soil. And in the event of Moscow's disagreement with the emergence of a hostile government in Poland, turn its weapons against the Soviet soldiers. The latter, in fact, has already begun to occur in the eastern regions of Poland after the common enemy, the Germans, were expelled from there by the Red Army.

Within the framework of this scheme, well known to Moscow, the Warsaw Uprising was conceived. What did not work out in Lvov and Vilna should have happened in the capital of Poland itself. The rebels also had plans to involve the Western allies of the USSR on anti-Soviet soil, especially the British, in this adventure, somehow parachuting the 1st Polish paratrooper brigade into Warsaw. The illusory nature of these plans, rejected by the British and Americans, was for some reason not obvious to the Pilsudski successors.

Operation Storm

The armed uprising in Warsaw, prepared by the Home Army, the exact date of which Polish politicians in London left to the discretion of its leadership, began when the Red Army appeared on the outskirts of Warsaw. It seemed to the Poles that the Germans were fleeing and that they could no longer wait. Meanwhile, the Nazis considered Warsaw to be Berlin's "shield" and threw large forces towards the city, including tank forces. And the Soviet troops, thinned out in a month and a half of continuous offensive battles, firing ammunition, detached from the supply bases and mortally tired, like the allied Polish forces helping them, were completely unable to successfully form the Vistula on the move and capture the entire city.

The Red Army had several bridgeheads on the "German" bank of the great Polish river in other places, around which fierce fighting broke out, because the Nazis were determined to throw them into the water. The "Home Army", in fact, was not going to help the Soviet troops to cross the Vistula in the Warsaw region. As partisans armed mainly with light weapons, its fighters were not capable of this. Their task was to gain a foothold in urban areas, where the Wehrmacht and SS punishers, among whom were also Soviet traitors, found it difficult to use tanks. They assumed three or four days to fight with the Germans, who, as the insurgents assumed, were to retreat. And then - to prepare for the arrival of representatives of the émigré government (recognized by the USSR, the Polish Committee for National Liberation, London leaders and the "Home Army" did not recognize) and become the new government.

Why did they lose?

Problems for the rebels, who numbered about 40 thousand people, began when the Germans promptly pulled up troops and began to suppress the uprising, and the Soviets did not have the opportunity to effectively attack on this sector of the front, despite the demands of the uprising leadership to help with an “immediate attack from outside”. The Western allies planted weapons, ammunition and foodstuffs on the rebels, which were dropped by parachute. The Red Army helped with artillery fire from the opposite bank of the Vistula. The attempts of the Soviet and Polish units from the 1st Army of the Polish Army to gain a foothold on the other bank of the wide river within Warsaw, which were available, naturally did not bring success.

It is difficult to shake off the impression, however, that Stalin, mindful of the "miracle on the Vistula" in 1920, was cautious and did not want to run errands for the London and Warsaw adventurers. But even so, it was really impossible to carry out an objectively serious offensive operation in those conditions.

After two months of stubborn battles, the "Home Army", which had occupied certain areas of the city, having not achieved either military or political goals, surrendered. 17 thousand insurgents were killed and the same number surrendered, about 10 thousand were injured. The civilian population died many times more during the fighting. The Nazis did not suffer serious losses.

Old friends

The leader of the uprising, General Tadeusz Komarovsky, a former Austrian officer who fought in the First World War on the Russian front, achieved good conditions for his people. The Germans treated the Home Army soldiers as prisoners of war, not bandits who were to be shot on the spot. On the German side, negotiations for surrender were conducted by an old friend of Komarovsky - SS Obergruppenfuehrer (General) Erich von dem Bach, whose real name was Zelevsky. This Pole, or rather a Kashubian, knew Komarovsky well before the war, including on the basis of equestrian sports. After all, Poland and Germany were then the closest allies, warmly sympathized with each other, adopting each other's punitive experience, participated in the partition of Czechoslovakia and prepared for a joint campaign to the East. Figures like Komarovsky hoped to gain power in Poland after the war, for the liberation from the Germans in which a total of 600 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers would die. And it would be truly stupid to help them a lot in this.

Summing up

Thus, the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was not only a military defeat, but also a huge political catastrophe for the Polish émigré government in London, as well as the “Home Army” targeting power. It greatly weakened their positions, as a result of which the emigrant government remained in exile, and a regime friendly to Russia appeared in Poland for almost half a century.

It is not surprising that from the first days of the Warsaw Uprising, Moscow was accused of not helping him, and then of the fact that it failed. This was done by its organizers in order to evade responsibility for the complete destruction of Warsaw, to get away from guilt for the senseless death of tens of thousands of people. Then another propaganda front was opened against the USSR, on which the current Polish authorities are showing hyperactivity today. They recoup the victors of Nazism and the saviors of Poles from national destruction by demolishing Soviet war memorials and falsifying history, which, which no one should forget, tends to repeat itself if the correct conclusions are not drawn from it.