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. For this victory, the USSR paid a high price - 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 the 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.
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 January 14. From the south, the 61st Army of Colonel-General Pavel Belov attacked the capital of Poland, 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, which operated from a bridgehead on the left bank of the Pilitsa River.
The documents of the Russian Ministry of Defense, 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 first broke into Warsaw. They 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.
Promotional video:
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 area for an attack on Germany. In addition, the support of the local Polish resistance forces had a positive impact 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 participated 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 the conversation, 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 had been prepared at the highest level. The advancing forces outnumbered the enemy in the number of tanks, artillery and aviation.
During the years of occupation, Warsaw suffered enormous damage. In addition, the Nazis, retreating, mined the Polish capital. In the report of the chief of staff of the 1st Belorussian Front, Colonel-General Mikhail Malinin, it was said that Soviet soldiers had cleared over 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 a conversation, Czeslaw Lewandowski, who lived in occupied Warsaw, said that the peak of the Nazi terror fell on 1942-1943. According to him, the Germans hanged and shot people right in the streets.
“It was terrible. 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. Terrible. He killed 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 Red Army strikes against the Wehrmacht groupings in Poland / Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
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, consecutively destroyed residential areas, urban facilities and major industrial enterprises.
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 livestock and food."
After the defeat of the Warsaw group 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 start 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 turned out 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 the Second World War.
It should be recalled that during the 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 speech. At the same time, despite previous defeats, the rebels hoped to knock out the Germans in a few days.
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 Andrey Vlasov, who defected to Hitler's side in 1942, were sent to eliminate the rebels.
Despite serious political disagreements, 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 everything had to be done 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 an army,”Lewandowski said.
The materials published on January 17 by the Ministry of Defense said that the Warsaw Uprising was poorly prepared and was carried out with political goals "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 offensive on the capital of Poland due to the recent heavy fighting for the liberation of Belarus. Nevertheless, 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 expert is convinced that the government located in London bears full political responsibility for the failure of the Warsaw Uprising. However, this 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 Russian Ministry of Defense.
A similar point of view is shared by the Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of Moscow State University Alexander Kobrinsky. In the conversation, 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.
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 starvation. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, from March to November 1945, to support the sowing campaign, Warsaw received food and fodder from Moscow 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 cause 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.
Alexey Zakvasin, Elizaveta Komarova