20 Facts that Brutally Highlight the Warsaw Uprising of 1944

20 Facts that Brutally Highlight the Warsaw Uprising of 1944

Larry Holzwarth - April 14, 2019

20 Facts that Brutally Highlight the Warsaw Uprising of 1944
Street fighting house to house was grueling, deadly, and slow as the Germans fought to contain the Poles. Wikimedia

4. Heinrich Himmler compared the fighting in Warsaw to that of Stalingrad

The German policy of reprisals was aimed at ending the Poles’ will to resist and thus avoiding heavy street fighting in the center and industrial areas of the city. The German superiority in artillery and tanks was partially neutralized in a battle which advanced house to house or along narrow streets flanked by factories and tall buildings. It was a lesson they had learned bitterly in Stalingrad. Despite the German atrocities the Polish resistance to their counterattacks stiffened and they even managed to extend some of the areas of the city under their control. While the Germans received almost daily reinforcements, the Poles stood on their own, and what had been a superiority in numbers at the beginning was reduced to parity, and then to inferiority.

To shift troops around the pockets of resistance without exposing them to German fire, the Poles resorted to using the interconnected sewers and other subterranean channels in the city. By August 9 the German advances into the city had been halted, and the two forces faced each other in a bloody stalemate. “This is the fiercest of our battles since the start of the war”, said Himmler, comparing it to Stalingrad. For nine days, August 9 – 18, German attacks gained ground, only to be driven back by Polish counterattacks, with heavy casualties on both sides. Neither side took prisoners, the Germans executed surrendering Polish fighters on the spot, the Poles refused to allow German soldiers to surrender.

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