Russia at war 1941-1945

suburbs of Warsaw, and Soviet planes appeared again over the city. Polish

communist forces, under Soviet orders, fought their way into the fringe of the

capital. From September 14 onward the Soviet air force dropped supplies, but few

of the parachutes opened and many of the containers were smashed and useless.

And then:

The following day the Russians occupied the Praga suburb, but went no further.

They wished to have the non-Communist Poles destroyed to the full, but also to keep alive the idea that they were going to their rescue.

[ Ibid., p. 127 (emphasis added).]

On October 2, a little over a fortnight later, Bör-Komarowski capitulated to the Germans.

According to the Russian official History, in order to understand the situation one has to go back to the directives given by the Soviet Supreme Command to the various fronts on July 28. These directives included the following:

The 3rd Belorussian Front was ordered to capture Kaunas by August 1 or 2, and

then push on to the East Prussian border;

The 2nd Belorussian Front was also ordered to advance, farther south, via Lomza,

towards the East Prussian border;

The 1st Belorussian Front was ordered, after capturing Brest and Siedlce, to occupy Praga (opposite Warsaw) between August 5 and 8, and to establish a number of

bridgeheads south of Warsaw on the western bank of the Vistula.

The right flank of the 1st Belorussian Front indeed clashed with the Germans on July 31

"on the close approaches to Praga, the suburb of Warsaw on the right bank of the Vistula". Meantime, the left flank of the 1st Belorussian Front forced the Vistula south of Warsaw and captured the small bridgeheads of Magnuszew and Pulawa. The capture of

these bridgeheads was followed by frantic German attacks on them; though the Russians were not to be dislodged, they were not strong enough to enlarge them.

Something obviously went seriously wrong with the Russian military plans at the end of July and beginning of August. Under the dateline "Outside Warsaw, August 1" (the day the Warsaw Rising began), Makarenko wrote in Pravda of August 2:

On to Warsaw! In an offensive there is a moment when the military operation

reaches its culminating point and, having acquired its necessary pressure and

impetus, goes ahead without any doubt as to what will happen next. At such a time when the full strength of the offensive comes into motion, it starts advancing in great strides, and then no power can stop its victorious forward march.

Whatever exactly this verbiage was supposed to mean, every reader must have

interpreted it as signifying that the Red Army would be inside Warsaw within a. few

days. On August 3, the Soviet papers published a map showing the front running a few miles from the Vistula, just east of Praga, though on a very narrow salient. The talk in Moscow was that Rokossovsky was going to capture Warsaw on August 9 or 10. And

then something went wrong: apparently that coup de main, of which Guderian was to speak, had not come off.

The news from Warsaw grew more tragic every day. Then, for nearly a fortnight there

was a news blackout in Russia as far as the Warsaw sector was concerned, and it was not till August 16 that an ominous communiqué was published saying that "east of Praga our troops have been repelling the enemy's large-scale attacks, and have abandoned Ossow."

Ossow was only a short distance from Praga, and there was no real indication how far the Russians had been pushed back.

After denouncing the decision taken by the AK command, with the blessing of the Polish Government in London, to start the Warsaw uprising on August 1 as an anti-Soviet