Russia at war 1941-1945

"political operation", and after describing the wholly inadequate quantities of arms available inside Warsaw, the Soviet History goes on to say:

The very first day proved highly unfavourable to the insurgents... They failed to capture the strategic points in the city, the railway stations or the Vistula bridges...

As a result, the Germans were able to bring up heavy reinforcements. The

commanders of some of the AK detachments, discouraged by all this, dissolved them or took them out of Warsaw. Yet, despite these unfavourable conditions, the

struggle continued, and greatly grew in vigour when the population of Warsaw

joined in... Rank and file members of the AK, unaware of the political schemes of their leaders, fought bravely against the Nazis... However, the forces were too

unequal... In the second half of August the situation became truly tragic, with the Germans carrying out Hitler's orders to wipe Warsaw off the face of the earth.

[ IVOVSS, vol. IV, p. 243.]

The explanation now given is that although "in principle" (as could be seen from Stalin's letter to Churchill of August 16), the Soviet Government did not wish to be associated with the Warsaw Rising (on which it had not even been consulted), it nevertheless "did all it could" because many thousands of Warsaw patriots had joined in the struggle.

In reply to the Western charge that the "Soviet Command had deliberately stopped its troops at the gates of Warsaw and so condemned the insurgents to death", the History says:

[IVOVSS, vol. IV, pp. 244 ff (emphasis added).]

People who say this have never taken the trouble to study the possibilities of the Red Army at the time of the Warsaw Rising. Here are the real facts:

In the second half of July the troops of the 1st Belorussian [Rokos-sovsky] and of the 2nd Ukrainian [Konev] Front entered Polish territory and began to advance

towards the Vistula... At the end of July, even before the beginning of the Warsaw Rising, the tempo of the offensive had greatly slowed down. The German High

Command had by this time thrown very strong reserves against the main sectors of

our advance. German resistance was strong and stubborn. It should also be

considered that our rifle divisions and tank corps had suffered heavy losses in

previous battles; that the artillery and the supply bases were lagging behind, and that the troops were short of both petrol and munitions.

Infantry and tanks were not receiving nearly enough artillery support. During the delays in re-basing our air force on new airfields, this was much less active than before. At the beginning of the Belorussian Campaign, we had complete control of

the air. At the beginning of August our superiority was temporarily lost. In the 1st Belorussian sector between August 1 and 13 our planes carried out 3,170 sorties and the enemy planes 3,316.