Russia at war 1941-1945

Consequently, after a long forty-day offensive, with enemy resistance much stronger than it was, our troops could not maintain the high tempo of our advance, and give immediate help to the Warsaw rising. This was quite obvious to the German

command. Thus General Tippelskirch writes: "The Warsaw Rising started on

August 1, at a time when the strength of the Russian blow had exhausted itself." The task was rendered all the more difficult as we were faced with the problem of

forcing the Vistula.

And then:

On August 1, troops of the left flank of the 1st Belorussian Front approached

Warsaw from the south-east. In approaching Praga, the 2nd Tank Army met with

fierce enemy resistance; the approaches to Praga had been heavily fortified... It was also here that the Germans concentrated a heavy striking force of one infantry and

four Panzer divisions, which struck out at the beginning of August and drove the 2nd

Tank Army away from Praga, before the bulk of our troops had had time to approach

this Warsaw suburb.

The very difficult position in which the 2nd Tank Army found itself at Praga may be measured by its losses.

In its battles fought on Polish territory—at Lublin, Deblin, Pulawa and the

approaches of Warsaw—it had lost about 500 tanks and mobile guns. Under the

weight of the German offensive it had to retreat from Praga, take up the defensive and repel the German attacks...

There followed weeks of confused fighting both north and south of Warsaw on the

eastern bank of the Vistula and also on the three bridgeheads the Russians had captured on the western bank—at Magnuszew, Pulawa and Sandomierz—all a considerable

distance from Warsaw. Everywhere the Germans were now throwing in heavy forces.

It is not clear from this how far away from Praga the Russians were thrown back, but they were certainly a considerable distance to the east of Praga by the middle of August, when Churchill was desperate to get Western planes to land behind the Russian lines.

Here I can supplement the History with what General Rokos-sovsky, commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, told me at Lublin on August 26, 1944.

My informal and off-the-record conversation with Rokossovsky (after a great ceremony in the main square for the unveiling of a cenotaph to those who had fallen in the Battle of Lublin) was a brief but significant one. Here is what he said:

"I can't go into any details. But I'll tell you just this. After several weeks' heavy fighting in Belorussia and eastern Poland we finally reached the outskirts of Praga about the 1st of August. The Germans, at this point, threw in four armoured divisions, and we were

driven back."

"How far back?"

"I can't tell you exactly, but let's say nearly 100 kilometres (sixty-five miles)."

"Are you still retreating? "

"No—we are now advancing—but slowly."

"Did you think on August 1 (as was suggested by the Pravda correspondent that day) that you could take Warsaw within a very few days? "

"If the Germans had not thrown in all that armour, we could have taken Warsaw, though not in a frontal attack; but it was never more than a 50-50 chance. A German counterattack at Praga was not to be excluded, though we now know that before these armoured divisions arrived, the Germans inside Warsaw were in a panic, and were packing up in a great hurry."

"Wasn't the Warsaw Rising justified in the circumstances?"

"No, it was a bad mistake. The insurgents started it off their own bat, without consulting us."

"There was that broadcast from Moscow calling on them to rise."

"That was routine stuff, [sic] There were similar calls to rise from Swit radio [the AK