Russia at war 1941-1945

radio], and also from the Polish service of the BBC—so I'm told, though I didn't hear it myself. Let's be serious. An armed insurrection in a place like Warsaw could only have succeeded if it had been carefully co-ordinated with the Red Army. The question of

timing was of the utmost importance. The Warsaw insurgents are badly armed, and the

rising would have made sense only if we were already on the point of entering Warsaw.

That point had not been reached at any stage, and I'll admit that some Soviet correspondents were much too optimistic on the 1st of August. We were pushed back.

We couldn't have got Warsaw before the middle of August, even in the best of

circumstances. But circumstances were not good, but bad. Such things do happen in war.

It happened at Kharkov in March 1943 and at Zhitomir last winter."

"What prospect is there of your getting back to Praga within the next few weeks?"

"I can't go into that. All I can say is that we shall try to capture both Praga and Warsaw, but it won't be easy."

"But you have bridgeheads south of Warsaw."

"Yes, but the Germans are doing their damnedest to reduce them. We're having much difficulty in holding them, and we are losing a lot of men. Mind you, we have fought non-stop for over two months now. We've liberated the whole of Belorussia and nearly one fourth of Poland; but, even the Red Army gets tired after a while. Our casualties have been very heavy."

"Can't you help the Warsaw insurgents from the air?"

"We are trying; though, to tell you the truth, it isn't much good. They are holding only isolated spots in Warsaw, and most of the stuff will fall into German hands."

"Why can't you let British and American planes land behind the Russian lines, after dropping their supplies on Warsaw? There's been an awful stink in England and America about your refusal... "

"The military situation east of the Vistula is much more complicated than you realise.

And we just don't want any British and American planes mucking around here just at the moment.

[This may or may not be the true explanation, but it tallies with the usual Russian

cageyness at times of reverses.]

I think in a couple of weeks, we'll be able to supply Warsaw ourselves from low-flying planes if the insurgents hold any recognisable area in the city. But this high altitude dropping of supplies on Warsaw by Western planes serves practically no purpose at all."

"Isn't all this massacre and destruction in Warsaw having a terribly depressing effect on the Polish people here? "

"Of course, it has. But a fearful mistake was made by the AK leadership. We (the Red Army) are responsible for the conduct of the war in Poland, we are the force that will liberate the whole of Poland within the next few months, and Bor-Komarowski and the

people around him have butted in kak ryzhy v tsirke—like the clown in the circus who pops up at the wrong moment and only gets rolled up in the carpet... If it were only a piece of clowning it wouldn't matter, but the political stunt is going to cost Poland hundreds of thousands of lives. It is an appalling tragedy, and they are now trying to put the blame on us. It makes me pretty sick when I think of the many thousands of men we have already lost in our fight for the liberation of Poland. And do you think," he concluded, "that we would not have taken Warsaw if we had been able to do it? The whole idea that we are in any sense afraid of the AK is too idiotically absurd."

*

There were two strange and, in some ways, pathetic figures at a press conference given by General Rola-Zymierski, the "Minister" of Defence of the Lublin Committee, later that day: two AK officers, Colonel Rawicz and Colonel Tarnawa, who said they had left Warsaw on July 29 on the initiative of "a strong minority" of AK officers inside Warsaw to establish contact with Mikolajczyk (who was then in Moscow), in a last-minute

endeavour to persuade the London Government to use all its influence to call off the rising that was being prepared for August 1—for, on July 25, they had already received orders from General Bor-Komarowski to prepare and stand by. They claimed that it was clear that the insurgents could not possibly hold Warsaw unless they struck out at the very last moment, with the Russians practically inside the city. Unfortunately, it had taken the two colonels nearly a fortnight to reach Lublin, and it was then too late.

Colonel Rawicz, a smart, dapper little man in a new uniform, but with a look of grief and bewilderment in his eyes, said that headquarters had given the order for a rising as soon as the Russians were twenty miles away from Warsaw; he and many other officers felt it would be folly to do it until the Russians had reached the Vistula bridges.

"We did not think," he said, "that the Russians could enter Warsaw before August 15. But the man-in-the-street (and you know how brave and romantic our Warsaw people are)