One for Piotr

[Botnst]

As our resident Pole, I thought you might comment on this. Snibble, you're Polish too, right?

BTW, I read of the recent repatriation of the body of a hero of the Polish underground, exiled in the USA. Sorry, I don't recall his name.

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The Warsaw Uprising of 1944


01 Aug 2004 11:37:49 GMT

LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Here are key facts on the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, whose 60th anniversary will be marked on Sunday in the Polish capital.

* The Warsaw uprising against Nazi occupiers began on Aug. 1, 1944, when the Soviet Army was advancing towards the capital. It was to mirror similar anti-Nazi liberations in Rome and Paris ahead of the arrival of Allied troops.

* The doomed uprising continued for 63 days as the Red Army stopped on the outskirts of Warsaw and refused to help 50,000 ill-equipped Polish troops pitted against 90,000 German soldiers, quickly reinforced by 50,000 elite SS troops.

* Recent accounts of history show Poland's wartime allies Britain and the United States applied little pressure to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to help the uprising or at least allow Allied planes to land with supplies.

* The resistance was brutally suppressed with Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS, ordering the city to be recaptured and burnt to the ground. Some 150,000 civilians were killed in the battles, 165,000 sent to labour camps and a further 350,000 displaced.

* Fifteen thousand Polish soldiers were killed or went missing during the uprising, with 25,000 wounded. After surrender, the Nazis razed the city, destroying 85 percent of its buildings, before fleeing to allow the Red Army to march in.

* After the uprising, many Polish Home Army troops who took part in the failed battle were prosecuted by Moscow-trained communists eager to impose their rule. For decades the uprising was played down by communist leaders and often confused in the West with a similarly tragic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

[Snibble]

This was one of the reasons why Russia is/was hated by many Pole's. They wanted the Warsaw Uprising to be destroyed by the Nazi's in order for them(Russians) to have an easy occupation without the threat that Pole's might fight off the commies.

[Vronsky]

Originally posted by Snibble
This was one of the reasons why Russia is/was hated by many Pole's. They wanted the Warsaw Uprising to be destroyed by the Nazi's in order for them(Russians) to have an easy occupation without the threat that Pole's might fight off the commies.

Being squeezed in between the big western continental powers France and Germany, and the other power Russia, Poland's tragic history of betrayal and deception goes much much further back than WW2. It's one of the saddest stories in Europe.