Poland commemorates Warsaw Uprising

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spidey

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A roll of honour on Sunday commemorating the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising 72 years ago was attended by top officials, veterans and residents.
The roll of honour at the Warsaw Uprising Memorial was attended by officials including deputy Prime Minister and Culture Minister Piotr Glinski, Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz and Warsaw Mayor

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The Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944 as the biggest resistance operation in Nazi-occupied Europe. Initially intended to last several days, it continued for over two months before being suppressed by the Germans. The uprising claimed the lives of 18,000 insurgents and around 180,000 civilians.
After the insurgents surrendered and the remaining 500,000 residents were expelled, the Germans methodically burned down and blew up Warsaw house by house. By January 1945, 85 percent of the buildings had been destroyed.
 
Terrible what happened! But not to forget that Stalin held back his Red Army and did not help the Polish resistance. He waited until they were all killed so
that there were no resistance fighters left when the Russians occupied Warsaw and entire Poland for the next 45 years.
 
Shorker said:
Terrible what happened! But not to forget that Stalin held back his Red Army and did not help the Polish resistance. He waited until they were all killed so
that there were no resistance fighters left when the Russians occupied Warsaw and entire Poland for the next 45 years.
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True but questionable. Could really Stalin launch his now stopped and exhausted army (after a long ride and destruction of army group center) for a city that doesn't want him ? That was a bit of a gamble and I guess he did not take the risk. Not very nice but strategically wise.
 
MikInthemist said:
True but questionable. Could really Stalin launch his now stopped and exhausted army (after a long ride and destruction of army group center) for a city that doesn't want him ? That was a bit of a gamble and I guess he did not take the risk. Not very nice but strategically wise.
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Stalin definitely wanted the non-communist Polish resistance crushed ... after Soviets captured rest of Poland, the NKVD ruthlessly hunted down every surviving Home Army resistance fighters they could find.
 
Yes, that's what he wanted and that's what he got. BTW, who knows what happened after WW2 of the thousands of polish soldiers who fought with the british army ? I think (pure speculation) that they got back home (the Soviets let a so-called non communist polish governement for a while) or did they stay in the west ?
 
Most of them emigrated to USA, Canada or Australia. Some of them stayed in GB. Those who left families in occupied Poland in 1939 , they got back after war and almost imiedietly were captured by communist political police, then had fake traials and sentenced for treason, spying for allied countries to prison or even death.
 
spidey said:
Most of them emigrated to USA, Canada or Australia. Some of them stayed in GB. Those who left families in occupied Poland in 1939 , they got back after war and almost immediately were captured by communist political police, then had fake trials and sentenced for treason, spying for allied countries to prison or even death.
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Amazing.

It has become an almost cliché saying now, but freedom isn't free.
 
Whether Stalin deliberately stopped his army is debatable. If you studied the campaign and I spent a lot of time on it while working on CMRT, by the time the Russians got to Warsaw they had outrun their supplies and were running out of ammo, fuel and replacements. The Germans were able to mass several fresh Panzer divisions and counter-attack the leading Soviet units. This is depicted in the CMRT German campaign.

No doubt Stalin had a political interest in letting the Germans do the dirty work for him, but it is not clear the Russians could have taken Warsaw in august with the forces available to them, even if they had wanted to.
 
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