11. Dirlewanger troops advancing. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
12. Hala Mirowska, one of the sites of mass murder by the Dirlewanger Brigade. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
13. A Polish flag raised over Starynkiewicza Square in the first days of the uprising. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
14. A Junkers landing at Okecie airfield. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
15. A ‘Karl’ mortar, the largest self-propelled siege gun ever built. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
16. Aerial view of Warsaw during the uprising. (National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park Annex, microfilm and documents collections)
17. Women being taken from Ochota to Zieleniak camp. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
18. Women and children on their way to Pruszków transit camp. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
19. Civilians and a German tank in Zelazna Brama Square. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
20. Krowas hurtling towards an AK-held area of Warsaw. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
21. Krowas being unloaded. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
22. A victim of a Krowa attack. (Warsaw Rising Museum, http://www.1944.pl/en/)
23. A ‘Goliath’ remote-controlled miniature tank. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
24. The Panzer train that bombarded the Old Town. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
25. German troops attack the Stone Steps in the Old Town. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
26. German soldiers clamber over rubble in the ruins of the Old Town. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
27. Germans remove their dead using stretchers provided by the AK. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
28. A mass grave in Długa Street. (Warsaw Rising Museum, http://www.1944.pl/en/)
29. Swastikas and red crosses painted on the roofs of buildings in Ochota to prevent German planes from bombing their own positions. (National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park Annex, microfilm and documents collections)
30. Supplies dropped on Warsaw by the Western Allies. (akg-images/East News)
31. An AK soldier emerging from the sewers into German hands on Dworkowa Street. (Mondadori via Getty Images)
32. German soldiers drop leaflets informing Warsawians of the city’s surrender. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
33. A German soldier guarding members of the resistance after the end of the uprising. (Getty Images)
34. Warsawians emerging from their hiding places. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
35. Two AK nurses leave the city as prisoners of war in October 1944. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
36. Von dem Bach presents a box containing Chopin’s heart to the Archbishop of Warsaw.
37. Bór meets von dem Bach after the surrender. (Topfoto)
38. German troops setting fire to buildings around Warsaw Castle after the surrender. (Zygmunt Walkowski)
1. Poland, 1939
2. Operation ‘Bagration’
3. Administrative Boundaries of Warsaw
4. Insurgent Warsaw, 5 August 1944
5. The Wola Massacre: The German Attacks, 5–6 August 1944
6. The German Encirclement of the Old Town
7. The German Attack on Czerniaków
The epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter are from Appian Roman History, Volume I, Book VIII, I, The Punic Wars, ed. Jeffrey Henderson, trans. Horace White, Harvard University Press, London, 1912
It was decreed that if anything was still left of Carthage, Scipio should raze it to the ground, and that nobody should be allowed to live there. (Chapter XX)
On 1 August 1944 Adolf Hitler was at his headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) at Rastenburg, deep in East Prussia, and he was busy. Army Chief of Staff General Heinz Guderian and Field Marshal Walter Model had just launched a massive counter-offensive against the Red Army only a few kilometres north-east of Warsaw, and the Führer was waiting anxiously for progress reports. He was annoyed rather than angry when news about some skirmishes in the Polish capital began trickling in. Apparently some ‘bandits’ with red-and-white armbands had been shooting at the police. Hitler was not worried. The day before, he had sent his trusted ‘fireman’ General Reiner Stahel to take charge of Warsaw, and was convinced that the city was in good hands. Himmler, too, had assured him that there would be no uprising in the hated capital. ‘My Poles will not revolt,’ the German Governor in occupied Poland, Hans Frank, had chimed in.
But the problem did not go away, and by evening the Germans were starting to get worried. As time went on it became clear that these were not isolated incidents, but that the Poles had managed to stage a simultaneous, well-coordinated attack throughout the whole of Warsaw. By evening the ‘unbeatable’ Stahel was trapped in the Brühl Palace along with his staff, and could do nothing. ‘Himmler wants answers!’ SS Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Koppe, SS and police leader in Kraków, yelled at Brigadeführer Paul Otto Geibel