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In August 1944, Warsaw appeared to present the last
major obstacle to the Soviet Army's triumphant march from Moscow to Berlin. When the Wehrmacht
was pushed back to the Vistula River, the people of Warsaw believed that liberation was at
hand. So, too, did the Western leaders. The Polish Resistance poured forty
thousand armed figures into the streets to drive out the hated Germans, but
Stalin condemned the Rising as a criminal adventure and refused to cooperate.
The Wehrmacht was given time to regroup, and Hitler
ordered the city and its inhabitants to be utterly destroyed.
For sixty-four days, the Resistance
battled the SS and Wehrmacht - in the cellars and
sewers. Tens of thousands of defenseless civilians were slaughtered week
after week. One by one, the city's districts were reduced to rubble as Soviet
troops watched from across the river. Poland's Western allies expressed
regret, but decided that there was little to be done. The sacrifice was in
vain. Hitler's orders were executed. Poland was not to be allowed to be
governed by Poles.
Largely sidelined in history books
and often confused with the Ghetto Uprising of 1943, the 1944 Warsaw Rising
was a pivotal moment both in the outcome of the Second World War and in the
origins of the cold war. Now on the sixtieth anniversary if the Rising,
Norman Davies's extraordinary book brings it vividly and movingly to life.
Norman Davies is Britain's bestselling author of Europe: A History and The
Isles: A History, as well as the definitive history of Poland, God's Playground, and
several books on European history. Davies is a graduate of Magdalene College, Oxford, and the University of Sussex. He is a Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, and is a Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of the Royal Historical
Society, and Professor Emeritus of London University.
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