Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler and the Crushing of a City

But this was to prove irrelevant. Stahel would spend the beginning of the uprising under siege in the Brühl Palace, and Himmler would wrest control from him soon enough.

To Kill Hitler

The second extraordinary event to rock Germany in the summer of 1944, after the shock of Bagration, was the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July. The day after the collapse of Wilno, Hitler had moved back to the stifling atmosphere of Rastenburg in order to be close to the front, swapping the homely Berghof for the miserable Wolf’s Lair, which was situated in what even he called ‘the swampiest, most climatically unfavourable and midge-infested region possible’.

During the flight he had kept the blinds of the aircraft drawn to spare himself views of destroyed German towns. But he made the move believing that ‘As long as the soldiers know I am holding out here, they will be all the more determined in their struggle to stabilize the front.’

Rastenburg was stifling. It was high summer, and the air was hot and sticky. The air-conditioning whined all day; even the guards wore mosquito-netting over their helmets. Hitler’s secretary Christa Schroeder recalled the horrible boredom and isolation there: ‘We sleep, eat, drink, and let people talk to us, if we are too lazy to talk ourselves.’ Hitler seemed to turn in upon himself, sitting in his rooms isolated from the rest of the world. According to his doctor, Morell, who by now had him hooked on various drugs, Hitler had developed a kind of ‘bunker mentality’. ‘It was the only place he felt at home … the only place he could work and think.’

Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed attempt on Hitler’s life at the Wolf’s Lair on 20 July was to have dire consequences for the fate of the Warsaw Uprising. First, Hitler came out of the destroyed conference room believing that he had been saved by divine providence, and was destined to snatch Germany from the jaws of defeat. According to Christa Schroeder, he had had a premonition about the attack the night before. ‘Nothing must happen to me,’ he had told her. ‘There is nobody who can carry on the business.’ Just after the blast, Morell heard him shout, ‘I’m invulnerable! I’m immortal!’ Albert Speer found Hitler ‘triumphant’ in the days after the attack, believing that he had discovered the true reason for his failure to win the war: the treachery of his own generals. ‘Now at last the great positive turning point in the war had come. The days of treason were over, new and better generals would assume the command.’ Hitler, who had previously referred to the barbarity of the Soviet dictator, now praised Stalin for the Terror, claiming that by eliminating the former commander-in-chief of the Red Army, Tukhachevsky, and liquidating his General Staff he had ‘made room for fresh, vigorous men’, free of the tainted ideas of Tsarist times. Hitler even toyed with the preposterous notion that there had been ‘treasonous collaboration’ between the Russian and German general staffs. ‘Now I know why all my great plans in Russia had to fail in recent years. It was all treason! But for those traitors we would have won long ago!’

He continued to rant against the generals and the officer corps, becoming ever more paranoid until his death in the Berlin bunker in April 1945. As the US Strategic Bombing Survey later put it, the attempt on his life ‘set in motion in the mind of that evil and uncertain man a chain of psychological reactions that separated the Führer from his advisers and friends and gradually undermined his psyche. In the end, these reactions trapped Hitler in the maze of his own obsessions and left him with self-destruction as the only escape.’

The German commanders scrambled to outdo one another in the proof of their loyalty. Model was the first to write a note of condolence to the ‘great man’: ‘Mein Führer,’ he said, ‘we soldiers of Army Group Centre and Army Group Nordukraine have just heard with outrage and hatred of the criminal attempt against your life. We thank the Almighty that He kept you, and all of Germany through you, from unimaginable disaster.’

All the other generals followed suit, probably more to divert suspicion than out of genuine feelings of relief. They tried to ingratiate themselves in other ways, too. General Walter Warlimont, deputy chief of operations for the OKW, remembered how Keitel and Göring had announced that ‘as an indication of the unshakeable loyalty to the Führer and of the close bonds of comradeship between Wehrmacht and Party, the Party salute is to be made obligatory for all members of the Services’.

The order was duly given. ‘The traditional salute of touching the cap with the right hand was now forbidden, and the Nazi Party salute, thrusting an outstretched right arm forward, was made mandatory. This was observed with contempt and resentment by soldiers who honoured military tradition,’ recalled Warlimont, ‘and the order was taken as an insult … it was not uncommon to observe entire companies carrying their mess tins in their right hands to avoid being compelled to demonstrate their “loyalty to the party”.’ Later, many soldiers would claim that the assassination attempt had ‘not caused a tear to be shed’ among their colleagues. They had fought on not out of loyalty to Hitler, but because they felt ‘bound to our duty by the oath we had sworn as soldiers of Germany; to swear, with weapons in hand, to defend our country even to the sacrifice of our lives. Not even a change in command or policy could free us from this oath.’

The failed assassination attempt would have a profound effect on the course of the Warsaw Uprising precisely because the German generals had been so deeply disgraced in Hitler’s eyes. Top Nazis now vied and plotted for influence. Kurt Zeitzler, who had told Hitler to his face that his ‘fortress city’ policy was madness, had a nervous breakdown. Heinz Guderian replaced him as Army Chief of Staff on 21 July; his promotion even earned him a cover picture on Time magazine. Goebbels used the attempt as an opportunity to push harder for ‘total war’: ‘It takes a bomb under his arse to make Hitler see reason,’ he wrote.

This would affect both the use of slave labour from Warsaw during the uprising and the creation of the Volkssturm, or ‘people’s army’, which was inspired in part by the Polish resistance.

The most chilling outcome of the failed plot to kill Hitler, and the one which would have the most significant influence on the future of Warsaw, was the meteoric rise of Heinrich Himmler and the SS. Himmler was now presumptive commander-in-chief of the army, commander of the Reserve Army (a group of units of trainees and older soldiers not yet released from service) and chief of army armament, as well as commander-in-chief of the Volksgrenadier Divisions. His new position at the head of the Reserve Army, in particular, gave him great power. Himmler saw 20 July as a chance to imbue the military with the Nazi Party spirit, and to kindle the ‘fire of the people’s holy war’. At last the Waffen SS was to be accepted as an equal partner with the army, navy and air force. National Socialist political officers were appointed to all military headquarters – a direct copy of Soviet practice perfected by the NKVD. Thus, when the uprising broke out only eleven days after the attempt on his life, Hitler would not turn to the army for help, but to his trusted and ‘Treuer Heinrich’, Himmler.

For his part, Stalin was elated when he heard about the attempt on Hitler’s life, and summoned Zhukov to share the good news. ‘If the mad dog isn’t dead already he soon will be,’ he said, tipping back a glass of champagne. For Stalin, Hitler’s death would have meant chaos in the Third Reich, a collapse of German morale and a much easier and quicker road to Warsaw and Berlin. When Zhukov returned to his headquarters after the meeting, he issued two orders to his senior staff: first, he was to be informed when Hitler’s death was confirmed; and second, the Red Army was to push even harder than before to defeat the Germans as quickly as possible.

Speed was important. If the Third Reich was going to implode, Stalin knew that he would have to act quickly to position himself politically in Eastern and Central Europe. The Soviet dictator was now waging an all-out political, as well as military, war. As the last of the German stragglers were being hunted down in the forests around Minsk, Stalin summoned Zhukov and General A.I. Antonov to his summer house outside Moscow. ‘We are strong enough to finish off Nazi Germany single-handed,’ he declared triumphantly. Zhukov said that ‘no one had any doubt that Germany had definitely lost the war. This was settled on the Soviet–German front in 1943 and the beginning of 1944. The question now was how soon and with what political and military results the war would end.’

Later that afternoon they were joined by Foreign Minister Molotov and other members of the State Committee for Defence. Stalin asked Zhukov: ‘Can our troops reach the Vistula without a stop, and in what sector can we commit the 1st Polish Army, which has acquired combat efficiency?’ ‘Not only can our troops reach the Vistula,’ Zhukov replied, ‘but they must secure good bridgeheads which are essential for further offensive operations in the strategic direction of Berlin. As for the 1st Polish Army, it should be directed towards Warsaw.’ At this point, Warsaw was less than two hundred kilometres from the front.

News of the assassination attempt only fuelled Stalin’s determination to set up the political structure he desperately needed before Germany collapsed completely or arranged a separate peace with the West. Always wary of his allies, he told the chief of the NKGB, Boris Merkulov, that ‘as long as Hitler is alive the Allies will not sign a separate peace with Germany. But they will sign a peace at once with a new government.’

It was a time of frenetic activity. The day after the attempt on Hitler’s life the 47th Guards Army reached the western Bug River. On the same day the Red Army formed the Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (Polish Committee of National Liberation, PKWN) in Chełm. Stalin announced that this was now the ‘only legitimate Polish government’ in place on Polish soil, essentially ending any chance of reconciliation between the Polish government-in-exile in London and the Soviets. The link between Soviet military conquest and political domination was becoming abundantly clear.

Zhukov was intrinsically involved in this political element of the war. On 9 July he had met Stalin and Bolesław Bierut, Edward Osóbka-Morawski and Michał Rola-Żymierski, Stalin’s Polish puppets in the PKWN. ‘The Polish comrades spoke of the plight of their people who had been suffering German occupation for over four years,’ Zhukov recalled. He conveniently forgot the fact that the war had started in 1939 with the mutual Soviet–German dismemberment of Poland, and the mass deportation and murder of tens of thousands of Poles. ‘The members of the Polish National Liberation Committee … burned to see their homeland free as soon as possible.’ Stalin decided that the new government was to be based in Lublin.

This political decision to set up a puppet government in Lublin, the largest city in the area, explains why on 21 July Stavka ordered General Bogdanovitj to move away from his original target of taking Siedlce and turn instead towards Lublin. Stavka issued an order to Rokossovsky to capture Lublin no later than 27 July. This ran counter to military logic, but Rokossovsky was told to put aside his doubts, as ‘the political situation and the democratic independent interests of Poland acutely required this’.

On 22 July Rokossovsky’s 1st Byelorussian Front broke through against 4th Panzer Army’s weak defence. Hitler had designated Lublin another ‘fortress city’, but the term was virtually meaningless, as it was being held by a mere nine hundred men. Lublin fell on 23 July. On the same day the Soviets liberated the concentration camp at Majdanek. This horrifying place, with its huts and brick crematoria and barbed-wire enclosures, was now virtually empty. The ever-efficient SS, under the direction of camp commander SS Obersturmbannführer Arthur Liebehenschel, had evacuated 15,000 prisoners in the previous weeks, the last thousand sent on a pitiless ‘death march’ just one day before the Soviets arrived. The Soviets found only a few hundred survivors trapped behind the barbed wire; most of them were severely crippled prisoners of war. They also found gas chambers, stained blue by Zyklon B, which the Germans had not had time to destroy completely. Eight hundred thousand shoes that had been earmarked for shipment to German civilians lay abandoned in a dusty pile.

Also on 23 July, the Polish underground AK started another uprising, this time in Lwów. This most elegant of cities, with its splendid pastel-coloured neoclassical buildings, once stood at the very furthest reaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It had always been a tolerant and welcoming place, with myriad religions and languages. Poles and Ukrainians, Jews and Germans, Russians and Armenians had all lived and traded and argued together there. Before the war its great university had contained one of Europe’s most celebrated faculties of mathematics, including world-renowned figures such as Stefan Banach and Stanisław Ulam.

On 18 July the German civilian authorities and pro-Nazi Ukrainian troops fled, but Hitler ordered that the Wehrmacht troops hold the city. The Polish Home Army under Władysław Filipkowski was poised to rise up, but waited until the Soviet 29th Tank Brigade of the 4th Tank Army had actually reached the city limits. The Soviet attack on Lwów was part of the hugely successful Lwów–Sandomierz offensive, which in concert with Bagration forced the Germans from Ukraine and eastern Poland. That evening the AK began the uprising, capturing the main railway station and taking the large nineteenth-century fortress, which was still filled with German supplies. The Soviet approach to Lwów had been slowed by the weather and by fanatical German resistance around Brody, but unlike so many units trapped in Hitler’s ‘fortress cities’, the Lwów garrison decided not to stand and fight, and managed to escape on 26 July. The Soviet 10th Tank Corps entered the outskirts of Lwów on 23 July, and were joined by the 4th Guards Tank Army. The city fell to General Konev on 27 July, and the Soviet and AK troops cooperated in mopping up any Germans still left there. The Soviets congratulated their Polish comrades on their mutual victory. But the euphoria was not to last.

Vyacheslav Yablonsky was a member of an NKVD squad sent into towns and cities to raid Gestapo and SS headquarters before the Germans could destroy evidence of their crimes. Tearing into Lwów in his American Studebaker truck, he and his team of twenty men dodged the retreating Germans and broke into the Gestapo building, where they found documents containing the names of Nazi collaborators and other ‘enemies of the Soviet Union’, as well as all the information the Nazis had gathered on the Polish Home Army. Interrogations began immediately. ‘Informers told us if somebody hated the Soviets and was a threat to us, and we would arrest him … they could be saying bad things about us or just thinking we were bad. Once arrested the normal sentence was about fifteen years of forced labour … we thought it was normal at the time.’

The Soviets arrested over 5,000 Home Army soldiers who had fought with them as brothers in arms only days before. Most were sent to the Miedniki gulag; those who remained were forcibly conscripted into the Red Army, usually into Stalin’s Polish 1st Army. This was treachery on a grand scale, and served as another grave warning to General Bór-Komorowski. The Warsaw Uprising was only days away. But after the arrest of so many Home Army soldiers in Lwów, Wilno and elsewhere, Bór had absolutely no reason to put his trust in Stalin.

After the fall of Lwów the Germans tried desperately to stop the Soviet advance towards the capital. General von Vormann was told to defend the Vistula’s central portion and the city of Warsaw with the reorganized 9th Army, but this was impossible. There simply were not enough troops. Von Vormann reported to Army Group Centre on 25 July that ‘there is not a single German division between Puławy and Siedlce’ – the area just east of Warsaw – while the road to Warsaw was not manned ‘by a single German soldier’.

On the same day the 8th Guards Army reached the eastern bank of the Vistula and easily established a bridgehead across the river at Magnuszew, fifty-four kilometres south of Warsaw. The 2nd Tank Army was ordered to turn north towards Brest and Warsaw, so as to cut off the retreating forces from Army Group Centre. Generaloberst Walter-Otto Weiss, leader of the 2nd Army, realized that Brest was lost, and gave the order to try to free the Germans trapped there; the plan worked, but the men, including General-Leutnant Scheller, commander of the 337th Infantry Division, were captured in a second encirclement east of Janów Podlaski. Brest fell on 28 July.

With the Polish capital within its grasp, Stavka issued new orders to Rokossovsky. These prove without a doubt that despite all later denials, Stalin did originally intend to take Warsaw in August 1944: ‘After the seizure of Brest and Siedlce the attacks on the front’s right flank are to be expanded in the direction of Warsaw and the mission is to, no later than 5–8 August, seize Praga and occupy the bridge emplacement on the Narew’s western bank in the area around Pułtusk and Serock. On the front’s left flank, the bridge emplacement on the Vistula’s western bank is to be seized in the area around Dęblin–Zwoleń–Solec. The seized bridge emplacement shall be used for attacking in a north-westerly direction and thereby neutralize the enemy’s resistance along the Narew and Vistula and thus guarantee the successful crossing of the Narew by the 2nd Byelorussian Front’s left flank and likewise over the Vistula by those armies which are concentrated at the front’s central section. Thereafter, attacks shall be planned in the direction of Toruń and Łódź.’

It is thus clear that, as of 28 July, the Soviets fully intended to seize the two operational bridges to the north and south of Warsaw, and to encircle the city. Like Buda and Pest, Warsaw is divided in two main parts, with the poorer eastern suburb of Praga separated by the Vistula from the main part of the city on the western side. The Stavka plan never saw the western city as a high-priority military target; rather it was intended to encircle it from the north and south, and to crush the trapped Germans as had been done at so many ‘fortresses’ in the previous weeks. Storming the city centre by pushing front-line troops across the bridges and into the Old Town, which was what the Polish Home Army believed the Soviets would do, was dismissed for tactical reasons from the very beginning. It would have been costly and senseless, not least because the Germans had already mined the bridges over the Vistula. The plan was always to encircle Warsaw in a giant pincer movement; indeed, that is precisely how the city was eventually taken in January 1945.

By 27 July the Soviets were moving ever closer to Warsaw’s eastern suburb, and the plan to take Praga was on course. The 2nd Tank Army overwhelmed the pathetically depleted 73rd Infantry Division, easily capturing Garwolin and taking General Frank prisoner. Further south, General Radziewsky approached Warsaw on 28 July with two tank corps, leaving a third to snake its way along the riverbank. The 69th Army began to cross the Vistula at Kazimierz Dolny. Stalin had also made sure to send the 1st Polish Army to the Warsaw area, above all for propaganda reasons; it was now outside Dęblin, waiting to help ‘liberate’ the capital.

By 29 July the Germans’ situation appeared hopeless. The 3rd Tank Corps was outrunning the panicked men of the 73rd Infantry Division scrambling to get back across the bridges and into Warsaw; that night the Soviets severed the railway line between Warsaw and Białystok. The noose tightened further. The next place to fall was the southern suburb of Otwock – a villa colony in the pine forests originally built in the 1920s by wealthy Warsawians keen on the pleasant summer climate there. The 16th Tank Corps moved in, and despite heavy fighting destroyed the German armoured train No. 74 and began to clear the area. On the morning of 30 July the 3rd Tank Corps moved towards Zielonka, with its main force taking the city of Wołomin. The Russians now set their sights on Radzymin, a pretty neoclassical town a mere thirty-five kilometres from Warsaw.

The bustling, leafy town of Radzymin, while most famous as the childhood home of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, has been at the centre of some of the most important battles in history. Napoleon’s army was there, as were Lenin’s and Stalin’s and Hitler’s. The 1809 Battle of Radzymin saw the Poles defeat the Austrians in a battle that set the Imperial forces reeling. In 1920 it was the location of ‘the Miracle on the Vistula’, still considered one of the most decisive battles of the twentieth century. Now the Red Army had returned. Stalin must have been wary of this approach to Warsaw, no doubt remembering the humiliation he had suffered there twenty-four years earlier. He had never quite got over the sting of Lenin’s disapproval.

But he had no reason to worry this time. The Red Army seemed invincible. The 2nd Tank Army stood on the outskirts of Warsaw with over five hundred tanks and assault guns, and Rokossovsky’s troops were already moving into the right-bank suburb of Praga, with its red-brick factories and working-class tenements that stretched the whole length of the city. The excited Warsawians believed that they were about to be rid of the Germans once and for all, and although many were mistrustful of the Soviets, there was a tremendous sense of anticipation. Stalin, Zhukov and Rokossovsky expected Warsaw to fall as quickly as the other cities had in the race through Byelorussia. But this time they were wrong.

Up until now the Soviet summer offensive had been a stunning success, vastly exceeding Stavka’s original expectations. In a matter of five weeks Stalin had pushed the Germans out of both Byelorussia and much of pre-war Poland, destroying an unbelievable seventeen and damaging fifty Army Group Centre divisions in the process. Bagration was the single greatest Soviet victory in numerical terms of the entire war: final estimates would put overall German losses at over a million men. Hitler had never suffered a defeat like this before, and because of it he would not be able to mount another major offensive on the Eastern Front. Now the Soviets stood a mere five hundred kilometres from Berlin. But their luck had temporarily run out. The Germans were not yet entirely beaten, and thanks to Field Marshal Model, Operation ‘Bagration’ was about to come to an abrupt end at the very gates of Warsaw.

When Model took command of Army Group Centre on 28 June, the situation was dire. With the Soviets ripping an ever greater hole in the German front, he knew that something had to be done, and quickly. Rather than try to argue with Hitler about withdrawing and regrouping the disorganized mass fleeing Byelorussia, Model had issued orders to bring troops to the Eastern Front from wherever possible in Europe. The Russians were moving so quickly that by the time these troops began to arrive the Red Army had already crossed the pre-war Polish border. The German reinforcements could no longer be used in Byelorussia; but they could be sent to Warsaw.

Model was in the process of amassing a considerable force, meant to include eleven tank divisions and twenty-five others, including the Grossdeutschland Division, the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf, three infantry divisions from ‘Heeresgruppe Nord’, and the 12th Panzer Division from Ukraine. Ten new grenadier divisions were promised by the command leadership of the Reserve Army, along with the 6th Panzer Division, the 19th Panzer Division and the 25th Panzer Division with the 6th Infanterie-Division. The ‘Hermann Göring’ Fallschirm-Panzer-Division was called in from Italy. Two infantry divisions, the 17th and the 73rd, were set to arrive from the Balkans and Norway, along with the new 174th Ersatz Division.

Many of these men took a long time to reach the front, arriving only in late July or early August, but enough had been gathered near Warsaw by 28 July to enable the first German counter-attack of the entire summer to begin. Model’s gambit would lead to the biggest tank battle on Polish soil during the entire war. It would take the Soviets by surprise, and stop them in their tracks.

This could not have come at a worse time for the people of Warsaw. The great Bagration offensive was to be forced to an abrupt halt at the very moment the Poles began their ill-fated uprising. Model, with his successful counter-attack, would hammer the first nail into the coffin of the doomed Polish bid for freedom.

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OSTPOLITIK (#ulink_efa7e39e-490e-503f-89b2-21901c3a5050)

Scipio, beholding this city, which had flourished seven hundred years from its foundation … now came to its end in total destruction. (Chapter XIX)

The City on the Vistula

Warsaw has the fortune – or misfortune – to be situated at the very centre of the immense flat, sandy plains of Mazowia, along the Berlin–Minsk–Moscow road. Although this vast unimpeded landscape gave the fledgling settlement great advantages in trade, the lack of natural barriers meant that it was at the mercy of any army that marched through. And march they did. Austria, Prussia, Sweden and Russia invaded and occupied the city numerous times, and its destiny has been written as much by foreign armies as by Warsawians themselves.

Today, evidence of this often violent past is visible everywhere. It is there in the huge swathes of overgrown fields in Wola, where pavements and houses once stood. It is there on the ancient steps where Napoleon stood before leaving on his march on Moscow. It is there in the Tartar and Protestant and Jewish cemeteries, which stand as a testament to a history of openness, and in the beautiful Gothic and Renaissance buildings so carefully rebuilt after the war. It is also there in the hill of rubble – 121 metres high – which was created from the ruins of the city after 1945. Ghosts are everywhere, too. They meet in the Art Deco bar of the Bristol Hotel, or in the white halls of the Wolski hospital, or hover in the spaces between the 1950s housing blocks that criss-cross the former ghetto, once home to the second-largest Jewish community in the world. There, the silence is palpable.

Ancient Warsaw started as a trading centre. Everything, from amber and fur to timber and salt, was carried by barges on the Vistula or hauled by road to Germany, Holland, Ukraine and Russia. The settlement prospered. It had become rich enough by the thirteenth century to be named a seat by the Dukes of Masovia, and before long the skyline was punctuated by the pretty rooftops of the cathedral and the red-brick church of St Mary’s, and by the merchants’ houses, churches and high walls of the Old and New Towns. In 1596 Warsaw’s star rose again when it was named capital of the now powerful Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Polish court moved from gracious Kraków to the ‘upstart’ city in the north.

It was a time of great prosperity for the new capital. Aristocrats, merchants, traders and soldiers moved to the city, and with them architects from all over Europe who built glorious churches, administrative buildings and palaces along the Royal Way, each one more beautiful than the last. This time of peace ended with the coming in 1654 of the Northern Wars, in which Swedish and Russian armies burned and pillaged their way across Polish territory in a seemingly endless orgy of violence. The wars lasted for decades, the worst being the invasion by the Swedes, which came to be known as the ‘Deluge’ and which saw much of Warsaw destroyed. Half a century later, Poland began to rebuild. The new king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, began to renew Warsaw’s battered cultural life. Dozens of institutions were founded in the eighteenth century, not least the Załuski Library – the first Polish public library – and the Collegium Nobilium, the predecessor of the University of Warsaw. But the peace would be short-lived. Poland’s avaricious neighbours Austria, Prussia and Russia carved up the country between them in three separate partitions; by 1795 Poland had ceased to exist.

Warsaw’s unlikely saviour came in the form of Napoleon Bonaparte, who marched through Poland in 1812 on his way to Russia. In 1807 he had created the ‘Duchy of Warsaw’, giving the Poles some autonomy at last, but his demise spelled another period of stagnation for Warsaw, this time under Russian rule. Tsar Alexander I was not particularly hostile to the city and allowed some development – the railways brought wealth, and new streets like Jerusalem Avenue were laid out. The Jewish population, which had numbered only 15,600 in 1816, was bolstered by mass migration of victims fleeing the pogroms in Russia, and had reached 337,000 by the end of the century.

In 1863, following the reign of the reactionary Tsar Nicholas I, an uprising against Russia ended in another humiliating defeat for the Poles. An oppressive military rule was imposed on the country, epitomized by the gigantic red-brick Citadel in Warsaw’s Żoliborz, built after the first uprising in 1830, which was both an administrative centre and a vast prison. Thousands of Poles were sent to Siberia from its cells. Some growth was permitted under the Russian-born mayor Sokrates Starynkiewicz, who under Tsar Alexander III built the city’s sewer system, introduced trams and street lights, and saw the creation of the Warsaw University Library, the Philharmonic Hall and the Polytechnic. Even so, when compared to the explosive growth of similar cities like Berlin and Vienna, Warsaw seemed stunted. By the end of the nineteenth century it had the reputation of being little more than a provincial city in the Russian Empire.

In most Western European countries 11 November, which marks the end of the First World War, is a day of mourning. But not in Poland. The ‘war to end all wars’ might have been a horrific conflict, but it freed Poland from despised Russian rule, and marked the beginning of a period of such energy and creativity and optimism that it remains unique in Warsaw’s history. The era was not without complications. In 1920 Lenin invaded the new country in an attempt to bring Bolshevism to Germany by force: ‘The road to worldwide conflagration will run over the corpse of Poland,’ he said. To his surprise the Poles defeated the Soviet forces in the ‘Miracle on the Vistula’, the last time Russia would lose a war until its foray into Afghanistan in the 1980s, persuading Lenin to rein in his global ambitions and to pursue Communism in Russia alone for the time being. Poland also endured hyperinflation and other economic problems, political strife and ethnic conflicts, but none of this could dampen the sheer optimism felt by its young people, the so-called ‘Columbus Generation’, who were growing up in freedom at last.

Warsaw had now become an important capital city. Though riven with serious social, political and economic problems, it was a major centre of political, diplomatic and military life, and its two main airports and roads and rail lines and five bridges across the Vistula to Praga brought diplomats, dignitaries and people from all over the world to trade, work and live. The city had always been a melting pot, and it continued to welcome foreigners, whether refugees from Bolshevik Russia or, later, those fleeing Hitler’s Germany. With its museums and concert halls, publishing houses and newspapers, museums and galleries, cabarets and film companies, it was a magnet for anyone who wanted to make a mark in the country. Its population increased from 700,000 at the turn of the century to 1.3 million by 1939.