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shakowyesterday at 10:00 PM1 replyview on HN

It was definitely not planned with the Soviets, for multiple reasons:

  - the Poles of the AK (London government loyal) were not the communist faction (Lublin government loyal), and saw the insurrection as the last chance to get a Poland out of the Soviet sphere of influence post WWII – especially after the publicization of Katyn;

  - even if they had wanted, Stalin had zero interest in giving a hand to London-loyal Poles that were in frontal opposition to “his” Lublin-loyal Poles;

  - the Germans were not caught flat-footed, they already knew of the insurrection preparations and therefore not only was the city well garrisoned, it would have been in any case, as it was the strategic lock of the area to hold the RKKA on the Vistula;

  - and all the above is moot in any case, because the RKKA units that reached the neighborhood of Warsaw in '44 had as many chance of taking the city as the German units that reached Moscow in '41 – they were just spent and at the end of their logistic tail after months of fighting during the Bagration operation, and had no chance of successfully developing an opposed crossing of the Vistula against two Panzerkorps.

So the London-loyal Poles were in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, and at least they were able to go with a glorious bang. Like a Marshal said, “c'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre”.

Replies

pzoyesterday at 10:11 PM

> So the London-loyal Poles were in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, and at least they were able to go with a glorious bang.

Many argue this uprising is nothing to be proud of and the crime of the leadership with devastating results: ~200k civilians went with this bang, and city completely wiped out.

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