Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw

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 fighters 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-three 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 of the Rising, Norman Davies's extraordinary book brings it vividly and movingly to life.