70th Anniversary Warsaw Uprising

Uprising Monument

After five years of a degrading occupation, the Poles decided to revolt against their Nazi captors. The rising of August 1944 was both heroic and catastrophically mistimed. They had not realised that there were SS divisions in the area. They did not bargain for the bestiality of the Führer’s response. Hitler ordered that the city should be flattened, and the Poles massacred; and with a sickening fidelity the German soldiers obeyed.

The insurgent Poles were flushed from the sewers with hand-grenades; they were carbonised with kerosene. Their cellars and hideouts were shelled with such unrelenting fury that by the end of the uprising – after 63 days – the Germans had destroyed 85 per cent of the city. 

Read more in the Telegraph