Polish Home Army’s 26th Infantry Regiment en route from the Kielce-Radom area to Warsaw in an attempt to join the Warsaw Uprising.
Bor-Komorowski issued the orders for the launch of Operation Burza, and later described how they were put into practice:
Partisan groups were assembled into larger units and directed to districts which lay across the German lines of retreat. In the eastern provinces, which were the first to start Burza operations, all soldiers of the Home Army were being mobilised. Regiments, battalions and divisions received names and numbers as in 1939. Arms and ammunition, radio and other equipment, stores, warm clothing (short uniform overcoats, caps and boots), hospital equipment, etc. – all these things manufactured at home in secret workshops – were being gradually smuggled to the forests. The Polish partisan groups in the east grew into substantial regular forces long before the Red Army front reached them.
Because chances were high that the Soviets would attempt to disarm the AK units, every unit was issued with a short wave radio transmitter so that Bor-Komorowski would be kept fully informed and could amend orders as required.
Operation Burza was begun by the AK 27th Division, commanded by Major Wojciech `Oliwa’ Kiwerski, which was operating near Kowel (Kovel) in the Wołyń province. It was a well-equipped division with 7,300 men divided into 8 battalions and 2 cavalry squadrons, as well as signals, engineers and military police units. These soldiers were armed with 4,500 rifles, 700 pistols, 140 sub-machine guns, 100 machine guns and 3 anti-tank guns. During January and February 1944, the division engaged the Germans and their Ukrainian auxiliaries in some fierce actions, leading to AK control of small areas of Wołyń, and in March it encountered the leading units of the Red Army and cooperated with them in the capture of Turzysk (Turiysk) and Kowel. The Soviet commanders, General Sergeyev and Colonel Charytonov, praised the action of the AK division and agreed to allow them to fight alongside the Red Army and under its operational command while still maintaining direct contact with AK command. Bor-Komorowski was delighted with this response from the Soviets and radioed back his agreement. The Germans then attacked the 27th Division and the Soviet 56th Cavalry Regiment with four divisions which included SS Panzer Division Viking. `Oliwa’ was killed and his place was taken by Major Tadeusz `Źegota’ Sztumberg-Rychter. After five days of heavy fighting, the Polish and Soviet troops became separated and the Poles were left to fight alone. As their losses mounted the decision was taken to flee for the relative security of the nearby marshes. Most of the supplies and heavy equipment were destroyed and 900 horses let loose, then `we took light automatic weapons, as much ammunition as we could carry, and we set off towards the Pripet marshes’. The remnants of the division fought the Germans for another two months before AK command ordered them to retreat westwards across the river Bug.
Thus the first major battle of Operation Burza was a military failure. It was also a political failure despite the hopeful nature of the first contacts with the Soviets. Unknown to the AK an order had been issued to Soviet commanders in November 1943 for the disarming of AK units and the murder of those soldiers who resisted. During the spring and early summer of 1944, the Soviet armies made no further advances against the Germans. The Soviets now occupied parts of the Polish provinces of Wołyń, Stanisławów and Tarnopol but were too weak to undertake military operations to liberate any major cities. Instead, they were occupied with the disarming of any AK units they found in Wołyń and East Galicia. In April orders were issued for the conscription of all men aged between 17 and 35 into the 1st Polish Army, and those who refused either to be disarmed or to join that army were arrested; many were deported to an unknown location in the Soviet Union. By July over 6,000 AK soldiers had been arrested. The Polish units were also under pressure from the Germans: in June and July, the Luftwaffe regiments mounted large-scale anti-partisan hunts in the forests of Białowieźa in Podlesie and near Biłgoraj, 55 miles south of Lublin.
The first battle of Operation Burza was also a political failure on the international front because the AK was not being given any credit for its actions: the Soviets publicised the activities of their partisans but failed to mention the AK units who had worked alongside them. In March, Sosnkowski warned Bor-Komorowski: The Allies, under influence of unfavourable propaganda, suspect that neither the central H.Q. nor the Home Army Command are really in control of the Underground as a whole. The dates and events of battle and sabotage are taken as accidental and unintentional from our side. Bor-Komorowski’s response was to ask Sosnkowski to approach the British Government to ask it to despatch a military mission to Poland to observe what the AK was doing and `which could serve as a witness to Soviet moves and oppose them’. In April Churchill gave a final and unequivocal refusal to this. The AK command kept the Polish Government in London fully informed about the progress of Operation Burza and the conduct of the Soviet authorities, and the Polish ambassador, Edward Raczyñski, in turn, passed the information on to Eden. The British Government, however, was not prepared to make public any news that detracted from the reputation of its ally, the Soviet Union.
An uprising in Poland had no place in allied strategic planning. If it had been given a central role, then more effort would have been made to parachute adequate supplies into Poland. Instead, the Allies wanted the AK to continue its operations aimed at disrupting German communications. On 11 March, Sosnkowski told Bor-Komorowski:
The Allies have approached us suggesting preparations for action against communications. The political situation may render such action necessary from our point of view, to demonstrate our goodwill in respect of the `Friends’ . . . We are ensuring secrecy at our end to prevent the Soviets from taking propaganda advantage for themselves or placing any obstacles in our way.
The result was Operation Jula, which took place at the beginning of April. One of the Cichociemni, a Polish paratrooper from Britain, `Szyb’, took part in the operation to blow up a 150-foot span of the railway bridge over the Wisłoka, in the Przeworsk-Rozwadow sector:
Two trains were coming, one in each direction. They were going to pass each other on the bridge. One locomotive thundered over the bridge and already a long stream of trucks was following. I waited as long as I could; then as the second locomotive was coming over the bridge, we detonated the charges.
Elsewhere, two munitions trains were blown up at Rogoźno and near Nowosielce. German records show that during this period 34 main railway routes were attacked in over 6,000 separate incidents. The Allies gained independent verification of the AK operation through Enigma decrypts, and the head of SOE, Lord Selborne, wrote to Sosnkowski expressing his delight at the success of the operation.
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On 22 June, the Soviets launched Operation Bagration, designed to destroy the German Army Group Centre and thrust the 1st Belorussian Front, under General Konstantin Rokossovsky, deep into central-eastern Poland.* Other Soviet armies would drive against Wilno to the north, and advance along the Lwow-Sandomierz axis in the south. The sheer weight of the Soviet attack took the Germans by surprise, and within two weeks the Army Group Centre had been routed, leaving a gap 250 miles wide and almost 100 miles deep in the German front. One by one major cities fell to the Soviet forces: Minsk, the capital of Belorussia on 3 July; Wilno on 13 July; Lublin on 23 July; Brzeoæ on 26 July; and Lwow on 27 July. By the end of July, the 1st Belorussian Front had crossed the Vistula near Deblin, Pu3awy and Magnuszow. The 1st Ukrainian Front had reached the Vistula near Baronow, south of Sandomierz. The Soviet armies were now converging on Warsaw. The casualty figures were high: of nearly 2,400,000 Soviet troops, 178,507 were killed, missing or taken prisoner, and a further 578,308 were wounded. The German losses were about 300,000 dead, 250,000 wounded and 120,000 taken prisoner.
Following Rokossovsky’s 1st Belorussian Front was the 1st Polish Army. After its blooding in the battle of Lenino in October 1943, the 1st Polish Army `Kościuszko’ Division had been withdrawn to Bobyry in the Ukraine for reinforcement and further training. While it was there, the political commissars informed the troops about the Katyń massacre, making it clear that the Germans were responsible. The Polish army chaplain, Father Kupsz, held Mass in the Katyń forest. One Polish soldier chanced upon an old man in the woods who whispered to him: `If these trees could talk, they would tell you much.’ By the end of March 1944, the 1st Polish Army consisted of 3 infantry divisions, tank units, artillery, as well as auxiliary units, numbering 43,508 men and women. An article in Pravda greeted the creation of the 3rd Division:
This Division has been trained and prepared for fighting on the Soviet- German front. To a considerable extent the Division is composed of Poles who lived in the western regions of the Ukraine, recently liberated by the Red Army from German occupation. Among the men of the Third Division are a number of former members of the underground organisations created by the London émigré Polish Government. These men, however, could not reconcile themselves to the humiliating position in which they were placed by their leaders. This Division was named `Romuald Traugutt’.
Other recruits included Poles from Silesia, Pomerania and Warthegau, who had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht and then captured by the Red Army. At the end of March, the 1st Polish Army began to move towards the front in stages via Kiev to the Berdichev-Zhitomir area. The army was commanded by General Berling, with General Owierczewski, his deputy commander responsible for operations, and General Aleksander Zawadzki, deputy commander responsible for political affairs.
On 29 April 1944, the 1st Polish Army joined the 1st Belorussian Front, commanded by Rokossovsky. The first Polish province it entered was Wołyń, and the first Polish towns it passed through were Równe and Łuck. After three years of exile in the Soviet Union, the Poles were delighted to be on home territory at last. The towns looked familiar but it was the countryside that made the most lasting impact on them:
We came to a large village where not a single house was left standing. Only smoky chimneys were sticking up everywhere. In this cemetery, cherry orchards were ripening, full of red juicy fruit as though in defiance of death and of this genocide. A sense of something sinister increased the deep silence which hovered over the place.
The Germans were not responsible for this destruction: the Ukrainian UPA had massacred the Polish inhabitants. Soldiers of the AK also remembered their first encounter with the 1st Polish Army, particularly their impression of the officers:
Making such a parody! You dress up a Russian who doesn’t even speak Polish . . . They were unruly. They were not elegant. They had no discipline. They looked more like riff-raff . . . You see, a few months earlier he was a forestry worker and 1706155082 has to pretend he’s a captain, a major, a colonel! And they would address themselves as `comrade’, stressing the political character of the army.
While in Wołyń the soldiers of the 1st Polish Army received an increased level of political indoctrination designed to convince them of the legitimacy of the Curzon Line and of the Union of Polish Patriots and the PPR, and efforts were made to discredit the Polish Government in London. On the night of 22-23 July, the army crossed the river Bug, the new Soviet-Polish frontier, and advanced towards Lublin. The crossing of this new frontier `was given a very solemn character – with flags flying and the band playing’.
The AK had played its part in the Soviet successes. In January 1944, the AK in the Wilno province had launched Operation Burza. By the end of April they had fought more than 20 major actions, capturing German arms, ammunition and stores, and taking control of areas of the province. At the end of June, the Red Army was approaching the city of Wilno. The AK wanted to seize it first in the name of the Polish Government, so Lieutenant-Colonel Aleksander `Wilk’ Krzyźanowski ordered over 10,000 AK soldiers to attack the German garrison. On 7 July, the battle began with the AK attacking Wilno from four directions with artillery, air and tank support from the Soviet forces. The city fell to the AK on 13 July, and for two days the Polish `red and white flag flew for the last time on the Giedymin Tower’ before being hauled down by the Soviets. `Wilk’ was invited to talks with General Ivan Tchernyakhowski, commander of the 3rd Belorussian Front, during which it was suggested that the Poles should form an infantry division and a cavalry brigade from their troops. The Poles opposed the offer and, on 17 July, the NKVD arrested `Wilk’ and 70 of his officers and deported them to the Soviet Union.
In Lwow, the AK commander Colonel Władysław `Janka’ Filipkowski and 3,000 poorly armed soldiers fought to wrest control of the city from the Germans as the Red Army advanced into the suburbs. As the Germans retreated, Filipkowski established his headquarters in the city and disclosed his identity to the Soviet forces. He was then invited to talks with General Ivanov, representing General Koniev, the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, and with the NKVD General Gruczko. During their meeting a message was read out from Koniev thanking the AK for its `brotherly cooperation’. On 27 July, Filipkowski reported to AK command that Gruczko had informed him: `finally Lwow is Soviet and Ukrainian but this does not exclude later modifications between the governments’. The Soviets had also demanded the disbandment of the AK units and their enlistment in the 1st Polish Army. On 31 July, Filipkowski returned to the Soviet headquarters for further talks, whereupon he and 5 of his staff officers were flown to the 1st Polish Army base near Zhitomir in the Ukraine and arrested – and never returned. Back in Lwow, the NKVD surrounded the AK headquarters and arrested everyone there, including the local government delegate, Professor Adam Ostrowski, and sent them all to the prison in Ulica Lacki.
* Rokossovsky had been born in Warsaw and was of Polish ancestry. He served in the Russian Army in the First World War and then joined the Red Army.
