The Soviet ‘March of Liberation’

Abstract

Having liberated the Soviet homeland, Stalin declared the Red Army was now on a‘march of liberation’. On 29 July Kosciuszko Radio, the Polish station in Moscow, appealed for Poles in Warsaw to rise, with Soviet help approaching. On 1 August the Polish Home Army, the AK, seized the centre of Warsaw. The AK had been building their strength until they could reassert Polish independence and had initiated risings elsewhere, such as in Volhynia in February. They were unlikely to have taken any lead from Polish Communists in Moscow. It is more likely that they assumed that the proximity of the Red Army meant that the Germans were in retreat, and the time to liberate Warsaw ahead of the Soviets was at hand. They seriously miscalculated. Model had mustered enough strength to hold Rokossovsky at Praga across the Vistula from Warsaw. Hitler gave Himmler the job of crushing the rising, and whatever the situation at the front, Himmler could always find units for such a job: they included a brigade of German criminals and another of anti-Soviet Russians. With typical SS ruthlessness they killed over 200,000 and razed the city to the ground.