Warsaw Uprising

Warsaw Uprising
1. (February 1943) An uprising against the occupying German troops staged by 60,000–100,000 survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto (established in 1940 for 400,000 Jews). Although the Jewish survivors were poorly armed it took the heavily armed German garrison over one month to defeat and massacre them.

2. (August 1944) The Polish insurrection in Warsaw in World War II, in which Poles tried to expel the German Army before Soviet forces occupied the city. As the Red Army advanced, Soviet contacts in Warsaw encouraged the underground Home Army, supported by the exiled Polish government in London, to stage an uprising. Polish RESISTANCE MOVEMENT troops led by General Tadeusz Komorowski gained control of the city against a weak German garrison. Heavy German air-raids lasting 63 days preceded a strong German counter-attack. The Soviet Army under the Polish-born General ROKOSSOVSKY reached a suburb of the city but failed to help the insurgents or to allow the western Allies to use Soviet air bases to airlift supplies to the hard-pressed Poles. Supplies ran out and on 2 October the Poles surrendered. The Germans then systematically deported Warsaw's population and destroyed the city itself. The main body of Poles that supported the Polish government in exile was thus destroyed and an organized alternative to Soviet political domination of the country was eliminated. As the Red Army resumed its advance into Poland the Soviet-sponsored Polish Committee of National Liberation was able to impose on Poland a Communist Provisional Government on 1 January 1945 with hardly any resistance.