Warsaw Uprisings

Warsaw Uprisngs

A page on the Warsaw Uprising, with statements about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of earlier in the war below

Warsaw Uprising 50,000 troops Polish, versus 25,000 German
Casualties for Poland 18,000 killed,
12,000 wounded,
15,000 taken prisoner
250,000 civilians killed
Casualties for Germany
10,000 killed,
7,000 missing
9,000 wounded
(Powstanie Warszawskie) was an armed struggle during the Second World War by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) to liberate Warsaw from German occupation & Nazi rule. It started on August 1, 1944, as part of a nationwide uprising, Operation Tempest. The Polish troops resisted the German-led forces until October 2 (63 days in total). Losses on the Polish side amounted to 18,000 soldiers killed, 25,000 wounded & over 250,000 civilians killed, mostly in mass executions conducted by advancing German troops. Casualties on the German side amounted to over 17,000 soldiers killed & 9,000 wounded. During the urban combat-and after the end of hostilities, when German forces acting on Hitler's orders burned the city systematically, block after block-an estimated 85% of the city was destroyed.
The Uprising started at a crucial point in the war as the Soviet army approached Warsaw. The Soviet army had reached a point within a few hundred meters across the Vistula River from the city on September 16, but failed to make further headway in the course of the Uprising, leading to accusations that Stalin did not want the Uprising to succeed.
There is no evidence that the Home Army coordinated its struggle with the Soviet army. According to Russian memoirs (for example Konstantin Rokossovsky who led the Warsaw liberation) the Home Army tried to liberate the city before (and without) the Soviet army. In Konstantin Rokossovsky's memoirs there is mention of the Home Army's betrayal.
The Home Army's initial plans for a national uprising, Operation Tempest, which would link up with British forces, changed in 1943 when it became apparent that the Red Army would force the Germans from Poland. The discovery of the Katyn massacre soured Polish-Soviet relations in April, & they never properly recovered. Although doubts existed about the military wisdom of a major uprising, the planning continued nevertheless.
The situation came to a head as Operation Bagration, the Soviet offensive, reached the old Polish border on 13 July. At this point the Poles had to make a decision: either carry out the uprising in the current difficult political situation & risk problems with Soviet support, or fail to carry out an uprising & face Soviet propaganda describing Armia Krajowa as collaborators & ineffective cowards. The urgency of this decision increased as it became clear that after some successful Polish-Soviet co-operation in the liberation of various towns (for example, in the Wilno Uprising), in many cases the Soviet NKVD units who followed behind would either shoot or send to Gulag most Polish officers & those Polish soldiers who could not or would not join the Soviet Army.
In the early summer of 1944, German planning required Warsaw to serve as the strong point of the area & to be held at all costs. The Germans had fortifications constructed & built up their forces in the area. This process slowed after the failed July 20 Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but by late July of 1944, German forces had almost reached their full strength again. On July 27, the governor of the General Government, Hans Frank, called for 100,000 Polish men between the ages of 17-65 to present themselves at several designated meeting places in Warsaw the following day. The plan envisaged the Poles constructing fortifications for the Wehrmacht in & around the city. The Home Army viewed this move as an attempt to neutralise the underground forces, & the underground urged Warsaw inhabitants to ignore it.
More than 1,000 members of German Ordnungspolizei & Sicherheitspolizei have died in the course of their normal police duties; this does not include the losses during participation in any special operations. Alongside those losses, the number of 500 casualties among the various officials of all administration sectors deserves a separate mention - from the speech of Hans Frank on 18 November 1943
The official Soviet propaganda line tried to portray the Polish underground as "waiting with their arms at ease" & not fighting the common enemy. As the Soviet forces approached Warsaw in June & July 1944, Soviet radio stations demanded a full national uprising in Warsaw to cut German communication lines of units still on the right bank of Vistula. On July 29, 1944, the first Soviet armoured units reached the outskirts of Warsaw, but were counterattacked by German 39th Panzer Corps, comprising 4th Panzer Division, 5th SS Panzer Division, 19th Panzer Division, & the Hermann Goering Panzer Division. In the ensuing battle of Radzymin Germans enveloped & annihilated Soviet 3rd Tank Corps at Wolomin, 15 kilometers outside Warsaw. The Germans crushed its resistance by August 11, inflicting a 90% casualty rate on this encircled Soviet force.
On 25 July the Free Polish Cabinet in London approved the planned uprising in Warsaw. Fearing German reprisals following the ignored order to support fortification construction, & believing that time was of the essence, General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski ordered full mobilisation of Home Army forces in the Warsaw area on 1 August 1944.
This mobilization decision had some key ramifications with the Soviet Union. Stalin decried for not being officially consulted on the uprising & thus suspected subterfuge from his Western allies. In retrospect, both sides were jockeying for regional political alignment, with the Polish Home Army's desire for a pro-Western Polish government & the Soviet's intention of establishing a Polish Communist regime.

The Home Army forces of the Warsaw District numbered about 50,000 soldiers, 23,000 of them equipped & combat-ready. Most of them had trained for several years in partisan warfare & urban guerrilla warfare, but lacked experience in prolonged daylight fighting. The forces lacked equipment, especially since the Home Army had shuttled weapons & men to the east of Warsaw before making the decision on 21 July to include Warsaw in Operation Tempest. Besides the Home Army itself, a number of other partisan groups subordinated themselves to Home Army command for the uprising. Finally, many volunteers, including some Jews freed from the concentration camp in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto, joined as the fighting continued.
General Antoni Chrusciel, codename 'Monter', commanded the Polish forces in Warsaw. Initially he divided his forces into eight areas:
· Area I (Sródmiescie, Old Town)
· Area II (Zoliborz, Marymont, Bielany)
· Area III (Wola)
· Area IV (Ochota)
· Area V (Mokotów)
· Area VI (Praga)
· Area VII (Powiat Warszawski)
· Zgrupowanie Kedywu Komendy Glównej
On September 20 a re-organisation of this structure took place to fit the structure of Polish forces fighting among the Western Allies. The entire force, renamed the Warsaw Home Army Corps (Warszawski Korpus Armii Krajowej) & commanded by General Antoni Chrusciel (Monter), formed into three infantry divisions.
On August 1 their military materiel consisted of:
· 1,000 rifles
· 1,700 pistols
· 300 machine pistols
· 60 submachine guns
· 7 machine guns (Meant by medium or light machineguns, such as the MG 42)
· 35 anti-tank guns & carbines (including several PIATs)
· 25,000 hand grenades (Mainly of the 'stick' variety).
In the course of the fighting the Poles obtained further gear through airdrops & by capture from the enemy (including several armoured vehicles). Also, the insurgents' workshops worked busily throughout the uprising, producing 300 automatic pistols, 150 flame-throwers, 40,000 grenades, a number of mortars, & even an armoured car.
On August 1, 1944, the German garrison in Warsaw numbered some 10,000 troops under General Rainer Stahel. Together with various units on the left bank of the Vistula River, German forces comprised some 15,000 to 16,000 Wehrmacht soldiers as well as SS & police forces. Critically, these well-equipped German forces had been prepared for the defence of the city's key positions for many months. Several hundred concrete bunkers & barbed wire lines protected the buildings & areas occupied by the Germans. Also, at least 90,000 additional German troops were available from occupation forces in the surrounding area. As of August 23, 1944, the German units directly involved with fighting in Warsaw included:
· Battle Group Rohr (commanded by Major General Rohr)
· Battle Group Reinefarth (commanded by SS-Gruppenführer Reinefarth)
o Attack Group Dirlewanger Brigade
o Attack Group Reck (commanded by Major Reck)
o Attack Group Schmidt (commanded by Colonel Schmidt)
o Various support & backup units
· Warsaw Garrison (Group of Warsaw Commandant) commanded by Lieutenant General Stahel
The uprising began officially in daylight at 17:00 or "W-hour" August 1, a decision which is now regarded as a costly mistake. Although the Germans failed to realise that extra activity & early fights with the insurgents were linked & had not developed a plan for dealing with the uprising, they received a warning, reportedly from a Polish woman, an hour before the start. Lack of surprise, a sudden change of plan, inexperience in day fighting & incomplete mobilization meant that many of the earlier Polish objectives of the uprising were not achieved. The first two days were crucial in establishing the battlefield for the rest of the uprising. Most successes were achieved in the city centre (Sródmiescie) & old town (Stare Miasto) & nearby parts of Wola, where most objectives were captured, although major German strongholds remained. In other areas such as Mokotów the attackers almost completely failed to capture their objectives, while in areas such as Wola they captured most of their targets, but with very heavy losses that forced them to retreat. In Praga, on the East bank of the river, the German concentration was so high that the Polish forces fighting there were forced back into hiding. Most crucially, the fighters in different areas failed to link up, either with each other or with areas outside Warsaw, leaving each section of the city isolated from the others.
After the first several hours of fighting many units adopted a more defensive strategy while the civilian population started erecting barricades throughout the city. The moment of greatest success, on August 4, was also the moment at which the German army began receiving reinforcements. SS General Erich von dem Bach was appointed commander & soon after began to counter-attack with the aim of linking up with the remaining German pockets & then cutting off the Uprising from the Vistula (Wisla) river. August 5 is marked by the liberation of the former Warsaw Ghetto area by insurgents & by the beginning of the Wola Massacre, where in mass executions approximately 40,000 civilians were slaughtered by the Germans. A critical aim of this German policy was to crush the will of the Poles to fight & bring the uprising to an end without having to commit to the heavy city fighting; until late September, the Germans were, in fact, shooting all captured insurgents on the spot for the same reason. In other areas, the prime aim of the German troops seems to have been to loot & rape rather than fight, which actually allowed Polish defence to continue against the odds. This German policy was later reversed when the German commanders decided that such atrocities only stiffened the resistance of the Poles to fight their oppressors. From the end of September on, some of the captured Polish soldiers were starting to be treated as POWs. On August 7 German forces were strengthened by the arrival of tanks with civilians being used as human shields. After two days of heavy fights they managed to cut Wola in two & reach the Bankowy Square.The German aim was to gain a significant victory to show the Home Army the futility of further fighting & make them surrender. This did not succeed. Between August 9 & August 18 pitched battles raged around the Old Town & nearby Bankowy Square, with successful attacks by the German side & counter-attacks from the Polish side. Once again, German 'special' tactics were demonstrated by targeted attacks against clearly marked hospitals (reminiscent of Luftwaffe attacks against hospitals in September, 1939). The Old Town was held until the end of August when diminished supplies made further defence impossible. On September 2 the defenders of the Old Town withdrew through the sewers, which at this time were becoming a major means of communication between different parts of the uprising. More than 5,300 men & women were evacuated in this way.
German tactics very much hinged on bombardment through the use of huge cannons (including the Schwerer Gustav supergun) & heavy bombers which the Poles, without any anti-aircraft artillery & few anti-tank weapons, were unable to effectively defend against.
The Soviet army captured Eastern Warsaw & arrived on the Eastern bank of the Vistula in mid-September. When they finally reached the right bank of the Vistula on September 10, the officers of the Home Army units stationed there proposed recreating the pre-war 36th 'Academic Legion' infantry regiment; however, the NKVD arrested them all & sent them to the Soviet Union.
Contrary to our expectations, the enemy has halted all of their offensive actions along the entire front of the 9th Army. - from the journal of German 9th Army on August 16, 1944, showing the German amazement at the Soviet response to the Uprising.
However, Soviet attacks on 4th SS Panzer Corps east of Warsaw were renewed on August 26, & slowly pressed 4th SS Panzer Corps into Praga, & then across the Vistula. Many of the "Soviets" who arrived in Poland were actually from the 1st Polish Army (1 Armia Wojska Polskiego), & some of them landed in the Czerniaków & Powisle areas & made contacts with Home Army forces. With inadequate artillery & air support, though 1st Polish Army had 5 artillery brigades under it, & coming in too small numbers, most were killed & the rest were soon forced to retreat. After repeated, almost unsupported attempts by the 1st Polish Army to link up with the insurgents failed, the Soviets limited their assistance to sporadic & insignificant artillery & air support. Plans for a river crossing were suspended "for at least 4 months", since operations against the 5 panzer divisions on 9th Army's order of battle were problematic at that point, & the commander of the 1st Polish Army, General Zygmunt Berling, who ordered the crossing of the Vistula by his units, was relieved of his duties by his Soviet superiors. From this point on, the Warsaw Uprising can be seen as a one-sided war of attrition or, alternatively, as a fight for acceptable terms of surrender. Fighting ended on 2 October when the Polish forces were finally forced to capitulate.
In the first weeks of the Uprising on Polish-controlled territory, people tried to recreate normal life in their free country. Cultural life was vibrant, with theatres, post offices, newspapers & similar activities. Boys & girls of the Polish Scouts acted as couriers for an underground postal service, risking their lives daily to transmit any information that might help their people. Near the end of the Uprising, lack of food, medicine, overcrowding & obviously indiscriminate German air & artillery assault on the city made the civilian situation more & more desperate.
The limited landings by the 1st Polish army, mentioned above, represented the only external force which arrived to physically support the uprising. Most importantly, there was limited support in terms of airdrops from the Western allies, (the Royal Air Force, in which a number of Polish, Australian, Canadian & South African pilots flew, made 223 sorties & lost 34 aircraft), but the effect of these airdrops was mostly psychological, as all but one American airdrop had to be carried out from faraway Brindisi in Italy. Although the Soviets briefly (13 September-28) provided some airdrops--but without parachutes & only when the uprising was on the verge of collapse--they actively prevented Allied assistance by denying landing rights to Allied aircraft on Soviet-occupied territory, & even shot down a number of those which carried supplies from Italy.
American support was also limited. After Stalin's objections to supporting the uprising, Churchill telegrammed Roosevelt on August 25 & proposed sending planes in defiance of Stalin, to "see what happens". Unable & unwilling to upset Stalin before the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt replied on August 26 with: I do not consider it advantageous to the long-range general war prospect for me to join you in the proposed message to Uncle Joe.
Also of significant note was the existence of an American airbase at Poltava in the Ukraine, from which an airdrop was made during the "Frantic Mission" in mid-September. However, this action infuriated Stalin, who immediately forbade all Allied presence in Soviet airspace.
On October 2 General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski signed the capitulation order of the remaining Polish forces (Warszawski Korpus Armii Krajowej or Home Army Warsaw Corps) at the German headquarters in the presence of General von dem Bach. According to the capitulation agreement, the Wehrmacht promised to treat Home Army soldiers in accordance with the Geneva Convention, & to treat the civilian population humanely. Fighting was so fierce that SS chief Heinrich Himmler remarked: One of the most deadly fights since the beginning of the war, as difficult as the fight for Stalingrad - to other German generals on 21 September 1944.
The next day the Germans began to disarm the Home Army soldiers. They later sent 15,000 of them to POW camps in various parts of Germany. Between 5,000-6,000 insurgents decided to blend into the civilian population hoping to continue the fight later. The entire Warsaw civilian population was expelled from the city & sent to a transit camp Durchgangslager 121 in Pruszków. Out of 350,000-550,000 civilians who passed through the camp, 90,000 were sent to labour camps in the Reich, 60,000 were shipped to death & concentration camps (Ravensbruck, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, others), while the rest were transported to various locations in the General Government & released.
One of the reasons given as to why the Warsaw uprising failed, was the failure of the Soviet Red Army to aid the Resistance. The Red Army, which was ordered to halt & therefore positioned just a short distance away on the right bank of the Vistula, was ordered not to link up with or in any way assist the Resistance forces. Post-war political considerations & malice by Stalin are seen as the reason for the Red Army's failure to act. Another possible reason was the 4-5 Panzer Divisions in the 46th Panzer Corps & 4th SS Panzer Corps on the order of battle of German 9th Army holding positions east of Warsaw.
It is likely that Stalin ordered his forces to halt right before entering the city so that the Home Army would not succeed. Had the Home Army triumphed, the Polish government-in-exile in London would have increased their political & moral legitimacy to reinstate a government of its own, rather than accept a Soviet regime. By halting the Red Army's advance, Stalin guaranteed the destruction of Polish resistance (which would undoubtedly also have resisted Soviet occupation), that it would be the Soviets who "liberated" Warsaw, & that Soviet influence would prevail over Poland. The Soviet military gave a shortage of fuel as the reason why they could not advance. German & Polish sources disagree.
After the remaining population had been expelled, the Germans started the destruction of the remains of the city. Special groups of German engineers were dispatched throughout the city in order to burn & demolish the remaining buildings. According to German plans, after the war Warsaw was to be turned into a lake. The demolition squads used flame-throwers & explosives to methodically destroy house after house. They paid special attention to historical monuments, Polish national archives & places of interest: nothing was to be left of what used to be a city. By January 1945 85% of the buildings were destroyed: 25% as a result of the Uprising, 35% as a result of systematic German actions after the uprising, the rest as a result of the earlier Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (15%) & other combat including the September 1939 campaign (10%). Material losses were estimated at 10,455 buildings, 923 historical buildings (94 percent), 25 churches, 14 libraries including the National Library, 81 primary schools, 64 high schools, Warsaw University & Warsaw University of Technology, & most of the historical monuments. Almost a million inhabitants lost all of their possessions. The exact amount of losses of private & public property as well as pieces of art, monuments of science & culture is unknown but considered enormous. However, various estimates place it at an equivalent of approximately 40 billion 1939 US dollars. In 2004 the Warsaw self-government authorities estimated that the approximate loss of the municipal property is 45 billion 2004 US dollars (this includes only the property owned by the city of Warsaw on August 31, 1939, & not the properties owned by the inhabitants themselves). The municipal council of Warsaw is currently disputing whether claims for German reparations should be made. Destruction was so bad that in order to rebuild much of Warsaw, a detailed landscape of the city which had been commissioned by the government before the Partitions of Poland, painted by two Italian artists Bacciarelli & Canaletto who ran an arts school there as well, had to be used as a model to recreate most of the buildings.
The Red Army finally did cross the Vistula River on January 17, 1945. They captured the ruins of Festung Warschau in a few hours, with little or no opposition from the Germans. German units put up some minor resistance in the Warsaw University area, but Soviet forces broke the German defenses in less than an hour. This advance was facilitated when the German High Command redeployed 4th SS Panzer Corps from the Warsaw area to Budapest in December 1944.
Due to a lack of cooperation & often the active aggressive moves on the part of the Soviets & several other factors, the Warsaw Uprising & Operation Tempest failed in their primary goal: to free part of the Polish territories so that a government loyal to the Polish government-in-exile could be established there instead of a Soviet puppet state. There is no consensus among historians as to whether that was ever possible, or whether those operations had any other lasting effect. Some argue that without Operation Tempest & the Warsaw Uprising, Poland would have ended as a Soviet republic, a fate definitely worse than that of an "independent" puppet state, & thus the Operation succeeded at least partially in being a political demonstration to the Soviets & Western Allies. It is also worth mentioning that due to the Warsaw Uprising, the Soviets stopped their offensive in Poland to let the Germans suppress the uprising. Some historians speculate that if they had not stopped their march, they would have occupied all of Germany rather than just the eastern section.
Overall Polish casualties were between 150,000 & 200,000; more importantly, many of those lost were the people who would have played important & even critical roles in the country's recovery (although many of the Polish intelligentsia had already been killed at the time of the Soviet & German invasions in 1939). The city of Warsaw was rebuilt, with the Old Town being restored to its former state.
Most soldiers of the Home Army (including those who took part in the Warsaw Uprising) were persecuted after the war: captured by the NKVD or UB, interrogated & imprisoned, awaiting trials on various charges. Many of them were sent to gulags or executed or just "disappeared". Most of those sent to POW camps in Germany were later liberated by British, American & Polish forces & remained in the West, including uprising leaders Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski & Antoni Chrusciel (in London & the United States, respectively).
In addition, members of the Polish Air Force flying supplies to the Home Army, were likewise persecuted after the war & many others "disappered" after their return to Poland. Once word got back to the Polish flyers still in England, many decided not to return to Poland.
Factual knowledge of the Warsaw Uprising, inconvenient to Stalin, was twisted by propaganda of the People's Republic of Poland, which stressed the failings of the Home Army & the Polish government-in-exile, & forbade all criticism of the Red Army or the political goals of Soviet strategy. Until the late sixties the very name of the Home Army was censored, & most films & novels covering the 1944 Uprising were either banned or modified so that the name of the Home Army did not appear. Further, the official propaganda of both communist Poland & the USSR suggested that the Home Army was some sort of a group of right-wing collaborators with Nazi Germany. From 1956 on, the image of the Warsaw Uprising in Polish propaganda was changed a little bit to underline that the soldiers were indeed brave, while the officers were treacherous & the commanders were characterised by disregard of the losses. The first serious publications on the topic were not issued until the late eighties. In Warsaw no monument to the Home Army could be built until 1989. Instead, efforts of the Soviet-backed Armia Ludowa were glorified & exaggerated.
In the West, the story of the Polish fight for Warsaw with little support was an embarrassment, as was the shock of Home Army soldiers as Western Allies recognised the Soviet controlled pro-Communist regime installed by Stalin; as a result, the story was not publicised for many years.
The courage of soldiers & civilians involved in the Warsaw Uprising, & its betrayal by the Soviet Union, contributed to keeping anti-Soviet sentiment in Poland at a high level throughout the Cold War. Memories of the Uprising helped to inspire the Polish labour movement Solidarity, which led a peaceful opposition movement against the Communist government during the 1980s, leading to the downfall of that government in 1989 & the emergence of democratic political representation.
After 1989 censorship of the facts of the Uprising ceased, & 1 August has now become a celebrated anniversary. On 1 August 1994, Poland held a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Uprising. Germany & Russia were invited to the ceremony, although there was opposition to Russia's invitation. Moreover, a joke making the rounds suggested that "Yeltsin should be given a pair of binoculars so he can observe the ceremony from across the [Vistula] river." On July 31, 2004, a Warsaw Uprising Museum opened in Warsaw (see "Related links" below for recent news reports on this event).
Warsaw President Lech Kaczynski, now President of Poland, established a historical commission in 2004 to estimate material losses that were inflicted upon the city by German authorities. The commission estimated the losses on at least 45.3 billion euros ($54 billion) in current value.
Several other cities & regions that experienced destruction by Germany have followed Warsaw, including Silesia, Mazowsze & city of Poznan, & said they would prepare their own estimates of war-time material losses
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
German casualties Official daily average of 2,090, including 821 Waffen SS

Jewish Casualties
750-1,800 insurgents (April 19)
56,000+ civilians

Casualties German
Officially 16 KIA; other estimates over 300 total dead since January 18, including a number of Jewish collaborators. 86 listed as wounded according to Stroop's Report.

Jewish
About 13,000 killed on spot, most of the rest deported to death camps; total of 56,065 accounted for {killed & captured}, according to Stroop's Report.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish insurgency against Nazi Germany's attempt to liquidate the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland during World War II. The main fighting lasted from April 19, 1943 to May 16 of that year, when a tenacious but weakly armed & badly supplied resistance was ultimately crushed by SS-Gruppenführer (then Brigadeführer) Jürgen Stroop.
The significant precursor to the main fighting was an armed insurgency launched against the Germans & Jewish collaborators on January 18, 1943.
Starting in 1940, the Nazis began concentrating Poland's population of over 3 million Jews in a number of extremely overcrowded ghettos in various Polish cities. The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, held 380,000 people in a densely-packed area in the middle of the city. Thousands of Jews died due to rampant disease or starvation even before the Nazis began massive deportations of the Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. In the 52 days before September 12, 1942, about 300,000 Ghetto residents were sent to the extermination camps & killed.
At the start of the deportations, members of the Jewish resistance movement met, but decided not to fight, believing that the Jews were really being sent to labor camps rather than to their death. By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to death camps, & many of the remaining Jews decided to fight.
On January 18, 1943, the first instance of armed insurgency occurred when the Germans started the second expulsion of the Jews. The expulsion stopped after four days & the ZOB & ZZW insurgent organizations took control of the Ghetto, building dozens of fighting posts & killing Jews they considered to be Nazi collaborators, including Jewish police officers & Gestapo agents.
As the frustrated Germans diverted additional resources to end the standoff, during the next three months all inhabitants of the Ghetto prepared for what they realized would be their final fight. Hundreds of camouflaged bunker shelters were dug under the houses (including 618 air raid shelters), most connected through the sewage system & linked up with the central water supply & electricity. The Ghetto fighters were armed with pistols & revolvers, few rifles & one machine gun (three heavy machine guns according to some sources). They had little ammunition, & relied heavily on improvised explosive devices & incendiary bottles; some more weapons were supplied through the uprising, or captured from the Germans. The Ghetto territory was divided into three military districts; each organization was responsible for its district.
Support from outside the Ghetto was limited, but Polish Resistance units from Armia Krajowa (AK) & Communist Gwardia Ludowa attacked German sentry units near the ghetto walls & attempted to smuggle weapons & ammunition inside. AK engaged the Germans between April 19 & April 23 at different locations outside the walls attempting to breach the ghetto. One Polish unit from AK, namely Panstwowy Korpus Bezpieczenstwa under the command of Henryk Iwanski, even fought inside the Ghetto together with ZZW & then retreated together to the so-called "Aryan side". AK disseminated information & appeals to help the Jews in the ghetto, both in Poland & via radio transmissions informing the Allies.. Several partisans of ZOB & part of the command structure with help from the Poles managed escape via canals. Though Iwanski's action was the most famous, it was just one of many actions by the Polish resistance to help the Jews.
However, in the end the combined efforts of the Polish & Jewish resistance fighters proved to be not enough against the full force of the Nazi war machine. The Germans eventually committed an averaged daily force of 2,054 soldiers & 36 officers, including 821 Waffen SS Panzergrenadier troops {consisting of five SS Reserve & Training Battalions & one SS Cavalry Reserve & Training Battalion} & 363 Polish Navy-Blue Policemen who had been ordered by Germans to cordon the walls of the Ghetto. The other forces were drawn from SS Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) police regiments {battalions from 22rd & 23rd}, SS Sicherheitsdienst (SD) security service, one Battalion apeice from two Wehrmacht railroad combat engineers regiments, a battery of Wehrmacht light artillery, a battalion of Ukrainian Trawniki-Männer from the SS Final Solution training camp Trawniki, Lithuanian & Latvian auxiliary policemen (Askaris), & technical emergency corps as well as Polish fire brigade personnel. Their support weapons included armoured fighting vehicles, combat gasses, flamethrowers, aircraft, tanks & artillery.
The final battle started on the eve of Passover, April 19, when the German columns entered the Ghetto in force. Jewish insurgents shot & threw Molotov cocktails & hand grenades at Nazi troops from alleyways, sewers, house windows, & even burning buildings; a French-made SS tank was set afire by ZOB petrol bombs, & the initial attack was repelled. The Jewish insurgents achieved noteworthy success against the forces of Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, who in effect had lost his post as the SS & police commander of the Warsaw area, & was replaced by Jürgen Stroop.
After a pause the assault resumed, with Nazis burning the houses block by block, blowing up basements & sewers, & rounding up or killing any Jew they could capture. Another German tank was knocked out on April 19 in the insurgent counterattack in which ZZW commander David Apfelbaum was killed. The longest lasting position battle took place around the ZZW stronghold at Muranowski Square from April 19 to late April. On April 29 the remaining fighters of the organization, which had lost all its leaders, left the ghetto through the Muranowski tunnel & became relocated in the Michalin Forest; this marked the end of the main battles.
After the significant fighting ended, the hidden bunkers were the main arena of resistance. In this fight, the Germans used smoke grenades & tear gas or poison gas, forcing the Jews out; in many instances Jews kept firing as they emerged, & a number of male & particularly female fighters threw hidden grenades after they had surrendered, or fired concealed handguns.On May 8 Germans discovered the command post of the ZOB at Mila 18, resulting in the death of most of its leadership & almost 100 remaining fighters, most of whom committed mass suicide; they included the organization's commander, Mordechai Anielewicz.
The uprising ended on May 16. Nevertheless, sporadic shooting could be heard in the area of the Ghetto throughout the summer of 1943. Finally, the uprising was strangled on June 5 when the last battle with the Germans was led by a group of Jewish criminals, without any link to either ZZW or ZOB.
During the fighting approximately 7,000 of the Jewish residents were killed. An additional 6,000 were burnt alive or gassed in bunkers. The remaining 50,000 people were sent to German death camps, mostly the Treblinka extermination camp.
The final report of Jürgen Stroop on May 13, 1943 stated:
180 Jews, bandits, & subhumans were destroyed. The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence. The large-scale action was terminated at 2015 hours by blowing up the Warsaw SynagogueTotal number of Jews dealt with 56,065, including both Jews caught & Jews whose extermination can be proved.[6]
According to the report, Stroop's force lost 16 dead & 86 wounded, including over 60 Waffen-SS. According to other estimates, up to 1,300 Germans & collaborators were killed or wounded in the uprising.
After the fighting, most of the burned down houses were levelled to the ground, & the complex of the KL Warschau concentration camps was founded in the area of the Ghetto. The Germans also used the former Ghetto to murder Polish Lapanka prisoners in a highly publicised reprisal hostage executions.
During the later Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Polish Home Army battalion "Zoska" was able to save 380 Jewish concentration camp prisoners from the KL Warschau's Gesiówka subcamp, most of whom immediately joined the AK. Few small groups of the Ghetto inhabitants also managed to survive in the sewers until the Warsaw Uprising.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 is sometimes confused with the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The two events were separated in time, & were quite different in aim. The first, in the Ghetto, was a choice to die fighting - with a slight hope of escape, rather than a sure death in an extermination camp, with the moment to fight being chosen as the last moment when the strength to fight was still available. The second was a coordinated action, part of the larger Operation Tempest.
Still, there are links between the events, as a number (approximately 100) of the insurgents from the Ghetto Uprising took part in the later Warsaw Uprising, fighting in the ranks of AK & AL. Moreover, many [citation needed] say that the Warsaw ghetto uprising inspired the Warsaw uprising of 1944.
A number of survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, known as the "Ghetto Fighters", including Yitzhak Zuckerman (Icchak Cukierman, ZOB deputy commander), & his wife, Zivia Lubetkin who was also one of the commanders of the fighting units, went on to found kibbutz Lohamey ha-Geta'ot (lit. Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz) in Israel. In 1984 the members of the kibbutz published Dapei Edut ("Testimonies of Survival," interviewed & edited by Zvika Dror), four volumes of personal testimonies from 96 members of the kibbutz. Located north of Acre, the Kibbutz features a museum & archives dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust.
Yad Mordechai, another kibbutz (just north of the Gaza Strip), was named after Mordechai Anielewicz.

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