Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler and the Crushing of a City. Alexandra Richie

highly educated men and women who looked on their new German ‘superiors’ with nothing but contempt.

      Having murdered most of Warsaw’s Jewish population the Germans had, by default, become the second-largest ethnic group in the city, with more than 16,000 Reichsdeutsche (‘pure’ Germans) and around 14,700 Volksdeutsche and Stammdeutsche (ethnic Germans). This did not include the hated SS and police units stationed there.²⁴ These German civilians were part of the advance party of Generalplan Ost, the new elite that was to create the foundation for the thoroughly Germanized city that was to rise from the ashes of the old Warsaw. Far from the prying eyes of Berlin and away from their own upright Nazi peers they quickly became drunk on privilege and absolute power, lording it over the citizens of Warsaw at every opportunity. Apartments and houses were seized at will, and entire German quarters created of this stolen property. Furniture, paintings, jewellery and other belongings were taken; unlike for the infantry, this was not considered looting. Trams, restaurants and parks were given signs reading ‘Nur für Deutsche’ (Germans only), ‘Kein Zutritt für Polen’ (No entry for Poles) or ‘Spielplatz nur für Deutsche Kinder’ (Playground for German children only). The Germans ran everything that mattered, from government organizations to cultural institutions, from banks to businesses requisitioned from Poles, which were used for the German war effort – Warsaw was an important centre of manufacturing, from armaments and heavy industry to chemicals and electrical technology to foodstuffs. The Germans had enjoyed their status enormously. But suddenly, thanks to Bagration, it was all in imminent danger of collapse.

      The German civilian authority managed to maintain order until early July, in part by restricting information about the actual situation at the front, but when news came that army support units on the eastern side of the Vistula were starting to withdraw, the cry of ‘full retreat’ went up. The sound of Soviet artillery was drawing closer, and the Germans in Warsaw, knowing full well what had happened to their counterparts trapped in Minsk and Vitebsk, simply panicked. Everybody wanted to get out.

      The streets were soon impassable. Cars and wagons, filled to bursting with all manner of goods, clogged the German district. Factories were hurriedly dismantled to be sent to the Reich, and institutions were prepared for evacuation. Heavy transport cars were loaded with the archives of the German Red Cross, the Police Presidium and the SS.²⁵ Relocation companies were overwhelmed by the number of German apartments they were expected to empty. Trunks, packing cases and other huge boxes of loot were loaded onto wagons and sent to Poznań, Łódź, Vienna and Dresden, where it was thought the risk of bombardment was less. German officers appealed for calm, but civil servants acted as if ‘they were all about to have heart attacks’.²⁶ Stanisław Aronson, by now working for the AK, noted that these Germans ‘bore little resemblance to the master race’. Furthermore, the inhabitants of Warsaw ‘were convinced that the German occupation was over’.²⁷ ‘No one would have been surprised if the next day he heard that Hitler had committed suicide and Russia, England and America had accepted German capitulation.’²⁸

      The panic reached fever pitch when the Nazi-appointed Governor Ludwig Fischer and Mayor Ludwig Leist abandoned Warsaw on 23 July.²⁹ Stanisław Ruskowski, a Polish engineer who worked at the water board, was amazed when his boss, Director Elhart Ellenbach, and his colleague Engineer Jung announced that they were going to try to escape through their own lines to get home to Germany; they even ordered that he kill and prepare three pigs for the journey. Larysa Zajączkowska, an AK operative who worked undercover at a German office, noted: ‘Documents had been taken out, destroyed or burned so there literally was nothing to work on. I was running from one office to another with mail as there were no Germans left to move it.’ In one embarrassing incident, Goebbels’ entire propaganda department secretly abandoned Warsaw, with the result that when the uprising broke out, the minister had no informers, and was forced to rely on short army reports until he could locate his errant employees and order them back to the city. One Gestapo chief who had delayed his departure to make sure his stolen goods were safely on their way to Germany was killed by the AK just as he was about to leave.³⁰ There were small acts of mercy, too, as when the German President of the Warsaw court ordered the release from Mokotów prison of more than one hundred German and four hundred Polish short-term prisoners before packing up to leave.³¹

      Cars waited with engines running as the remaining Germans said goodbye, giving huge tips to their concierges as they left for the last time. ‘I met some at Piusa Street,’ remembered Stefan Chaskielewicz, ‘going down the stairs with suitcases, fur coats, anything they could carry, telling me, “We have no time to lose, tomorrow in the morning the Bolsheviks will be in Warsaw.” They left their apartments filled with furniture, pictures, carpets – sometimes they even left the doors open.’ Dr Jerzy Dreyza, who worked at the Maltese hospital, watched as SS guards forced thirty Jews in striped camp uniforms to empty the basement of the house next door, which had been used as a store room. ‘Lorry after lorry was filled with food and vodka and wine’ for the journey west.³² Eugeniusz Szermentowski remembered ‘lorries and carriages with heavy horses loaded up to the sky with cases, suitcases and furniture all going down Jerusalem Avenue and Wolska Street. The Germans are quiet, and not dragging Jews out of apartments any more.’³³ That evening the roads leading west were completely blocked by German cars. An evacuation train was supposed to be leaving for Łódź, but then information arrived that the Russians were already in Radzymin. New columns of lorries appeared at the railway stations and in front of the big institutions as Germans looked for other ways out.

      The evacuation affected non-German foreigners, too. They were told that they would be allowed to evacuate only on Tuesday, 25 July. ‘The tiny corridor of the police office in Aleja Ujazdowskie was filled with people from all over Europe – Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, French workers, Belgians and especially White Russian émigrés trying to get papers before the Soviets arrived and arrested them. The German functionaries giving out passes were so tired they could hardly stand up.’³⁴ The railway stations were no better. Sister Tosia Hoffman saw ‘piles of luggage left at the mail stations by German Volksdeutsche, but the trains to Łódź and Kielce have already been cancelled’. Poles were now forbidden to board any train leaving Warsaw. ‘In some places Poles broke into now abandoned German warehouses, as on Długa Street where they stole clothes, or in Miodowa Street, where they took salt and flour. White powder lay all over the road.’ Sister Hoffman was given bolts of stolen red and white cloth from which to sew armbands for the AK for the coming uprising.³⁵ Soviet reconnaissance planes and bombers began to appear over the city, lighting up the evening sky with rockets. Warsawians watched these so-called ‘chandeliers’, and broke into song.

      The sudden, chaotic departure of the Germans was a boon for the AK, as it allowed them to prepare for the uprising with little fear of harassment. Stanisław Jankowski, one of the SOE-trained ‘Cichociemni’ (‘silent and dark’) agents parachuted into Poland from England, was amazed at the sudden change in atmosphere in those hot July days. ‘The city was full of “Kałmucy” or “Hilfswillige” – Russians who had worked for the Germans. For them the war was over. They sat with open uniforms drinking beer, their shirts undone, their belts and guns sitting in the corner. They spoke a language we didn’t understand, but they knew enough to negotiate. We got their guns with five clips for 2,000 zloty.’ Jankowski even managed to buy weapons from the departing German police at Dworkowa Street, including machine guns with eight full magazines. ‘With the right password and some money you could get anything.’³⁶

      An AK soldier who had been working for a company based in the Prudential building, Warsaw’s only ‘skyscraper’, managed to steal a car from the fleet, as there were no Germans left to stop him. Teams of boy scouts moved around Warsaw distributing leaflets and carrying out reconnaissance, making detailed notes about German patrols and the fortifications around important buildings. At Okopowa Street they hung a string of white eagles from the tram cables as a defiant symbol of Polish national identity. To their surprise, the German police did nothing.

      By 26 July the atmosphere in Warsaw was one of intense anticipation and excitement. Dr Zbigniew Woźniewski put benches in the lower corridors of the Wolski hospital so that patients could