In July 1944, the Polish capital was the site of a tragic page in World War II history. The Warsaw Uprising, initiated by the Polish Home Army, was a valiant resistance against Nazi rule, but it occurred in tandem with complicated, high-stakes moves by Allied leaders that would not only determine the fate of Poland but also portend the nascent tensions of the Cold War.
The foundation for this tragedy was set months before, at the Tehran Conference in November of 1943. Seated at that table were Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—three great leaders dividing up the postwar world. Poland, interestingly, had no place at that table. Without a Polish presence, the Allies, at their own discretion, decided to redivide Poland’s eastern border along the Curzon Line, offering to make up for the loss with German land to the west. Churchill and Roosevelt informed the Polish government-in-exile that an alliance with Stalin was necessary, even if it entailed making difficult concessions. As historian Norman Davies later described it, the West did not have much to give other than pressure, and Stalin was going to get his way anyway.
When the insurrection began on August 1, 1944, the Red Army was near—agonizingly near. General Rokossovsky’s 1st Belorussian Front was pushing from the south, and troops of the 2nd Tank Army had even made it to the Praga suburb on the east bank of the Vistula River. But the Soviets were thin on the ground, and a German counterattack to the east caught them in the middle. Stalin, cautious and cunning as ever, had no interest in supporting the resistance movement in Poland. He aimed to allow the Germans to destroy the non-Communist Polish fighters, clearing the way for his postwar ambitions—ambitions already in preparation through a fresh Soviet-supported provisional government in Lublin.
On August 8, Rokossovsky suggested a new offensive to relieve Warsaw. It was supported by General Zhukov. Stalin did not. He diverted troops instead towards the Baltic and the Balkans. Although Soviet-held airfields were within Warsaw’s reach, there was no air cover provided. The fate of the uprising now rested more and more with the Western Allies.
They, too, were under restraint. The British and the Americans had already alerted the Polish government in London that this would be a logistical nightmare for any operation. Nevertheless, Churchill ordered the RAF to start supply drops. He alerted Stalin that a 60-ton airdrop was being made. Stalin was cold, even contemptuous, in his reaction. He asserted that the rebellion was exaggerated and consisted of only small groups, inadequately armed and not worthy of significant consideration.
Worse, Stalin would not allow Allied aircraft to land on Soviet airfields. Churchill was incensed and would later refer to this denial as “an episode of profound and far-reaching gravity.” The Soviets had no desire to be a part of what they called a drunken Polish escapade. One British plane that did find itself on the ground was greeted not with assistance, but internment for its crew—diplomacy alone set them free.
Battling from Italy, the Allies began flying out of Brindisi. It was a tough 1,800-mile round trip across hostile skies. British aircrews flew at night in blazing Warsaw amidst furious German anti-aircraft fire. Conditions were savage. Supplies were difficult to get to where they were needed, and many fell into German possession or fell short of their objectives. For each ton dropped successfully, a plane was frequently lost. The Polish Special Deputies Squadron alone lost 16 of its crews.
Nevertheless, the drops did provide some sorely needed relief—guns, food, medical kits. A joint Allied airlift by mid-September brought temporary relief, but it was hardly sufficient. Without Soviet assistance and under constant German pressure, the rebellion collapsed. Nazi soldiers, including sadistic SS troops, were unleashed on the city, laying waste to everything in their path. By the time the Home Army capitulated on October 2, an estimated 150,000 civilians had been killed, along with 20,000 fighters in the resistance. Some 10,000 Germans were killed. German troops destroyed whole neighborhoods in the aftermath, sending hundreds of thousands to forced-labor camps. When Soviet forces finally moved into Warsaw in January 1945, they entered a ghost city, destroyed to its foundations.
The Uprising in Warsaw was not merely a botched uprising. It was a turning point that revealed the growing fissures in the Allied alliance. Historian Alexandra Richie wrote, it showed how far the vision for postwar Europe among the West diverged from that of Stalin. His withholding of support wasn’t simply strategic—it was ideological. Recognizing the Home Army would be to acknowledge an independent Polish resistance that wasn’t Soviet-controlled. And that didn’t mesh with his blueprint for the postwar era.
As historian Halik Kochanski noted, Stalin’s decision earned him worldwide criticism—but to him, the price of assisting the rebellion was higher. It would’ve cost him legitimizing a regime he sought to annihilate.
Although the uprising did not light the fuse of the Cold War by itself, it undoubtedly was a turning point. It produced long-lasting wounds in Polish memory and set out in stark relief the way the aspirations of a whole people can be shattered not just by the brutality of an adversary but by the cold calculations of putative friends. The devastation of Warsaw was a grim reminder of what occurs when strategy eclipses solidarity.