Do Stalinists Justify Stalin's Actions in the Warsaw Uprising?

[Optiow]

As it is the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising), I am interested to know how those who support Stalin justify (or don't justify) not supporting the Warsaw Uprising.

For those that don't know, the Warsaw Uprising was a revolt by the Polish in Warsaw against their German oppressors. They rose up because of the German repression and the growing weakness of the Germans. They assumed the Soviets would help, but Stalin ordered his men to halt because he had broken off relations with the exiled Polish government.

The fighting in the city lasted for over sixty days, and lead to over 150,000 Polish deaths. Because of the halt of the Soviets, the Germans were able to reallocate their resources more effectively to crush the Polish.

Had the Russians given more support, they could have saved many lives and pushed the Germans out of Warsaw. Some historians justify what Stalin did by saying that he was 'overstretched', but there was only a few men available to hold back the Russians, and this thin line did not receive any pressure at all during the time of the Warsaw Uprising. The Soviets were only a few kilometers away, and they did very little to help the Polish fight the Germans.

What I want to know is if the Stalinists support this move of Stalin's, and if so, how can they justify this slaughter that they allowed to happen?

Here is a further resource (http://www.warsawuprising.com/) if anyone wants it.

[Geiseric]

I was wondering this myself. The answer i'm predicting is: "why support a liberal uprising against the nazis who we didn't want to attack us? and the poles weren't ever going to ally with Kremlin because they weren't communists."

[Ismail]

"After advancing some 450 miles in five weeks, Rokossovsky's troops were fatigued and his front was suffering from the problems of overextended supply lines. At this time, moreover, the Germans in front of Warsaw were reinforced by three panzer divisions, rushed up from the south. In the first three weeks of August they delivered a counterattack, halting the Russian attempts to advance from their bridgeheads over the Vistula. Nearly six months were to pass before the Russians were ready to launch a major offensive from these positions.

Rokossovsky's advance to the outskirts of Praga, the suburb of Warsaw on the opposite bank of the broad Vistula, made liberation seem at hand. Already on July 24, however, General T. Bor-Komorowski, commanding the Armya Krajowa (AK), the Polish underground army in Warsaw, had decided to order an uprising before the Red Army could reach the city. He was fanatically anti-Russian. He was determined that the Poles should liberate their own city and prepare the way for the London government to take power, excluding the Polish communists. For these reasons and also from stubborn pride he avoided all contact with Rokossovsky and the Russian High Command, refusing even to consider co-ordinating action with the Red Army.

The people of Warsaw were, however, expecting Rokossovsky's forces to cross the river and come to their aid. Moscow radio had broadcast on July 29 the usual appeal, sent to occupied territories, for the people to rise against the enemy as the Russians approached. They were bewildered when no Russian crossing was attempted and the Russian guns fell silent.

On August 1, Bor-Komorowski's underground army of 40,000 men attacked the Germans in the city. They were poorly armed and lacked supplies, but they fought bravely. The battle raged for sixty-three days, but the uprising was savagely crushed. Over 200,000 of the citys inhabitants were killed. The Germans expelled the 800,000 survivors and razed the city to the ground.

The uprising and what Churchill called the 'Martyrdom of Warsaw' aroused controversy. The Allied leaders suspected that Stalin had ordered the Red Army to halt at the Vistula and that he was callously leaving the city to its fate. The London Poles actively fomented these suspicions in Britain and the United States. In fact, Rokossovsky's forces had been halted and were in no position to cross the river and liberate the city.

Stalin considered the uprising ill timed and misconceived. He was opposed to co-operation with Bor-Komorowski and the AK, whose hatred of Russians was well known. He appreciated Rokossovski's military difficulties. But also at this time when he was actively creating a new pro-Russian regime which would displace the Polish government in London, he was concerned to foster cordial Russo-Polish relations. He was anxious, too, to avoid alienating his Western allies.

On the capture of Lublin on July 23, a manifesto had proclaimed the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation...

Soon after the start of the uprising, Churchill, misinterpreting Russian inactivity at the Vistula, sent a cable to Stalin, informing him that British planes were dropping supplies to the Poles and seeking assurances that Russian aid would soon reach them. Stalin's reply was noncommittal and suggested that the extent of the uprising had been grossly exaggerated. Under pressure from the London Poles, Churchill asked Eden on August 14 to send a message to Stalin through Molotov, urging him to give immediate help to the Warsaw Poles. Two days later Vyshinsky informed the U.S. ambassador that the Soviet government would not allow British or American aircraft to land on Soviet territory after dropping supplies in the Warsaw region, 'since the Soviet government does not wish to associate itself either directly or indirectly with the adventure in Warsaw.' But on September 9 this decision was reversed. Moreover, from September 13 Soviet planes flew over Warsaw, bombing German positions and dropping supplies to the insurgents."
(Grey, Ian. Stalin: Man of History. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979., pp. 398-99.)

Geoffrey Roberts also mentions this event in his book Stalin's Wars.

[Geiseric]

So the Red Army, a symbol of workers power, didn't help the uprising because of petty politics?

[Ismail]

So the Red Army, a symbol of workers power, didn't help the uprising because of petty politics?If by "petty politics" you mean a reactionary government in exile that considered itself the heir to Pilsudski's fascistic dictatorship then perhaps. Not to mention the "Case of the Sixteen" after the war: http://www.shunpiking.com/books/GC/GC-AK-MS-chapter24.htm

But the bigger reason was due to Rokossovsky's troops being overstretched, as has been noted. If you want further evidence I can get out Roberts' book for you.

[Geiseric]

Hmm, but was the russian army unable to send any kind of aid whatsoever? also, as it was stated in the article, the polish people wanted the russians to come. If the russians did go, or send some help, isn't it possible they would have won over alot of the poles? to hell with the polish government, this was one of the cases where russian intervention was most needed. i simply don't think stalin actually supported the uprising from an ideological viewpoint.

[Ismail]

Hmm, but was the russian army unable to send any kind of aid whatsoever? also, as it was stated in the article, the polish people wanted the russians to come. If the russians did go, or send some help, isn't it possible they would have won over alot of the poles? to hell with the polish government, this was one of the cases where russian intervention was most needed. i simply don't think stalin actually supported the uprising from an ideological viewpoint.I'll quote from Stalin's Wars.

p. 204: "On 8 August Zhukov and Rokossovskii submitted to Stalin a detailed plan for the capture of Warsaw... They estimated that the operation could begin on 25 August. The go-ahead was given by Stalin, but enemy counter-action in the Warsaw area meant that it was mid-September before the Soviets were ready for another major assault on the city... as previously, the Red Army's efforts to cross the Vistula in force and advance on Warsaw made little headway in the face of strong German opposition. In early October the Soviet attack was finally called off and the Red Army did not resume offensive operations against Warsaw until January 1945."

p. 207: "In his discussion of the motives for the uprising the Polish historian Eugeniusz Duraczynski suggests the uprising was staged not so much in anticipation of the Soviet capture of Warsaw as to force Stalin to prioritise the capture of the city rather than bypass it. If that was their calculation, the uprising's leaders were not far wrong. The uprising did reinforce Stalin's inclination to capture the city; the problem was that he was unable to do so...

None of this is to deny Stalin's blatant hostility to the AK, to the uprising, and to the anti-communist and anti-Soviet politics of the Polish government in exile in London - all of which threatened his plans for a postwar Poland friendly to the USSR. If the uprising failed and undermined the nationalist opposition to Soviet and communist influence in Poland, then so much the better from Stalin's point of view."

On p. 214 Roberts quotes a note Stalin wrote to Churchill on August 16, which is available online:

Secret and Personal from Premier J. V. Stalin to the Prime Minister, Mr W. Churchill

After a talk with Mr Mikolajczyk I instructed the Red Army Command to drop munitions intensively into the Warsaw area. A liaison officer was parachuted, but headquarters report that he did not reach his objective, being killed by the Germans.

Now, after probing more deeply into the Warsaw affair, I have come to the conclusion that the Warsaw action is a reckless and fearful gamble, taking a heavy toll of the population. This would not have been the case had Soviet headquarters been informed beforehand about the Warsaw action and had the Poles maintained contact with them.

Things being what they are, Soviet headquarters have decided that they must dissociate themselves from the Warsaw adventure since they cannot assume either direct or indirect responsibility for it.p. 215: "The Warsaw Uprising was an emotional event for the Soviets, too. They had lost millions of troops reaching Warsaw, and would suffer another half-million casualties in liberating Poland from the Germans; they did not take kindly to suggestions that they had provoked the uprising and then abandoned the Warsaw population to their fate. Equally important was the fact that the Red Army was preparing further assaults on the Polish capital and the Soviet expectation was that Warsaw would fall to them within days, thus making redundant any question of supplying the uprising."

[thesadmafioso]

This does not really look to be fodder for petty bickering over tendencies, it seems to of been a rather straight forward question of military tactics. If the Poles were unwilling to cooperate with the Red Army, than what were they to honestly do? Risk the integrity of the entire front in support of some poorly planned resistance uprising? There is simply no sense to such a reckless move.

As for the political motives, I really don't think that the fervent nationalism of the Poles can really qualify as substantial 'workers power'. I mean, yes, this is something to be expected of Stalin, but at the same time I don't know if it was necessarily a move really worth disputing.

[Ismail]

As a note, from the book Sto sorok besed s Molotovym (the Russian-language version of Molotov Remembers, with many more pages), p. 56, Molotov said in 1974 that, "On the streets of [Warsaw] the blood of Polish patriots was flowing. We didn't know about the beginning and intent of this uprising. It was provoked by Mikolajczyk with a view towards forming a government before the arrival of Soviet troops in Warsaw, thus presenting the Soviet Union with a fait accompli. We later learned that the uprising in Warsaw was a planned operation."

[Kléber]

The reactionary AK leaders also bear responsibility, since they mostly stood by and conserved their forces during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising while the Jews and other partisans got wiped out.

Stalin's real crime was helping the Nazi army to conquer Poland in the first place - and continuously beheading the Polish Communist movement by murdering its leaders for disloyalty to Moscow.

[Nox]

It wasn't his actions; it was his lack of actions.

The Polish exile government had their relations cut for a reason.

I do not criticise his actions (of lack of)