CIECHANOWSKI Jan
THE WARSAW UPRISING
outline of the political and diplomatic background
London, 1971. Renewal, pp. 399, [2]; format 12x24 cm
SOFTCOVER, PUBLISHER
Jan Ciechanowski - a Polish historian living in Britain since the late 1940s - fought in the Warsaw Uprising as a teenager, was wounded and twice awarded the Cross of Valor.
The historian is a declared critic of the decision to launch the uprising. He believes that the Home Army command made serious mistakes, the consequences of which proved disastrous.
"The uprising ended in a terrible defeat, a catastrophe and ruin that has not affected any other capital in Europe since the Huns invaded Rome. 200,000 people were killed, 500,000 were exiled and condemned to misery. The city was razed to the ground," Prof. Ciechanowski.
From the introduction:
This study is based on my doctoral thesis, submitted to the University of London - London School of Economics and Political Science - in 1968 г., on the political and ideological background and course of events and causes that led to the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising.
The work is an attempt to determine: when, how and why the authors of the uprising decided to capture Warsaw by Polish efforts, at least twelve hours before the Russians entered the city, even though they knew that the capital's Home Army units lacked the weapons and ammunition needed to do so. It was also a matter of determining to what extent the political, ideological and diplomatic assumptions and pulls of the London camp contributed to the outbreak of the uprising.
The term "London camp" is used here to describe all political and military forces and organs at home and abroad, subordinate to the Polish Government in London.
The work does not deal with the course of the uprising itself, and the purely military activities of the Home Army are included and discussed insofar as they influenced the policies, attitudes and decisions of the pro-London authorities who were responsible for instigating the struggle in the capital. Excluding all military issues from the work would obscure rather than highlight the political aspects of the uprising, the outbreak of which, as intended by the Home Army Command, was to coincide with the climax of the Russian-German battle for Warsaw.
In addition, in order to illuminate in a broader political context the events and decisions that led to the uprising, it was necessary to discuss the main areas of national life during World War II, as well as the origins and development of the Polish resistance movement. It was also necessary to examine the relations between the London camp and the communist movement due to the fact that in the final years of the war these groups competed with each other for power in post-war Poland, which influenced the political decisions of the pro-London leadership....
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