Rising '44: The Battle For Warsaw (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
It has amazed me in my further educating myself about all things Polish that so much of the history of the Poles in (and post) World War II has been suppressed and/or distorted. The Katyn massacres were only finally acknowledged over a half century after they occurred. The whole "big politics" picture, long-standing stereotypes about high moral ground subscribed to by the Allies' leaders, most notably Roosevelt and Churchill, during the war was altered by Plohky’s Yalta: The Price of Peace. The story of Warsaw Rising 1944 is yet another persuasive and unsettling addition to the realpolitik that almost destroyed a nation – certainly destroyed a generation of Polish young adults. Norman Davies has given Poles back part of their history with this book. There are many reasons to read this book, especially if one is a Pole, but also if one is a history buff. It is but one document that begins to give credit to the Poles for their courage and unrecognized contributions in World War II. The disrespect and apathy accorded Poles and Poland for these, was brought home to me by a documentary on General Sosabowski in which a military cemetery director in response to a journalists questions about grave markers replies: “Oh, those. Those are just some Poles.” Just some Poles.If for no other reason than correcting the erroneous conflation of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis of 1944, this book is valuable. These two events were confused as recently as the rising's 50th anniversary in 1994 by Germany's President Herzog, by advisers to the British prime minister, by NBC News and Reuters. Even Polanski's film The Pianist “telescopes “events of the two risings. Davies book helps to explain why many people confuse the two events: The post-WWII government in Poland purposely obfuscated the heroism of the 1944 pro-democracy Polish patriots who fought the Nazis. Moscow required the idea of a failed rising in the minds of the Poles for its puppets to take power, which was portrayed as ultra-nationalist, reckless, even criminal. They persecuted its surviving heroes, many of whom emigrated to the U.S., Australia, Canada, or the U.K., and many of whom I grew up knowing well. Two of them were my parents. It was not until Andrzej Wajda’s 1956 film, Kanal, that the truth of the Rising was made openly public. Now there is a magnificent museum in Warsaw dedicated to these brave souls.Rising ‘44 is a carefully researched and argued indictment of the Churchill government concerning its treatment of the Poles during the Warsaw Rising against the Germans by the Armia Krajowa. The generally accepted view of historians is that the uprising was an ill-conceived, romantic exercise of the Polish commander General Bór-Komorowski. The truth is something dramatically different.The rising of August 1944 concerns the city holding out against the Nazis for 63 days, with the loss of 200,000 lives. True to their compulsive nature and Hitler’s psychotic obsession with the “subhumanity” of Poles, the Germans then destroyed Warsaw street by street. They destroyed 90% of Warsaw, which was a heap of rubble when they finished. Poland’s home army (Armia Krajowa or AK) belonged within an Allied coalition nominally fighting a common enemy in unison: 10 per cent of all Battle of Britain fliers were Polish. America under Roosevelt was compliant to Stalin's wishes. Roosevelt and Churchill treated the Polish government in exile like pesky children, even after their heroic breakthrough on behalf of the “Allies” at Monte Casino. How many people know that it was only the Poles who managed to take Monte Casino and clear a path for the allies to Rome, after 3 other attempts by other countries armies failed? When Churchill - first to fathom Stalin's malevolence - ordered air-drops from Brindisi, the Soviets refused the planes landing-rights, or even shot at them. The Soviets first encouraged the Poles, then stalled on the far side of the Vistula, watching the Germans do their own dirty work. Wajda’s last scene in Kanal leaves no mystery as to what the two young lovers are seeing and what awaits Poland through the sewer grate across the entrance to the Vistula. Although Churchill recognized (late in the game) what he was dealing with, the situation in Britain was muddied by infiltration of the leadership by communist spies and moles, disinformation, arrogance, an attitude that Poles were simply a nuisance, and that they were paranoid on the issue of the Soviets. They should have listened to them about Stalin; after all, Poles had years of experience with the Russians and knew what they were about and that they wanted to obliterate Poland.No less than George Orwell, who was a socialist and journalist during WW II (I had no idea he was a socialist), and author of Animal Farm, castigated the British press for their shabby attitude toward Poles and Poland.One of the strategic mistakes of the Poles was to trust their British allies to support a rising that ostensibly had the full backing of Churchill and about which the British had full knowledge in all stages of planning. Another was to assume that they could rely on the U.S. In point of fact, Poland was not even on the radar screen of the U.S. military leadership or Roosevelt and his government. I came to dislike Roosevelt after reading “Yalta: The Price of Peace” which I have reviewed on Goodreads as well. After this, I have nothing but contempt for his fawning obsequiousness with respect to Stalin. Blue blood and a Groton/Harvard education didn’t mean much – Harry Truman, who only had a high school education had more sense about who he was dealing with (see my review of The Last Empress for more). To be fair, the U.S. was distracted by the war with Japan, so perhaps my views are a bit harsh, but the kind of treatment I, and my parents, had to endure when we emigrated to the U.S. in 1952 as second class “DPs” does not predispose me kindly to any of this and it underscores what I was reluctant to learn from them. Poles have two outstanding qualities, and those do not always serve them well. They are tenacious and they are honorable. Poles determined to go against Machiavellian realpolitik and do the decent thing and to make an alliance with the British and the French early in the war, assuming that their “allies” would also do the decent thing. It was inconceivable to them that their “allies” would sit by while their country was first invaded by Germans, partitioned by the Germans and Soviets, and then almost destroyed by Germans while the Soviet troops sat across the Vistula waiting like vultures to move in on the traumatized country. The tenacity led to the Rising and the remarkable events since the 1980s during which they took back their country from communist control. Honor sometimes led to blindness with respect to the honor of their “allies.” It should have been clear what Poland was dealing with when one considers that no British soldier died fighting the Germans during the entire blitzkrieg of Poland. I found this commentary on the Rising very interesting: "Norman Davies, who is probably the greatest historian of Poland ever, has laid out a brief of bravery and betrayal that all Polish statesmen might well heed. “Whom can we trust to defend Ireland?” asked the Irish bard. “We ourselves (sinn fein)."OK, I could write a lot more. What about commenting on the book itself as a read? It is dense, and like many histories is not linear. This is requires a commitment because it becomes a bit difficult at times to keep events straight. But, again, this is the nature of a history, especially one as meticulously researched as this one. I have to say that I agree with the folks who reviewed the book in various venues (New York Times etc.) in that Davies’ decision to “anglesize” Polish names and assign some pseudonyms is annoying and condescending. Although he did this to keep folks from getting confused insofar as the Polish language can be remarkably tortuous, filled with multiple consonants that bump up against each other. Sometimes one feels as though some impersonal god took an alphabet and threw down the letters willy-nilly when one sees the names and words. But the language is a people and to infanticize or take away a language is a step to extinguishing a national identity. Shame on Davies for this. He should have known better and thought this through better.Another comment. A book cannot be all things to all people. But my parents were heroes of the Rising, and spoke little of those years. I would like to have seen more about the “regular people” and more about the day to day life under the Rising. Davies does go into it some, but my own selfishness in this regard begged for more. Perhaps my visit to the Muzeum Powstanje Warsawskje will fill in some blanks and connect some dots.
Davies has quite simply created a masterpiece with this one. A long neglected story of the Warsaw Rising and a searing condemnation of the Allies who considered keeping Stalin sweet more important than Polish independence and the people of Warsaw. His knowledge of the subject matter knows no bounds and the excellent use of "capsules" to convey first hand accounts brings the story of the Rising alive. [return][return]Before having visited Warsaw in 2009 I was, like many others, only aware of the Ghetto Rising, a tragic but separate event which took place in 1943. However, I had the great fortune of visiting the Warsaw Uprising Museum which made me aware of the tremendous sacrifice of all of the citizens of Warsaw in the face of the Nazis in 1944 and brought about the city's total obliteration. Davies brings the spirit of the museum and the story of the Home Army to modern readers and it is one book that anyone studying resistance movements in the Second World War should study thoroughly. It is a truly phenomenal work.
What do You think about Rising '44: The Battle For Warsaw (2004)?
What a sad and terrible story: After years of Nazi occupation, the Poles of Warsaw rise against their oppressors on August 1, 1944, only to be ignored by their Western allies and betrayed by their Soviet ones. The Rising is viciously crushed by the Nazis, and Warsaw is leveled in retribution. Then the Soviet army marches in and Poland is forced to accept a puppet Communist government and Soviet overlordship, ushering in ten terrible years of Stalinist tyranny. Norman Davies, who has fine credentials as a historian, tells the tale in depth and with passion; it's clear that to him, giving the Poles their due after fifty years of ignominy and falsehood is more than just setting the historical record straight - it's a crusade. This may be more in this volume than many readers want to know about the Warsaw Rising, but no one who reads it can possibly be unmoved.
—Karen
This is one of those books that you read a paragraph and think 'wait, I didn't take in a word of that' and reread it... hence it's taken me six weeks to get to page 296 (out of about 500, 150 of which are appendices). Fascinating stuff, though. Norman Davies loves the Poles (and we love him) and this history of the Warsaw Rising shows the tragedy that could have been avoided had Britain and the US pulled their collective finger out and helped a bit more, like they promised. The Russians don't come off too well, either.
—Ilona
Rising '44 est un tres grand livre sur la très controversée Insurrection de Varsove qui a lieu entre le 1er aout et le 2 octobre 1994. Pendant cette insurrection 17,000 soldats allemands et 25,000 soldats polonais sont mort. Les pertes de vie chez les civiles se sont chiffrées entre 160 000 et 180 000. La grande controverse se fait entre ceux qui sont de l'avis que l'Insurrection a été un acte courageux commis par les polonais qui voulaient combattre les Nazis et ceux qui pensent que l'acte a été une action irresponsible commise par des forces reactionnaires qui voulaient empecher l'URSS d'etablir un regime communiste en Pologne. Il y a un peu de vrai dans les deux positions. Les polonais avaient bel et bien une envie folle de faire la guerre contre les allemands. C'est vrai aussi qu'ils ne voulaient pas tomber sous la domination de l'URSS.Cependant, Norman Davies s'abstient de trancher sur cette controverse. Ses buts sont autres. Il veut raconter l'histoire des combats et décrire la vie des Varsoviens pendant l'insurrection. Finallement il presente une critique feroce de La Grande Bretagne et les E-U qui n'ont exercé aucune pression l'URSS pour que son armée qui était campée a l'extérieure de la ville rentre dans la ville afin de secourir les insurrectionistes et les Varsoviens.Le point fort de son livre est la maniere dont Davies decrit l'ambiance dans la ville pendant les combats. Il se sert des journaux et des memoires qui ont survecu. Meme le laureat du prix Nobel de Litterature Czeslaw Milosz a garde un journal durant l'insurrection. Davies racontent biens des histoires tres touchants. Il y avait des volontaires qui batissaient des barricades et qui travaillaient comme benevoles dans les hopitaux. ll y avait des jeunes amants qui se rencontraient et qui faisaient l'amour pendant les pauses dans des combats. Finallement, il y avait des gens qui mouraient de milles facons terribles. En somme Davies nous livre une histoire remarquable de la vie des petits gens prisoniers dans leur ville qui s'etait transformée en champ de bataille. Rising '44 vaut bien la peine de le lire.
—Czarny Pies
