The destruction of Warsaw was Nazi Germany's substantially-effected razing of the city after the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The uprising had infuriated German leaders, who decided to make an example of the city, which they had long since selected for major reconstruction as part of their planned Germanization of Central Europe.
The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.
Even before the uprising, the Germans knew that, within a few months, Warsaw would fall into Allied hands. Despite that, they dedicated an unprecedented effort to destroying the city. Their decision tied up considerable resources which could have been used at the Eastern Front and at the newly-opened Western Front following the Normandy landings. The Germans destroyed 80–90% of Warsaw's buildings and deliberately demolished, burned, or stole an immense part of its cultural heritage.[citation needed]
Currently, more than half of the antiques and museum objects of Polish heritage stolen by Germans in 1944 have not been returned to Poland.[citation needed] After the war, extensive work was put into rebuilding the city according to pre-war plans and historical documents. As with most of Poland, the city was rebuilt without any German labor, unlike in Stalingrad and other cities, where German forced labor was used during and after the war as part of war reparations.[citation needed]
Plan for Neue deutsche Stadt Warschau ("New German city of Warsaw")
Destruction of Warsaw was planned before its final destruction in 1944 and even before the start of World War II.[citation needed] On June 20, 1939, while Adolf Hitler was visiting an architectural bureau in Würzburg am Main, he noticed a project of a future German town – Neue deutsche Stadt Warschau. According to the Pabst Plan, Warsaw was to be turned into a provincial German city of 130,000. Third Reich planners drafted precise drawings outlining a historic "Germanic" core where a select few landmarks would be saved such as the Royal Castle which would serve as Hitler's state residence. The Plan, which was composed of 15 drawings and a miniature architectural model, was named after German army architect Friedrich Pabst who refined the concept of destroying a nation's morale and culture by destroying its physical and architectural manifestations. The design of the actual new German city over the site of Warsaw was devised by Hubert Gross.[5][6] The project was soon incorporated into Generalplan Ost. The aftermath of the failure of the Warsaw Uprising presented an opportunity for Hitler to begin to realize his pre-war conception.[7]
In December 1939, the first mass shootings of civilians took place in the Kampinos Forest near Warsaw, where thousands were killed by 1943. In 1940, round-ups (łapanki) of civilians on streets and in homes became the norm.[citation needed] Those who did not manage to escape were sent to concentration camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek or forced into slave labour in Germany. The Nazis divided Warsaw into a Jewish sector, a Polish sector and a German sector. The programme of annihilation and ethnic cleansing was systematically carried out starting with Polish Jews and Jews from other areas shipped into the Warsaw ghetto.[citation needed]
In 1940, the Germans turned the northern part of mid-town Warsaw, about one square mile in size, into the Jewish ghetto surrounded by ten foot high walls and watch-towers. The population eventually swelled to 500,000 by some estimates. Between July 22 and October 3, 1942 the ghetto was "evacuated." More than 300,000 inhabitants perished in Nazi camps; the 70,000 remaining in the ghetto were employed as slave labourers supplying the German army. In April 1943 Nazis undertook the final destruction of the ghetto which triggered the ghetto uprising. The uprising was put down mercilessly and the whole district razed to the ground.[citation needed]
Elsewhere in Warsaw collective responsibility was the rule resulting in the murders of thousands, which resulted in the Warsaw Uprising on August 1, 1944. In response, under orders from Heinrich Himmler, Warsaw was kept under ceaseless barrage by Nazi artillery and air power for sixty-three days and nights with Erich von dem Bach, SS-Gruppenführer and Police General who took over from Heinz Reinefarth at the helm. Von dem Bach later wrote about his meeting with Reinefarth: "Reinefarth drew my attention to the existence of a clear order issued by Himmler. The first thing he told me was that he has been distinctly ordered not to take any prisoners but to kill every inhabitant of Warsaw. I asked him, 'women and children, too?' to which he replied, 'Yes, women and children, too ...'" In the wake of this unprecedented planned destruction and ethnic cleansing, by 1944 around 800,000 civilians were killed, or 60% of the population.[citation needed]
A few days after the outbreak of the uprising Hans Frank wrote in his diary: "Almost all Warsaw is a sea of flames. To set houses afire is the surest way to deprive the insurgents of their hiding places. When we crush the uprising, Warsaw will get what it deserves – complete annihilation."[citation needed]
In 1944, a large transit camp (Durchgangslager) was constructed in Pruszków's Train Repair Shops (Zakłady Naprawcze Taboru Kolejowego) to house the evacuees expelled from Warsaw. In the course of the Warsaw Uprising and its suppression, the Germans deported approximately 550,000 of the city's residents and approximately 100,000 civilians from its outskirts, sending them to Durchgangslager 121 (Dulag 121). The security police and the SS segregated the deportees and decided their fate. Approximately 650,000 people passed through the Pruszków camp in August, September, and October. Approximately 55,000 were sent to concentration camps, including 13,000 to Auschwitz. They included people from a variety of social classes, occupations, physical conditions, and ages. Evacuees ranged from infants only a few weeks old to the extremely elderly. In a few cases, these were also people of different ethnic backgrounds, including Jews living on "Aryan papers."[8]
German Verbrennungskommando (Burning Detachment) destroying Warsaw.[9] Taken on Leszno street. From left: building No. 24, 22 & part of 20.[10]
Sprengkommando is preparing to blow up the Royal Castle, 8th September 1944
After the remaining population had been expelled, the Germans began the destruction of the remnants of the city.[11] Special groups of German engineers were dispatched throughout the city in order to burn and demolish the remaining buildings. According to German plans, after the war Warsaw was to be turned into nothing more than a military transit station.[2][12] The demolition squads used flamethrowers and explosives to methodically destroy house after house. They paid special attention to historical monuments, the Polish national archives, and other places of interest whose destruction was carried out under the supervision of German scholars. What couldn't be taken by Germans was to be burnt or destroyed. Nothing was to be left of what used to be the city of Warsaw.[3]
By January 1945, between 85% and 90% of the buildings had been completely destroyed; this includes up to 10% as a result of the September 1939 campaign and following combat, up to 15% during the earlier Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 25% during the Uprising, and 40% due to systematic German demolition of city after the uprising.[11][not in citation given]
German demolition unit (Sprengkommando) led by major Sarnow.
Material losses were estimated at 10,455 buildings, 923 historical buildings (94%), 25 churches, 14 libraries including the National Library, 81 primary schools, 64 high schools, the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology, and most of the city's historical monuments.[11] Almost a million inhabitants lost all of their possessions.[11] The exact losses of private and public property, including pieces of art, other cultural artifacts and scientific artifacts, is unknown but must be considered substantial since Warsaw and her inhabitants were the richest and wealthiest Poles in pre-war Poland. In 2004, the President of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński (later President of Poland) established a historical commission to estimate losses to public property alone that were inflicted on the city by German authorities. The commission estimated the losses to be at least $31.5 billion.[14] Those estimates were later raised to $45 billion and in 2005, to $54.6 billion (all equated to 2004 dollars). The official estimates don't include immense losses of private property, which are of unknown value since almost all of the pre-war documents (such as insurance values of private collections) have also been destroyed, but are considered between double and triple the official estimates (which are based on documented losses only[15] while for example, the National Library's list of pre-war property lost estimated to be 1% of its collection since Germans destroyed all archives too).
Notable dates in the history of destruction of Warsaw, in 1944:[citation needed]
Interior of the Zamoyski Estate Library in a building at Żabia Street.
The 12th-century Meuse School Bible, one of the books burned by the Germans in October 1944.
During the German suppression of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 around 70 to 80% of libraries were carefully burned by the Verbrennungskommandos (burning detachments), whose mission was to burn Warsaw.[16] In October 1944 the Załuski Library, the oldest public library in Poland and one of the oldest and most important libraries in Europe (established in 1747), was burned down.[17] Out of about 400,000 printed items, maps and manuscripts, only some 1,800 manuscripts and 30,000 printed materials survived.[17]
In the last phase of the Warsaw Uprising and after its collapse, in September and October 1944, the three major private libraries in Warsaw (Krasiński Library, Przeździecki Library and Zamoyski Library), including collections of priceless value to Polish culture, ceased to exist.[18] Those libraries had already suffered in September 1939, when they were bombed and burned.[18]
An important collection of books belonging to the Krasiński Estate Library, created in 1844, was largely destroyed in 1944.[19] The collection originally consisted of 250,000 items.[19] During the Uprising, on September 5, 1944, the library's warehouses were shelled by German artillery and burned almost completely.[19] Some of the books were preserved, thrown through windows by the library's staff.[19] The surviving collection was later deliberately burned by the Germans in October 1944 after collapse of the Uprising.[19] About 26,000 manuscripts, 2,500 incunables, 80,000 early printed books, 100,000 drawings and printmakings, 50,000 note and theater manuscripts as well as a large collection of maps and atlases were lost.[19] The Przeździecki Estate Library in 6 Foksal Street included 60,000 volumes and 500 manuscripts, a rich archive containing 800 parchment and paper documents, as well as a cartographic collection consisting of 350 maps, atlases and plans.[18] In addition to 10,000 prints and drawings, there was an extensive art gallery (Portrait of Casimir Jagiellon from the 15th century, Portrait of John III Sobieski from the Schleissheim Palace, the House altar of Sophia Jagiellon, 1456), valuable collection of miniatures and decorative art: textiles, porcelain, faience, glass, gold objects, military, etc.[18] It burned down on September 25, 1939 as a result of severe aerial bombardment by the Germans (incendiary bombing).[18] The surviving items sheltered in the neighbouring tenement house at Szczygla Street were burned in October 1944.[18] The last of above mentioned libraries, the Zamoyski Estate Library, acquired collections of 70,000 works (97,000 volumes), more than 2,000 manuscripts, 624 parchment diplomas, several thousand manuscripts, a collection of engravings, coins and 315 maps and atlases.[18] Library collections also gathered numerous collections of art: a rich collection of militaria, miniatures, porcelain, faience and glass, natural collections, research tools etc.[18] In 1939, about 50,000 items (about 30%) were destroyed in bombing.[18] On September 8, 1944, the Germans set fire to both the Zamoyski Palace (Blue Palace) and the library building.[18]
The Central Military Library, containing 350,000 books on the history of Poland, was destroyed, including the Library of Polish Museum in Rapperswil deposited there for safekeeping. The collection of the Rapperswil Library was transported to Poland in 1927.[20] The library and the museum were founded in Rapperswil, Switzerland, in 1870 as "a refuge for [Poland's] historic memorabilia dishonored and plundered in the [occupied Polish] homeland" and for the promotion of Polish interests.[21] The greater part of library's collections, originally 20,000 engravings, 92,000 books and 27,000 manuscripts, were deliberately destroyed by the Germans in 1944.[20]
Unlike earlier Nazi book burnings where specific books were deliberately targeted, the burning of those libraries was part of the general burning of a large part of the city of Warsaw.[22] This resulted in the disappearance of many valuable old books and scrolls among about sixteen million volumes from National Library, museums and palaces burnt indiscriminately by Germans in Poland during World War II.[16]
Section of Warsaw razed to the ground, photo c. 1950. Northwest view of the Krasiński Gardens and Świętojerska Street.
The destruction of Warsaw was so severe that, in order to rebuild much of old Warsaw, detailed 18th-century landscapes by the Italian artists Marcello Bacciarelli and Bernardo Bellotto, painted before the Partitions of Poland, were used in recreating many of the buildings. Also of assistance were architectural drawings made before World War II.[citation needed]
Warsaw was rebuilt by the Polish people between the 1950s and 1970s with support from the Soviet Union. The Palace of Culture and Science (completed in 1955) was a gift from the Soviet people and still remains the tallest building in Poland. Some landmarks were reconstructed as late as the 1980s. While the Old Town has been thoroughly reconstructed, the New Town has been only partly restored to its former state.[citation needed]
^Source: (Polish) Adolf Ciborowski, Warszawa – o zniszczeniu i odbudowie miasta, Warsaw, Interpress Publishers, 1969, p. 57.
^ abKrystyna Wituska, Irene Tomaszewski, Inside a Gestapo Prison: The Letters of Krystyna Wituska, 1942–1944, Wayne State University Press, 2006, ISBN0-8143-3294-3, Google Print, p.xxii
^Ciborowski, Adolf (1969). O zniszczeniu i odbudowie miasta [A City Destroyed and Rebuilt] (in Polish). Warszawa: "Interpress" Publishers. p. 56. OCLC3369342.
^Księga Pamięci, Transporty Polaków z Warszawy do KL Auschwitz 1940–1944 (Memorial Book: Transports of Poles from Warsaw to Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1940–1944)
^Source: (Polish): Adolf Ciborowski: O zniszczeniu i odbudowie miasta (A City Destroyed and Rebuilt), Warszawa 1969, Poland: "Interpress" Publishers, p.63
^ abMaria Witt (September 15 and October 15, 2005). "The Zaluski Collection in Warsaw". The Strange Life of One of the Greatest European Libraries of the Eighteenth Century. FYI France. Retrieved February 17, 2008. Check date values in: |date= (help)
^Gabriela Pauszer-Klonowska (1969). "year XXV, no 8 (281)". W Rapperswilu śladami Żeromskiego i Prusa (In Rapperswil in the Footsteps of Żeromski and Prus) (in Polish). Problemy: organ Towarzystwa Wiedzy Powszechnej. pp. 466–467.
^Rebecca Knuth (2006). Burning books and leveling libraries: extremist violence and cultural destruction. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 166. ISBN0-275-99007-9.
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established by the German authorities in November 1940; within the new General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. There were over 400,000 Jews imprisoned there, at an area of 3.4 km2 (1.3 sq mi), with an average of 9.2 persons per room, barely subsisting on meager food rations. From the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps and mass-killing centers. In the summer of 1942 at least 254,000 Ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during Großaktion Warschau under the guise of "resettlement in the East" over the course of the summer. The ghetto was demolished by the Germans in May 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings which had temporarily halted the deportations. The total death toll among the Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed by bullet or gas, combined with 92,000 victims of rampant hunger and hunger-related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the Ghetto.
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation, in the summer of 1944, by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Home Army, to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to raze the city in reprisal. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.
War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II
Over six million Polish citizens, divided almost equally between ethnic Poles and Polish Jews, are estimated to have perished during World War II. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. At the International Military Tribunal held in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945–46, three categories of wartime criminality were juridically established: waging a war of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. These three crimes in international law were for the first time, from the end of the war, categorised as violations of fundamental human values and norms. These crimes were committed in occupied Poland on a tremendous scale.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Majdanek and Treblinka concentration camps. After the Grossaktion Warsaw of summer 1942, in which more than a quarter of a million Jews were deported from the ghetto to Treblinka and murdered, the remaining Jews began to build bunkers and smuggle weapons and explosives into the ghetto. The left-wing Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and right-wing Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) formed and began to train. A small resistance effort to another roundup in January 1943 was partially successful and spurred the Polish groups to support the Jews in earnest.
Bombing of Warsaw in World War II
The Bombing of Warsaw in World War II refers to the aerial bombing campaign of Warsaw by the German Luftwaffe during the siege of Warsaw in the invasion of Poland in 1939. It also may refer to German bombing raids during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. During the course of the war approximately 84% of the city was destroyed due to German mass bombings, heavy artillery fire and a planned demolition campaign.
Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg
Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era.
He served in World War I; and postwar in the Freikorps Oberland and the Steirischer Heimatschutz. He served as SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw area in German occupied Poland from 1941 until 1943 during World War II.
Castle Square, Warsaw
Castle Square is a historic square in front of the Royal Castle – the former official residence of Polish monarchs – located in Warsaw, Poland. It is a popular meeting place for tourists and locals. The Square, of somewhat triangular shape, features the landmark Sigismund's Column to the south-west, and is surrounded by historic townhouses. It marks the beginning of the bustling Royal Route extending to the south.
Załuski Library
The Załuski Library was built in Warsaw in 1747–1795 by Józef Andrzej Załuski and his brother, Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, both Roman Catholic bishops. The library was the first Polish public library, the largest library in Poland, and one of the earliest public libraries in Europe.
Polish resistance movement in World War II
The Polish resistance movement in World War II, with the Polish Home Army at its forefront, was the largest underground resistance movement in all of occupied Europe, covering both German and Soviet zones of occupation. The Polish resistance is most notable for disrupting German supply lines to the Eastern Front, providing military intelligence to the British, and for saving more Jewish lives in the Holocaust than any other Western Allied organization or government. It was a part of the Polish Underground State.
Krasiński Palace
The Krasiński Palace, or Palace of the Commonwealth, is a reconstructed Baroque palace in Warsaw, Poland, on Krasiński Square.
National Library of Poland
The National Library of Poland is the central Polish library, subject directly to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation
Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland, along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II, consisted of the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles and the murder of millions of (non-Jewish) ethnic Poles. The Germans justified these genocides on the basis of Nazi racial theory, which depicted Jews as a constant threat and regarded Poles and other Slavs as racially inferior Untermenschen. By 1942 the Nazis were implementing their plan to kill every Jew in German-occupied Europe, and had also developed plans to eliminate the Polish people, through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, enslavement and extermination through labor, as well as the assimilation into German identity of a small minority of Poles regarded as racially valuable. During World War II the Germans not only murdered millions of Jewish and non-Jewish Poles, but ethnically cleansed millions more ethnic Poles through forced deportation, supposedly to make room for racially superior German settlers.
Old Town Market Place, Warsaw
Warsaw's Old Town Market Place is the center and oldest part of the Old Town of Warsaw, capital of Poland. Immediately after the Warsaw Uprising, it was systematically blown up by the German Army. After World War II, the Old Town Market Place was restored to its prewar appearance.
Polish culture during World War II
Polish culture during World War II was suppressed by the occupying powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both of whom were hostile to Poland's people and cultural heritage. Policies aimed at cultural genocide resulted in the deaths of thousands of scholars and artists, and the theft and destruction of innumerable cultural artifacts. The "maltreatment of the Poles was one of many ways in which the Nazi and Soviet regimes had grown to resemble one another", wrote British historian Niall Ferguson.
Calel Perechodnik
Calel (Calek) Perechodnik was a diarist who joined the Jewish Ghetto Police in the Otwock Ghetto during the Nazi German occupation of Poland. His wartime diaries were published posthumously as Am I a Murderer? in 1995 by the Karta Centre of Warsaw.
History of Warsaw
The history of Warsaw spans over 1400 years. In that time, the city evolved from a cluster of villages to the capital of a major European power, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—and, under the patronage of its kings, a center of enlightenment and otherwise unknown tolerance. Fortified settlements founded in the 9th century form the core of the city, in today's Warsaw Old Town.
Ludwig Fischer
Ludwig Fischer was a German Nazi Party lawyer, politician and a convicted war criminal who was executed for war crimes.
Pabst Plan
The Pabst Plan was a Nazi German urban plan to reconstruct the city of Warsaw as a Nazi model city. Named after its creator Friedrich Pabst, the Nazis' "Chief Architect for Warsaw", the plan assumed that Warsaw, the historical capital of Poland and a city of 1.5 million inhabitants, would be completely destroyed and rebuilt as a small German town of not more than 130,000 inhabitants.
Krasiński Library
Krasiński Library was a library in Warsaw, founded in 1844. During the German invasion and occupation of Poland, part of the building was destroyed and its collections were stolen, redistributed, or burned. Its surviving collections are now at the National Library of Poland.
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