The 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in Color

172 points
1/21/1970
3 days ago
by keiferski

Comments


Keyframe

These two in particular:

https://www.barwypowstania.pl/photos/22

https://www.barwypowstania.pl/photos/51

and the world is stupid enough to repeat the endless cycle of violence.

3 days ago

stared

Well, there is "never again" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_again).

It is up to us to decide if "never again" is a universal rule or "oh, but this time it is different".

2 days ago

datsci_est_2015

“Nie wieder ist jetzt” is common graffiti in Berlin right now: “Never again is now.”

2 days ago

snowpid

This slogan started as a reaction against rising antisemitism after 7. Octobre. A problem which many here just deny (" Germany is again on the wrong site")

2 days ago

cramsession

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2 days ago

cyclopeanutopia

We have a monument commemorating children fighting in the uprising: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomnik_Ma%C5%82ego_Powsta%C5%8...

3 days ago

pndy

And the "W" Hour is commemorated on every 1st August at 1700 hours

https://youtu.be/Ejd2rsXoQSI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22W%22_Hour?useskin=vector

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Also, if you ever have a chance then head to Warsaw Rising Museum:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Rising_Museum?useskin=v...

3 days ago

cowmix

I was in Warsaw a few weeks ago and ended up visiting that museum almost on a whim, so I wasn’t prepared for the experience. I don’t think a museum has ever hit me that hard — inspiring, gut-wrenching, and unforgettable.

2 days ago

0rzech

And the parent comment has been flagged to death until now. What for?

Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego [1] indeed makes an exceptional work of walking people through the dramatic story of the Warsaw Uprising.

[1] https://www.1944.pl/en

2 days ago

tasuki

I used to live nearby and was always weirded out by the statue just being one of the required two-minute stops for all the tourist groups. A short monologue, then move on to the next attraction...

2 days ago

aaron695

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2 days ago

sdoering

Great work. My SO is doing family research on the part of her family that came from Warsaw (and a few other parts of Poland). I know she will love to see those.

3 days ago

varispeed

Don't forget that Germans were able to quickly find people they wanted to exterminate by going through municipal and church records. Today it will be much easier thanks to push for Digital ID. Choose demographic and the dashboard will show where everyone is and their connections.

2 days ago

phatfish

Corporations already have a "digital ID" for everyone. As we know from WW2 (and more recent conflicts) private corporations would be lining up to work with the next Nazi regime if the price was right.

2 days ago

lifestyleguru

Digital ID? Kiddos <25 years old give away 3D face scans and fingerprints at the gym, grocery store, and in the gambling mobile app.

2 days ago

watwut

The choosen demographic in Poland was easy to find without any records. Jews were mostly orthodox and easily visibly different and poor.

Polish were basically "anyone there" no records necessary.

2 days ago

odiroot

That's a big simplification. There were plenty of ethnic Jews who already converted to Catholicism (or remained atheist) and identified as regular Polish citizens. There were also mixed families who were exterminated as a whole nonetheless.

2 days ago

varispeed

They were going after key people like academics, engineers, doctors, artists first.

2 days ago

expedition32

Yeah the Nazis had future plans for Poland. The idea was to make the entire country into illiterate slaves.

A lot of people don't know that although what the Nazis did was obviously terrible it was nothing compared to what they wanted to do.

Poland survived 60 years of communism. It would not have survived national socialism.

2 days ago

0rzech

There was a version which considered leaving 15%-20% of the Polish population to be slaves, but "In 1941, the German leadership decided to destroy the Polish nation completely, and in 15–20 years the Polish state under German occupation was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists.[16]: 32 A majority of them, now deprived of their leaders and most of their intelligentsia (through mass murder, destruction of culture, banning education above the absolutely basic level, and kidnapping of children for Germanization), would have to be deported to regions in the East and scattered over as wide an area of Western Siberia as possible. According to the plan, this would result in their assimilation by the local populations, which would cause the Poles to vanish as a nation.[46]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost#Poland

2 days ago

datsci_est_2015

Specifically a national socialism predicated on a definition of “nation” that was based on dubious race science and excluded anyone whose physical appearance or genealogy was “Polish”.

2 days ago

billypilgrim

Ten years ago multiple tech giants openly stated they would not help the Trump administration build a Muslim registry [1]. Since then, several of them have bowed the knee and donated to his second inauguration. I’m from Germany, and keep wondering how much more damage the NSDAP could have done if they had access to the data these companies now have on everybody. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/16/13990234/google-muslim-r...

2 days ago

blub

Germany has the Schufa. Should be trivial to narrow down to a specific group based on name only.

2 days ago

snowpid

Again a reminder that Google etc have data far more than historical dictatorship like Stasi, KGB etc. just for better marketing. we need better data protection though GDPR is a good start.

2 days ago

nicbou

Germany already has religion logged in the Melderegister

2 days ago

flohofwoe

2 days ago

nicbou

I'm a little confused. It's still a field on the registration form and is used to collect Church tax, right? My last Anmeldung was in 2019 so I might have missed something.

2 days ago

dostick

It’s in colour if you have a computer

2 days ago

Robotbeat

Incredible to see just so many smiling, cheerful faces surrounded by utter destruction and death. The power of comradery, I suppose.

3 days ago

pzo

It shows only the better part but doesn't show the bad part. Poles are divided about usefulness of this uprising, how it was (badly) executed and many believe it was deemed to fail.

The aftermath [1] was that ~220k Poles died and out of that 150-200k civilians, often with mass execution - later on a lot of warsaw population was sometimes bitter toward the uprising’s leadership.

To put it in context: within 2 months 200k people died, similar number like in Hiroshima but almost nobody wordwide know about warsaw uprising.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising#Aftermath

2 days ago

weezing

Glory to heroes

2 days ago

TheOtherHobbes

Harrowing.

For those who don't know, the Uprising was a planned resistance action to expel the Nazis from Warsaw.

Supposedly it was planned in collaboration with the Russians. But the Russian army stood down while the resistance fought alone for two months.

This allowed the Germans to regroup, fight back, and eventually to destroy the city, and most of the resistance itself.

3 days ago

TheAlchemist

That's not accurate - the uprising was not planned in collaboration with the Russians.

The whole point of the uprising was to liberate Warsaw before the Russians get in, as everybody knew that Russians are not liberating Poland - they are looking to occupy the country, just as Germany did. If the Uprising was successfull, it would give a great credit and negotiating card to the Polish government.

Unfortunately, Russians knew that too - that's exactly why they stopped their advance and watched the city being razed to the ground. Also unfortunately, they were right and ended up occupying Poland for the next 45 years.

2 days ago

shakow

It was definitely not planned with the Soviets, for multiple reasons:

  - the Poles of the AK (London government loyal) were not the communist faction (Lublin government loyal), and saw the insurrection as the last chance to get a Poland out of the Soviet sphere of influence post WWII – especially after the publicization of Katyn;

  - even if they had wanted, Stalin had zero interest in giving a hand to London-loyal Poles that were in frontal opposition to “his” Lublin-loyal Poles;

  - the Germans were not caught flat-footed, they already knew of the insurrection preparations and therefore not only was the city well garrisoned, it would have been in any case, as it was the strategic lock of the area to hold the RKKA on the Vistula;

  - and all the above is moot in any case, because the RKKA units that reached the neighborhood of Warsaw in '44 had as many chance of taking the city as the German units that reached Moscow in '41 – they were just spent and at the end of their logistic tail after months of fighting during the Bagration operation, and had no chance of successfully developing an opposed crossing of the Vistula against two Panzerkorps.

So the London-loyal Poles were in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, and at least they were able to go with a glorious bang. Like a Marshal said, “c'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre”.
2 days ago

pzo

> So the London-loyal Poles were in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, and at least they were able to go with a glorious bang.

Many argue this uprising is nothing to be proud of and the crime of the leadership with devastating results: ~200k civilians went with this bang, and city completely wiped out.

2 days ago

shakow

This is a question I don't feel qualified enough to lean one way or the other.

2 days ago

bjourne

Some would argue the same way about the Gaza uprising.

2 days ago

spwa4

It was an attempt of the Polish resistance to avoid being "liberated" by the Soviets to just immediately become occupied by the communist red army. The idea being to liberate Warsaw and get US/UK assistance through the Polish government-in-exile in London to establish Polish military control before the Soviet army arrived. Getting US/UK support could have meant that Poland remained an independent state. Instead, Stalin not only betrayed them, but later actually convicted the surviving leaders of the uprising. "Crimes against communism".

This is now politely referred to as a Soviet betrayal in service of "Stalin's post-war political goals for Poland".

3 days ago

expedition32

The West aren't entirely the good guys here.

My own city was liberated by Polish troops. After WW2 they obviously couldn't go back to Poland. A lot of them ended up in relative poverty after the war.

At least Canadians and Australians went back home and got a parade.

2 days ago

0rzech

Yes, that was awful. Not to mention pushing Poland into Eastern Bloc and then putting embargoes on it.

2 days ago

spwa4

It was definitely Soviets/Stalin that started conquering and this was a western reaction to it. The Yalta conference was an attempt to appease Stalin and give Russia the conquests it wanted (it's not like they appeased someone else 10 years before leading to the incredible disaster, arguably the biggest disaster in human history, or anything like that. But not giving up Eastern Europe would have likely meant war with the Soviets right then and there)

It was a choice between giving up a lot, not just Poland, and continued war. Must have sucked pretty damn badly if you were one of the things given up to Stalin, but ...

a day ago

0rzech

We can only guess if it would mean war or not, but it looks like Churchill assumed it would, given he tried to campaign for taking Poland from USSR by force. I know that not only Poland was sold.

It was a horrible betrayal in both how it was done and in its outcomes. Embargoing those countries by the West, which the same West has sold to Stalin in the first place, was just a cherry on top.

21 hours ago

pstuart

Did Russia back out to intentionally let it happen or did they chicken out to avoid fighting the nazis?

3 days ago

Robotbeat

Intentionally. Allowed the Soviets to administer the place when the Nazis finally left, as the Polish resistance had been crushed. Unforgiveable.

3 days ago

consumer451

For more context, WWII was started as a partnership between Hitler and Stalin to partition Poland. [0]

Spreading this knowledge is now illegal in Putin's Russia. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Against_Rehabilitation_of_...

2 days ago

mr_toad

It would be naive to think that either ruler intended to honour this agreement in the long run. Both sides were probably gambling on when, not if, the agreement would be broken.

2 days ago

consumer451

Sure, that's debatable supposition. I would think that it's likely correct.

What is fact is that Hitler and Stalin were military allies to start WWII. This is documented history.

Would you agree with my latter statement?

2 days ago

NooneAtAll3

meanwhile France and UK simply sat on their asses against empty unguarded border

nobody cared about the poles

2 days ago

consumer451

Yes, and actual history yet again subverts the dominant story:

> The citizens of Poland have the highest count of individuals who have been recognized by Yad Vashem as the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, for saving Jews from extermination during the Holocaust in World War II. There are 7,232 (as of 1 January 2022) Polish men and women conferred with the honor, over a quarter of the 28,486 recognized by Yad Vashem in total. The list of Righteous Among the Nations is not comprehensive and it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Poles concealed and aided tens of thousands of their Polish-Jewish neighbors. Many of these initiatives were carried out by individuals, but there also existed organized networks of Polish resistance which were dedicated to aiding Jews – most notably, the Żegota organization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Righteous_Among_the_Nat...

As a Pole, I am pissed af about the fact that this true story of WWII is not known. In fact, very often the Russian version of "pravda" is what has been spread.

Why tf is there no Oscar winning movie about this story?

Poland is invaded from both sides, saves the most lives of our fellow Jewish brothers and sisters: the most heroic story, and the movie count is zero.

2 days ago

0rzech

A story of Witold Pilecki [1] would be more than enough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki

2 days ago

temp8830

[flagged]

2 days ago

phatfish

Are you upset that Russia's attempt at occupying Kyiv was hilarious bad (from a military point of view, obviously not as far as the Ukrainians are concerned), and Russia has lost any chance of retaking Poland for generations?

2 days ago

varispeed

Russians started the war together with Germans. The idea that they could "help" is Western propaganda that tries to whitewash helping Soviet Union.

2 days ago

elia_is_me

uprising together with Germans against russia invasion, and it garnered sympathy from many Chinese people --- though Polish people are anti-Chinese for religious and communism (maybe also religious) reasons

2 days ago

lukwoz

I don't think there's any such sentiment in Poland; in fact, this research points to (slightly) positive sentiment of the Polish towards the Chinese: https://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2026/K_016_26.PDF

2 days ago

flohofwoe

> uprising together with Germans against russia invasion

Please educate yourself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising

Maybe you've been confused by some of the resistance fighters wearing German helmets?

The Germans crushed the uprising because the Soviets conveniently stopped their advance, giving the Germans time to focus on the Polish resistance, which was convenient for the Soviets because it eliminated a potential "problem" for the Soviet occupation of Poland after WW2.

2 days ago

0rzech

> though Polish people are anti-Chinese for religious and communism (maybe also religious) reasons

Where did you get that from?

2 days ago

maradon

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3 days ago

siltcakes

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2 days ago

enoughstupid

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2 days ago

7e

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2 days ago

xyzelement

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2 days ago

datsci_est_2015

Well for one thing there are still buildings in Berlin that were built before 1945 (“Altbau”) but the policy of IDF appears to be to make the strip entirely uninhabitable except by their terms. At least, that’s what independent satellite imagery studies would imply (90%+ buildings uninhabitable).

2 days ago

xyzelement

Unsure about that "policy" but was there anything going on recently - any sort of context?

2 days ago

datsci_est_2015

To expand on my usage of the word “imply”: the implication of destroying buildings to the point where independent satellite imagery analysis deems 90%+ off buildings uninhabitable would be that there is a policy of making that area entirely uninhabitable, whether explicit or implicit.

To use the very example the grandparent comment gave as contrast, the advancing Russian army did not have a policy of making Berlin entirely uninhabitable - and if it did it was stopped through diplomatic means at the end of the war.

2 days ago

xyzelement

The idea that the allies restrained themselves to win the war is best underwood by considering Hiroshima or Dresden than whatever we can divine from the remaining pre war architecture in berlin. My point was that looking at what was happening. In berlin (or Hiroshima or Dresden) in 1945 without considering that those countries had done immediately prior is dumb.

2 days ago

datsci_est_2015

Well that wasn’t the point of this thread. The comment was literally asking if the Battle of Berlin would’ve reminded the OP of Gaza.

> The idea that the allies restrained themselves to win the war is best underwood by considering Hiroshima or Dresden than whatever we can divine from the remaining pre war architecture in berlin.

Yes, interestingly you bring up the worst of the worst bombing campaigns of the allies, Hiroshima and Dresden, which were specifically not carried out as extermination campaigns against an entire peoples, rather the destruction of a city thanks to a misguided doctrine that declared aerial bombing would demoralize populations, still unsuccessfully in use today (spoiler: it does not demoralize, it radicalizes).

Maybe it’s best to compare Japan’s actions in China to Israel’s current actions in Gaza?

> My point was that looking at what was happening. In berlin (or Hiroshima or Dresden) in 1945 without considering that those countries had done immediately prior is dumb.

What did China do to deserve its rape and pillage at the hand of Japan?

2 days ago

xyzelement

>> still unsuccessfully in use today (spoiler: it does not demoralize, it radicalizes).

I think your idea if I follow correctly that Israel's campaign in Gaza is to demoralize the Gazans (vs kick back, Hammas, get the hostages back, etc.) but at the same time that it's irrational for them to do it because of what you said re radicalization?

2 days ago

datsci_est_2015

Actually no, because the IDF isn’t carrying out an aerial bombing campaign. Aerial bombing campaigns are the ones that have been used in attempts to demoralize an enemy, but often instead radicalize them, e.g. Battle of Britain.

The IDF is occupying the strip, much more akin to the occupation of nations on the Eastern front, or Japan among the islands of SEA and Oceania, if we’re continuing comparisons to WW2. Those occupations were about resources, Lebensraum, and affirming racial superiority.

a day ago

cramsession

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2 days ago

lifestyleguru

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2 days ago

cramsession

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3 days ago

ngruhn

They were fighting the German army. Hamas mostly and intentionally gunned down civilizations and then took some hostages for good measure.

3 days ago

cramsession

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3 days ago

ngruhn

Wow, Hamas is _more_ justified? The Nazi's invaded Poland. Doesn't get more stolen than that. Also again: one is slaughtering civilians, the other is fighting the army. This is not even comparable.

2 days ago

cramsession

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2 days ago

yakshaving_jgt

Lots of Polish people on this website, including me.

What makes you think you're in a position to qualify the morality of the deaths of my not-so-distant relatives at the hands of Nazi invaders?

2 days ago

cramsession

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2 days ago

yakshaving_jgt

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2 days ago

cramsession

I'm 100% sure threatening other Hacker News users with violence is against site regulations.

2 days ago

Drupon

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2 days ago

thomassmith65

Polack jokes, too. Very classy /s

2 days ago

Drupon

Don't use slurs on Hackernews, thanks

17 hours ago

thomassmith65

Cheers. I don't bicker with random internet people.

14 hours ago

sdoering

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2 days ago

Drupon

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2 days ago

[deleted]
2 days ago

sdoering

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2 days ago

breppp

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3 days ago

Drupon

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2 days ago

breppp

So a thousand civilians weren't shot by death squads in civilian towns? babies weren't kidnapped? women weren't raped? houses weren't burned with people inside? bodies weren't found dismembered?

I think you should really investigate your sources of information as this is approaching an alternative reality.

2 days ago

Drupon

>So a thousand civilians weren't shot by death squads in civilian towns

Correct. The civilian death count was below a thousand and quite good by IDF/US military collateral damage standards. Compare to the hostage rescue operation the IDF and US carried out to get that one bimbo woman (who was immediately raped by an Israeli after being rescued btw) that killed over 100 civilians.

>babies weren't kidnapped

Correct

>women weren't raped

Correct

>houses weren't burned with people inside

I'm sure many were, yes. Again, fairly acceptable by collateral standards.

>bodies weren't found dismembered

Maybe there were, but there's been no evidence posted of it.

>I think you should really investigate your sources of information as this is approaching an alternative reality.

Nothing I've posted is controversial or hard to verify.

17 hours ago

cramsession

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3 days ago

sdoering

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3 days ago

Drupon

If disliking the terrorist tactics of the zionists who invented modern terrorism (Lehi, Irgun, etc.) is "antisemitic" then my heart weeps for the Jews who will have to be held accountable for it then.

2 days ago

cramsession

What did I say that's antisemitic? Ashkenazis aren't even Semitic and their factual history is just that.

3 days ago

breppp

Jewish communities in Europe trace their roots to Israel/Judea and the Roman expulsion and subsequent colonization.

Israel nowadays is mostly non-Ashkenazi in any case, and is mostly composed of Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab countries following the 1948 war

There's a widespread antisemitic conspiracy theory which links Ashkenazi to Khazars, but except being historically unsound, it echoes very ancient antisemitic (racist) tropes such as British Israelism, which are christian ideas claiming Jews are imposters to their own religion/nationality

2 days ago

cramsession

No, actually every single Israeli prime minister is in fact Eastern European. They even changed their names to sound more "hebrew", which itself is an affected language created for propaganda purposes.

2 days ago

sdoering

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3 days ago

sdoering

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3 days ago

cramsession

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3 days ago

sdoering

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3 days ago

sdoering

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2 days ago

cramsession

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2 days ago