Destruction of Warsaw

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Destroyed Warsaw in January 1945

The planned destruction of the western parts of Warsaw by the German occupation troops happened in autumn 1944. This was preceded by the suppression of the Warsaw uprising . As part of the uprising, there was heavy house-to-house fighting between German units and armed formations of the Polish Home Army in the urban areas of Warsaw west of the Vistula . The eastern districts of Warsaw were already under the military control of the Soviet Red Army . At that time the Vistula formed the front line between the combat units of the German Wehrmacht and those of the Red Army.

Large-scale demolition and reconstruction plans before the war

The reconstruction of Warsaw with the simultaneous large-scale demolition of parts of the building fabric of the Polish capital Warsaw was planned on the German side before the beginning of the Second World War . When Adolf Hitler visited an architecture firm in Würzburg on June 20, 1939 , his attention was focused on the project of future German urban design - "New German City Warsaw".

According to the so-called “ Pabst Plan ”, Warsaw was to be transformed into a German provincial town. Among other things, the demolition of entire blocks of houses was planned with the aim of creating large street axes, similar to the Germania concept for the German capital Berlin .

Aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising

Deportation of civilians

In 1944, a large transit camp was set up in Pruszków in the railway repair works ( Zakłady Naprawcze Taboru Kolejowego ) to accommodate the evacuees who were deported from Warsaw by the National Socialists . In the course of the Warsaw Uprising , the Germans brought an estimated 555,000 of the city's residents and 100,000 civilians from the surrounding area to this transit camp 121 (DuLag 121 for short). The SD and SS separated the deportees and determined their fate. An estimated 650,000 people passed DuLag 121 from August to September. It is believed that 55,000 were sent to concentration camps, 13,000 of them to Auschwitz . These included people from a wide variety of social classes and professions (government officials, scientists, artists, doctors, merchants and workers), in a wide variety of physical conditions (injured, sick, disabled and pregnant women) and from all age groups, from babies a few weeks old to old people of 86 and over. In some cases these were people of different ethnic backgrounds, including Jews, who lived with " Aryan proof ".

Some people hid in the deserted city. They were called "Robinsons" (after Robinson Crusoe ) or "Cavemen". Above all, the Germans called them “rats” and murdered them when they were found in the ruins of the city. The most famous of these “Robinsons” was Władysław Szpilman (protagonist in the film The Pianist ). His memoir was published by Chaim Itsl Goldstein under the title The Bunker .

Looting and destruction of buildings

German flamethrower squad in Warsaw

After the remaining population had fled or been deported, associations of the Wehrmacht began with the systematic destruction of the remains of the western parts of the city. Pioneer units of the Wehrmacht were sent through the city to burn down and demolish the buildings still standing there after the fighting. According to different planning approaches, Warsaw was to be converted into a military interim storage facility or a lake after a hypothetical German victory in World War II. The demolition forces used flamethrowers and explosives to continually destroy house by house. They paid special attention to historical monuments, Polish national archives and places of special interest.

On September 4, 1944, the remains of the royal palace were destroyed. The Polish National Library was pillaged in October, resulting in a great loss of historical manuscripts. The Brühlsche Palais was destroyed on December 18th and the Saxon Palace on December 27th . The Łazienki Palace burned in December with around 1000 holes in its walls, but the construction still held up. The destruction was documented by Alfred Mensebach and a number of camera teams.

The Bank Polski was in 2004 still the scars of the uprising. The lighter stones were added when the building was rebuilt in 2003.

In January 1945 around 85% of the buildings were destroyed, 10% as a result of the attack on Poland in 1939 and other fighting, 15% as a result of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising , 25% after the Warsaw uprising and 35% as a result of systematic German destruction operations after the Revolt.

As part of the major offensive of the Red Army in January 1945, it also took the entire urban area of ​​Warsaw; this meant that all other German plans had become obsolete.

The losses (94%), 25 churches, 14 libraries including on 10,455 buildings, 923 historic buildings National Library , 81 primary schools, 64 secondary schools and the University of Warsaw , the Warsaw University of Technology and most of the historical monuments appreciated. Almost a million residents lost all of their property.

In the post-war period, the city of Warsaw was rebuilt, with the Old Town being reconstructed and the New Town largely restored to its former state. The destruction was so severe that when the historic old town of Warsaw was being rebuilt, a detailed city map, which was commissioned by the government before the partitions of Poland in the 18th century, and by the Italian artists Marcello Bacciarelli and Bernardo Bellotto , who also ran an art school there, had been drawn to be used as a model for restoring most of the buildings.

The exact losses of private and public property, such as works of art, cultural and scientific achievements, are unknown. Studies in the late 1940s estimate the damage at about 30 billion US dollars . In 2004, the then mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński , set up a historical commission to assess the damage to public property that had been inflicted on the city by the German authorities alone. She estimated the damage to be at least $ 31.5 billion. These estimates were later increased to $ 45 billion (2005) and $ 54.6 billion (at the 2004 exchange rate).

See also

literature

  • Vanessa Gera: Warsaw bloodbath stirs emotions. In: Chicago Sun-Times, August 1, 2004.
  • Peter K. Gessner (2000): For over two months… . [As of August 13, 2009].
  • Niels Gutschow, Barbara Klain: Destruction and Utopia: Urban Planning Warsaw 1939-1945. Junius, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-88506-223-2 .
  • Księga Pamięci: Transporty Polaków z Warszawy do KL Auschwitz 1940–1944. Without publisher, place and year.
  • Anthony M. Tung: Preserving the world's great cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis. Three Rivers Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-517-70148-0 .
  • Krystyna Wituska, Irene Tomaszewski: Inside a Gestapo Prison: The Letters of Krystyna Wituska, 1942–1944. Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2006, ISBN 0-8143-3294-3 .
  • Report o stratach wojennych Warszawy ( pl , PDF; 5.4 MB) Miasto Stołeczne Warszawa. November 2004. Retrieved July 18, 2013.
  • Hans Steidle: The destruction of Warsaw on the drawing board (PDF; 2.2 MB) Retrieved on May 24, 2013.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Pamięci (n.d.): no page number
  2. ↑ a b c d FAQ on the Warsaw Uprising (as of August 13, 2009)
  3. ^ Wituska, Tomaszewski (2006): No page number
  4. ↑ Gessner (2000)
  5. ^ Tung (2001): no page number
  6. ↑ Gera (2004): page number is missing
  7. ↑ Warszawa szacuje straty wojenne. (As of March 16, 2007)
  8. ↑ Sub-pages of the official Warsaw homepage : Raport o stratach wojennych Warszawy. (PDF; 5.4 MB), Straty Warszawy w albumie. and Straty wojenne Warszawy. (As of August 13, 2009)