The main objective, set by the
Armia Krajowa [AK] for
the rebel units was to occupy the government communal administration
buildings.
The town hall, the main post building, power station, the
gas plant, filtering facilities, central telephone station, several school
buildings, the “Dzeciontka Ezus” hospital, several banks, securities
publishing as well as other institutions were occupied.
Not a single
railway station was taken, no brailroads have been destroyed - this allowed
the Germans to freely use those during the entire uprising period. Bridges
were not taken, Kostyushowskoe coast, the highway were left in the hands of
Germans. In other words: not a single strategic point was taken.
Barricades were built on almost every street in the city. The
civilians were building them mostly without any military supervision. The
barricades were not reinforced, frequently didnt have ditches in front of
them and were not an obstacle for tanks. Those were useful only to protect
against rifle fire (which was not common since the Germans were not sending
infantry to attack) and as machine gun nests.
Rebel units were at best
armed with machine guns and rifles, but frequently with grenades and pistols
only. Many units had only part of their soldiers armed while others were
forced to wait for their combat mate to get wounded to take his weapon.
There were absolutely no anti-tank weapons initially, but later some amount
of “Piatto” guns were dropped by the English aircraft. There were almost no
stationary or light machine guns.
After the initial offensive to the
administrative buildings the rebels have chosen defensive tactics. When
discussing the cooperation they would also force
Armia Ludowa [AL]
to follow the same tactics.
The commanders of the AK were claiming
that the Germans were trying to occupy only the communication routes leading
away from the city:
- The Pnyatowsky bridge. 3rd of May alley, Jerusalem alley, Gruentskaya street.
- The Karbedzya bridge, Castle square, Senate street, Electoral street, Cold street, Volyska street.
- Gorchevskaya street, Lyeshno, Tlomatzkoe, the Kerbedzya bridge
and to leave alone the rebel resistance points between those.
Based on
that theory they did not attack when there were all the possibilities for
that, but were in the defence. As a result of this, the region of the
uprising was squeezed and reduced in size which formed isolated points of
resistance which could communicate one with another only through channels.
On the Zhilobozha there were even such cases when they didn’t allow to
shoot at the Germans within our firing sector just not to provoke them to
return fire and start storming the rebel’s positions.
18.09.1944
Source: original scanned document
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