Very interesting pictures. Most photographs I have seen have been taken in black and white, and show the destroyed city in 1944/'45.
My family had many tragic memories of the ruins of Warsaw, for they were bound with the jewish ghetto uprising and the following uprising by the AK (armia krajowa, underround army).
On another note, many cities still show signs of the destructive effect on war on the jewels of our civilizaton: The battle for Berlin also had a great toll on the city and its inhabitants, and the battle for Stalingrad (Wolgograd) had the worst effect on the population of the city: just left a single, half destroyed house and very few survivors were left. But many more civilian deaths and destruction of settlement took place during the war - the fires of Hamburg and Dresden, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Blitz on english cities are well known, but the destruction of smaller settlements and villages are not mentioned that often.
These were terrible days. We should be thankful for the peace we have.
Let's not forget that MOST of the Japanese cities were actually destroyed, not just Hiroshima and Nagasaki. US army used incendiary bombs on Japanese cities, causing massive fires (and according death tolls in civilian populations, largely exceeding the people who died from atomic bombs) across the country in all large cities. The whole country was effectively destroyed.
Yeah, in the grand scheme of things I think the A-bombs did relatively little damage, both in terms of human losses and material damage, compared to all the conventional bombing going on. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not destroyed in the sense many fire-bombed cities in Japan and Germany were.
Britain's War Machine, a book by David Edgerton, set me off on some fairly disturbing reading when he stated that the British army's total losses for the second work war were less than those suffered by the USSR in the campaign to take Berlin. The sheer scale of the war on the Eastern front is absolutely titanic.
Compare it to US deaths in Vietnam (60,000) and in Iraq/Afghanistan (~7,000).
The irony is that for all the warmongering politics of the US, the population are highly sensitive to actually losing soldiers in battle. There were single days in WWI (and the US Civil War) that saw single countries having more combat deaths than the US has seen this century in total. The US public wants wars it can win effortlessly (conscription anyone? rationing perhaps?) but has no stomach for the realities of war.
Hell, every time Australia lost a soldier in Afghanistan, the papers would do a double-page spread with portraits of all the soldiers lost so far. It's not a particularly difficult war if you can fit portraits of all the lost soldiers after 10 years in the field on a newspaper page. We've lost 40 soldiers... and in the same timeframe, we've lost 36 police officers in the normal course of civilian duty.
We really have no idea what it's like to actually be a society at war.
This just goes to show how asymmetrical Afghanistan and Iraq are in terms of war. We just don't know what is like to be on the receiving end of war.
Think about it: an Australian soldier in Afghanistan has made a choice (maybe forced by her economic condition, sure) to risk her life in Afghanistan. Afghan civilians didn't really have that choice.
The estimates for civilian deaths in Iraq are above 100k, around 20k for Afghanistan and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight for this quagmire the US has put themselves in, so I really don't know what you mean by not a particularly difficult war.
The estimates for civilian deaths in Iraq are above 100k...
That's just the best estimate for those killed in and around main areas of conflict. With all the ethnic cleansing, and general privation from the destroyed infrastructure of the Iraq nation, the total death toll is estimated to be 1 million or more.
War is more horrible than most people (who haven't directly experienced it) can imagine. We the voting public should not take any decision to go to war lightly. As we have in the past.
so I really don't know what you mean by not a particularly difficult war.
To me it's blindingly obvious that I'm talking about the experience of the Western nations in these wars. You seem to be more choosing to be obtuse rather than not actually understanding what I'm saying: that we as citizens of western make effectively zero sacrifices in pursuing these wars.
That's entirely true, but did that Afghan civilian not have that choice "to get embroiled in a war pushed on them by Western imperial overreach", or did they not have a choice "to be dominated by an extremist militant Jihadist movement that imposed a ruthless ideological dictatorship and pursued an aggressive terrorist agenda, which we are attempting to free ordinary Afghans from".
Yes we have lost dozens of soldiers, but the US also lost thousands of civilians on 9/11. The UK lost 67 people that day. Even Australia lost 11. There are reasons we are in Aghanistan. Whether you believe those are good reasons is the issue.
Huge deaths in WWII were made possible by totalitarian ideologies which made societies insensitive to losses. It only shows how much totalitarianism sucks (and it sucked most in case of Soviets vz Nazi which were BOTH totalitarian).
No there were. A lot of people volunteered knowing they will be almost certainly killed. In a democratic country it wasn't possible. And it was the main reason why so many people were killed - they were prepared to die and kill (purges of the 1930s, on both sides, devalued the human life, it was okay to report your neighbor to NKVD knowing he will be shot just out of jealousity). WWII is a crime of totalitarian regimes - on all sides - and is a lesson to learn that totalitarianism is unacceptable and never makes anyone happy.
If you think that is bad then consider WW1 - UK 995,939 deaths, France 1,697,800. No wonder people here were rather skeptical about another war.
On the subject of Soviet deaths though - my father, who served in the RAF during WW2, always said if I asked who beat the Nazis that it had been "the Soviet people". The suffering that country had to endure in the 20th century is staggering - WW1, the Revolution and Civil War, the famines and purges of the 30s and then WW2...
I apologize for being nit-picky here, but please upload it somewhere other than Facebook. (It's just a personal policy to not visit Facebook and give them any data about me, and I'm sure there are others like me here).
Interesting if the original commenter will visit this link. Won't visit Facebook but will visit a random .pl link with a name that means nothing to those who don't speak polish.
For his sake I even checked if the images in that page are not in fact hosted on facebook servers. Still... I'm pretty sure browsing facebook in incognito mode would be enough
Not true, a lot more in Minsk remained after a war with some 10% of the housing stock intact, with more damaged but inhabitable. Much like in every European city. I don't even say that almost all of the damage was done by the Soviets (there are pics of Minsk from spring-early summer 1944 where city is largely intact).
Building from the first picture, The Prudential[0], looks pretty much the same right now[1]. I don't know if the actual renovation started already or not but hopefully it'll be turned into this[2].
Edit2: I just remembered there is a movie showing Warsaw in 1935[3] and another one when city was destroyed in 1939[4]. I encourage you to visit Warsaw Rising Museum if you ever have a chance.
last time I visited Warsaw it was in much worse shape than on google maps photo. Hope it'll get into [2] soon :)
p.s. I grew up really close to it - like a block away. Seeing photos of the streets around my block at the time when you could see horizon and ruins... frisson.
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.
—SS chief Heinrich Himmler, October 17, SS officers' conference
Warsaw has to be pacified, that is, razed to the ground.
The appalling behavior of the Red Army and of the USSR in general at the time is briefly covered in the Wikipedia entry. Churchill in particular seems to have tried very hard to do the right thing.
It's worth noting that the UK was drawn into the war through the alliance it made with Poland in an attempt to contain German acquisitions - the UK was a friend to Poland with no real quarrel. 'Protecting Poland' was their call to war. It's not the greatest stretch of the imagination to consider the UK as doing right by Poland.
The Soviets, on the other hand, had a desire for Polish territory.
This is unfortunately not true. Great Britian declared war on Germany, but provided none support to Poland. This was also the case during the Warsaw Uprising. After the war has ended Poland has been sold by under the Russian occupacion. The polish fighter squadrons that took part in the battle of britain were not even allowed to join the wining parade. They were sent home to what was now considered an enemy state. The Brits may have done a lot of things, but most certailny not the right thing.
Keep in mind that no-one but the Germans were aware that blitzkreig would be as fast as it was. Up until that point, war was a somewhat leisurely affair - this is the exact reason why France fell so ignomiously. War was declared, now we can start shifting things into place while the Poles hold the Germans and... holy shit, the Poles have collapsed in only five weeks.
Same thing happened to the French - the German army moved so fast through the low countries that the French couldn't move fast enough to block them. The last time everyone fought, months would go by with only a few miles of land exchanged. This time round, a few miles of land only took an hour to obtain.
In any case, the UK deserves some credit for hastily allying with the Polish in an attempt to dissuade Germany from invading in the first place. And after the war, the Soviets were ascendent in Europe, with the rest of the Allies afraid that they would continue their march through the rest of the continent. They had a plan to take on the Soviets, but they didn't have the power to realistically defeat them.
"Keep in mind that no-one but the Germans were aware that blitzkreig would be as fast as it was"
Yeah, that's a great excuse. That should be written in the anglo-polish military alliance:
"in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power... Unless of course the germans use tanks and move very quickly. In that case, sorry".
The UK did not ally itself with Poland to help them from being taken over. It was a way of saying to Hitler, that he can't just do what he wants in Europe (like anecting Czechoslovakia) without the Germans and French approving it. The war was immenent, and everybody seemd to know that except for Chamberlain. This was only an act of self interest on behalf of the UK, and hey, who could blame them for that?
What you can't reasonably argue though, is that they tried to really help Poland in the beginning of WW2, and that they didn't betray them at the end in Yalta. And the occupation by the Soviets really wasn't much better than by the Nazis.
There was no real plan to take the Soviets on, because the Allies had no real stake in it.
What you can't reasonably argue though, is that they tried to really help Poland in the beginning of WW2
The UK allied with Poland in an attempt to contain Germany, as I've already said. It's normal for countries to make such big gestures in their own interest. Should the UK have just allied with Poland out of a sense of charity? What in particular had Poland done for the UK before this time, to demand the UK's unquestioning selfless military intervention? What became Poland was, after all, part of the central powers that opposed the UK in WWI.
And, like I said, no-one knew how rapidly Poland would fall under Blitzkreig; the mobility of the German armies was still not countered by the time they invaded France months later.
The war was immenent, and everybody seemd to know that except for Chamberlain.
Chamberlain was buying time to rearm the UK. I've always found it amusing that people take the position that the UK is responsible for 'letting Germany annex Czechoslovakia'. Apparently the other powers in the region didn't have a moral responsibility to protect an unrelated central European country, only the UK.
One wonders, if it's all about morals rather than capabilities, why Poland didn't step in and prevent Germany from annexing Czechoslovakia?
There was no real plan to take the Soviets on, because the Allies had no real stake in it.
The rest of the Allies had a huge stake in preventing the Soviets from dominating Europe. They just had no way to feasibly follow it through.
I'm not sure the UK was in much position to directly help Poland at the start of WW2, especially when Poland ended up being split between Nazi Germany and the Soviets.
At the end of the war Churchill did ask the military to come up with a plan to free Poland from Soviet control by force - but that was never going to be a realistic option, even with US assistance:
It wasn't the case with The Uprising. There were serious efforts to help from the air. The Soviets made this hard though. And yes, treatment of Poles (and Cossacks and others) was very bad). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_airlift
It certainly is. Over the last few years there seems to have been a fair bit of WW2 history written that is less loaded with Cold War prejudice. While lots is still unavailable it has made for some interesting reading. I hope this carries on as it's been fascinating.
The other day, I was talking to a friend in England and the topic of The Second came up. I told her that even though I have no first hand knowledge, I still find it deeply, deeply disturbing and humbling to ponder what happened during that time.
She offered words of consolation: 'Well, but that really was a long time ago.' - 'Maybe, but all those people are still dead.'
I refuse to find closure with that part of my countries' history. The least I can do is be eternally sad about what my country has done to the world.
Thank you to the OP and thank you for sharing those links. They have reminded me once again to stay deeply disturbed and humbled.
All these flat areas covered in rubble hills used to be housing estates (usually 5-6 stories high) in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was blown up, bulldozed, razed to the ground. As you may see, other parts of the city survived in a slightly better state.
Born and raised in Warsaw I sometimes feel I'm literally walking on history. There are hundreds of commemorative plaques/stones everywhere you go in the downtown and neighbouring districts.
The Warsaw Uprising Museum commissioned a computer simulation of the destruction of the city, visualized as a view from an airplane flying over. It's another way to see the scale of destruction.
Slightly improved translation over the google translate version:
In the summer of 1947 a group of American designers visited England, Czechoslovakia and Poland, in order to assess the post-war reconstruction progress. The photos are from their visit in August in Warsaw. The Group extended their visit to Warsaw by a few days to meet with the architects from the Capital Office of Reconstruction and reported that their work commands respect.
Google Earth has historic aerial imagery of Warsaw for 1935 and December 1945. This helps to adds some sense of scale to the images of the destruction taken on the ground and enables direct comparison to the current city layout.
Interesting how many buildings were clearly hit by bombs, burned out and still didn't collapse into their own footprint as tall buildings are known to do.
You need to look at a longer time frame. Humans are slowly, but surely becoming less violent. Way too slowly though.
The below link is probably the most interesting thing I've stumbled across on the Internet, although this is in a different form compared to how I first found it.
http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker
Quark: "Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don’t believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes." -- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Siege of AR-558 (#7.8) (1998)
Meh, it's not particularly insightful: "make someone fight for their survival and they'll fight for their survival" is what that quote boils down to. A sci-fi race that doesn't fight for survival when pressed is usually depicted as an uber-pacifistic race.
The fascinating thing about the Second World War is that several countries weren't fighting for survival, but for victory and power. Surely the big winner was the US. However Britain was in it to win from early on, as survival wasn't really the issue. The richer you were, the better you fared, unsurprisingly.
Survival wasn't really the issue? At the height of the U-Boat campaign we had a only few weeks worth of food supplies left in the country. We were loosing well over half a million tons of ships a month. If Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbour, the US would have just sat on it's hands and watched Britain collapse.
Yes we broke the U-Boat codes, but without US ships and aircraft covering the western Atlantic, we wouldn't have been able to use that information to mount an effective anti U-Boat campaign.
The Enigma encoding was actually cracked by Polish mathematicians and handed to the UK during the summer of 1939. In exchange, Poles expected the UK to join them, were they to be attacked by Germans. Unfortunately, that part of the bargain never materialised.
And yet the army was built up and arms manufacturing was built up, at the expense of food production. Troops and tanks were being sent to Africa, even as Germany looked poised to in invade Britian. Yes, it was tight, but Britain was in it to win, not defend. British production outstripped Germany and when the Empire was included, it was vastly superior. It took time to ramp up, but Britain wasn't facing defeat. The tonnage of ships controlled and owned by Britain actually increased (though numbers fell), and additionally those controlled by not owned by Britain also helped. The actual loses weren't that big. In a bad patch, Nov 1940 to June 1941 it was 3.4%. There were later times when it reached similar rates. The British diet was vastly better than those on the continent by and large. Britain wasn't starving.
You're promoting a false dichotomy: "If you're fighting for victory, you can't be fighting for survival".
In WWII if you weren't victorious, you didn't survive. The governments of Hitler? Mussolini? Antonescu? Even Tiso? Japan did keep it's emperor, but he was always a figurehead and Japan's governance was heavily reformed.
The British Empire was rapidly weakening. It didn't have the resources to maintain it's massive navy, and the head-start it had in the Industrial Revolution had waned. Germany was an ascendent power and the UK was no match for it. The UK was very much fighting for survival - the counterbalancing alliances of European powers had been in considerable tension since at least Germany unified.
Look what it took to bring Germany and its allies down down - the immense manpower and resources of the Soviets, the industrial might of the US, and the naval power and combined might of the UK and the Commonwealth. And good old General Winter working for the Soviets. And this was only 20 years after WWI's peace treaty where the factories of Germany were stripped of heavy machinery. The UK was certainly fighting for survival. When you get bankers training to use catapults seriously intending to use them (however comical the Home Guard was at times), you really are in the grip of total war, fighting for your survival.
Britain made more planes than Germany except in 1944, made more tanks, except in 43 and 44 (when imports radically increased. It's navy was growing throughout the war. It out produced Germany in many important measures. The army grew and the workforce grew. Yes, it was hard, but total war was what the Russians and Germany fought, not the British. Casualty figures tell us that.
Total war refers to how a society mobilies resources for war, not the casualties it sustains. The UK shipped children out of London, introduced rationing, blackouts, sustained and conducted bombing runs against civilian centres to strike at production, engaged in conscription, sustained and conducted sinking of merchant vessels, and used its political power to pull in every ally it could find. Just because an army didn't land on Great Britain and lay waste to the land doesn't mean it wasn't total war.
How would you describe the difference between the war experiences of those from USSR and Germany compared to Britain? There is a fairly striking difference. Part of this is due to a totalitarian regime, but more is due to the catastrophic effects of the war. Rich countries had a considerably easier war than poor countries. Britain was a rich country. While it didn't finish paying for its World War Two loans until 2006, it is a sign of an incredible wealth that it got the loans in the first place. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6215847.stm
Edit: And to more directly address a couple of those points, many countries had starvation, with vast numbers of deaths in both civilian and military populations. Britain didn't as far as I know. Children fought in many battles and the elderly and infirm too (as much as possible). These things also didn't occur in Britain, with the exception of children who lied to get into the armed forces, which at times may have been officials turning a blind eye. Perhaps it was total war in Britain, but it was certainly an easier and cheaper war than others experienced. A low grade total war?
The nazi lesson is more important in the face of processes which happens today, on our eyes in Poland, in Baltic states and Ukrane (do you know that Nazi penetrate the official power in Ukrane, what would western countires do if somebody seized the official buildings or even attacked a policeman?).
They do it on the formerly Deutsch land, that was generously gifted to the polish people by "the bloody dictator, Stailn", after Polish nationalists have siezed the western part of Soviet Union in 1920 and collaborated with Hitler to start WWII attacking the Checkoslovakia USSR allies in 1938.
The burgeose-democratic Poland does not deserve being an independent country. Independent, it turns immediately into a nazi regime. Nazi hate Russians, hate communism. The modern Poland is a nazi country, as usually (american, capitalist puppet. Capitalists do raise the nazi to defend the capitalism from communists, not only in Poland but everywhere in the Europe and the Latin America also).
You mean the Soviet soldiers that invaded Poland in 1939, killed 20,000 of its politicians, lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists, clergy, etc, then rolled through again 4 years later only to stay as a way to prop up the communist regime for the next 45 years?
I assure you, "Polish nazis" are not the only ones who have a problem with what Soviet soldiers and officers did, nor do we care for the hundreds of such monuments spread all over Poland.
In 1939 SU "invated the Poland" is a complete nazi nonsense. SU has invateded its own territory, siezed earlier by the fascist Poland, after the polish government ceased to exist. So, it is hard to tell what you are talking about at all. Returning your territories from criminals is a right thing to do, especially in order to save the territory and people from the Gernam Nazi criminals. Stalin did the only right thing.
> killed 20,000 of its politicians, lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists, clergy, etc,
I do not know what you are talking about. It seems to be the nazi nonsense, similar to your first sentence.
Please do not abuse words like nazi and do not promote Russian propaganda here, do you argue with a mass murder that was confirmed to be done by Russians ? Or is it also some 'nazi' propaganda ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
I expected when you come up with this piece of Goebbels propaganda in order to justify your nazi wars. The very article you refer confirms that we have a piece of Goebbels propaganda. The polish officers, arrested by Soviet Union, have nothing to do with your "killed 20,000 of its politicians, lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists, clergy, etc" In fact, all politicians, lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists, clergy, and etc. were fingting in the red army, against nazi. The officers that you are referring now, left in Katyn, were killed by Nazi. This atrocity was used by Goebbels to quarrel the Soviet and polish people in 1943, when it became apparent that germans are defeating and the truth will resurface. They were bonded by german ropes and killid from the german guns by german bullets. The fact that burgeose Russian governemnt manufactures documents to support this Goebbels lie cannot deny the evidence. Neither, it cannot be used to justify the fascist behaviour of polish burgeose (i.e. predatorish) policies. This is what you try to do: you use german Nazi propaganda to deny the truth and justify your crimes.
I don't know that much about Katyn, but Gorbachev and Yeltsin both admitted to this, right? There's no doubt about the documents that they released to the Poles confirming the Soviet orders? What are you talking about?
> There's no doubt about the documents that they released to the Poles confirming the Soviet orders?
Are you so brainwashed that you cannot even read? How there cannot be doubt after http://katynmassakern.blogspot.com/2010/07/katyn-ilyukhins-v... and me talking "the fact that burgeose Russian governemnt manufactures documents to support this Goebbels lie cannot deny the evidence". Do you think that I will believe that those documents happened to be stored in the Yeltsin's personal safe, when he organized the trial against the Communist Party, http://katynmassakern.blogspot.com/2011/01/katyn-mysterious-...? Do you mean that there was nothing more to store in the "closed package no. 1" (google it) in the whole 1000-year Russian history than the "Katyn affair"? What do you think I mean by "burgeose Russian governemnt manufactures documents"? Do you think I mean that _there is no doubt_? Are you crazy?
It would be interesting to investigate what happened in the Western Ukrane in 1941. But, instead of investigation, you demand the russians to be balmed guilty and hide the reason why the Polish intelligence appeared on the Soviet territory in the first place.
Do you mean that the attack of the Soviets by Poland in 1920, when the Western Ukrane was seized by polish fascists, and dividing the Chekoslovakia with Hitler in 1938, inflaming the WWII, was the act of piece? Or, you just deny these facts?
Look for manufacturing consent and Noam Chomsky to understand why the facts that I tell seem outlandish to you. He speaks right about indoctrination, the indoctrination that turns white into black and vice-versa.
It says about "landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials and priests". The same cleanup was done in the Soviet Union 10 years earlier. It is class struggle. There is nothing national in this question. 40 years later, in the 199x, this class of "intelligent people" killed much more workers in their capitalism restoration. You cannot justify your fascism/nacism by the class war conducted.
> SU has invateded its own territory, siezed earlier by the fascist Poland, after the polish government ceased to exist.
This territory was agreed upon in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, so how could the SU move to save territory after the Polish government fell, if it had already agreed to split it up before it fell?
Also, if you say that it's the Soviet Union's territory, why was a large part of it returned after WWII?
You is a fascist propaganda. At first, Poland was eager to sign the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Polish_Non-Aggression_P... in 1934 -- watch the photo (Hitler is in power since 1933). June 1939 absolutely nazi germany have signed the pact with Baltic states. Soviet Union did that later, in August 1939. So, who is the real Nazi aggressor? Why do you poke the Molotov-Ribbentrop all the time? Because you are try to conceal the inconvenient truth.
Particularly, the border between USSR and Poland was demarked not by Hitler but by _European democracies (google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curzon_Line)_. The Molotov-Ribbentrop was innocent, it reclaimed the lands siezed by fascist Poland earlier. In fact SU reclamed that even after the Polish government ceased to exist, to minimize the boold. Only criminals can say that restoring the justice with minimal viktims is a terrible crime act. You is a fascist criminal. Stallin was the last European leader to pack with Hitler. You have forced Stalin to sign the piece treaty with your ally, Hitler.
Communists are the primary enemy of fascism. Fascists were invented in 20-st century to counteract the communism. You felt better with Hitler than with Russian comrades. That is why you askribe your crimes to the others. All what you say is a manipulating hypocracy.
My family had many tragic memories of the ruins of Warsaw, for they were bound with the jewish ghetto uprising and the following uprising by the AK (armia krajowa, underround army).
On another note, many cities still show signs of the destructive effect on war on the jewels of our civilizaton: The battle for Berlin also had a great toll on the city and its inhabitants, and the battle for Stalingrad (Wolgograd) had the worst effect on the population of the city: just left a single, half destroyed house and very few survivors were left. But many more civilian deaths and destruction of settlement took place during the war - the fires of Hamburg and Dresden, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Blitz on english cities are well known, but the destruction of smaller settlements and villages are not mentioned that often.
These were terrible days. We should be thankful for the peace we have.