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Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944

The Warsaw Uprising 1944

Reviewer: Marek Chodakiewicz


Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944

(The Warsaw Uprising 1944) By Wlodzimierz Borodziej. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2001. 251 pages. Hardcover. In German.

The story of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 is grim. Over 200,000 Poles died, most of them civilians. The Polish independentist elite (which was anti-Nazi and anti-Communist) was decimated, in particular its youth who fought and sacrificed in the hopeless endeavor to regain the nation's independence. The capital was in ruins, methodically blown up block by block long after the insurgents surrendered on October 4, 1944. "Polen hatte eine ganze Generation verloren, und seine Hauptstadt dazu," according to the apt conclusion of Wlodzimierz Borodziej who ably retold the story of the Uprising to the German reader. (1)

Borodziej set out to synthesize the existing knowledge about the Uprising. To anchor the tragedy within its proper context, he painted a broad historical background starting with the partitions of Poland in the eighteenth century. Next, he concentrated on the German and Nazi occupation regimes in Poland after September 1939, stressing correctly that "ohne den Hitler-Stalin-Pakt vom 23. August 1939 hätte es keine polnische Frage im Zweiten Weltkrieg gegeben." (2)

Arguably, Borodziej is at his best when dealing with the diplomatic background. Poland was basically abandoned by its allies in 1939, and the tradition of neglect continued afterward both diplomatically and militarily. Neither the British nor the Americans were willing to antagonize Stalin by opposing his Polish policy. For Stalin, according to Borodziej, the main bone of contention was, first, Poland's eastern territories and, second, the desire to control the rest of the country through a Communist proxy regime established in Moscow and later transplanted to Lublin.

Poland's experience from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries was punctuated by insurrections against foreign powers occupying the country: Russia, Prussia, and Austro-Hungary. Initially, the risings were staged by regular Polish military units reinforced by volunteers (1794, 1806, and 1830-1831). Later, Poland's armed endeavors were based upon poorly trained levée en masse commanded by Polish veterans of foreign armies. The only successful Polish rising took place in November 1918, when the Poles of Poznan /Posen rebelled against the Prussians. As the news of the rising spread, coinciding with the armistice on the western front, the Polish underground disarmed German and Austro-Hungarian troops throughout central Poland. The Poles thus liberated themselves and re-established a Polish state after almost 120 years of captivity.

As Borodziej correctly points out, almost all senior officers of the Polish army and underground during the second world war had been junior participants in the rising of 1918 and were hoping to repeat its success in 1944. Accordingly, from the very beginning, they drafted numerous contingency plans for a national uprising to liberate Poland. Also from the very beginning, the Polish independentist underground leadership, which organized and commanded the Polish Underground State and its main clandestine force, the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK), took the stance that Poland had two enemies: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. Although after June 1941 the latter became "the ally of our allies," unofficially the Polish attitude toward the Soviet Union remained mistrustful at best.

The situation became seriously exacerbated after the discovery of the victims of the Katyn massacre perpetrated by Soviet Russia and the subsequent break-off of diplomatic relations between the Polish government-in-exile and the USSR. Katyn was but the tip of an iceberg. A powerful wave of revolutionary banditry swept central and eastern Poland with the Soviet and Polish Communist partisans raiding Polish villages and assaulting the AK troops. By 1944, in certain regions of Poland, the Wilno /Vilnius area in particular, a state of virtual war existed between the independentist Poles and the Communists. As Soviet forces rolled west, Stalin's ill-will and hostile intentions became manifestly transparent. Once the Red Army crossed Poland's pre-war frontier in January 1944, local Home Army units were given orders to commence the "Operation Tempest." This was envisioned as a rolling insurrection. The objective was to defeat the Germans and re-establish Polish administration before the arrival of the Soviets. In practice, the AK succeeded in taking power on its own in some places, but in most instances it simply assisted the Red Army offensive. Afterward, invariably, the Poles were disarmed, arrested, forcibly drafted into the Polish Communist army or sent to the Gulag. Some AK men were shot.

Both the command of the Home Army and the Polish government-in-exile were aware of those developments as the Red Army approached Warsaw. Nonetheless, acting on faulty intelligence (has it ever been investigated?) about the allegedly imminent entry of the Soviet troops into the capital, Home Army Commander-in-Chief General Tadeusz Komorowski (alias "Bór") gave orders to commence the rising on August 1, 1944. However, it was the AK Warsaw commander Colonel Antoni Chrusciel ("Monter") who led the insurgents in the struggle, a crucial fact of which Borodziej informs us only on pages 142 and 146 of his book. The decision to fight resulted from the behind-the-scenes political actions of a few senior AK officers who outmaneuvered the majority of their colleagues, including General Komorowski. The distinguished minority decided to act on the Goethe-like "ideology of the deed" (ideologia czynu) to demonstrate to the world Poland's will to freedom. Borodziej, who carefully avoids almost all judgment, delicately asks, "Nur: Musste dies die Entscheidung bedeuten, einen nach militärischen Gesichtspunkten mehr als zweifelhaften Kampf in einer Stadt mit mehreren hunderttausend Einwohner aufzunehmen?" (3)

Terrible carnage and predictable failure resulted. Even if the Uprising had succeeded, what then? Would Stalin have allowed a free Polish government in Warsaw? That would have been the question. As in Wilno/Vilnius, Lwów/Lviv, Lublin, and elsewhere, the AK insurgents would have been disarmed, arrested, and sent to the Gulag, if not shot. ‘Western public opinion' would have cared as much as it did when the insurgents were bleeding in vain before the Nazi onslaught.

From August 1 on, Warsaw was largely left to its own devices. The greatest contribution of the Allies was to have secured, late in the game, the recognition of the AK as a full-fledged combatant, which somewhat moderated the Nazi treatment of Polish POWs. On the other hand, the Allied supply drops were inadequate, if not symbolic. Only in mid-September did the Russians allow the Americans to use their airfields. Stalin also permitted an ill-fated expedition by a token Polish force under Communist command to cross the Vistula River to assist the insurgents. Those troops were massacred, as were the AK fighters. Meanwhile, the Nazis bombed hospitals, executed civilians, burned alive the wounded and medical staff, and used women and children as human shields for their tanks. Despite the exemplary heroism of the insurgents, the districts of Warsaw fell one by one. The defiant Poles refused to surrender. When, on September 18, the Wehrmacht sent its emissaries to the beleaguered AK commander of Zoliborz, the Polish officer told the Germans that they should surrender to him (p. 178). Nonetheless, on October 4, having exhausted all means of resistance, the Home Army capitulated. The insurgents were sent to POW camps. Warsaw's population was deported and the city systematically raised to the ground. Borodziej argues that had it not been for the Uprising, the resistance to the Communist takeover would have been much stronger (p. 218).

Probably the most original part of Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944 is the author's acknowledgement that, although only an episode in the Second World War, the Warsaw Uprising domestically became a symbol of monumental proportions, second to none, signifying for the next fifty years Poland's unquenchable desire for independence and freedom. The Communists first attempted to destroy the legend of the Uprising; later, they tried to appropriate it; and, finally, they joined the rest of the Poles in the ritual of the solemn celebration of that tragic event.

This is the story that Borodziej narrates in an admirably calm and systematic manner. For the most part, his monograph is informative, accessible, and well organized. However, Borodziej leaves his scholarly peers somewhat unsatiated. Most importantly, there are a few problems that are inherent in synthetical, rather than analytical works. Borodziej based himself largely on what others have published, including both primary and secondary sources, which he then squared with his preferences. On the other hand, he avoided other sources. For example, one is surprised that he failed to mention Polish-American scholar J. K. Zawodny's Nothing but Honor (1978) which deals incisively and specifically with the Warsaw Uprising. Nor did Zawodny's pioneering work on the Katyn massacre even make the bibliography.

There are other lacunae as well. First, Borodziej fails to shed new light on Stalin's decision-making during the Uprising. True, Borodziej's intuitive interpretation of the Soviet dictator's motives and actions seems to be right, but the final verdict must wait until a lucky historian is granted access to these particular files in the post-Soviet archives.

Next, it is frustrating that Borodziej did not elaborate on the fact that the "'fremdvölkische' Truppen im Einsatz gegen Warschau" constituted "fast 50 Prozent der Angreifer unter deutschem Kommando." (4) Although the topic of their participation against the insurgents of Warsaw still awaits serious scholarly consideration, there are nonetheless at least a few monographs dealing with the East European auxiliaries of the Nazis and plenty of references to them in Polish memoirs and secondary works.(5) It is a pity that Borodziej did not take note of them. What does the participation of the ex-Soviet auxiliaries of the Nazis in the Uprising signify? How did it bear on the Polish attitudes toward all ‘Ruskies:' Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians? Sure, the Nazi commanders deserve the bulk of the blame, but is it still warranted to refer continuously to the enemies of the insurgents as "the Germans" when we know that some of the most bestial atrocities were committed by the ex-Soviets in Nazi uniform?

Next, his depiction of General Komorowski is unimaginative and unflattering, partly because, as Borodziej has admitted himself, no scholarly monograph on this commander exists. Yet there is enough available material to have qualified the negative picture of the General, just as Borodziej did when dealing with General Leopold Okulicki, one of the major advocates of the launching of the rising. Therefore, just for the record, it is worth recounting some basic facts about General Tadeusz Komorowski, an erstwhile Habsburg officer and a conservative noble landowner.

In the Polish Army Komorowski commanded the 12th Lancers. Seriously wounded in the battle of Komorów in 1918, he refused to leave the field. In 1920, he distinguished himself in the war against the Bolsheviks, earning Poland's top medal, the Virtuti Militari. During the September 1939 campaign Komorowski aquitted himself well defending the Vistula. Later, he went underground, operating in Kraków. Having been appointed commander-in-chief of the Home Army after the arrest of his predecessor, General Stefan Rowecki ("Grot"), Komorowski indefatigably strove for the unity of the independentist underground. He succeeded in subordinating to the Home Army most of the far-right National Armed Forces (Narodowe Sily Zbrojne) and much of the left-wing Peasant Battalions (Bataliony Chlopskie) by 1944.

Komorowski's sense of honor and duty was legendary; he made no allowances for his family. For example, on July 31, 1944, a day before the Uprising, the General failed to warn his wife, who was in an advanced state of pregnancy, of the impending action and to spirit her out of the city. Mrs. Komorowska miraculously survived the Uprising, even though, at the end, she was used as a live shield by the Nazis for the Nazi tanks. Later, the General commented: "there were many pregnant women in Warsaw at the time. . . I was unable to evacuate all of them and therefore I was unable to make an exception for my own wife! Besides, I was obligated by the rule of military secrecy to keep silent."(6) All that of course does not imply that Komorowski was right to have succumbed to the minority of the AK staff that had pushed for the Uprising. Borodziej is correct in criticizing the general's failure to prevent the tragedy. After all, he was in charge and could have acted accordingly.

Another sin of omission is the virtual lack of discussion of the participation of women in the Uprising. Borodziej admits that they constituted about 10 per cent of the Home Army (p. 162). How valuable were they? What functions did they play in battle? What was the impact of their presence on the troop morale?

There is not much on the lot of the Jews during the Uprising. Borodziej limits himself to recalling parenthetically a few incidents. One learns that about 15 Jews remained in hiding after the capitulation (p. 206). Also, he tells us that in September, a few rogue insurgents, "who had plagued the civilian population before (die schon vorher als Plage der Zivilbevölkerung gegolten hatten)," robbed and murdered about 15 Jews (p. 199). This and other incidents were subject to an immense public debate in Poland in the mid-1990s. (7) One would like to hear more about it. In another instance, Borodziej narrates that the Home Army freed up to 100 Hungarian Jews from the custody of the SS (p. 115). However, why did the scholar relegate to a footnote (230 n. 9) the most important action of the Home Army on behalf of the Jews during the Uprising, namely the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp "Gesiówka," where about 300 Jews were imprisoned? Many of them joined the insurgents and fought in their ranks with distinction.(8) On the other hand, why did not Borodziej address the hypothesis that had there been no Uprising, about 20,000 Jews who were hiding in the capital on its eve would have survived the war? (9)

It is distinctly unhelpful to talk about "the Jews" during the Warsaw Uprising because it obscures the social and ideological plurality of the remnant Jewish population, including the resistors. It would have been helpful to be informed that, because of its mistrust of the communists and Soviets, the Jewish Marxist Bund joined the left-wing Polish People's Army (Polska Armia Ludowa) rather than the communist People's Army (Armia Ludowa). Neither can one find anything about the activities of the far-right Jewish Military Union (Irgun Zwoi Leumi/Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy). The Irgun fighters acquitted themselves bravely, including some, as for example Caleb Perechodnik, who fought during the Uprising in the ranks of the National Armed Forces.(10) Again, much of the material concerning the Jews during the Uprising is dispersed through numerous memoirs and scholarly monographs. Much of it is inaccurate and should be supplemented with archival research. Hopefully, an in-depth analysis of the Jews during the Uprising will be available in the forthcoming monograph of Gunnar S. Paulson.(11)

Further, there are questions concerning Borodziej's interpretation of the Nazi and Soviet occupations. He seems to have a problem with the periodization. Borodziej undoubtedly considers the Soviet attack in September 1939 and the subsequent actions of Stalin in eastern Poland until 1941 as aggression and occupation. But what of the period after 1944 when the Soviets occupied Poland again? Was that freedom?

Moreover, Borodziej postulates a parity of suffering among all ethnic groups under the first Soviet occupation of eastern Poland. This interpretation is problematic, indeed untenable. The Soviet terror targeted first and foremost ethnic Poles and Catholics, members of the Polish elite in particular. Poles were a minority in eastern Poland. Yet, they accounted for the majority of the victims of mass executions (in Katyn and elsewhere), arrests, and deportations, which included entire families of ‘enemies of the people.' The Polish victims of Stalin also lost their properties to confiscation. In comparison, local Jews were repressed to a much lesser extent than refugee Jews from the West, who were overrepresented among the Jewish deportees.(12)

Borodziej correctly considers the Jewish population to be the primary victim of Nazism. However, it should have been noted that until 1941, the Polish Christian elite was the principal target of the Nazis and it suffered disproportionately to its numbers. This continued well into the second Soviet occupation of Poland. In contradistinction, the bulk of the Christian population suffered most mainly during the final period of the Nazi rule (1942-44).

Last but not least, one is troubled by Borodziej's asymmetrical treatment of Poland's far-right National Armed Forces (NSZ) and Stalin's Polish Communists operating as the Polish Workers Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza) and its military arm, the People's Army (Armia Ludowa). Borodziej devoted four sentences to the NSZ. Without footnoting his claim, he confidently states that "in Warsaw however the extreme right did not play a large role" (p. 35). How does he know that? On the other hand, immediately after this remark about the NSZ, he becomes quite talkative about the PPR/AL (pp. 35-37 and numerous other remarks throughout the book). Granted, the PPR/AL merited attention because the communists represented Soviet interests in Poland. Neither their numbers nor their combat record however merited such detailed consideration. The problem becomes obvious when one consults the recently published documents of the NSZ and PPR/AL, which Borodziej completely ignored.

In September 1943 the National Armed Forces fielded about 70,000 soldiers. By April 1944, when the NSZ subordinated themselves to the Home Army, they had an estimated 90,000 fighters. The Warsaw garrison of the NSZ had about 6,800 soldiers, including a small minority of 2,000 radicals who did not subordinate themselves to the AK. During the Warsaw Uprising, the number of the NSZ men and women fluctuated. Because the NSZ leadership was not informed of the Uprising, most soldiers were caught off guard and failed to join their detachments. Instead, they fought in Home Army units and were considered Home Army soldiers. Only a minority managed to assemble as separate units, albeit subordinated to the Home Army. On August 9, 1944, their commander, Colonel Spirydion Koiszewski ("Topór"), reported to his Home Army superiors 2,316 men, including 340 officers of the NSZ in the city center alone. In the Old Town, the NSZ "Kolo" Brigade had an estimated 1,200 men not subordinated to Colonel Koiszewski, who consequently failed to list them. Thus, the NSZ fielded about 3,500 men, not counting several partisan units operating in the close proximity of Warsaw to assist the insurgents (e.g., Bateria "Kampinos"). The National Armed Forces lost at least 1,079 killed in action during the Uprising. The Home Army leadership commended the NSZ soldiers for their valor.(13) Unfortunately, their exemplary combat record and great sacrifice merited only one sentence in Borodziej's book, where he notes that "deren Kampf im Aufstand bis 1989 verschweigen wurde" (their fight in the Uprising was glossed over in silence until 1989), and that only in the 1990s did the NSZ veterans begin openly to participate in the commemorative activities of the Uprising (p. 217).

How about the Communists? According to party documents, at their peak in June 1944, the PPR/AL enrolled slightly over 6,000 members. In March and April 1944, there were only 91 fighters in the Warsaw underground cells. During the Uprising their strength increased. The Communists may have contributed as many as 400 insurgents to the struggle. For example, according to a dispatch of August 30, 1944, there were 35 Communist fighters and 122 support personnel in the Old Town alone. They were armed with 5 rifles, 2 submachine guns, two handguns, and 18 grenades. Most of their comrades (between 100 and 300 people, including civilians) had deserted two days prior by sewers to the northern suburb of Zoliborz. On October 1, 1944, the AL Chief of Staff reported that the AL had 278 fighters. On October 1, 1944, Colonel Chrusciel established that "the AL Headquarters claimed to have commanded first 1,000 and then 700 persons. In fact their battle-readiness (stan bojowy faktyczny) is as follows: 1 platoon somewhat equipped with arms (more than 40 persons). More than 200 fled to Zoliborz. One-hundred and sixty and the aforementioned storm platoon made it to the city center."

Borodziej is also willing to cut the Communists more than a fair share of slack. When most of the AL deserted from the Old Town on August 28 (and not on the 25th), the scholar judges the desertion to have been "naturally a relative concept" (natürlich ein relativer Begriff) (p. 150). Why naturally? Why relative? Most of their colleagues in the Home Army, who stayed behind, would have found such relativism plainly offensive. Relativism may be a fashionable concept among academics in peacetime, but it certainly was not in style among the insurgents of Warsaw where desertion was a matter of life and death. Finally, what of the fact that the Communists planned to attack the Home Army and other ‘reactionaries' during the Uprising and that they hoped to convert the Uprising into a social revolution so they could seize power?(14)

Borodziej found it appropriate to include in his brief resume of the NSZ a remark about the alleged collaboration with the Nazis, but he remained silent about the thorough penetration of the PPR leadership and many field units by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. Borodziej does not call the Polish Communists ‘Soviet collaborators;' perhaps he simply considers them ‘Stalin's Polish puppets' and assumes that the reader would take that for granted.

To reiterate, Borodziej's work is weakened by his failure to incorporate recent scholarship into his work. On the other hand, had he included it , he might have been obliged to re-conceptualize his story. On balance, his synthesis, although very useful for the general reader, remains largely captive of the state of historical knowledge in the 1980s.


NOTES

1. Wlodzimierz Borodziej, Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 8 (afterward Der Warschauer Aufstand).

2. Borodziej, op. cit., 38.

3. Borodziej, ibid., 112.

4. Borodziej, ibid.,120.

5. David Littlejohn, The Patriotic Traitors: A History of Collaboration in German-Occupied Europe, 1940-1945 (London: Heinemann, 1972); Peter F. Sugar, ed., Native Fascism in the Successor States, 1918-1945 (Santa Barbara, Ca.: ABC-Clio, 1971).

6. Zbigniew Mierzwinski, Generalowie II Rzeczpospolitej (Warsaw, 1990), 110, quoted in Bohdan Urbankowski, Czerwona msza, czyli usmiech Stalina, 2nd edition, vol. 2 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Alfa, 1998), 217.

7. Borodziej took part in the debate but in Der Warschauer Aufstand, p. 199, he significantly moderated his view. Wlodzimierz Borodziej, "Wysoki stopien ryzyka," Gazeta Wyborcza, 5-6 February 1994. See also Michal Cichy,"Czarne karty powstania," Gazeta Wyborcza, 29-30 January 1994; Leszek Zebrowski, Paszkwil Wyborczej: Michnik i Cichy o Powstaniu Warszawskim (Warsaw: Burchard Edition, 1995); and Janusz Marszalec, Ochrona porzadku i bezpieczenstwa publicznego w Powstaniu Warszawskim (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 1999).

8. Samuel Willenberg, Surviving Treblinka (London and Oxford: Basil Blackwell in Association with the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, 1989), 173-203. For a bibliography see Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Polacy i Zydzi, 1918-1955: Wspólistnienie, Zaglada, Komunizm (Warsaw: Fronda, 2000), 602 n. 143.

9. At least one historian charged that the Warsaw Uprising caused the death of Jews everywhere west of the Vistula River because it retarded the advance of the Red Army. See Icchak (Henryk) Rubin, Zydzi w Lodzi pod niemiecka okupacja, 1939-1945 (London: Kontra, 1988). However, Paulsson estimates that only some Jews perished in the Uprising: "Of the 27,000 Jewish fugitives in Warsaw, 17,000 were still alive 15 months after the destruction of the ghetto, on the eve of the Polish uprising in 1944. Of the 23,500 who were not drawn in by the Hotel Polski scheme [in which some 3,000 well-to-do Jews on the ‘Aryan' side were lured out of hiding on false promises of passage out of Nazi Europe on foreign passports], 17,000 survived until then. Of these 17,000, 5,000 died in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and about 10,500 were still at liberation." See Gunnar S. Paulsson, "The Rescue of Jews by Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland," The Journal of Holocaust Education, vol. 7, nos. 1-2 (Summer/Autumn 1998): 19-44.

10. Caleb Perechodnik fought in the Chrobry II NSZ-AK battalion. More specifically, he was a soldier in the national-radical storm squad "Baska" of the "Neda-Kosa" company (which originated from the Sword and Plow Movement [Ruch "Miecz i Plug"] and was commanded by Lieutenant Leonard Kancelarczyk ("Jeremi") of the National Radical Camp's proletarian "Crew" ["Zaloga"] section). There were other Jewish insurgents in the unit; at least two of them were killed in action. Many more served in other AK units, including the elite "Baszta" battalion. See Chaim Lazar Litai, Muranowska 7: The Warsaw Ghetto Rising (Tel Aviv: P.E.C. Press Ltd., 1996), 327; Sebastian Bojemski to Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, 3 December 2001. An erstwhile ghetto policeman, Caleb Perechodnik penned a well-known memoir during the war, Czy ja jestem morderca? (Warszawa: Karta, 1993), English trans. Am I a Murderer? Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press/HarperCollins, 1996).

11. Gunnar S. Paulson, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). (forthcoming)

12. About 43,000 refugee Jews were deported to the Gulag, constituting 62% of all Jewish deportees from Poland. The number of Jews killed by the Soviets is unknown. However, among an estimated 5,000 that died the most prominent victims included the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army and the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw. See Ben-Cion Pinchuk, Shtetl Jews under Soviet Rule: Eastern Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust (London: Basil Blackwell, 1990); and Mark Paul, Neighbors on the Eve of the Holocaust: The Jewish Community in Eastern Poland during the Soviet Occupation, 1939-1941 (Toronto and Chicago: PEFINA Press, 2002). (forthcoming)

13. The most exhaustive treatment of the NSZ garrison in Warsaw is in Sebastian Bojemski, Warszawscy Narodowcy: Okreg Warszawski ZJ i NSZ, 1939-1945 (Biala Podlaska: Rekonkwista, 2002) (forthcoming), based upon his master's thesis defended at the Department of History, University of Warsaw, where Professor Borodziej teaches. For other statistics and details concerning the NSZ see Leszek Zebrowski, ed., Narodowe Sily Zbrojne: Dokumenty, struktury, personalia, 3 vols. (Warsaw: Burchard Edition, 1994-1996).

14. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Piotr Gontarczyk, and Leszek Zebrowski, eds., Tajne oblicze GL-AL i PPR: Dokumenty, 3 vols. (Warsaw: Burchard Editions, 1997-1999), especially, vol. 1: 62-95 (on their strength in Warsaw see pp. 75-76, 79); vol. 2: 242-55 (on their strength during the Uprising see pp. 252-55).


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