354 GOLGOTACommand nor the Western allies had bothered to collect. The idea that Warsaw
could have been held by the AK in the name of the Government-in-Exile with-
out a subsequent showdown with the Soviets was belied by all previous ex-
perience. The notion that the Western leaders possessed the will to take the part
of their Polish allies in any major dispute with their Soviet Allies was, to say the
least, unfounded. Thus a fine ideal, and human emotions straining at the leash,
paved the way for catastrophe. When Bor-Komorowski gave the order to launch
the Rising in the hope that the Soviet Army would enter Warsaw in the first days
of August, he was consciously taking a risk. Only half an hour later, when he
learned that the T34 tanks sighted in Praga belonged not to the main body of
Rokossowski's army, but only to an isolated reconnaissance patrol, he knew
that the fate of the Rising was at the mercy of others. But it was too late to think
again. And 'the others' might yet ride to the rescue. The couriers carrying the
order had already disappeared into the cellars and byways of the occupied
capital, and could not be recalled at short notice. The stage for tragedy was set.
Those historians who can bear to judge a man of unblemished courage and
devotion have said that Bor was guilty of 'gross irresponsibility'.^39
The Rising followed its course through sixty-three days of savagery. In the
first four days, the insurgents occupied the city's central suburbs, but failed to
take the airport, the main station, the Vistula bridges, or the vital right-bank dis-
trict of Praga. Thereafter they were on the defensive. Some 50,000 ill-armed
irregulars faced the professional retribution of the Nazi war-machine. General
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski picked his men with gruesome attention to detail.
The regular Wehrmacht formations were supported by the Posnanian Military
Police; by units of the SS-Herman Goering Division and the SS Viking Panzer
Division; by three battalions of starved Soviet prisoners from Azerbaijan and
Turkmenistan; by Oskar Dirlanger's 'Anti-partisan' Brigade, composed entirely
of reprieved criminals; and by the infamous 'SS-RONA Brigade'.* Their ener-
gies were directed no less against the defenceless civilian population than
against the youthful insurgents. Their military task was assisted by low-level
aerial dive-bombing and by short-range heavy artillery. Day by day, street by
street, the Polish capital and its inhabitants were reduced to ashes. The pattern
of operations was first witnessed in the main street of the Wola suburb, where
the withdrawal of the AK under fire preceded the wholesale execution of 8,000
citizens. The capture of Ochota on 11 August was attended by the murder of
40,000 people. Hospitals were set alight together with their nurses and patients.
Mass shootings were commonplace. Women and children were commonly
roped to the hulls of Germans tanks as a precaution against ambushes. Rows of
civilian hostages were driven in front of the German infantry as protection
against snipers.^40 On 2 September the AK evacuated the Old City. One thou-
* RONA was the acronym of Russkaya Osvoboditelnaya Narodnaya Armiya (Russian
National Liberation Army). The Brigade was formed from Soviet deserters in Russia in
1942, and was commanded by a former Soviet officer of Polish origin, Mieczystaw
Kamifiski, who was shot by the Germans during the Rising for indiscipline.