358 GOLGOTA
Roosevelt's reply was to say that 'there now seems to be nothing we can do
to help them.' Yet the Rising had almost a month still to run. At the begin-
ning of October, one of the last broadcasts from Warsaw was picked up in
London:
This is the stark truth. We were treated worse than Hitler's satellites, worse than Italy,
Roumania, Finland. May God, who is just, pass judgement on the terrible injustice suf-
fered by the Polish nation, and may He punish accordingly all those who are guilty.
Your heroes are the soldiers whose only weapons against tanks, planes and guns were
their revolvers and bottles filled with petrol. Your heroes are the women who tended the
wounded, and carried messages under fire, who cooked in bombed and ruined cellars to
feed children and adults, and who soothed and comforted the dying. Your heroes are the
children who went on quietly playing among the smouldering ruins. These are the people
of Warsaw.
Immortal is the nation that can muster such universal heroism. For those who have
died have conquered, and those who live on will fight on, will conquer and again bear
witness that Poland lives when the Poles live.^44
In Churchill's considered opinion, these words were 'indelible'.
The suppression of the Warsaw Rising marked the end of the old order in
Poland. For the remaining months of the War, the dispositions of the Soviet
authorities were not seriously challenged. The Government-in-Exile in London
lost its remaining influence on the course of events. Co-ordinated action against
the Germans was left entirely to the Soviet Army. In January 1945, in the month
when the USSR uni-laterally recognized the transmogrification of the PKWN
into the Provisional Government of the Polish Republic (RTRP), the Home
Army was formally disbanded. Its leaders were being arrested by the Soviet
security forces as 'bandits'. Some of the AK men turned their conspiratorial
experience into anti-communist enterprises; some of them joined the commu-
nists; most of them, thoroughly confused and disillusioned, went home and
awaited developments. It was a privilege to be still alive.
In those remaining months of the German Occupation, following the total
evacuation of Warsaw's surviving inhabitants, the Germans systematically
attacked the empty shell of the capital. Hitler had ordered that Warsaw be razed
to the ground. Verbrennungskommando units tore at the ruins with dynamite,
flame-throwers, and bulldozers. Their task was virtually complete when in
January 1945 they were interrupted by the sudden advance of the Soviet Army.
In three days' fighting, the troops of the First Byelorussian Front drove the
German Ninth Army from the Vistula, and on 17 January entered the smoul-
dering moonscape. On the 18th, they were joined by units of the First Polish
Army in an improvised march-past along the line of the Aleje Jerozolimskie.
Two weeks later the communist RTRP moved to Warsaw from Lublin, and the
ministries of the Provisional Government began to function. An unknown com-
munist, Marian Spychalski (born 1906), unannounced and unelected, made his
appearance as the first post-war President of the city. The horrors of the German
Occupation gave way to the mysteries of the Soviet Liberation.