The capitulation of Warsaw after the Warsaw Uprising

The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was ended through a capitulation agreement which guaranteed not only the rights of the resistance to be treated as Prisoners of War but also was designed to guarantee the fair treatment of the civilians living in Warsaw. This agreement, between General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski and General Erich von dem Bach, which had taken a long period of on and off negotiations to achieve.

On October 3 General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski signed the capitulation of the remaining Polish forces (Warszawski Korpus Armii Krajowej or Home Army Warsaw Corps) in the German headquarters in the presence of general von dem Bach. According to the capitulation treaty, the Home Army soldiers were to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention and the civilian population was to be treated humanely.

The next day the Germans began to disarm the Home Army soldiers. Most of them were later sent to POW camps in various parts of Germany. At the same time the civilian population (approximately 700,000) was resettled to concentration camps west of Warsaw. Many soldiers, fearing German atrocities in captivity, chose to blend into the civilian population, escape Warsaw among them and continue the fight later.

There are several factors responsible for the failure, although there is no consensus about all of them nor their relative importance.

One of the main reasons for the collapse of the uprising was the lack of support from the Soviet Red Army. Soviet assistance to the Home Army on the eastern territories was limited to small collaboration on a tactical level at best, with common incidents of shooting or imprisoning of Home Army soldiers after the area was seized by Soviets. During the Warsaw Uprising the Red Army stood on the other bank of the Vistula River and only elements from the Polish 1 Armia Wojska Polskiego attempted to make a crossing and received artillery support. The Soviet High Command did not allow pilots from the RAF and the Polish Air-forces to use Soviet landing strips. After the initial radio and leaflet propaganda campaign, the Moscow-backed Wanda radio station remained silent until the very end of fighting. It has been argued that the Soviets deliberately allowed the Germans to defeat the Home Army in order to eliminate a force in Poland which would oppose the communist puppet government the Soviets planned to install in Poland. This is consistent with later Soviet treatment of many Home Army soldiers, who were usually imprisoned, tortured and executed.

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