Those who gave the first order to fight
let them now count our corpses.
Let them go through the streets
that are not there
through the city
that is not there
let them count for weeks for months
let them count our corpses
till death.⁽¹⁾

The war in Ukraine has commenced a new stage in the worldwide drive to war, in which the ongoing slaughter in Gaza is another escalation.⁽²⁾ In times like these, it is helpful to look to the past, to see how it can inform our perspectives today. We have previously written about the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto⁽³⁾ and the activities of Polish socialists unsuccessfully trying to chart an independent political course under the occupation.⁽⁴⁾ 1 August marks the 80th anniversary of yet another historical juncture – the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. This tragic episode, which now forms a key element in Polish nationalist mythology⁽⁵⁾, provides an insight into our understanding of the difference between national uprisings and revolutionary class struggle.

Occupation of Warsaw

On 1 September 1939, Poland was invaded from the West by Nazi Germany, signalling the start of the Second World War. On 17 September, the USSR invaded Poland from the East, dividing the country in half as proposed in the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.⁽⁶⁾ Poland would remain under occupation for the duration of the war, though the demarcation lines continued to shift (particularly after Nazi Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941, opening up the Eastern Front).

As the German army approached Warsaw, the population of the city was mobilised for defence, while Polish state officials prepared to evacuate. At least 2,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians died during the siege of Warsaw which began on 8 September 1939, and 10% of the city's buildings were destroyed. On 27 September, a ceasefire was agreed and Warsaw capitulated soon after. Escaping through Romania, a Polish Government-in-Exile was formed in France (relocating to London after the fall of France). Meanwhile, the Nazi regime attempted to put into motion the Pabst Plan and Generalplan Ost, transforming Warsaw into a “new German city” – suppression of any and all opposition, massive reduction of the city’s Polish population, the Germanisation of the remainder, and the creation of a Jewish Ghetto (which opened in November 1940). As the situation on the frontlines deteriorated, the use of forced labour and concentration camps became more and more widespread, before the opening up of death camps from 1942 onwards.

Despite all this, political life in Poland continued under clandestine conditions. The remnants of the Polish ruling class regrouped in a Polish Underground State, subordinated to the Polish Government-in-Exile. Within it, agrarian populists, nationalists, Christian democrats, and the social-patriots of the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS) vied for political influence. The Polish Underground State created its own armed wing, the Union of Armed Struggle, in 1942 reorganised into the Home Army, an anti-Nazi umbrella open to anyone who “pledged allegiance to the Homeland”. The other main political-military force was the Polish Workers' Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR) subordinated to Moscow, which had its own People's Army and in July 1944 proclaimed the Polish Committee of National Liberation in the Lublin province, a provisional government in opposition to the Polish Government-in-Exile. Over time, most political groups in occupied Poland came to attach themselves to the leadership of either London or Moscow.

Operation Tempest

By the end of 1943, facing defeat on the Eastern Front, it was becoming clear that Nazi Germany would lose the war. The Polish Government-in-Exile was now hoping to take back control, before the arrival of the advancing Red Army, which they expected would transform Poland into a vassal state of Moscow. Under the codename Operation Tempest, the Home Army drew plans for a series of national uprisings across Polish territories to begin in January 1944. At first, Warsaw was excluded from this for strategic reasons. However, as the actions on Poland’s pre-war eastern borders failed to achieve their objectives, an uprising in Warsaw became the last chance for the Home Army to shift the balance in their favour.

The question of an uprising in Warsaw remained controversial even within Polish military and political circles. General Bór-Komorowski, the commander of the Home Army who came to back the idea and was tasked with its preparation, saw it as being directed militarily against the Germans, but politically against the Soviets. On the other hand, General Anders, who led the Polish Armed Forces in the East, considered the decision to launch the uprising a criminal act, as he realised the Red Army would never come to its aid. Either way, upon receiving false rumours that the Red Army was reaching Warsaw, the leadership of the Home Army met in secret and agreed to launch the action on 1 August 1944 at 17:00. Though an uprising was widely expected by the population of Warsaw, many resistance fighters were still caught off-guard, poorly armed, and unable to reach their units until much later.

In a city of 1 million people, Bór-Komorowski had up to 50,000 resistance fighters at his command. The leadership of the Home Army planned it to last just a few days – instead it went on for 63. Except for some supply drops, no help arrived from the Red Army or the Allies in general. Russian imperialism recognised the uprising was aimed against its interests in the region, but it was also inconvenient for American and British imperialism which after the Tehran Conference did not want to upset their relationship with Stalin. On the other hand, Himmler, in conversation with Hitler, expressed his delight: “the action of the Poles is a blessing … Warsaw will be liquidated … Poles themselves will cease to be a problem for our children and for all who will follow.”⁽⁷⁾ German retribution was severe – massacres in the working class district of Wola and the suburb of Ochota, mass deportations, the bombing and burning down of whole districts. In the end, 80–90% of Warsaw was destroyed, 200,000 civilians were killed, and 650,000 deported to transit camps. The uprising failed to fulfil the aims of the Home Army. On 17 January 1945, the Red Army finally entered the ruins of Warsaw, facing only weak resistance from the now retreating German military. With the help of the Red Army and NKVD, the foundations for a Polish People's Republic were established. Surviving participants of the uprising were liable to repressions, and while the Home Army officially dissolved itself, some units continued to carry out clandestine activities against the new authorities.

Historical Parallels

It is true that in the first days of the uprising, there were expressions of enthusiasm and self-organisation, with some finding solidarity in disaster. House and block committees were established to help with air-raid precautions, firefighting services, supply of food, water and sand. Young scouts managed the mail service while news and political publications continued to be printed in significant numbers and local radio stations were set up. Zygmunt Zaremba, a PPS representative of the Polish Underground State and participant of the uprising, described the situation on the ground as follows:

Life was strange on this small island of liberty. Administration was partly carried on by the High Command of the Home Army, and partly by the cadres of the civil administration prepared in secret. The main part, however, was played by the buildings and house block committees, which were freely obeyed. Police were not needed. The entire city had become a completely socialised commune. The inhabitants shared their food with the soldiers, and with refugees from those parts of the city that were still occupied by the Germans. Communal kitchens were set up in the houses which provided for the inhabitants and for guests passing through. When private stocks ran out, through the intermediary of the house committees the administration distributed free food captured from German storehouses. Money played no role whatsoever. There was a fraternal community of all the fighters, dominated by the happy knowledge that we were all finally free. We were proud of having liberated ourselves by our own strength, of beating the Germans, and of forcing them to surrender and give up their weapons to ‘our lads’, as we called the soldiers of the Home Army. It was remarkable that no one took revenge on the prisoners; the people stared at them curiously in the streets when they were made to construct fortifications; very often an ironical remark addressed to the ‘Herrenvolk’ was let slip, but no prisoner was either struck or lynched.⁽⁸⁾

Zaremba, who considered the uprising an attempt to create “a free and independent Polish state by our own efforts and sacrifice”, had a vested interest in presenting it in romantic terms. Yet he was not the only one to make the Paris Commune comparison. The events in Warsaw did not pass unnoticed in Italy, where a national uprising against fascism was also approaching. In October 1944, on the pages of La Sinistra Proletaria, published by Bordiga’s followers in Naples, appeared an article under the title “Long Live the Warsaw Commune!”:

First of all, the Russian authorities have evaluated the Polish partisans for what they really are, namely, proletarian fighters without masters, autonomous fighters of the working class, fighting not for the freedom of the Poland of the capitalists and landlords, but for the emancipation of the working classes against all the masters of East and West, North and South. It was against this communard attitude that the Russian leaders intended to react, first of all by denying military aid to these fighters of the world proletarian front and secondly by allowing the massacre of 200,000 people by the Nazis, almost all of them militants of the revolutionary-socialist Bund in Warsaw.⁽⁹⁾

Written contemporarily, certain factual inaccuracies are understandable – the Bund played a significant role in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, where most of its militants perished, but it had negligible influence on the Warsaw Uprising (only a few individual surviving members of the Bund took part in it). However, the idea that resistance fighters subordinated to the Home Army, who made up the vast majority of the combatants, were “proletarian fighters without masters, autonomous fighters of the working class” is absurd. Yet, almost ten years later, Bordiga himself would repeat this claim:

[the Polish proletariat] rose up during the Second World War in a desperate attempt to take power in the martyred capital against the German and Russian General Staffs, ending up just like the communards of Paris, who fell in the crossfire of their enemies.⁽¹⁰⁾

The interpretation of Bordiga and his followers was, at best, wishful thinking, at worst, confounding the notions of nation and class. Already by mid-August, in the face of Nazi terror, exhaustion, hunger and disease, morale in Warsaw had plummeted. Everyday life now took place in basements, sewers and improvised shelters. Civilian calls for the Home Army to surrender were being raised, the privileges enjoyed by the soldiers (such as priority access to water) caused tensions, and increasingly soldiers were being verbally abused by civilians. More and more civilians took up the offer to leave the city, even if it meant deportation or worse. Furthermore, the Warsaw Uprising was from the get-go prepared by the Polish Government-in-Exile with realpolitik calculations in mind. In order to become a real national uprising and not just a stillborn military operation, the leadership of the Home Army had to of course exploit the popular moods among the Warsaw masses. Five years of the occupation had made anti-Nazi sentiments widespread, but most workers did not want a return of the Second Polish Republic. The Polish Government-in-Exile had to put forward a programme that could compete with the social reforms being promised by the Moscow-aligned Polish Committee of National Liberation. The appeals for the “socialisation of key industries, the participation of employees and workers in the management of industrial production”⁽¹¹⁾ circulated by the Home Army during the uprising have to be understood in this context. Some resistance fighters may indeed have wanted the working class to “take power”, but for the most part this would be understood as the creation of a “workers’ and peasants’ government” which, according to the PPS was being built in London, and according to the PPR already existed in Moscow.

On the other hand, a different analysis emerges from a flyer distributed in Asti in December 1944 by members of the newly founded Internationalist Communist Party (Partito Comunista Internazionalista, PCInt):

In this atmosphere of expectation of the imminent end of the conflict, the National Liberation Committee re-launches, especially through the Italian Communist Party, its incitement to the working masses to prepare for the insurrection against Nazi-fascism. We call such propaganda provocative and affirm that if the working class committed the naive mistake of rising up against the German troops it would face a terrible slaughter. The painful episodes of Grosseto, Paris and Warsaw constitute an instructive lesson, which must not be forgotten. The confusion between war and revolution is also absurd. The working class is not militarist, and in no historical period have the proletarian political parties posed the problem of action on the level of war of a military nature against the army, which requires, above all, special technical skills. The proletariat is against war and is fighting against it by making propaganda in favour of desertion and boycott, ready to take advantage of any favourable situation to transform it into a civil struggle for the conquest of power. The working class is revolutionary, but the revolutionary struggle has nothing to do with the war between armies: the technique is different, different methods are used, different also therefore are the qualities that the leaders must possess.⁽¹²⁾

Here the experience of Warsaw served as a warning of what can happen when workers are drawn into insurrectionary activity not on their terms. Instead of getting swept up in the national uprising, the PCInt advocated the following approach:

we would commit a sin of abstraction if we did not recognise that, in the insurrectional events we will witness, the initiative is and remains in the hands of those very forces that have dominated the world conflict and that, in the current state of relations of strength, it would be romantic to dream of changing the course of history with only our intervention and to turn a democratic-patriotic movement into a revolutionary-class one. Our intervention will therefore be inspired by these criteria: 1) Preventive criticism of the political aims and tactical direction of the national uprising and the armed strike; 2) Intervention in the insurrectional movement wherever it takes on a mass character, and action in it as a differentiating political force; 3) Exploitation of the ongoing agitation for the conquest of that position that can benefit both the continuation of the proletarian struggle in the months to come, and the strengthening of the Party.⁽¹³⁾

In this way, the PCInt was able to intervene in the mass strikes that were taking place, without sacrificing its political and organisational integrity. Like in Italy at the time, there was also an ongoing class struggle in Poland. From the end of 1943, factory committees were making an appearance across the country. They began making practical preparations for when the occupation ended, taking over workplaces and restarting production on their own terms. In some cases, they armed themselves to prevent the destruction and ransacking of industrial equipment by the occupiers and discourage the old owners from coming back. Various tendencies were represented on these factory committees, from the PPR and PPS, to smaller socialist and syndicalist groups, trade unionists, non-party workers, and even members of the Home Army. It was this rising radicalism among the working class which forced all these political groups to concede some role for factory committees in their programmes for a post-war Poland. In March 1944, the commander of the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Home Army warned:

There has undoubtedly been a strong radicalisation of previously disadvantaged social layers and a general shift to the left. The demand to liquidate large concentrations of wealth from the hands of private persons or groups of people has become almost universal. ... Any attempt to reverse this process or even to stop it is hopeless and therefore harmful. ... There will remain contempt or even hatred for infirm leaders and... à la lanterne.⁽¹⁴⁾

It is a historical coincidence that on 1 August 1944 at 17:00, the very day and time at which the uprising was launched, a congress of factory committees was supposed to take place in Warsaw, with the aim of establishing city-wide coordination. The uprising inevitably pushed the factory committees in Warsaw underground (though there were some cases, like in the Praga district, where the uprising was used as an opportunity to seize workplaces prematurely – the German military quickly reclaimed and ransacked them, punishing the workers). One of the main political consequences of the failed uprising was the further strengthening of PPR influence (whose participation in the uprising was only limited) – the Home Army was decimated, while smaller socialist and syndicalist groups which took part in the fighting lost any independent character having to subordinate themselves militarily to one or the other political centre. But, even as the PPR was establishing its control, workers continued to act independently. The anarchist Paweł Lew Marek described the situation in early 1945 as follows:

Almost no one waited for orders from the authorities above, some workers took over production matters, others sought out supplies. Brigades from various factories went behind the front to search for machines that the Germans had taken away at the last minute. ... Factories, in order to somehow retain crews and start production or repair damage, developed an extensive mutual aid initiative. Other companies were contacted directly regarding provisions or electricity supply. Those that had some sellable products or skilled craftsmen sent them to the countryside to exchange goods or services for groceries.⁽¹⁵⁾

Workers also clashed with the new Stalinist authorities. In the years 1945-1948, some 1,200 strikes took place, 80% of them over economic issues.⁽¹⁶⁾ In the 1946 elections to the factory committees, the PPR received only 31% delegates, the PPS 38%, non-party workers 27%, and the agrarian populists 4%.⁽¹⁷⁾ No surprise then that, as soon as the factory committees had fulfilled their role in restarting production, the PPR completely subordinated them to the state-controlled trade unions. Unlike in Italy, there was not even a skeleton of an independent revolutionary party able to present an alternative to London and Moscow within the organs of the working class. On its own, the elemental but short-sighted syndicalism of the workers who took over their workplaces could not challenge the emerging Stalinist state – their efforts were utilised by the new authorities, who then proceeded with a nationalisation programme on the state capitalist model.

Contemporary Parallels

Nationalism always feeds on martyrdom and a sense of betrayal, which the Warsaw Uprising provides in spades. The suppression of its memory under the Polish People's Republic made its cult even more potent. With the fall of the Eastern Bloc, and the economic and political transformation of Poland after 1989, the Polish Government-in-Exile officially dissolved itself and recognised the Third Polish Republic. In 2009, 1 August was declared a public holiday on the initiative of then-President of Poland Lech Kaczyński, founder of the populist and national-conservative Law and Justice Party. The Warsaw Uprising is now commemorated annually with various government sponsored events and marches led by the far-right, though the debate on whether the decision to launch it was right or not continues. Meanwhile, many Polish social-democrats and even anarchists interpret the uprising as primarily an anti-fascist movement that allegedly reveals how “real” Polish patriotism is inherently at odds with fascism.

But it is not just in Poland where the memory of the uprising functions today as a tool of political mystification. The Hamas incursions of 7 October 2023 have been compared to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, but also to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.⁽¹⁸⁾ In a previous article we have explained why comparisons to the former are erroneous.⁽¹⁹⁾ And while some of the same objections apply to the latter comparison (e.g. German civilians were generally not considered targets by the Polish resistance, the Warsaw Uprising was not an incursion into German territory but a rebellion within an occupied city, etc.), there are however certain parallels, beyond the simple fact that both military interventions were launched against regimes which contributed to incredible economic and social misery in the occupied territories.

• There were wider geopolitical considerations at play. Liberating Warsaw before the arrival of the Red Army would have given the Polish Government-in-Exile the upper hand in post-war peace negotiations. On the other hand, provoking the wrath of Israel has forced the likes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Jordan, and Egypt to rally around Palestine, disrupting the process of Arab–Israeli accommodation which threatened to isolate Hamas on the international stage.
• It was also a response to domestic factors. Rising support for the Stalinists was a concern for the Home Army, so it had to portray itself as a radical fighting force. On the other hand, Hamas has been facing increasing economic protests over recent years and various polls indicated they were beginning to lose popular support. In both cases, military intervention was an attempt to restore legitimacy to political-military forces worried about their grasp on the civilian population.
• Last but not least, the Polish leadership residing in London and the Palestinian leadership residing in Qatar both made their decision with the full knowledge that it would carry the risk of massive retaliation on the civilian populations. 200,000 Poles then and 39,000 Palestinians (and counting) today have paid the price.

For much of the modern capitalist left, 1 August and 7 October are expressions of progressive national liberation movements (though dyed in the wool Stalinists will still denounce the Warsaw Uprising as anti-Soviet). But when the ruling class, no matter how low in the imperialist pecking order, calls on workers to “fight for the nation” they are really asking workers to die in defence of capitalist property. The interests of political-military forces such as the Home Army or Hamas are not, and cannot, be the same as those of the working class. While national uprisings initially tend to reinforce national unity, the longer the slaughter continues, the more likely are class divisions to re-emerge. Like in the 1940s, today the scattered forces of internationalists are not in a position to transform democratic-patriotic movements into revolutionary-class ones. However, if we learn one lesson from Warsaw 1944, it is that even in the depths of the most ruthless capitalist barbarism, class struggle does not go away. Often it is the severity of the situation which eventually forces workers to act in order to secure their very existence. It is at this point that the question of nation or class takes centre stage, and the presence or absence of the subjective factor (a revolutionary party rooted in the wider working class) becomes decisive.

Notes:

(1) Let Them Count Corpses (1974), a poem by Anna Świrszczyńska (1909–1984) who was a military nurse during the Warsaw Uprising. Translated in: przekroj.org

(2) The Latest Butchery in the Middle East is Part of the March to Generalised War

(3) Warsaw Ghetto and the Real Cost of Imperialist War

(4) 1943: An Independent Communist Party in Occupied Poland?

(5) For more on Polish nationalism, see: From the Heart of Darkness: Anatomy of a March in Poland

(6) 75 Years Since the Soviet Invasion of Poland: The Nightmare of Imperialist History

(7) Translated in: Norman Davies, Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw, p.249

(8) Zygmunt Zaremba, The Warsaw Commune: Betrayed by Stalin, Massacred by Hitler, marxists.org

(9) La Sinistra Proletaria, 28 October 1944, international-communist-party.org

(10) Amadeo Bordiga, The Factors of Race and Nation in Marxist Theory, quinterna.org

(11) Biuletyn Informacyjny, no.54, organ of the Home Army, 17 August 1944

(12) Guerra o rivoluzione, PCInt, December 1944, leftcom.org

(13) Prospettive e direttive, PCInt, 13 April 1945, leftcom.org

(14) Jan Rzepecki, Wspomnienia i przyczynki historyczne, pp.267-268

(15) Paweł Lew Marek, Początki ruchu zawodowego w Krakowie w 1945 r., materiały „Archiwum FA-Słupsk”, pp.101-103

(16) Łukasz Kamiński, Polacy wobec nowej rzeczywistości 1944–1948. Formy pozainstytucjonalnego żywiołowego oporu społecznego, p.135

(17) Kazimierz Kloc, Historia samorządu robotniczego w PRL 1944-1989, p.57

(18) See e.g. aljazeera.com or wsws.org

(19) Falsification of History and the Warsaw Ghetto