It was, historian Norman Davies writes in his powerful and compelling account of the Warsaw Rising, ``one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century'' - and until now it remained a largely untold story.
Davies, a British historian whose ``God's Playground'' is a highly regarded history of Poland, anchors his account of the Rising in that nation's "tradition of fighting for its freedom.''
Its "armed risings'' against occupying European powers, he writes, "were a regular and well-publicized fixture of the nineteenth-century scene.''
The Polish cavalry, charging with lances and sabers against German tanks in the opening days of World War II, were gallant, but the Polish defeat of an invading Red Army in 1920 had ``postponed indefinitely'' Soviet plans for ``World Revolution,'' Davies writes.
By 1944, Davies reports, the Polish Underground was Europe's largest Resistance movement. And Warsaw, like "other capital cities awaiting liberation, was a dangerous place,'' with a "restless'' occupying garrison and a populace that, by August 1944, had been awaiting liberation for five years.
Davies provides a detailed account of the Resistance in those five years. It owed part of its success to ``the prevalence of instinctive, spontaneous social support'' of the city's residents. Polish agents flown in from Britain, the seat of the government in exile, brought ``knowledge that the Underground had allies, that it was not fighting alone.''
The weeks leading up to the Rising, Davies writes, were agonizing. The Underground's leaders realized they could not ``smash the Wehrmacht single-handedly,'' but could seize large parts of the city and hold out for a week.
