Warsaw. 1944. Hitler, Himmler And The Warsaw Uprising - Softcover

‘Unusually well-placed to research and rehearse the story of that terrible event ... [Richie] offers a comprehensive narrative of the Polish experience’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times

‘Richie's detailed and sympathetic history ... draws heavily on private archives and recounts many unpublished stories. Such survivors' testimony make it the definitive study of the uprising’ Economist

‘Chronicled with astonishing precision by historian and Warsaw resident ... this grim and chilling book delivers exhaustive and unforgettable details of this gruesome chapter of World War II’ Publishers Weekly

‘A detailed, if harrowing, narrative history of the rising. Richie has mastered an immense range of material in both German and Polish ... There are powerful first person accounts ... impressively accomplished in terms of research and narrative ... Readers ... will gain an understanding of an extraordinary event’ BBC History Magazine

‘Fast-paced narrative history’ Observer

‘Most impressive. She explodes many myths, and is more balanced and judicious than some previous writers in her dissection of the difficult moral and military problems faced by the Poles, by their British allies, and even by the Russians who brought both liberation and a new subjection ... Richie brings it magnificently alive’ Rodric Braithwaite, author of ‘Afgansty’

‘Must be the most detailed and harrowing account of the uprising staged by the Polish Home Army ... ever published, and is likely to be of lasting value to scholars and general readers alike ... this extraordinarily detailed account of a two-month bloodbath creates a vast monument to an often neglected event’ TLS

‘A sympathetic portrait of the struggle waged by Polish insurgents and the civilians caught up in it ... As a detailed narrative of the brutal crushing of the uprising as seen through civilian eyes ... ‘Warsaw 1944’ is an important contribution to a tragic literature’ Wall Street Journal

As Antony Beevor cast new light on the Battle of Stalingrad, Alexandra Richie here unearths the traumatic story of one of the last major battles of World War II, in which the Poles fought off German troops, street by street, for sixty-three days.

The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was a shocking event in a hideous war. This is the first account to recall the tragedy from both German and Polish perspectives and asks why, when the war was nearly lost, Hitler and Himmler returned to Warsaw bent on murder, deportation, and destruction.

For the only time in European history a capital was entirely razed. Hundreds were thrown from windows, burned alive, shot and trampled to death. 40,000 were murdered on 5th August – the largest battlefield massacre of the war.

Using the vast archive of her combatant father-in-law Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Alexandra Richie interweaves testimonies from all sides. Charting the crimes of the SS and then their final break-down of morale, ‘Warsaw 1944’ reveals how the Nazis had hoped that Allied divisions over Warsaw would lead to a Third World War, while Stalin’s refusal to help changed the fate of post-war Europe. But above all else ‘Warsaw 1944’ is the story of a city’s unbreakable spirit, in the face of unspeakable barbarism.