With the Polish capital within its grasp, Stavka issued new orders to Rokossovsky. These prove without a doubt that despite all later denials, Stalin did originally intend to take Warsaw in August 1944: ‘After the seizure of Brest and Siedlce the attacks on the front’s right flank are to be expanded in the direction of Warsaw and the mission is to, no later than 5–8 August, seize Praga and occupy the bridge emplacement on the Narew’s western bank in the area around Pułtusk and Serock. On the front’s left flank, the bridge emplacement on the Vistula’s western bank is to be seized in the area around Dęblin–Zwoleń–Solec. The seized bridge emplacement shall be used for attacking in a north-westerly direction and thereby neutralize the enemy’s resistance along the Narew and Vistula and thus guarantee the successful crossing of the Narew by the 2nd Byelorussian Front’s left flank and likewise over the Vistula by those armies which are concentrated at the front’s central section. Thereafter, attacks shall be planned in the direction of Toruń and Łódź.’58
It is thus clear that, as of 28 July, the Soviets fully intended to seize the two operational bridges to the north and south of Warsaw, and to encircle the city. Like Buda and Pest, Warsaw is divided in two main parts, with the poorer eastern suburb of Praga separated by the Vistula from the main part of the city on the western side. The Stavka plan never saw the western city as a high-priority military target; rather it was intended to encircle it from the north and south, and to crush the trapped Germans as had been done at so many ‘fortresses’ in the previous weeks. Storming the city centre by pushing front-line troops across the bridges and into the Old Town, which was what the Polish Home Army believed the Soviets would do, was dismissed for tactical reasons from the very beginning. It would have been costly and senseless, not least because the Germans had already mined the bridges over the Vistula. The plan was always to encircle Warsaw in a giant pincer movement; indeed, that is precisely how the city was eventually taken in January 1945.
By 27 July the Soviets were moving ever closer to Warsaw’s eastern suburb, and the plan to take Praga was on course. The 2nd Tank Army overwhelmed the pathetically depleted 73rd Infantry Division, easily capturing Garwolin and taking General Frank prisoner. Further south, General Radziewsky approached Warsaw on 28 July with two tank corps, leaving a third to snake its way along the riverbank. The 69th Army began to cross the Vistula at Kazimierz Dolny. Stalin had also made sure to send the 1st Polish Army to the Warsaw area, above all for propaganda reasons; it was now outside Dęblin, waiting to help ‘liberate’ the capital.
By 29 July the Germans’ situation appeared hopeless. The 3rd Tank Corps was outrunning the panicked men of the 73rd Infantry Division scrambling to get back across the bridges and into Warsaw; that night the Soviets severed the railway line between Warsaw and Białystok. The noose tightened further. The next place to fall was the southern suburb of Otwock – a villa colony in the pine forests originally built in the 1920s by wealthy Warsawians keen on the pleasant summer climate there. The 16th Tank Corps moved in, and despite heavy fighting destroyed the German armoured train No. 74 and began to clear the area. On the morning of 30 July the 3rd Tank Corps moved towards Zielonka, with its main force taking the city of Wołomin. The Russians now set their sights on Radzymin, a pretty neoclassical town a mere thirty-five kilometres from Warsaw.
The bustling, leafy town of Radzymin, while most famous as the childhood home of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, has been at the centre of some of the most important battles in history. Napoleon’s army was there, as were Lenin’s and Stalin’s and Hitler’s. The 1809 Battle of Radzymin saw the Poles defeat the Austrians in a battle that set the Imperial forces reeling. In 1920 it was the location of ‘the Miracle on the Vistula’, still considered one of the most decisive battles of the twentieth century. Now the Red Army had returned. Stalin must have been wary of this approach to Warsaw, no doubt remembering the humiliation he had suffered there twenty-four years earlier. He had never quite got over the sting of Lenin’s disapproval.
But he had no reason to worry this time. The Red Army seemed invincible. The 2nd Tank Army stood on the outskirts of Warsaw with over five hundred tanks and assault guns, and Rokossovsky’s troops were already moving into the right-bank suburb of Praga, with its red-brick factories and working-class tenements that stretched the whole length of the city. The excited Warsawians believed that they were about to be rid of the Germans once and for all, and although many were mistrustful of the Soviets, there was a tremendous sense of anticipation. Stalin, Zhukov and Rokossovsky expected Warsaw to fall as quickly as the other cities had in the race through Byelorussia. But this time they were wrong.
Up until now the Soviet summer offensive had been a stunning success, vastly exceeding Stavka’s original expectations. In a matter of five weeks Stalin had pushed the Germans out of both Byelorussia and much of pre-war Poland, destroying an unbelievable seventeen and damaging fifty Army Group Centre divisions in the process. Bagration was the single greatest Soviet victory in numerical terms of the entire war: final estimates would put overall German losses at over a million men. Hitler had never suffered a defeat like this before, and because of it he would not be able to mount another major offensive on the Eastern Front. Now the Soviets stood a mere five hundred kilometres from Berlin. But their luck had temporarily run out. The Germans were not yet entirely beaten, and thanks to Field Marshal Model, Operation ‘Bagration’ was about to come to an abrupt end at the very gates of Warsaw.
When Model took command of Army Group Centre on 28 June, the situation was dire. With the Soviets ripping an ever greater hole in the German front, he knew that something had to be done, and quickly. Rather than try to argue with Hitler about withdrawing and regrouping the disorganized mass fleeing Byelorussia, Model had issued orders to bring troops to the Eastern Front from wherever possible in Europe. The Russians were moving so quickly that by the time these troops began to arrive the Red Army had already crossed the pre-war Polish border. The German reinforcements could no longer be used in Byelorussia; but they could be sent to Warsaw.
Model was in the process of amassing a considerable force, meant to include eleven tank divisions and twenty-five others, including the Grossdeutschland Division, the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf, three infantry divisions from ‘Heeresgruppe Nord’, and the 12th Panzer Division from Ukraine. Ten new grenadier divisions were promised by the command leadership of the Reserve Army, along with the 6th Panzer Division, the 19th Panzer Division and the 25th Panzer Division with the 6th Infanterie-Division. The ‘Hermann Göring’ Fallschirm-Panzer-Division was called in from Italy. Two infantry divisions, the 17th and the 73rd, were set to arrive from the Balkans and Norway, along with the new 174th Ersatz Division.59 Many of these men took a long time to reach the front, arriving only in late July or early August, but enough had been gathered near Warsaw by 28 July to enable the first German counter-attack of the entire summer to begin. Model’s gambit would lead to the biggest tank battle on Polish soil during the entire war. It would take the Soviets by surprise, and stop them in their tracks.
This could not have come at a worse time for the people of Warsaw. The great Bagration offensive was to be forced to an abrupt halt at the very moment the Poles began their ill-fated uprising. Model, with his successful counter-attack, would hammer the first nail into the coffin of the doomed Polish bid for freedom.
Scipio, beholding this city, which had flourished seven hundred years from its foundation … now came