The Juxtaposition Is Starking
World War II unleashed an unimaginable level of loss from human life to entire cities. From Dresden to Tokyo cities were leveled and thousands upon thousands of lives were lost more rapidly than any time in recorded human history. One city that witnessed likely more senseless destruction than any other was Warsaw.
The people of Warsaw endured.
Hitler began WWII by invading Poland under the false pretense that the Polish were persecuting ethnic Germans and a Nazi staged a Polish attack on a German radio station. Even after Hitler and the Germans knew the war was lost, he ordered the complete demolition of Warsaw purely out of spite. The destruction was so complete that Polish authorities considered moving the capital to Łodź. The reconstruction took place mostly thanks to the former residents and displaced Poles who returned and began the process themselves.
Old Town Square 32 (Karol Pecherski)
Hiter’s Plans For Warsaw
Before Hitler’s grandiose plans of world domination began crumbling beneath him, Warsaw was slated for destruction and major reconstruction. Under the Nazi plan for Germanization, Warsaw was to become a German city of 130,000. A few landmarks were to be saved like the Royal Castle, which would have become Hitler’s state residence. Nazi policy at the time outlined the annihilation of a country’s morale and culture through the flattening of architecture and any physical manifestations of that culture.
In 1944, once Hitler realized that his demonic hopes and dreams were going to pot, he ordered the utter eradication of Warsaw. Such pointless ravaging was Hitler’s revenge for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of the same year. High-ranking Nazi Hans Frank verbalized Hitler’s desires, “When we crush the uprising, Warsaw will get what it deserves – complete annihilation.”
Market place on Polna Street (Edward Falkowski)
Interment Of The Entire Population
To put down the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, German troops bombarded Warsaw for 63 straight days via artillery and aerial bombings. By 1944, 60% of the city’s population, more than 800,000 people were killed. Then, prior to leveling the city even more, Nazi troops rounded up more than half a million people and sent them to Durchgangslager, a transit camp set up in one of Warsaw’s train repair shops. From there SS officers segregated and decided the fate of 650,000 people. The majority were sent to concentration camps, including Auschwitz.
German Verbrennungskommando Burning Detachment destroying Warsaw. (Wikipedia)
Unprecedented Razing Of Warsaw
Once the remaining population was removed, special forces of German engineers entered the city. Then the German military spent an untold amount of resources to carry out the complete ruination of Poland’s capital city. Soldiers armed with flamethrowers and dynamite were overseen by German architectural experts and historians. They went street by street systematically devastating everything in their path. Special attention was paid to national archives, monuments, and libraries.
Over 10,000 buildings were obliterated and nearly 1,000 historical edifices were turned to heaps of rubble. 25 churches, 14 libraries, including the National Library, one of the oldest in all of Europe, 81 primary schools, 64 high schools, both universities, and almost all of the city’s monuments were lost. Nearly a million inhabitants lost every single possession they owned.
Many years later the President of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński, formed a historical commission to ascertain the estimated losses to public property. The total came to $54.6 billion, which did not include private property. By the time the Nazis abandoned the city in January of 1945, 85% of Warsaw had been completely wiped out.
Warsaw in January 1945 – the Old Town. (culture)
Historic Reconstruction
In February of ‘45, the Warsaw Reconstruction Committee was formed, but the scope of the project was nearly unfathomable. The decision was made to rebuild much of Warsaw as it had been before the Nazi invasion. 18th-century paintings of the city by Marcello Bacciarelli and Bernardo Bellotto were studied and used as a frame of reference. The great places of worship like the Palace of the Four Winds, the Copper-Roof Palace, and the Ostrogski Palace were painstakingly reconstructed, inside and out, to resemble their former glory.
The Royal Route, the exquisite street lined with grand buildings for government offices, restaurants, and hotels all came back brick by brick. Old Town complete with the world-famous Market Place was also restored. For more than three decades the restoration process continued. The Royal Castle was one of the last grand edifices to be rebuilt between 1971 and 1984. More than 500,000 people pass through its gates annually. Many have no idea the building they are entering is less than 50 years old.
The crimes committed by the Nazis all over Europe stretched far beyond the definition of heinous. In 2019, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany expressed sincere remorse in Warsaw’s Piłsudski Square to mark the eightieth anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. The German President addressed the crowd and the people of Warsaw, “In no other square in Europe do I find it more difficult to speak, and to address you in my native language of German. I ask for forgiveness for Germany’s historical guilt and I recognize our enduring responsibility.”
