When the Warsaw Uprising was crushed, Heinrich Himmler demanded the complete destruction of Warsaw as revenge for the Polish revolt.

On 9 October 1944, he gave a chilling order: “The city must be completely destroyed. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to the ground.” What followed was one of the most deliberate acts of urban annihilation in modern history.

German forces, enraged by the 63-day resistance of the Polish Home Army, began the systematic demolition of the city. They set fire to buildings, placed explosives in hospitals, churches, and schools, and executed civilians on a mass scale. Whole districts were flattened. The city that had fought for freedom was turned into a wasteland of ashes and stone.

By January 1945, when Soviet troops finally entered Warsaw, over 85 percent of the city lay in ruins. The capital of Poland, once home to more than a million people, had been erased from the map. Up to 200,000 civilians were murdered, many shot in the streets or burned alive in their homes.

The survivors were deported to concentration camps or sent as forced laborers to Germany. And after all this, Poland received no reparations. The nation that suffered one of the highest civilian death tolls of the war, whose capital was deliberately destroyed, was never compensated for its loss. Instead, it was handed over to Soviet domination at Yalta, betrayed by the very Allies it had fought beside. Still, from this devastation came something extraordinary.

The people of Warsaw began to rebuild their city with their own hands, brick by brick, often using the rubble of what had once been their homes. The Old Town, now restored from ruins, stands as a monument to faith, courage, and national resurrection.

Warsaw is not only a city. It is a symbol of endurance, of the will to survive when everything has been taken away. It reminds the world that even when a city is destroyed, the human spirit cannot be conquered.

Edward Reid

Photo: IPN