In August 1944, the Red Army steamrolled across eastern Europe. Yet when Warsaw rose up against the nazi occupiers, they found themselves alone. 

Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski (right), Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Home Army 

AK fighter with flamethrower

Home Army soldiers from Kolegium "A" of Kedyw formation on Stawki Street in the Wola District of Warsaw, September 1944. Source: Wikipedia Commons

Jewish POWs freed by AK

The remains of Warsaw after the Germans “withdrew.” 

Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012. 

Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw. London, UK: Macmillan, 2004.

Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 

Anthony Tucker-Jones,Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945.  Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017. 

Music by Nicolas Bury.

Morse code from Thane Brown.