Battle For Warsaw / Chronicles Of W.W.2

This documentary traces the tragic story of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising in which nearly a quarter of a million Poles lost their lives. It includes much archive material that is rare and that has only recently come to light, as well as remarkable eye-witness accounts from some of the principal survivors. To many people, this uprising is one of the great and controversial epics of modern history. It was also the first skirmish in the Cold War and one of the earliest guerilla battles. Armed with only homemade or captured weapons and outnumbered by nearly three to one, the citizens of Warsaw held out for over two months against the German forces. Their goal was to liberate their capital for themselves before the Russians came. Although the Red Army was only ten miles away when the uprising began, Stalin chose to delay his capture of Warsaw and to ignore until too late the pleas for help from the Poles besieged there. It suited his scheme of things, of course, for the Germans to eliminate for him the bulk of the non-Communist Poles before his own troops arrived on the scene. After brutally ending the uprising, the Germans systematically raised Warsaw to the ground. However, the Poles have laboriously and painstakingly rebuilt their capital almost exactly how it was.