After the departure of the two divisions towards Magnuszew, the German 9th Army, together with the 2nd Army, succeeded for a period of time in holding the entire Warsaw isthmus with a mobile combat force numbering approximately 200 armoured vehicles (the 3rd SS-Panzer-division “Totenkopf”, the 5th SS-Panzer-Division “Wiking”, and the 4th Panzer-Division). Even though the repair and recovery crews towed away the disabled tanks from Radzymin and Wołomin and were subsequently able to return a portion of them back into battle, the total number of German armoured vehicles in Praga’s suburbs was very low at the beginning of the second week in August. After the withdrawal of the 4th Panzer-Division on August 8-10 to the vicinity of Modlin and Nasielko, opposition to General Popov’s 150 tanks along the Okuniew-Stanisławów line consisted of only a very few score tanks belonging to the enemy’s 5th SS-Panzer-Division “Wiking” (the 4th Panzer Division had been despatched to Kurland).
1 : 4 · The Battle for Warsaw’s Suburbs
August 7 — September 9, 1944
To a great extent, the development of combat operations outside Warsaw depended on Stalin’s wishes. No later than August 2, he received verified intelligence from Poland’s capital that reported the Uprising had begun. On August 3, this event was directly confirmed by Polish Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk who had flown to Moscow from London for talks concerning the future of his country. There was no doubt about it being the Home Army that stood behind the Uprising, and there was equally little doubt about the in-country representatives of the Polish Government having swung into action.
Simultaneous with these political developments, on August 2, or August 3 at the latest, Marshal Rokossovskij informed headquarters about the 2nd Tank Army’s troublesome situation. The commander of the 1st Belorussian Front emphasized the fiasco with the original intention of cutting away the rearguard troops for 2nd Army, and he also pointed out the enemy’s increasingly troublesome opposition between the Bug and the Narew. On the positive side, the sector of the front under his command had experienced fantastic success along the western flank where two bridge emplacements on the Wisla had been captured. At Magnuszew, it was now possible to transport large sections of the 8th Guards Army across the river to its western bank.
Stalin decided to exploit the operational situation which had arisen. The Soviet dictator ordered that only defensive warfare should be conducted on the outskirts of Warsaw, particularly with respect to the direct approaches to Pragda. In his view, the Germans — just as Hitler and other highly placed Nazis believed — should be able to crush the opposition of the insurgents over the next few days. He anticipated that when this happened and the Home Army had been eliminated, Soviet troops would then attack and seize Praga. In Stalin’s view, an attack against the city sectors east of the river should not begin until after the Uprising in Warsaw had been quashed, since a premature attack would work to needlessly prolong the time, or even make it impossible for the Germans to pacify the Polish capital.
And while it is true that this order, with its ruthless import, was never committed to paper, it was nevertheless, on August 4, set into motion: First and foremost, a halt was called to the planned storming of southern Praga by the 125th Rifle Corps from the 47th Army over the coming days. On August 4, General Kuzmin’s corps had just reached the area around Radość, thereby making contact with the 16th Tank Corps’ left flank. Following this, the Soviet fighters were forbidden from flying over Warsaw’s airspace where German Ju 87D bombers carried out several terror attacks. Prior to August 10, the NKVD finally staked out its “defensive line” behind the front. These orders, and their underlying objective, made it impossible for help to reach the battling Home Army units from the Lublin area.
Initially, Stalin hid his hostile attitude toward the Uprising especially during talks held on August 9 with Prime Minister Mikołajczyk. However, he soon cast aside this mask and openly expressed his intention to passively await the fall of free Warsaw. On August the 13, the Soviet news agency, TASS, reported this strategy in a matter-of-fact, and to all intents and purposes, reasonable tone, but three days later in response to Churchill’s request for assistance for the Home Army, Stalin replied that:
“on having acquainted myself with events in Warsaw, I am now convinced that this is a foolish and awful form of troublemaking which will cost the population many victims […] In the situation which has arisen, the Soviet command has come to the conclusion to not have anything to do with the troubles in Warsaw because we cannot take direct or indirect responsibility for what is going on there.”
On August 22 he wrote:
“Sooner or later, the truth about the handful of criminals who started the trouble in Warsaw in order to seize power will be generally realised they are only interested in.”
The Soviet dictator would not even agree to granting allied aircraft carrying provisions for the Polish fighters landing rights on Soviet air fields. Stalin’s openly hostile attitude didn’t change until the beginning of September, when the issue of the Warsaw Uprising began to enflame relations with Great Britain.