1 : 6 · The Front at the Wisla
Parallel with the 47th and 70th Armies’ final combat engagements north of Praga between September 16 and 23, a number of dramatic landings were made by regular Polish troops on Warsaw’s western bank. Directly after the front passed through Praga, the Wisła-sector made ready to greet Major General Zygmunt Berling’s 1st Polish Army which was en route to the city. On the evening of September 15, Berling occupied the river bank opposite the city quarters of Marymont and Żoliborz located west of the river, with the 2nd Infantry Division “Henryk Dąbrowski”; the area around Warsaw’s Zoo on the east side opposite the ruins of the Old Town and the New Town, with the 1st Cavalry Brigade; and lastly, in Saska Kępa on the east side, with the 3rd Infantry Division “Romuald Traugutt.” When the remaining German positions by the ruins of the railway bridge in Praga near Cytadela (Golędzinów) had been eliminated, the exhausted Polish 1st Infantry Division, with the exception of an artillery regiment, returned to the army’s reserve forces.
On the morning of September 16, under orders from the commander of the 1st Polish Army, preparations were already underway for the 3rd Infantry Division’s 9th Infantry Regiment to cross the river to Czerniaków. Unfortunately, this became a fairly chaotic operation. Only the first battalion managed to get across the river as planned — the other two, due to enemy fire, had to make use of the cover of dark and didn’t reach Czerniaków until sometime during the nights of September 16 and 17. Despite the soldiers linking up with Lieutenant Colonel “Radosławs” Home Army forces, they were seriously hampered by the absence of ammunition deliveries and by poor training in urban warfare. As a result, they suffered heavy losses which only served to prolong Czerników’s death struggle. The 9th Regiment was wiped out before September 23 by General Rohr’s units and soldiers from the II Panzergrenadier-Regiment 146 from the 25th Panzer-Division. Only some tens of survivors were successfully evacuated during the night to Praga.
The toll was even worse for the 3rd Infantry Division, 8th Regiment’s landing between the Central and the Poniatowski Bridges, both of which had been destroyed. The regiment’s 1st Battalion began crossing the Wisła on September the 19, at 1600 hours. Thanks to smoke cover and artillery support, this unit successfully reached the built-up area of the city. But the landing operation was poorly coordinated with respect to planned artillery support, which led to the next battalion having to attempt a successful crossing on rubber floats without any protection. Seeing this, the German artillery opened up with a wall of fire on the river — and at the 2nd Battalion’s proposed landing site, a transport carrier, equipped with a machinegun and a rapid-fire 20 mm gun, suddenly cropped up, along with other tracked-vehicles from Fallschirm-Pz.Gren.Rgt. 2 “Hermann Göring.” Soldiers from the Luftwaffe drove back the 1st Battalion and the cover it was attempting to provide from the river bank; and thereafter, proceeded to mow down a large part of the 2nd Battalion in the water. It was only the telling effect of a direct hit from a 7.62 cm gun firing from Praga which forced the German vehicles to retreat from the river bank, thereby saving the lives of around 150 swimming survivors who managed to take themselves up onto the river bank on the Praga side. Meanwhile, the 1st Battalion had been surrounded and after having fought throughout the night, it surrendered. All told, the two Polish battalions lost 370 soldiers and an additional 300 were taken prisoner.
A similar drama was played out in Żoliborz. On the night of September 17, in the district of Potok, a company out of the 2nd Infantry Division, 6th Regiment, 2nd Battalion landed without taking casualties (serving in the cited regiment was, among others; Lieutenant Wojciech Jaruzelski — the last President of the Peoples Polish Republic.) The following night the rest of the battalion joined the, as yet, undiscovered-by-the-enemy company (the soldiers had hidden in bushes by the bank and the Germans at this point had no troops in the immediate area). That same night another company from the 3rd Battalion crossed the river. These troops made a failed attempt to enter Żoliborz which was defended by a Lt. Colonel “Family provider” contingent. On September 20, a messenger had just arrived from the battalion to the location of a resistance unit baring a radio transmitter, but by that time the Germans had already cut off the battalion at the Wisła. General Lüttwitz gave the order that the enemy bridgehead should be eliminated as soon as possible. This resulted in units from the Panzergrenadier-Regiment 146 and the Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 87 from the 25th Panzer-Division attacking the Polish troops; who lacked heavy weapon support, on the morning of September 21. Despite initial hard-nosed resistance, the commander of the 2nd Infantry Division, General Jan Rotkiewicz, watching from the other side of the river observed: “At 11:00 AM, the sound of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment’s battle quieted and communication was broken.” The Germans took a total of 218 prisoners of war.
Thus ended the 1st Polish Army’s effort to support the Uprising. The final figures reflect a tragic outcome: 1,987 dead or missing, 627 evacuated, of which 289 were wounded (more than at the storming of all of Praga). Marshal Rokossovskij received news of the landing-operation’s failure stoically. Objectively, it should not have surprised him. General Berling’s army was clearly not capable of single-handedly, i.e. without the assistance of Soviet engineer units, overcoming the obstacles posed by large bodies of water under combat conditions This was also evident at Dęblin and Puławay where crossings of the Wisła were organized in a clumsy fashion. In Warsaw, the disorganization, the useless coordination of the individual units, and the consequent excessive time it took for the troops enter into battle became ever more apparent. The commander of the 1st Belorussian Front never hindered Berling’s amphibious operations. He even assisted him by providing a number of boats held in reserve but he did this fully aware that these resources would not be enough to make these operations successful. This was just what Stalin meant when he gave the order to: “Provide the insurgents complete support.” Rokossovskij was only surprised at how quickly Berling had begun the crossing operations — in his view, it bordered on overzealousness. For this very reason, Berling was transferred on October 1 to the post of deputy to the commander of the Polish Army. Formally, the position of deputy commander was a promotion but in December 1944, the general nonetheless resigned his post and travelled back to Moscow.