On the German side, the end of September was characterised by mounting nervousness. The HQ staff of the 9th Army had grossly overestimated the actual Soviet troop strength and the possibilities they had outside Warsaw, plus their commitment to helping the insurgents. Therefore, following the loss of Praga, very well-equipped units from the Wehrmacht had been regularly sent to the capital city and the fighting taking place there. The Uprising was to be strangled as quickly as possible, for fear there would be further landings across the Wisła in the very near future. Here, units from the 25th Panzer-Division and Fallschirm-Pz.Gren.Rgt. 2, plus an engineer battalion from the Fallschirm-Panzer-Division “Hermann Göring” were brought into action. For the sake of being more precise, it should also be noted that Panzer-Regiment 9 from the 25th Panzer-Division and Panzergrenadier-Regiment 147 had already been notified in the middle of the month, but had, in fact, never been dispatched from Pułtusk. Thus, the division fought in Warsaw only with the earlier cited Panzergrenadier-Regiment 146, Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 25, Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 87, Flak-Artillerie-Abteilung (motorised) 87, along with artillery from Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 91. The presence of these units strongly contributed to the defeat of the enemy at Czerniaków and the annihilation of the Polish Army’s landing attempts, as well as to the significant weakening of the Home Army, even though heavy losses were sustained. During the first 48 hours of fighting against the resistance soldiers, German losses from the so-called “Family providers” detachment with respect, for example, to the reconnaissance battalion and the engineer troops from the 25th Panzer-Division, were recorded as 110 killed and 220 wounded.
Between September 21 and 23, the new commander of the 9th Army carried out a number of changes in the grouping of his troop forces. He issued an order to SS-Gruppenführer Gille to regroup the 19th Panzer-Division on the Wisła’s west bank with the XXXXVI Panzer-Corps, and further ordered that the Hungarian 1st Cavalry Division and the remnants of the 73rd Infantry-Division be drawn back to the rearguard. This evident weakening of the momentarily passive IV SS-Panzer-Corps was dictated by an order from Heeresgruppe “Mitte’s” command imparting the information that the 25th Panzer-Division was to return to Pułtusk. The 2nd Army therefore resumed preparations for eliminating the bridgehead there. The Hungarian troops, on the other hand, would, before the month was out, leave all their positions to the disposal of the Germans and be despatched home to Hungary. As it actually happened, this didn’t take place until the last half of October. Prior to this, or more precisely, during the last few days of September, the rest of the 73rd Infantry-Division was attached to the 5th Ersatz-Division outside Warsaw. After two weeks, the Wehrmacht’s luckless division was reorganised and the Hungarians were replaced by the 337th Volksgrenadier-Division (this arrived successively: the first to arrive in Konstancin was the 688th Grenadier-Regiment on October 14th). The Germans were able to regroup their formations “…during a period where the enemy was relatively quiet and without combat activity over and above the usual,” just as Heeresgruppe “Mitte’s ” command reported on September 23. These conditions were to prevail on the Warsaw front from that precise day (when the final liquidation of the 1st Polish Army’s bridgehead took place) until October 10.
At this same time, in the field outside of Praga, stood the commander of the IV SS-Panzer-Corps and worried over his chances of retaining control over the area around the bridgehead. The exhausted 3rd SS-Panzer-Division “Totenkopf” and the 5th SS-Panzer-Division “Wiking” had each, without question, occupied both suitable and reinforced positions, but the soldier morale-situation in the combat units was extremely poor. It was grim common knowledge that the Soviets were preparing for new attacks. Gille therefore arranged, together with Lüttwitz, the redeployment of Fallschirm-Panzer-Division “Herman Göring” — with exception of its 2nd regiment — to the IV SS-Panzer-Corps. Transport trains soon left Magnuszew and made haste towards Modlin and Włochy (outside of Warsaw). Their arrival was delayed due to Soviet air attacks on the railway bridge near Warka. Despite this, in the beginning of October an elite Luftwaffe unit arrived in time to reinforce the exhausted Waffen-SS formations. In addition, at the end of September, the Germans had organized operation “Falling Star” aimed at the partisans who had taken over the Kampinos-reservation west of the capital, and in this way the Germans exploited the prevailing stagnation at the front. Among other units that participated in this action were the rapid-response battalion from the 3rd SS-Panzer-Division “Totenkopf,” the 5th SS-Panzer-Division “Wiking” and the Fallschirm-Panzer-Division “Hermann Göring.”
1 : 7 · The Final Clashes
On the second day of October 1944 the Warsaw Uprising was over, but the written order to surrender didn’t reach the insurgents in Warsaw’s centre until the following day. And hence, the Polish combatants have always talked of “64” days of resistance, in contrast to the view held by many historians. On the German-Soviet front a relative calm reigned. Both sides, however, sensed that new hostilities were about to break out. Marshal Rokossovskij’s aim, before adopting a totally defensive posture, was to destroy the enemy’s positions in the area of the Narew and Wisla’s join and continue to extend his control of the line as far as possible towards Pultisk. The Germans were planning a counterattack against the 65th Army’s bridgehead and, due to the relative weakness of their combat strength, hold to a defensive posture with respect to Praga.