To those familiar with the course of the Second World War, a monograph dedicated to the study of one city will not be surprising. Still, Warsaw's fate needs explaining because it was exceptionally tragic. The wartime history of the city and its inhabitants encapsulated the full horrors of German Nazi policies upon the population and on the city, a place in the geography of occupied Poland where race defined policies were imposed. Warsaw experienced the full horrors of aerial attack in September 1939; it was then systematically looted of its cultural wealth by the occupation forces. During the course of the war, its inhabitants were exposed to the horrors of occupation with no distinction being made between combatants and civilians. Civilians were shot on a constant basis in retaliation for every German who died in the town. The two uprisings completed the picture of wanton and gratuitous destruction. In August 1944, Warsaw witnessed what was the largest urban confrontation, only matching Stalingrad for the sheer destruction of the physical features of the town.
Jadwiga Biskupska states at the outset that it is her aim to explain how the elites, the professional and cultural leaders, were targeted by the occupation forces, the purpose of which was to destroy the nation. In the process, the city as a place that they inhabited, administered, and in which they organized resistance to the German occupation, was to be likewise eliminated from the map. The debate on Warsaw's fate started with the September 1939 campaign when the government, the army leadership, and the Catholic hierarchy left the city. Warsowians were left to fend for themselves. The city fought until September 28. According to Biskupska, the city's elites stepped into the political vacuum left by the departed government leaders. The sense of responsibility for the city and its citizens never left them for the duration of the war.
The book meticulously traces how the Nazi authorities systematically eliminated those whom they viewed as the nation's leaders. As a result of operation Tannenberg between September 1939 and January 1940, over 20,000 Polish men and women, those who were perceived to represent the Polish nation's cultural and political capital, were systematically murdered in planed operations. That and following actions destroyed the city's intellectual strata. Biskupska traces each of the stages when the Nazi's accelerated the process of elimination; from operation Tannenberg, through the separation of the Jewish people and their imprisonment in the ghetto to the systemic destruction of the educational system and of all forms of cultural expression. The fate of the Warsaw Jews merits a separate chapter but the author frequently stresses the complexity of Christian-Jewish relations, as a result of which the fate of the Jews was at that time perceived to be separate from that of the Polish Christians. Antisemitism under occupation is not easy to explain but Biskupska confronts this head on. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943 and the Warsaw town uprising a year later completed the picture of the horrors visited upon the city. The people and the places they had occupied were to be destroyed: the Nazis hated both with equal determination.
A book of this scale is bound to have its strengths and weaknesses, which does not distract from its overall quality. The author has conducted research in all known archives, Polish and German. She has made excellent use of personal memoirs and accounts, thus augmenting the analysis of the military and political events with well-chosen accounts of those who bore witness.
But there are some weaknesses, in particular in the conceptualization of the book. From the outset, Biskupska states that it is her aim to debate the fate of the political and intellectual elites. In such circumstances, one would have expected a debate on who these people were, what posts they occupied and how relevant were they to the fate of the city. What the author has provided in the Introduction is far from adequate in terms of justifying a book that ostensibly is dedicated to commemorating the sacrifice and fate of these groups. In reality, the book becomes a history of the city in the context of the war. The stated objective gets more than once lost in the narrative. The book would have benefitted from firmer editing, in particular regarding the peripheral events into which the author frequently digresses. A summary chapter on the scale of losses to the nation would have likewise been much welcome.
