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The basic organizational unit was the platoon, numbering 35–50 people, with an unmobilized skeleton version of 16–25; in February 1944, the Home Army had 6,287 regular and 2,613 skeleton platoons operational. [5] Such numbers made the Home Army not only the largest Polish resistance movement, but one of the two largest in World War II Europe.
Warsaw Uprising; Part of Operation Tempest of the Polish Resistance and the Eastern Front of World War II: Clockwise from top left: Civilians construct an anti-tank ditch in Wola district; German anti-tank gun in Theatre Square; Home Army soldier defending a barricade; Ruins of Bielańska Street; Insurgents leave the city ruins after surrendering to German forces; Allied transport planes ...
On 11 February 1944 the Resistance fighters of Polish Home Army's unit Agat executed Franz Kutschera, SS and Reich's Police Chief in Warsaw in action known as Operation Kutschera. [52] [53] In a reprisal of this action 27 February 140 inmates of Pawiak – Poles and Jews – were shot in a public execution by the Germans.
Home Army positions (in black) after five days' fighting, August 5, 1944. Fighting broke out before the "W-hour" (scheduled for 1700) in several places where German units encountered organising Polish forces: around 1400 on Żoliborz, 1500 on Czerniaków, 1600 around Plac Napoleona, Hale Mirowskie, Plac Kercelego marketplace, Okopowa street and Mokotów.
27th Volhynian Infantry Division (Polish: 27 Wołyńska Dywizja Piechoty) was a World War II Polish Home Army formed in the Volhynia region in 1944. It was created on January 15, 1944, from smaller partisan self-defence units during the Volhynia massacre and was patterned after the prewar Polish 27th Infantry Division.
The Warsaw Uprising was launched by the Polish Home Army on August 1, 1944, as part of Operation Tempest. In response, under orders from Heinrich Himmler , Warsaw was kept under ceaseless barrage by Nazi artillery and air power for sixty-three days and nights by Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski .
[2] [3] According to intelligence available to the Polish Home Army in July 1944, the personnel and fortifications of German installations along the Żoliborz section of the orbital railway were as follows: Warszawa Gdańska railway station – the station area was secured by a machine gun nest and six individual firing positions. [1]
Seeing the fate of the Home Army forces that had taken part in Operation Tempest, the Polish government in exile and the Home Army's current commander, General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, decided that the last chance for regaining Poland's independence was to open an uprising in Warsaw. On July 21, 1944, Bór-Komorowski ordered that the Warsaw ...