The Rokossovski Enigma:
OLSHANSKY, BORIS
THE ROKOSSOVSKI ENIGMA Ten years after the tragic Warsaw uprising By Boris Olshansky (with Walter Nelson) MARSHAL Konstantin K. Rokossovski's turbulent Red Army career and brilliant generalship...
...The 1944 Warsaw uprising was such a crisis...
...L., who at that time was deputy chief of operations for Rokossovski's front...
...The answer we received was nonsense and all knew it...
...Colonel L. told me, Marshal Rokossovski had informed him that "we would enter Warsaw on August 1. simultaneously with the start of an uprising planned by the inhabitants of that town...
...Now Defense Minister of Communist Poland, he is at the same time one of the most fascinating and most enigmatic personalities in the Soviet bloc...
...Originally...
...After V-E Day, Mr...
...In a unique position to know the true plans, he stated flatly that "the original plan to cross the river and enter Warsaw was fully realizable in the light of the Army's favorably developing offensive...
...According to another version, General (now Marshal) Georgi Zhukov interceded with Stalin on Rokossovski's behalf, vouching for the latter's zeal and loyalty...
...In any case, Rokossovski was restored to duty...
...Soviet officers and soldiers, beginning to grumble and mutter, asked their political officers why no help was being offered to the insurgents and why the Red Army was not seizing advantage of this excellent opportunity to attack...
...The propagandists said: "Bor-Komorowski turned against the Germans without an agreement with the Soviet Government...
...Colonel L. told me that an order was received on July 29 which countermanded all offensive plans...
...Throughout this period of quiet, the Germans ceased bombarding Soviet positions in the vicinity, and Soviet artillery, which might have aided the insurgents a little, also stopped firing at the Germans...
...The note stated bluntly: "Let the Poles feel their dependence on the actions of our army...
...But first, Lt...
...The dissatisfaction was accentuated by the fact that many officers, especially those in such positions as Colonel L.'s...
...Bor-Komorowski is in league with the Hitlerites...
...One thing I know from personal experience...
...Rokossovski's aide-de-camp, Captain M., with whom I discussed the tragic events after the war, reported to me that Rokossovski originally got the order on Stalin's direct wire—"leave the Warsaw people to their own fate"—though the uprising had previously been agreed upon by the Soviet Government...
...The news spread fast...
...All of us knew that a bridgehead had already been successfully secured on the Western side of the Vistula, but now we learned that it was not to be expanded...
...This report of the Warsaw uprising is adapted from a report originally prepared by the authors for Radio Free Europe...
...According to one version, said P., Rokossovski wrote to Stalin right after the Nazi invasion, begging Stalin for the command of a military unit, even if it were only a battalion...
...But, once in favor, just how devoted was he to his former jailers...
...Walter Nelson is a writer working for the Crusade for Freedom...
...Grumbling was widespread...
...had known a week before that plans for the Warsaw uprising had been formulated in consultation with General Bor-Komorowski...
...His troops—among whom I was one—knew of his imprisonment...
...At this time, I had an opportunity to converse with a prewar friend, a certain Lt...
...Olshansky has been a permanent resident in the United States since 1952...
...The fear that the troops might advance on their own was not unrealistic...
...There are several versions of how Rokossovski, jailed by Stalin in the 1937 purges, re-established himself in favor with the Kremlin...
...The Germans had prepared for a rapid evacuation of Warsaw, expecting the promised Soviet assault...
...Polish Defense Minister Rokossovski now has had ample time to review the rubble which Stalin's order helped create...
...Their usefulness to the Kremlin is most questionable...
...Olshansky was an inspector at the headquarters of the Soviet Military Administration in Berlin, under Marshal Georgi Zhukov and others...
...The spokesman of the political command of the front, Major General Telegin, declared at a special meeting of combat and staff officers: The Polish London Government is in secret agreement with Hitler...
...Officers I met along the way told me that they were shocked—that they could not understand the new orders...
...In the summer of 1946, while I was stationed in Berlin with the Soviet Military Administration, I got to know well a former friend and colleague of the Marshal...
...During World War II, he served on the staff of Marshal Rokossovski's First Byelorussian Front Command...
...they added, "the uprising is just a provocation calculated to trap the Red Army...
...This officer confirmed my suspicions, stating that political rather than military reasons prompted the order to halt...
...A kind of "silent armistice" between two totalitarian regimes took place...
...Secondly...
...He reigns today in the same Warsaw at whose gates ten years ago his army paused while the Nazis destroyed the Polish underground...
...Stalin is dead...
...I was there and saw the effect of Stalin's betrayal of the insurrection...
...soon everyone talked of the revolt of the Poles under Bor-Komorowski...
...The uprising in Warsaw is merely meant to deceive the eye...
...Rokossovski, said Captain M., was in no position to disobey...
...The feeling of shame in the hearts of Soviet military men was very great in those days and I often heard them outspoken in their criticism of the Stalin regime...
...Boris Olshansky was a Major in the Soviet Army when he defected in 1949...
...The result of this cut was that many Soviet armored units were left at the mercy of the Germans, with only the latter's weakness saving them from total destruction...
...It was at this time that the troops first learned of the widespread revolt of the Warsaw Poles...
...Though suffering severe losses, he set up his own division from these tattered troops and broke through the Nazi lines...
...P. had been a Lieutenant Colonel ever since the Tukhachevsky affair, in which he was implicated together with Rokossovski...
...A little later the order came in writing: "Stop the offensive...
...They intend to conclude a separate peace treaty with him, aided and abetted by Churchill and the British Government...
...Imprisoned during Stalin's purge of the Army, he came back to become one of the outstanding heroes of the war against Hitler...
...The true feelings of Rokossovski, as well as other Soviet soldiers, showed themselves in times of crisis...
...Clearly, an offensive was in the making...
...THE ROKOSSOVSKI ENIGMA Ten years after the tragic Warsaw uprising By Boris Olshansky (with Walter Nelson) MARSHAL Konstantin K. Rokossovski's turbulent Red Army career and brilliant generalship have made him a Soviet legend...
...Then, suddenly, we received orders to retreat to the Seldze-Minsk-Mazovetzki districts, to abandon all present plans to assault Warsaw...
...L. further stated that the new orders to halt had also cut off fuel from front-line tank units, lest they attack on their own, ignoring the order to stop...
...Rokossovski's true feelings are still a subject of fascination...
...The exploit led to a promotion and decoration...
...The original copy was in Rokossovski's personal possession and carried a notation made by Stalin himself...
...Those Soviet soldiers and officers who saw what I saw in Warsaw in 1944 have not forgotten...
...And many of his fellow-officers, high and low, among them Lt...
...P. states, Stalin had to test Rokossovski...
...Orders to Soviet units—the author's included—had already gone out...
...A very reserved man who has learned to conceal his true thoughts and feelings, the Marshal nevertheless was nervous and irritable when he received the Stalin order and, said his aide, "was upset and flabbergasted" after he had first read it...
...Later on, he never liked to talk of the Warsaw affair and once, asked about it directly, merely said: "It was not advantageous for us to hurry on to Warsaw...
...Released and returned to duty in grade, he had never been promoted in all the years that followed...
...We were to cross the Vistula and enter Warsaw on August 1. The troops were eager to roll and, reaching the front echelons, I noted an almost unending stream of military traffic flowing toward the Polish capital...
...He personally had not forgotten the harshness of Soviet penal existence...
...P., had also known the Red terror well...
...Additional orders came: "Main troop formations to stay on the East side of the Vistula River...
...The general was parachuted into command of scattered and beaten Soviet units surrounded by German forces...
...Officers and troops were overwhelmingly in favor of assisting Bor-Komorowski...
Vol. 37 • September 1954 • No. 39
