
Warsaw, August 1947 - wsieroci
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150325663587093.334866.315289652092&type=3
======
wuschel
Very interesting pictures. Most photographs I have seen have been taken in
black and white, and show the destroyed city in 1944/'45.

My family had many tragic memories of the ruins of Warsaw, for they were bound
with the jewish ghetto uprising and the following uprising by the AK (armia
krajowa, underround army).

On another note, many cities still show signs of the destructive effect on war
on the jewels of our civilizaton: The battle for Berlin also had a great toll
on the city and its inhabitants, and the battle for Stalingrad (Wolgograd) had
the worst effect on the population of the city: just left a single, half
destroyed house and very few survivors were left. But many more civilian
deaths and destruction of settlement took place during the war - the fires of
Hamburg and Dresden, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Blitz
on english cities are well known, but the destruction of smaller settlements
and villages are not mentioned that often.

These were terrible days. We should be thankful for the peace we have.

~~~
ekianjo
> the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

Let's not forget that MOST of the Japanese cities were actually destroyed, not
just Hiroshima and Nagasaki. US army used incendiary bombs on Japanese cities,
causing massive fires (and according death tolls in civilian populations,
largely exceeding the people who died from atomic bombs) across the country in
all large cities. The whole country was effectively destroyed.

~~~
Sharlin
Yeah, in the grand scheme of things I think the A-bombs did relatively
_little_ damage, both in terms of human losses and material damage, compared
to all the conventional bombing going on. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not
destroyed in the sense many fire-bombed cities in Japan and Germany were.

~~~
morsch
90% of Hiroshima and 45% of Nagasaki were destroyed. So pretty much the same
as the big firebombing runs. Handshakes all around.

~~~
Sharlin
90%? Mea culpa then, remembered it was quite a bit less.

------
selmnoo
I apologize for being nit-picky here, but please upload it somewhere other
than Facebook. (It's just a personal policy to not visit Facebook and give
them any data about me, and I'm sure there are others like me here).

~~~
Mchl
It wasn't the HN poster who uploaded these pictures. Here you go, mostly same
content from another source:
[http://pokazywarka.pl/hi4dlh/](http://pokazywarka.pl/hi4dlh/)

~~~
guard-of-terra
Warsaw is happy to have any walls - Minsk was reduced to runis completely (you
could say, bombed to be like moon ground).

~~~
TrainedMonkey
War is shit in general, when looking at pictures like that I really understand
hippies.

------
mdigi
Building from the first picture, The Prudential[0], looks pretty much the same
right now[1]. I don't know if the actual renovation started already or not but
hopefully it'll be turned into this[2].

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudential,_Warsaw](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudential,_Warsaw)

[1][https://maps.google.pl/maps?q=mapa+warszawa&ll=52.235936,21....](https://maps.google.pl/maps?q=mapa+warszawa&ll=52.235936,21.012814&spn=0.001873,0.004699&hnear=Warszawa,+mazowieckie&gl=pl&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=52.236068,21.012911&panoid=V3KNU37Kbhr7NW-
MWRExzg&cbp=12,202.96,,0,-31.5)

[2][http://www.bimarch.pl/cmsArchitectPortfolio/renderShow/id/6](http://www.bimarch.pl/cmsArchitectPortfolio/renderShow/id/6)

Edit: wording.

Edit2: I just remembered there is a movie showing Warsaw in 1935[3] and
another one when city was destroyed in 1939[4]. I encourage you to visit
Warsaw Rising Museum if you ever have a chance.

[3][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ea_396LPo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ea_396LPo)

[4][http://www.miastoruin.pl/index_en.html](http://www.miastoruin.pl/index_en.html)

~~~
zbraniecki
last time I visited Warsaw it was in much worse shape than on google maps
photo. Hope it'll get into [2] soon :)

p.s. I grew up really close to it - like a block away. Seeing photos of the
streets around my block at the time when you could see horizon and ruins...
frisson.

~~~
justincormack
It was pretty awful when I stayed there many years ago.

------
leoc
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_destruction_of_Warsaw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_destruction_of_Warsaw)

~~~
abat
TL;DR

The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve
only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing.
Every building must be razed to its foundation.

—SS chief Heinrich Himmler, October 17, SS officers' conference

Warsaw has to be pacified, that is, razed to the ground.

—Adolf Hitler, 1944[2]

~~~
lostlogin
The appalling behavior of the Red Army and of the USSR in general at the time
is briefly covered in the Wikipedia entry. Churchill in particular seems to
have tried very hard to do the right thing.

~~~
INTPenis
>Churchill in particular seems to have tried very hard to do the right thing.

I'm not saying what's right and what's wrong but your sentence made me think
of the age old quote "history is written by the victors".

~~~
vacri
It's worth noting that the UK was drawn into the war through the alliance it
made with Poland in an attempt to contain German acquisitions - the UK was a
friend to Poland with no real quarrel. 'Protecting Poland' was their call to
war. It's not the greatest stretch of the imagination to consider the UK as
doing right by Poland.

The Soviets, on the other hand, had a desire for Polish territory.

~~~
Kociub
This is unfortunately not true. Great Britian declared war on Germany, but
provided none support to Poland. This was also the case during the Warsaw
Uprising. After the war has ended Poland has been sold by under the Russian
occupacion. The polish fighter squadrons that took part in the battle of
britain were not even allowed to join the wining parade. They were sent home
to what was now considered an enemy state. The Brits may have done a lot of
things, but most certailny not the right thing.

~~~
vacri
Keep in mind that no-one but the Germans were aware that blitzkreig would be
as fast as it was. Up until that point, war was a somewhat leisurely affair -
this is the exact reason why France fell so ignomiously. War was declared, now
we can start shifting things into place while the Poles hold the Germans
and... holy shit, the Poles have collapsed in only five weeks.

Same thing happened to the French - the German army moved so fast through the
low countries that the French couldn't move fast enough to block them. The
last time everyone fought, months would go by with only a few miles of land
exchanged. This time round, a few miles of land only took an hour to obtain.

In any case, the UK deserves some credit for hastily allying with the Polish
in an attempt to dissuade Germany from invading in the first place. And after
the war, the Soviets were ascendent in Europe, with the rest of the Allies
afraid that they would continue their march through the rest of the continent.
They had a plan to take on the Soviets, but they didn't have the power to
realistically defeat them.

~~~
Kociub
"Keep in mind that no-one but the Germans were aware that blitzkreig would be
as fast as it was"

Yeah, that's a great excuse. That should be written in the anglo-polish
military alliance:

"in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and
which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with
their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at
once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power... Unless of
course the germans use tanks and move very quickly. In that case, sorry".

The UK did not ally itself with Poland to help them from being taken over. It
was a way of saying to Hitler, that he can't just do what he wants in Europe
(like anecting Czechoslovakia) without the Germans and French approving it.
The war was immenent, and everybody seemd to know that except for Chamberlain.
This was only an act of self interest on behalf of the UK, and hey, who could
blame them for that?

What you can't reasonably argue though, is that they tried to really help
Poland in the beginning of WW2, and that they didn't betray them at the end in
Yalta. And the occupation by the Soviets really wasn't much better than by the
Nazis.

There was no real plan to take the Soviets on, because the Allies had no real
stake in it.

~~~
vacri
_What you can 't reasonably argue though, is that they tried to really help
Poland in the beginning of WW2_

The UK allied with Poland in an attempt to contain Germany, as I've already
said. It's normal for countries to make such big gestures in their own
interest. Should the UK have just allied with Poland out of a sense of
charity? What in particular had Poland done for the UK before this time, to
demand the UK's unquestioning selfless military intervention? What became
Poland was, after all, part of the central powers that opposed the UK in WWI.

And, like I said, no-one knew how rapidly Poland would fall under Blitzkreig;
the mobility of the German armies was still not countered by the time they
invaded France months later.

 _The war was immenent, and everybody seemd to know that except for
Chamberlain._

Chamberlain was buying time to rearm the UK. I've always found it amusing that
people take the position that the UK is responsible for 'letting Germany annex
Czechoslovakia'. Apparently the other powers in the region didn't have a moral
responsibility to protect an unrelated central European country, only the UK.

One wonders, if it's all about morals rather than capabilities, why Poland
didn't step in and prevent Germany from annexing Czechoslovakia?

 _There was no real plan to take the Soviets on, because the Allies had no
real stake in it._

The rest of the Allies had a huge stake in preventing the Soviets from
dominating Europe. They just had no way to feasibly follow it through.

------
odiroot
All these flat areas covered in rubble hills used to be housing estates
(usually 5-6 stories high) in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was blown up, bulldozed,
razed to the ground. As you may see, other parts of the city survived in a
slightly better state.

Born and raised in Warsaw I sometimes feel I'm literally walking on history.
There are hundreds of commemorative plaques/stones everywhere you go in the
downtown and neighbouring districts.

------
Mchl
Pictures like this one:
[http://pokazywarka.pl/hi4dlh/#zdjecie2341024](http://pokazywarka.pl/hi4dlh/#zdjecie2341024)
It was a densely populated area before war.

------
stiff
On top of that over 200,000 children were kidnapped from Poland during WWII,
most of which never returned:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_children_by_Nazi_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_children_by_Nazi_Germany)

------
pchm
For comparison, the same city in 1935:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ea_396LPo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ea_396LPo)

------
gshubert17
The Warsaw Uprising Museum commissioned a computer simulation of the
destruction of the city, visualized as a view from an airplane flying over.
It's another way to see the scale of destruction.

Article and trailer: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/28/simulation-
wars...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/28/simulation-warsaw-
second-world-war)

Film:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH7UOB5hGHg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH7UOB5hGHg)

------
cpfohl
Slightly improved translation over the google translate version:

In the summer of 1947 a group of American designers visited England,
Czechoslovakia and Poland, in order to assess the post-war reconstruction
progress. The photos are from their visit in August in Warsaw. The Group
extended their visit to Warsaw by a few days to meet with the architects from
the Capital Office of Reconstruction and reported that their work commands
respect.

------
mxfh
Google Earth has historic aerial imagery of Warsaw for 1935 and December 1945.
This helps to adds some sense of scale to the images of the destruction taken
on the ground and enables direct comparison to the current city layout.

[http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/02/spotlight-on-
hist...](http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/02/spotlight-on-historical-
imagery-warsaw.html)

------
cclogg
Whoa nice, are these scanned film photos? Wonder if there's any higher res
scans.

------
amurmann
Interesting how many buildings were clearly hit by bombs, burned out and still
didn't collapse into their own footprint as tall buildings are known to do.

------
rokhayakebe
I love a few things in life more than the sight of old ruins.

I also understand there is always a horrific, or at least sad, story behind
each one.

------
kolev
It doesn't seem like the world has changed that much in 60 years!

~~~
lostlogin
You need to look at a longer time frame. Humans are slowly, but surely
becoming less violent. Way too slowly though. The below link is probably the
most interesting thing I've stumbled across on the Internet, although this is
in a different form compared to how I first found it.
[http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-
pinker](http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker)

~~~
kendalk
Quark: "Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful,
friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are
working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep,
sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and
those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and
as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don’t believe me? Look at
those faces. Look in their eyes." \-- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Siege of
AR-558 (#7.8) (1998)

~~~
vacri
Meh, it's not particularly insightful: "make someone fight for their survival
and they'll fight for their survival" is what that quote boils down to. A sci-
fi race that doesn't fight for survival when pressed is usually depicted as an
uber-pacifistic race.

~~~
lostlogin
The fascinating thing about the Second World War is that several countries
weren't fighting for survival, but for victory and power. Surely the big
winner was the US. However Britain was in it to win from early on, as survival
wasn't really the issue. The richer you were, the better you fared,
unsurprisingly.

~~~
simonh
Survival wasn't really the issue? At the height of the U-Boat campaign we had
a only few weeks worth of food supplies left in the country. We were loosing
well over half a million tons of ships a month. If Japan had never attacked
Pearl Harbour, the US would have just sat on it's hands and watched Britain
collapse.

Yes we broke the U-Boat codes, but without US ships and aircraft covering the
western Atlantic, we wouldn't have been able to use that information to mount
an effective anti U-Boat campaign.

~~~
lostlogin
And yet the army was built up and arms manufacturing was built up, at the
expense of food production. Troops and tanks were being sent to Africa, even
as Germany looked poised to in invade Britian. Yes, it was tight, but Britain
was in it to win, not defend. British production outstripped Germany and when
the Empire was included, it was vastly superior. It took time to ramp up, but
Britain wasn't facing defeat. The tonnage of ships controlled and owned by
Britain actually increased (though numbers fell), and additionally those
controlled by not owned by Britain also helped. The actual loses weren't that
big. In a bad patch, Nov 1940 to June 1941 it was 3.4%. There were later times
when it reached similar rates. The British diet was vastly better than those
on the continent by and large. Britain wasn't starving.

~~~
vacri
You're promoting a false dichotomy: "If you're fighting for victory, you can't
be fighting for survival".

In WWII if you weren't victorious, you didn't survive. The governments of
Hitler? Mussolini? Antonescu? Even Tiso? Japan did keep it's emperor, but he
was always a figurehead and Japan's governance was heavily reformed.

------
valtih1978
The nazi lesson is more important in the face of processes which happens
today, on our eyes in Poland, in Baltic states and Ukrane (do you know that
Nazi penetrate the official power in Ukrane, what would western countires do
if somebody seized the official buildings or even attacked a policeman?).

Today, Polish nazi do destroy the monument of the soviet solders, who
liberated them, [http://ru-facts.com/news/view/31587.html](http://ru-
facts.com/news/view/31587.html)

They do it on the formerly Deutsch land, that was generously gifted to the
polish people by "the bloody dictator, Stailn", after Polish nationalists have
siezed the western part of Soviet Union in 1920 and collaborated with Hitler
to start WWII attacking the Checkoslovakia USSR allies in 1938.

The burgeose-democratic Poland does not deserve being an independent country.
Independent, it turns immediately into a nazi regime. Nazi hate Russians, hate
communism. The modern Poland is a nazi country, as usually (american,
capitalist puppet. Capitalists do raise the nazi to defend the capitalism from
communists, not only in Poland but everywhere in the Europe and the Latin
America also).

~~~
jedrek
> Today, Polish nazi do destroy the monument of the soviet solders, who
> liberated them, [http://ru-facts.com/news/view/31587.html](http://ru-
> facts.com/news/view/31587.html)

You mean the Soviet soldiers that invaded Poland in 1939, killed 20,000 of its
politicians, lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists, clergy, etc, then rolled
through again 4 years later only to stay as a way to prop up the communist
regime for the next 45 years?

I assure you, "Polish nazis" are not the only ones who have a problem with
what Soviet soldiers and officers did, nor do we care for the hundreds of such
monuments spread all over Poland.

~~~
valtih1978
In 1939 SU "invated the Poland" is a complete nazi nonsense. SU has invateded
its own territory, siezed earlier by the fascist Poland, after the polish
government ceased to exist. So, it is hard to tell what you are talking about
at all. Returning your territories from criminals is a right thing to do,
especially in order to save the territory and people from the Gernam Nazi
criminals. Stalin did the only right thing.

> killed 20,000 of its politicians, lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists,
> clergy, etc,

I do not know what you are talking about. It seems to be the nazi nonsense,
similar to your first sentence.

~~~
atglawok
Please do not abuse words like nazi and do not promote Russian propaganda
here, do you argue with a mass murder that was confirmed to be done by
Russians ? Or is it also some 'nazi' propaganda ?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre)

~~~
valtih1978
I expected when you come up with this piece of Goebbels propaganda in order to
justify your nazi wars. The very article you refer confirms that we have a
piece of Goebbels propaganda. The polish officers, arrested by Soviet Union,
have nothing to do with your "killed 20,000 of its politicians, lawyers,
doctors, scientists, artists, clergy, etc" In fact, all politicians, lawyers,
doctors, scientists, artists, clergy, and etc. were fingting in the red army,
against nazi. The officers that you are referring now, left in Katyn, were
killed by Nazi. This atrocity was used by Goebbels to quarrel the Soviet and
polish people in 1943, when it became apparent that germans are defeating and
the truth will resurface. They were bonded by german ropes and killid from the
german guns by german bullets. The fact that burgeose Russian governemnt
manufactures documents to support this Goebbels lie cannot deny the evidence.
Neither, it cannot be used to justify the fascist behaviour of polish burgeose
(i.e. predatorish) policies. This is what you try to do: you use german Nazi
propaganda to deny the truth and justify your crimes.

~~~
PanTardovski
I don't know that much about Katyn, but Gorbachev and Yeltsin both admitted to
this, right? There's no doubt about the documents that they released to the
Poles confirming the Soviet orders? What are you talking about?

~~~
valtih1978
> There's no doubt about the documents that they released to the Poles
> confirming the Soviet orders?

Are you so brainwashed that you cannot even read? How there cannot be doubt
after [http://katynmassakern.blogspot.com/2010/07/katyn-
ilyukhins-v...](http://katynmassakern.blogspot.com/2010/07/katyn-ilyukhins-
video-on-katyn.html) and me talking "the fact that burgeose Russian governemnt
manufactures documents to support this Goebbels lie cannot deny the evidence".
Do you think that I will believe that those documents happened to be stored in
the Yeltsin's personal safe, when he organized the trial against the Communist
Party, [http://katynmassakern.blogspot.com/2011/01/katyn-
mysterious-...](http://katynmassakern.blogspot.com/2011/01/katyn-mysterious-
discoveries-of-katyn.html)? Do you mean that there was nothing more to store
in the "closed package no. 1" (google it) in the whole 1000-year Russian
history than the "Katyn affair"? What do you think I mean by "burgeose Russian
governemnt manufactures documents"? Do you think I mean that _there is no
doubt_? Are you crazy?

It would be interesting to investigate what happened in the Western Ukrane in
1941. But, instead of investigation, you demand the russians to be balmed
guilty and hide the reason why the Polish intelligence appeared on the Soviet
territory in the first place.

