The Wola massacre (Polish: Rzeź Woli, lit. 'Wola slaughter') was the systematic killing of between 40,000 and 50,000 Poles in the Wola neighbourhood of the Polish capital city, Warsaw, by the German Waffen-SS, Ordnungpolizei, the Azerbaijani Legion, Sicherheitdienst and the SS-Sonderregiment Dirlewanger, which took place from 5 to 12 August 1944. The massacre was ordered by Heinrich Himmler, who directed to kill "anything that moves" to stop the Warsaw Uprising soon after it began.
Tens of thousands of Polish civilians along with captured Home Army resistance fighters were murdered by the Germans in organised mass executions throughout Wola. Whole families, including babies, children and the elderly, were often shot on the spot, but some were killed after torture and sexual assault. Soldiers murdered patients in hospitals, killing them in their beds, as well as the doctors and nurses caring for them. Dogs were let loose to find survivors to be killed. The operation was led by Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, though its most infamous perpetrators were the SS-Sonderregiment Dirlewanger whose forces committed the cruelest atrocities, drawing criticism from Bach-Zelewski himself. However, recent research has shown that the participation of Dirlewanger in the early days of the massacre was limited, and it was the German police forces under Heinz Reinefarth that carried out the majority of murders.
The Germans anticipated that these atrocities would crush the insurrectionists' will to fight and put the uprising to a swift end. However, the ruthless pacification of Wola only stiffened Polish resistance, and it took another two months of heavy fighting for the Germans to force an agreement providing for the forces in Warsaw to give themselves up.
Hitler's order to destroy Warsaw
Warsaw was regarded by the German occupiers as the center of Polish resistance against the Nazi New Order. Despite efforts to reduce the Polish capital to the status of a provincial town under the General Government, Warsaw remained a hub of Polish political, intellectual, and cultural life. It was also the headquarters of the Polish Underground State and home to highly organized resistance structures. General Governor Hans Frank noted in his diary on 14 December 1943:
We have one point in this country from which all evil emanates: that is Warsaw. If we didn't have Warsaw in the General Government, we wouldn't have 4/5 of the difficulties we face. Warsaw is and will remain the center of unrest, the point from which unrest spreads throughout this land.
The outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising on 1 August 1944 was seen by Nazi leaders as an ideal opportunity to resolve the "Polish problem". During a speech on 21 September 1944 at Jägerhöhe, addressed to military district commanders and school commandants, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler recounted that upon learning of the uprising, he immediately approached Hitler and declared:
My Führer, the time is not very favorable for us. From a historical perspective, however, it is a blessing that the Poles are doing this. In five or six weeks, we will emerge from this. And afterward, Warsaw – the capital, the head, the intellect of this former 16–17-million-strong Polish nation – will be destroyed. This nation, which for 700 years has blocked our path to the East and has stood in our way since the First Battle of Tannenberg [in 1410]. Then, historically, the Polish problem will no longer be a significant issue for our children or anyone who comes after us – even for us.
Hitler, still recovering from the recent assassination attempt on his life, entrusted the task of regaining control over Warsaw not to the Wehrmacht generals – whom he deeply distrusted – but to Himmler. Hitler likely intended this brutal suppression of the uprising to serve as a clear signal to his enemies and wavering allies that he had not lost control. Furthermore, like Himmler, he believed that destroying the Polish capital would secure the "racial future of Germany".
It is believed that during a meeting held on the night of August 1–2 or early on August 2, Hitler issued Himmler and General Heinz Guderian, Chief of Staff of Oberkommando des Heeres, an oral order to level Warsaw and exterminate all its inhabitants. According to SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, appointed commander of the forces tasked with suppressing the uprising, the order stated:
Every inhabitant must be killed; no prisoners are to be taken. Warsaw is to be razed to the ground, creating a terrifying example for all of Europe.
SS-Brigadeführer Ernst Rode, von dem Bach's chief of staff, testified post-war that SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger, the commander of one of the units assigned to the uprising, received a handwritten order from Himmler. The order, issued in Hitler's name, instructed Dirlewanger to destroy Warsaw and granted him the authority to "kill anyone he wished, as he pleased". The order to destroy Warsaw was also conveyed to the commanders of the German garrison in Warsaw. SS-Oberführer Paul Otto Geibel, SS and Police Leader for the Warsaw District, testified after the war that on the evening of August 1, Himmler had instructed him by telephone: "Destroy tens of thousands". Hitler's order applied not only to SS and police units under Himmler but also to Wehrmacht forces.
German crimes in Wola from 1–4 August
"Human shields" and first executions
The Warsaw Uprising broke out on 1 August 1944. During the first few days the Polish resistance managed to liberate most of Warsaw on the left bank of the river Vistula (an uprising also broke out in the district of Praga on the right bank of the river but was quickly suppressed by the Germans). Two days after the start of the fighting, SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was placed in command of all German forces in Warsaw. Following direct orders from SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler to suppress the uprising without mercy, his strategy was to include the use of terror tactics against the inhabitants of Warsaw. No distinction would be made between insurrectionists and civilians as Himmler's orders explicitly stated that Warsaw was to be completely destroyed and that the civilian population was to be exterminated.
Professor Timothy Snyder, of Yale University, wrote that "the massacres in Wola had nothing in common with combat ... the ratio of civilian to military dead was more than a thousand to one, even if military casualties on both sides are counted."
From the first hours of the uprising, the German forces in the Warsaw garrison committed numerous war crimes. Captured insurgents were executed, and the wounded were finished off. Civilians also became victims of these atrocities. Special orders from Hitler were not necessary for these actions, as General Reiner Stahel, as the commander of the Warsaw garrison, had the authority to "use all measures against the civilian population in Warsaw necessary to maintain peace, security, and order".
The crimes committed by the Germans in Wola were initially not aimed at the complete extermination of the district's population but were more acts of retaliation for the outbreak of the uprising. The main targets of executions were men suspected of participating in the fighting. On the afternoon of August 1, before the official start of the uprising at "W" Hour, the Germans carried out a mass execution at 28 Sowiński Street (corner of Karliński Street). In retaliation for an earlier skirmish with Polish soldiers heading to assembly points, eight randomly captured Polish men were executed there. At the beginning of the fighting, German infantry, supported by tanks, surprised the insurgent groups of lieutenants Ostoja and Gromada from the Wola Subdistrict. After crushing the Polish units, the Germans conducted a sweep on the streets of Koło, finishing off the wounded and executing captured soldiers of the Home Army. On August 1, the Germans also killed several civilians in a house on 20 Okopowa Street and set fire to the "Piekiełko" house at 165 Wolska Street, executing six Polish men there as well.
Due to the enemy's numerical and technical superiority, the Wola Subdistrict units were unable to capture most of their designated targets. Only part of the district was briefly under insurgent control. A major factor in the course of the battles in Wola was the fact that one of the most important communication routes in the city, the Wolska–Chłodna–Elektoralna–Senatorska–Kierbedź Bridge route (known as the Wola artery), passed through this district. In the summer of 1944, this was one of the key supply routes for the German forces on the right bank of the Vistula river. Starting from the morning of August 2, German frontline units attempted to unblock this critical artery, which led to intense defensive fighting by the Polish units in Wola right from the beginning of the uprising. The enemy's attacks intensified each day, accompanied by numerous war crimes committed against prisoners and civilians. Wola would become one of the districts of Warsaw where, even before the organized "rescue forces" sent by Himmler arrived, the Germans had committed some of the most severe violations of the laws of war.
Between August 1 and 4, soldiers of the 1st Fallschirm-Panzer Division Hermann Göring fighting in Wola murdered approximately 400 captured insurgents, including many wounded. Simultaneously, units of this division, supported by soldiers of the 608th Security Regiment, systematically expelled Polish civilians from residential buildings, committing murders, looting, and raping women in the process. On August 2, 23 Polish men were rounded up in a garden at 43 Zawisza Street and killed with grenades. Another 15 men were murdered in a house at 9/11 Magistracka Street. On the same day, a group of men from a house at 26 Sokołowska Street (corner of Górczewska Street) and seven men taken from homes at 17 and 19 Prądzyński Street were executed. Additionally, August 2 marked the day when the first group of civilians was imprisoned in the church of Saint Stanislaus Bishop at 76 Wolska Street (subsequent groups, initially small, were brought there on August 3 and 4). On August 3, German soldiers wearing insurgent armbands deceitfully captured houses at 12, 14, and 16 Młynarska Street. They massacred residents hiding in the basements, using grenades thrown inside.
German units fighting in Wola routinely used Polish civilians, including women and children, as "human shields" to cover infantry or tank assaults. Captured Poles were also forced to dismantle barricades under fire. Wehrmacht units first employed this criminal tactic in Warsaw, followed later by SS and police units. On August 2, soldiers of the 1st Fallschirm-Panzer Division Hermann Göring used 50 Poles tied to a ladder as a shield for tanks advancing on insurgent positions near Okopowa Street. This was the first recorded instance during the uprising of Polish civilians being used as "human shields". The following day, as German tanks attacked insurgent barricades on Wolska Street, a group of men and women was driven ahead of the armored column to serve as a shield for the vehicles and as labor to dismantle the barricades. The attack was repelled; some hostages were freed by the insurgents, but many others were killed in the crossfire.
In the late morning hours, a strong armored column belonging to the 1st Fallschirm-Panzer Division Hermann Göring launched another assault along Wolska Street. Approximately 300 Polish civilians (women and men) were driven ahead of the tanks as shields. The German column managed to break through the insurgent barricades and reached the vicinity of the Poniatowski Bridge via Towarowa Street and Jerusalem Avenue. Only there were the surviving hostages released. German tank crews also used Polish civilians as "human shields" during battles in Wola on August 4.
Arrival of the "relief forces"
While the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising did not tactically surprise the Germans, it was an operational shock. Therefore, the German command could only deploy units to Warsaw that were available given the situation on the Eastern Front. On August 2, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler flew to Poznań, where, along with local Gauleiter Arthur Greiser and General Walter Petzel, commander of the XXI Military District, he began forming a police group to assist the German garrison in Warsaw. Himmler placed SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth, Higher SS and Police Leader in the Wartheland, in command of this group.
The first wave of German forces deployed against the uprising included: