Festung Warschau
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- For the 19th century fortress in the Polish capital, see Warsaw Citadel.
Festung Warschau (German for Fortress Warsaw) was the name applied to the city of Warsaw by the Germans. The term was in use twice during World War II.
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1939
During the September Campaign in 1939 the German troops reached the outskirts of Warsaw on September 9. The Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) assumed that the unfortified city damaged by countless terror bombing raids would be taken by German motorized units without any resistance and issued a press and radio release stating that the capital of Poland was taken. However, the German motorized assault was defeated and the advancing troops were forced to retreat with heavy casualties.
The forces of the defenders, composed initially of only several battalions and various units of second line troops were soon strengthened by the soldiers of the armies Poznań and Pomorze who reached the city after the Battle of Bzura. The Germans laid a siege to the city and started shelling it with heavy artillery located in the outskirts. However, the defending troops managed to defeat all assaults and until the end of September the Germans could not manage to break into Warsaw.
After three weeks of constant aerial and artillery bombardment and assaults, the situation of the civilian inhabitants of Warsaw became tragic. Food, water and medicine shortages as well as the Luftwaffe strafing inhabitants and refugees grouped inside the city caused Warsaw's civilian authorities to request a cease-fire. Warsaw President Stefan Starzyński and Gen. Walerian Czuma, commander of the Warsaw garrison, decided that further defence, although possible, would only expose the civilians to more cruelties and signed the capitulation on September 28, 1939. The German text of the capitulation treaty as well as German propaganda used the term Festung Warschau to suggest that the failures of the Wehrmacht were due to heavily fortified terrain they had to cross. In reality, Warsaw had no fortifications before the war and the foxholes and baricades were only built by the civilian population in the first days of the war.
1944
By 1944 the German Eastern Front's situation became hopeless. Adolf Hitler who took over personally many duties in the OKW and OKH adopted the no step back policy in order to halt the Soviet offensives. Following this policy, several cities were declared Festungen (Fortresses) and were to be held by the German army at all cost, even if surrounded and with no hope to break the siege. Examples of this policy were the Festung Stalingrad and Festung Kiev.
On July 27, 1944 Adolf Hitler ordered the Festung Warschau to be created and defended at all cost. The same day the governor of the General Government, Hans Frank, called for 100,000 Polish men between the ages of 17–65 to arrive at several concentration places in Warsaw the following day. They were to be employed at construction of fortifications for the Wehrmacht in and around the city. This move was viewed by the Armia Krajowa as an attempt to neutralize the underground forces, and the underground urged Warsaw inhabitants to ignore it. Fearing that the city would be turned into ruins and share the fate of Stalingrad and Kiev, General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski ordered Operation Tempest to be started in Warsaw, which resulted in the Warsaw Uprising.
After the Uprising, the Germans razed the city to the ground and continued the construction of concrete bunkers that were to defend Festung Warschau against the Red Army. However, when the Soviets finally crossed the Vistula on January 17, 1945, the city was captured in several hours with little resistance from the German garrison. Later both Wrocław and Berlin were also declared fortresses and destroyed in the course of the fights.