Sirens will be wailing across Poland's capital on Tuesday as the country marked the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a doomed revolt against the occupying Germans during World War II
Sirens will sound for about a minute at 5 p.m., the hour the 1944 uprising began, bringing traffic mostly to a standstill while people stopped to pay respect to the Poles who fought and died.
The Warsaw Uprising broke out August 1, 1944, with the Polish underground taking up arms against the powerful Nazi forces. They held out for 63 days before the Germans crushed the revolt.
It was the largest act of resistance in any nation under German occupation during the war. The heroism of the insurgents remains a defining element in Polish national identity.
The Germans suppressed the rebellion brutally, destroying most of Warsaw and killing around 200,000 people (and 25,000 were injured), most of them civilians. The Warsaw Uprising was the largest act of resistance of this type in German-occupied Europe
Soviet troops who had arrived on the outskirts of Warsaw in their westward push against Adolf Hitler's forces remained on the city's outskirts without helping the Poles who were supposed to be their allies. The Red Army's inaction was viewed as a deep betrayal.
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