Warsaw Uprising 1944 Soviet Betrayal Condemned By RAF Marshal Slessor

The Central Blue: Recollections and Reflections, by John Slessor. 1956

Sir John Slessor, Air Marshal of the RAF, Squarely and Forcefully Confronts the Perfidy of the Soviet Betrayal of the Poles’ 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and the Persistent British Softness on Communism

This thick volume raises many topics, and includes a profuse index. I focus on a few items of lasting interest.

A GEM: THE BOTTOMLESS PERFIDY OF THE SOVIET-BETRAYED WARSAW UPRISING (1944)

Some authors have created a false ambiguity about Soviet conduct towards the Warsaw Uprising. Slessor will have absolutely none of that: “It is a story of the utmost gallantry and self-sacrifice on the part of our air crews, R.A.F., South African and above all Polish; of deathless heroism on the part of the Polish Underground Army fighting against desperate and increasingly hopeless odds in the tortured city of Warsaw; and of the BLACKEST-HEARTED, COLDEST-BLOODED TREACHERY ON THE PART OF THE RUSSIANS. I am not a naturally vindictive man, but I hope that there may be some very special hell reserved for the brutes in the Kremlin who betrayed Bor’s army, and led to the fruitless sacrifice of some two hundred airmen of 205 Group and 334 Wing.” (p. 612; Emphasis added). Well said! But don’t forget the 200,000 German-slain Varsovians.

Slessor is, at first, critical of Polish leaders for not having pre-planned the Uprising with the Allies [How could it then have been kept secret? Besides, the Soviets HAD been informed, and had even encouraged an uprising]. He then qualifies his views: “Even he [Sosnkowski] perhaps may be forgiven for failing to foresee the depths to which Russian Communist treachery would descend.” (p. 616). No kidding.

RAF Marshal Slessor, recounting his earlier position that the airdrops were a waste of lives in support of a hopeless undertaking, now recognizes the fact that the Uprising was supposed to be a few-day rational military act, not a 63-day quasi-suicidal agony: “But at the beginning it did not seem to me possible that the battle could last more than a few days–indeed, but for the Russian treachery, it could hardly have done so…” (p. 615). Right again.

SLESSOR CONDEMNS BRITISH SOFTNESS ON COMMUNISM

Slessor incisively comments, “How, after the fall of Warsaw, any responsible statesman could trust any Russian Communist further than he could kick him, passes the comprehension of ordinary men.” (p. 612). Indeed!

POLAND WAS NOT AT FAULT FOR HER RAPID DEFEAT IN 1939

“Poland was overwhelmed far more easily and quickly than anyone had thought possible by the blitzkrieg, which should have taught us more than it did about what to expect when the enemy turned against the West.” (p. 236).

THE PIVOTAL ROLE OF POLISH PILOTS IN THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN (1940)

Slessor comments on Polish pilots in the RAF: “During the battle of Britain I had watched 303 Squadron pile up their magnificent record of achievement and sacrifice…The Poles may have been tactless and often stupid, but they were indomitably brave.” (p. 611). [How were the Poles “tactless and stupid”? Was it because they wanted freedom? Or was it for loudly protesting western inaction towards, and later sellout of, their treaty obligations to Poland?].

SATURATION BOMBING WAS NEITHER UNPRECEDENTED, NOR INEFFECTIVE, NOR IMMORAL (COMPARED TO OTHER WARTIME ACTS)

Ironic to the armchair moralizing, in recent years, about Allied WWII area bombing, this issue had been effectively settled before the war. International law didn’t govern aerial bombing. Then German bombing conduct set the precedent (p. 216). Besides, the rather abstract distinctions between military and civilian targets, artificial to begin with (p. 213), proved totally unworkable during the air war. (pp. 238-239). Finally, nighttime area bombing had become compelled by the fact that daylight bombing of individualized targets had proved too costly (p. 429), and nighttime bombing usually couldn’t destroy individualized targets. (p. 295).

Slessor could have made his argument stronger by pointing out that the lost productivity caused by the disruptions of area bombing was more important than the lost productivity caused by the deaths and destruction itself.