The declassified report prepared by a soviet military marshal, Gieorgij Żukow, describes how Nazi Germans razed the Polish capital to the ground during, and after, the Warsaw Uprising.

“The fascist barbarians have destroyed the capital of Poland - Warsaw, they have acted with cruelty and sadism and have levelled the city district after district,” reported military marshal Gieorgij Żukow on 29th January 1945.



The declassified report was originally addressed to Joseph Stalin and the National Defence Committee of USSR. It is the first time it has been presented to the public, said the Russian Historical Society that revealed the document in Moscow.



In his report Żukow stated that “the largest industrial plants have been turned into dust. Households have been blown up, the city economy is in ruin. Tens of thousands of people have been killed or banished. The city is dead.”

Żukow also referred to the Red Army’s progress in the fight against Germany. In the first paragraph of the document, he informed Stalin of the accomplishment of his order to “crush the enemy with a strong blow” and “quickly advance towards the Polish-German border”. He revealed that in 17 days the Red Army had covered a distance of 400 kilometers. In his opinion such fast manoeuvres had saved many other Polish cities, the country’s infrastructure and its people.



The 1st Polish Army, which took part in the Red Army’s offensive, entered the destroyed Warsaw on 17th of January 1945. The fight to liberate the city from the German occupation took just a few hours as the Nazis had withdrawn their forces. But it was too late for the city and the people who have fought in the Warsaw Uprising, which failed after 63 days of heroic struggle. Some 200,000 Warsaw residents were already dead.