During the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans used many types of secret, prototype and unusual weapons. To destroy the city they used the heaviest 600 mm Karl-Gerät mortar, rockets with napalm and remote-controlled mines "Goliath". Units intended to blow up and set fire to barricades, buildings and cellars, as well as river sappers and sappers-miners came to Warsaw. During the fights for the Old Town, the Germans called a geologist to Warsaw to lead the excavation of the underground tunnel leading to the basement of the Reduta Bank Polski.
Only in the first days of the Warsaw Uprising (August 1-4), the insurgent troops carried out offensive operations on a larger scale. Later, the Germans recovered from surprise, formed troops intended to suppress the Uprising and began counterattacking the districts in which the white and red flags were waving. The offensive was accompanied by the slaughter of civilians and the merciless destruction of the city:setting fire to and blowing up buildings.
General Erich von dem Bach sent a combat group to fight, which was a jumble of various special, penal and foreign-language units, school and backup units. He placed his greatest hopes in the units of sappers who - during the five years of the war - perfectly mastered the ability to destroy, blow up, set fire to, collapse and demolish. The Germans also reached for unusual technical solutions, the so-called special warfare measures.
They used weapons against the insurgents, which they could no longer use in conventional combat at the front, because they had been losing for a long time and were constantly withdrawing. However, after assessing the situation and the balance of power in Warsaw, the arsenals were equipped with equipment useful for storming cities, destroying buildings and demolishing barricades. Prototype weapons that were not fully tested were sent to Warsaw but - in Warsaw - it could be successfully used. The reason was obvious - the insurgents were unable to attack, so there was no fear that they would break through the German lines and seize or destroy these experimental and secret weapons.
The insurgents were to face an opponent who would tower over them in almost every respect, not only having an absolute advantage in armaments, but also more numerous and using ruthless methods, including genocide. As if that were not enough, the Warsaw Uprising soon became an opportunity for the Germans to use a wide range of special combat means, some of a completely unknown, experimental nature
- we read in the book “Dawid i Goliath. German special warfare agents in the Warsaw Uprising. ”
Attention Goliath is coming!
One of such weapons were the goliaths, self-propelled remotely controlled tanks-mines, known to most of us, for example from movies about the Warsaw Uprising. They were small vehicles on tracks, weighing approximately 370 kilograms, controlled remotely by means of a cable. They carried a load of about 100 kilograms of TNT in the hull . Sappers from Pionier-Sturm-Batallion 500 placed such a tank-mine in front of their lines and, using the "front-back" and "right-left" manipulators, drove up to the vicinity of insurgent barricades or defended buildings.
The vehicle driver pressed the "Feuer" button, followed by a powerful explosion that destroyed the front walls of buildings, opened passages in barricades, and most of all stunned and blinded the defenders . Then the assault troops set off to fight, occupying the ruins and moving the "front line" several hundred meters forward.
A replica of the Goliath self-propelled mine at the Warsaw Uprising Museum
The insurgents learned quite quickly how the goliaths worked and knew that they could be immobilized by cutting the control cable. Dozens of insurgents died in the attempts to destroy the goliaths and break the cable, and although many mines were blocked, others reached their destination and exploded, inflicting huge losses on the defenders. According to the memories of the insurgents, in many cases it was possible to capture an important building only after using goliaths.
Around 2 p.m. there was a huge blast, very close to me. It was "Goliath" who came, they aimed at the gate. This one was closed, reinforced from the inside, supported by sandbags. They aimed at the gate to get inside the entire block. But they missed. The Goliath exploded on the opposite side of the gate, a few meters from the wall. The entire building rolled down from top to bottom and began to burn. After a short time, the Germans released the second "Goliath", and then the third, which unfortunately reached the gate, exploded and smashed the entire gate. Then the attack immediately followed and the Germans burst into the gate with a machine gun
- recalled Janusz Biesialski "Poraj", one of the defenders of the Wawel Redoubt in Ochota, where the insurgents were the first in Warsaw to learn about the destructive power of these small vehicles.
The tragedy at ul. Kilinskiego
In addition to the goliaths, the Germans also had larger sapper vehicles resembling small tanks in their arsenal. They were Borgward B IV cars, in German terminology "heavy carriers of explosives ". These hellishly dangerous machines were perfect for fighting a poorly armed enemy. The insurgents against the "Borgward" were virtually powerless. In addition, the Home Army intelligence did not recognize the principle of operation of these vehicles in time, so the insurgents did not know how to fight them. The "Borgward" functioned a bit differently than the goliaths. They approached insurgent positions and dropped boxes with explosives in front of them. Then the carrier vehicle, which was controlled by the radio, turned towards the German positions and could load another mine in the rear. The charge dropped near insurgent positions was fired with a radio pulse or a time fuse.
It was such a vehicle that caused one of the greatest tragedies of the Uprising, when on August 13, 1944, it broke out at ul. Kilińskiego 1. The explosion killed around 300 people, both insurgents and civilians , and the whole event was considered by the Varsovians as a perfidious German operation, which consisted in planting a "tank stuffed with TNT" to the insurgents. However, a different scenario emerges from the accounts and memories of the insurgents and from the analysis of the course of events.
The remains of the Borgward B IV tank that exploded at Kilińskiego Street on August 13, 1944 at 18:07
On the barricade at ul. Podwale insurgents immobilized an armored vehicle. They considered it a small tank. They decided to get him to their side and use it against the Germans. They did not recognize its purpose, did not notice that there was no turret, barrel, or even a machine gun. The front intelligence and imagination of Polish soldiers clearly limped on this occasion, and the joy of the success achieved overshadowed common sense.
Without waiting for the engineers who were to examine the vehicle, the young soldiers started it and drove deep into the insurgent positions. The vehicle made a triumphal ride through the streets of the Old Town. At one point, a "strange crate" fell from the front of the vehicle and an attempt was made to reinstall it. However, it did not work, the clock mechanism was activated on this occasion and after a while there was a monstrous explosion which tore the "Borgward" and killed dozens of joyful people surrounding the captured "tank". The remains of the explosion were even found on the roofs of nearby buildings, and dozens of seriously wounded were sent to insurgent hospitals.
Young poet Tadeusz Gajcy, who fought in the Warsaw Uprising, shocked by the information about the explosion at ul. Kiliński wrote a macabre poem about this event:
All the saints, hey, to the table! / A feast in heaven:Polish tripe / straight from the gutters of Kiliński! / Salcesonów misa full / Fresh, crispy / They smell like corpse / Fresh, crispy / They smell like corpse:It's from Przedmurza! / To mating, saints, to mating, / Bite with Christ of the Nations!
This tragedy taught the insurgents a lot and such tragedies did not happen again, but the "Borgward" operated in Warsaw almost until the end of the Uprising and inflicted great losses on the insurgents. However, insurgent memories show that the tracked German machines of destruction:"Goliath" and "Borgward" did not fill the insurgents with such fear as the missile launchers known as "cows" or "wardrobes".
The cow roars! Don't stand in the gate!
First, you can clearly hear a distant roaring of a cow, some terrible creaking, three, four, five times. Then there is a few seconds of silence and a series of explosions. A maddened blast shakes everything in its path. Everything disappears in clouds of thick acrid smoke and dust - recalled Tadeusz Dzierżykray-Rogalski, pseudonym Mściwój, fighting in Mokotów.
This is how they worked and such sounds were made by German Wurfrahmen 40 rocket launchers , a weapon with a very simple design. The tool of destruction in this case were rocket-propelled missiles with a caliber of 280/320 mm and a range of up to 2,200 meters. Rocket launchers were wooden or metal boxes hung on the sides of vehicles or simply placed on the ground and directed towards the enemy.
During the Warsaw Uprising, they were used by the 210. Heavy Mine Thrower Battery, which had high-explosive and incendiary missiles. The action of both was terrible. Near the site of the high-explosive blast, rapid changes in pressure were produced which caused humans to burst alveoli and blood vessels, resulting in instant death. There were no signs of injuries on the victims' bodies.
The shelling of Warsaw during the 1944 uprising
Rockets with an incendiary charge had an even more devastating effect - when such a missile exploded, it contained a mixture of diesel fuel and gasoline, the so-called Flammol, splashed over a long distance, covering everything with a burning substance that was difficult to extinguish. ("Flammol" worked similarly to the napalm later used by Americans in Vietnam - ed.)
Those in the impact zone of the missile from the "cabinet" died in terrible torments or suffered difficult-to-heal wounds - burns on the entire surface of the body. Doctors from insurgent hospitals were helpless in such situations and they could only administer morphine (if it was still available), remove charred pieces of skin and cool the burns with water, which was also constantly lacking in the fighting Warsaw.
Archival photos from the Uprising period show that the Germans used enormous amounts of missiles, as evidenced by the large storage sites of empty crates lying in the area of the intersection of Żelazna and Żytnia Streets, from where the "cows" shelled the city.
Karl-Gerät and Sturmtiger
The heaviest weapon that the Germans used in Warsaw was the Karl-Gerät 600 mm self-propelled mortar. The project of its construction was made before the war, because the Wehrmacht foresaw that such a weapon would be needed to conquer the powerful fortifications of the French Maginot Line.
So it was planned to build a heavy mortar that could move on its own tracks at a maximum speed of 10 km per hour. Special railway carriages with high load capacity were used for transport over longer distances.
Weighing 124 tons and manned by 22 soldiers, a mortar named "Ziu" arrived in Warsaw on August 17 in the morning . The next day, a transport with ammunition arrived, and on August 19, the first missiles were fired from the monstrous barrel at Warsaw. Karl-Gerät fired heavy Betongranate 040 rounds weighing 2,170 kg or "lighter" leichte Betongranate weighing 1,700 kg at a distance of approximately 4 km.
In Warsaw, such a range was completely sufficient ... 
The "Ziu" mortar, weighing 124 tons and manned by 22 soldiers, arrived in Warsaw on August 17 in the morning.
It turned out that missiles designed to destroy concrete bunkers and shelters did not work well in Warsaw. They pierced the roofs and walls of tenement houses, but did not explode. On August 18, a mortar shell broke through the walls of buildings No. 14, 12 and 10 at ul. Moniuszko and landed in the basement of the famous entertainment venue "Adria". There, Polish sappers found him and - after disarming - used the explosive to produce insurgent grenades. 250 kg of TNT were extracted from the missile, which was enough to produce 25,000 bag grants.
The insurgents called the mortar shells Karl-Ger ä t "trunks", because they flew towards the target rather slowly and resembled a flying trunk. According to the authors of the book "Dawid and Goliath", on September 7 a second siege mortar of the same type as "Ziu", with its own name "Baldur", arrived in Warsaw and he also joined the city fire.
The work of destruction carried out by German bombers, rocket launchers and siege mortars was completed by another type of weapon sent to Warsaw by the armored theorist General Heinz Guderian. In order to support the poorly performing pacification troops, he decided to send to "combat" the self-propelled rocket mortars called the Sturmmorser Tiger, which were then being produced.
Colloquially they were called SturmTiger because they were mounted on the chassis of typical Tiger tanks. The SturmTigers fired 38 cm caliber missiles weighing 380 kg. It is known about the use of two vehicles of this type in Warsaw, belonging to the 1000th assault mortar companies.
Prudential building hit by a 2-ton Mörser Karl
mortar shellThe microcompany was commanded in Warsaw by captain Franz Kodar. The use of the Sturmtigers is confirmed in German reports and memoirs of the insurgents, but there is also a film showing how the PWPW redoubts are being fired from the position in Traugutt Park.
Interestingly, these vehicles were prototype weapons in August 1944 and their superstructures were made of cast iron. For this reason, of course, they could not be sent to the front. However, they could be used in Warsaw to fire at the city that was being turned into ruins by the Germans ...
Typhoon in the sewers
A top secret and unknown weapon until recently was the Typhoon-Ger ä t, used by German sappers to destroy cellars, and above all to blow up underground sewage collectors, which the insurgents used to secretly move from one district to another.
Already during the 1943 uprising in the ghetto, the Germans noticed that the fighting Jews were hiding and escaping the ghetto through the sewers . German soldiers did not want to enter the sewers personally, they were afraid of fighting in the sewers, so in order to spare them, many methods of destroying "sewer communication" were developed. Sappers let gas into the sewers, dammed up water and sewage, blocked passages, collapsed exit wells, set up mine and grenade traps.
In order to carry out the work of destruction more accurately and with better results, Hitler's engineers developed a special weapon useful in such situations. After the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, when the Germans realized that underground "marches" of insurgent troops were taking place under their lines, they decided to use it in Warsaw.
Typhoon-Ger ä t, as this "inconspicuous" weapon was called, consisted of metal cylinders containing compressed coal dust and oxygen, and pipes with which these gases were pumped. The mixture of pulverized coal and oxygen was forced through pipes into basements or sewers and - when the volatile mixture filled the voids - the explosion was initiated. Dust explosions in basements caused entire buildings to collapse, and if gas was released into the sewage system, the explosion killed everyone underground within a radius of several hundred meters.
In Warsaw, after one of such eruptions, an uplift of several hundred meters of cobblestones in the street was observed. It is difficult to imagine what happened to the people who were exposed to this weapon in the sewers.
The Germans used it (typhoon) for the first time during the Warsaw Uprising in our section, where they broke through from the ghetto side, made holes to the basement at Passage 3, filled the basement with dust and caused an explosion. Then 30-40 insurgents died in ruins - recalled Bohdan Hryniewicz, pseudonym Bohdan from the "Nałęcz" Battalion.
The poet, Tadeusz Gajcy, mentioned earlier in the article, died in the Uprising in a building at ul. Route 1, probably as a result of the use of Typhoon-Ger ä by the Germans t.
Armored train, warship and sappers with drills
The Germans also used the Panzerzüg 75 armored train in Warsaw, which traveled along the regional railway line and entered the action in key sections, firing at insurgent units. The armored train stopped the insurgent attacks on the Gdańsk Railway Station, the capture of which was to enable the connection of the Old Town with Żoliborz, which was defending itself with the last of its strength.
Hundreds of Home Army soldiers were killed in the storms at the station, incl. from partisan units from Kampinos. On the other hand, a vessel armed with cannons operated on the Vistula, which was a patrol boat pulled out by the Germans from the Vistula in 1939. (It was a river cutter sunk by Polish seamen called "Nieuchangny", editor's note). After it was renovated by the Germans, it was called Pionier, and during the Uprising, it shelled the city by sailing on the Vistula and harassing insurgents in the Old Town and Powiśle.
There were also German river sappers operating on the Vistula, whose task was to block the outlets of the channels flowing into the river. The last scenes of the film by Andrzej Wajda "Kanał" are not the director's invention. The Germans made sure that the insurgents, who had already got into the sewers, could not get out of them. So, at the outlet of the collectors to the river, sappers installed grates, dams and barricades, often secured with grenades, mines and explosives.
During the Warsaw Uprising, both sides waged a typical underground mine war, reminiscent of the struggles of World War I, or medieval methods of capturing castles.
Ties and tunnels were made to plant explosives there and destroy defenders or break into buildings. In the case of insurgent units, this method was successfully used, for example, when conquering the Pasta building.
In turn, the Germans were unable to capture the "Sosna" Grouping, held firmly by the insurgents, the redoubt of the Bank of Poland at Bielańska Street in the Old Town. When it turned out that the assault on this stronghold failed, and the use of Typhoon-Ger equipment ä t was excluded due to distance, it was decided to carry out an action codenamed "Sauna".
A tunnel 1.2 × 1 m in diameter at a depth of 5 meters below the street was started from the nearest building. The trench was to be 21 meters long. After breaking through to the bank's cellars, the Germans planned to plant a triple mine with a total weight of 1.5 tons of TNT or pump coal dust into the building.
The Old Town after the Warsaw Uprising. View of Kanonia and Market Square
A drilling and mining platoon was sent to drill the tunnel, which was to use special drilling machines. Engineers specialized in this type of activity were brought from Offenbach am Main. Prof. Hahne of the Military Geology Section of the 9th Army , who conducted a geological survey of land near Warsaw. He assessed that it would not be possible to drill in sand and gravel and to build a shaft safe from flooding with groundwater.
Eventually, the shallow tunnel was partially hollowed out. There was no need to finish it, because on September 2, the Germans seized the redoubt of Bank Polski after the insurgents withdrew to Śródmieście. They were still 3 meters away from their destination. In this case, their efforts were wasted, and the walls of the Reduta Bank Polski are one of the objects from the Uprising period that has survived to this day.
Bibliography:
- N. Bączyk, G. Jasiński, Dawid versus Goliath. German special combat assets in the Warsaw Uprising, Instytut im. Witold Pilecki, Warsaw 2020
- N. Bączyk, Panzertruppen and the Warsaw Uprising, Pegaz-Bis, Warsaw 2013
- Ł. Mieszkowski, Mysterious wound. The myth of a trap tank in the Warsaw Uprising. W.A.B., 2014
- Z. Czarnotta, Z. Moszumański, Wehrmacht rocket artillery, Lampart, Warsaw 1995