Festung Warschau

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.

[1] 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 that reached the city in the aftermath of the Battle of Bzura.

Food, water and medicine shortages as well as the Luftwaffe strafing inhabitants and refugees grouped within the city caused Warsaw's civilian authorities to request a cease-fire.

Adolf Hitler who took over personally many duties in the OKW and OKH ordered the no step back policy in an attempt to halt the Soviet offensives which could not be contained by open field battle anymore.

After the Uprising, during which the Soviets troops had arrived near the Vistula, 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 for four months.

The Chief of the Operational Branch of the German Army General Staff (Generalstab des Heeres), Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin, gave permission for the retreat of German Heeresgruppe A from Warsaw on 16 January 1945, throughout the Soviet Vistula-Oder Offensive and was imprisoned on 19 January 1945 by the Gestapo at Flossenbürg concentration camp and Dachau concentration camp as he rejected a direct command of Adolf Hitler by this action.