Talk:Warsaw Uprising

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Featured? The article needs a lot of work to be done.

As per my edits, there is a huge amount of work to be done to meet the FA criteria. A small list of what should be done follows:

1. Add references where needed (about 40 sentences for now, and I haven't fully read two sections...).
2. Look through #W-hour and #Capitulation and correct all the untrue sentences, expand these section a bit.
3. expand #Eve of the battle (and Lead up to the Warsaw Uprising as well) to cover more political and military reasons and actions taken by the AK just few days before the Uprising, #Capitulation to include information about the AK leaving Warsaw, about Gen. Okulicki taking the position of Commander of the Home Army and the reasons of Bór-Komorowski going to slavery, shorten #Soviet stance (remove doubled information, write more about Berling's landings in Warsaw).
4. do the whole to-do list (e.g. include Cultural representations of the Warsaw Uprising into the main article, polish the style, copy-edit, remove red links, proofread and so on)

I feel the article doesn't meet the FA criteria for now. There were and still are bits of untrue statements -- e.g. the sentence stating it was Bór-Komorowski who signed the capitulation order in the presence of von dem Bach-Zelewski. In fact, it was not him--the act of capitulation was signed by Kazimierz Iranek-Osmecki, Zygmunt Dobrowolski and Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. The article contains many such examples and they all need to be re-written or removed. --Teodor Jan Ranicki (talk) 16:09, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

You can start right away, feel free to improve the article. By definition, no WP article is "ready". //Halibutt 17:40, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I second Halibutt. WU has fallen behind our standards, and keeps on falling, despite our occasional attempts to improve it. Help from a new editor would be vastly appreciated! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:22, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

L-hour

I see in the talk archive some discussion about "W-hour" as opposed to "L-hour". Polish radio says "w" stands for "battle for freedom". Davies admits in a frustratingly patronising way that he's translated as many Polish words as possible into English. (He also contracts everyone's surnames to an initial letter because he thinks Polish surnames are too difficult for English readers. Paradoxically, I find this makes his book more difficult to read rather than less.) Anyhow, I wonder if his "L-hour" is "Liberation-hour"? I don't speak Polish, but an internet-based translation gives "Wybawienie" as meaning "Liberation". Any comments? DrKiernan (talk) 11:31, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, Davies, p.430, does says "L" stood for Liberation. I think this may be a fair but loose translation of "Wybuch". DrKiernan (talk) 08:51, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

It may not. "W" in the W-hour probably means "Wybuch", but I also recall seeing it could stand for "Wystąpienie"; however, both of these words do not mean "Liberation" ("Wybawienie"). I will have to look it up in some archives ("Polskie Siły Zbrojne", v. III "Armia Krajowa" should do), as neither Kirchmayer, nor Borkiewicz go into details in here; the Internet isn't a good source in here as well, as results in Google do vary a lot. Tomasz W. Kozłowski (talk) 13:40, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

My first thought would be w for wolność (Polish for freedom...). Second - wyzwolenie (liberation). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 05:11, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, I went to library yesterday and looked the whole thing up in some books ("Polskie Siły Zbrojne", "Studium Polski Podziemnej" -- google it for more information). As far as I see, and I have seen the original plan of Rowecki [Raport Operacyjny W-154], there was no information about what does the "W" letter stand for. However, Rowecki has mentioned the word "wybuch" (outbreak), so we can suspect it is what "W" means. There are two ways, then: (1) no specification of "W" was given and (2) the meaning of the letter was given in the interior correspondence and orders of AK, not in the correspondence between AK's Commander and Commander in Chief. Any ideas how to solve this problem? Tomasz W. Kozłowski (talk) 12:30, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Andrew Borowiec, who fought in the uprising, says in his book (p. 79) that "W" stands for walka meaning "combat". DrKiernan (talk) 09:22, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Weapons

Weapon list on 1 August: "300 machine pistols" and "60 submachine guns", is wrong, but I don't know what author understood under this terms. There was probably not one machine pistol in the whole uprising - most probably it refers simply to submachine guns, but what is 60 then? Pibwl ←« 23:37, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

You're probably right. I don't know much about firearms but I'm guessing that one of these (probably the 300) is supposed to be the Blyskawica gun which in the relevant article is interchangeably called either "submachine gun" or "machine pistol". It's possible that the 60 refers to RKMs - not sure what the English translation is but I think they were Light machine guns - maybe like an earlier version of the Soviet RPKs. That seems like a lot of RKMs though.radek (talk) 00:49, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Right, an equivalent of RKM is LMG (although LMG covers also somewhat heavier weapons, known in Poland as LKM, like Lewis gun, or UKM, like MG-34 ("universal machine gun")). The correct English term for weapons like Błyskawica and MP40 is submachine gun (a confusion might come from a fact, that submachine gun in Polish is "pistolet maszynowy"). Pibwl ←« 14:47, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I've changed this to "300 submachine guns" and "60 assault rifles", as estimated by pl:Aleksander Gieysztor and given by pl:Władysław Bartoszewski, but I don't know the makes. DrKiernan (talk) 08:57, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Seems probable. Only assault rifles available could be MP-43/Stg-44. Submachine guns were of course a variety of Stens, Błyskawicas, MP-38s/-40s and other less popular models. Pibwl ←« 01:47, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Can we get a ref for the number of weapons produced/captured during the uprising? I've added the refs for the vehicles and some other items; one of the captured SdKfz's even has an article on pl wiki: pl:Szary Wilk (transporter opancerzony).--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 05:26, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I've removed Tiger tank - where did you find it? :-) There were certainly none on the Polish side - unless some miraculous source has been discovered recently, that I don't know about :-) (there was probably one PzKpfw-IV captured, but it was lost some hour after, in a stupid way, without any combat action, when a soldier just drove it accidentally towards the German side). And there was also Jagdpanzer 38 captured, which might be added, but it stood in vain as a reserve, until a building collapsed upon it. Pibwl ←« 01:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Tiger is mentioned here: "German Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger. One tank was captured on August 4th in Ochota district. It was pressed into service but was lost on the same day." --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 04:52, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

There's no reliable source saying it was Tiger. Probably it refers to the same vehicle, which, according to Jan Tarczyński "Pojazdy powstania warszawskiego", was most probably PzKpfw.IV (there is no material reference). However, due to its very short career, lack of combat usage, and probably even lack of "commissioning" as insurgent vehicle, it's not worth to be mentioned as insurgents' weapon. On contrary, two Panthers created an "armoured platoon" and were actively used. I have doubts if Jagdpanzer 38 deserves to be listed - it could be used, but it wasn't. Pibwl ←« 19:57, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

A question

I don't understand the sentence "It became obvious that the advancing Red Army might not come to Poland as a liberator but rather as "our Allies' ally."[8]" Could the editors make it clear? Vb (talk) 11:47, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Ally of our allies doesn't mean our ally. I am not sure how to make it more clear...? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 05:27, 28 January 2009 (UTC)