October 17, 1944: The Near-Destruction of Warsaw

October 17, 1944, 80 years ago: Having successfully put down an uprising in the Polish capital of Warsaw for the 2nd year in a row, Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler gives an order: "The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation."

Himmler's boss, Adolf Hitler, had been considering this since 1939: He wanted to tear the city down, and replace it with a modern city in the German style. He specifically said to get rid of historical monuments and the Polish national archives. Hitler didn't just want genocide, he wanted to completely wipe Poland from public memory.

By January 1945, 85 percent of the buildings that had stood in Warsaw before the initial German invasion of September 1, 1939 had been destroyed. In 2005, an estimate was made that the value of the damage was, in current U.S. dollars, $54.6 billion.

With Poland a client state after World War II -- the Eastern European version of the West's NATO was founded in 1955 as "The Warsaw Pact" -- the Soviet Union funded the rebuilding of the city, but in the Communist style. As a result, it is not considered an architectural marvel. No, if you want to see a classical Polish city, the only one left is Kraków, which was always the country's home of culture.

The 778-foot, 42-story Palace of Culture and Science was erected in 1955, a copy of the Moscow State University Building. It has nicknames of both genders: Since the State University Building is one of Moscow's "Seven Sisters," the Palace is called "The Eighth Sister"; but it's also known as "Stalin's Dick." (Also, "Stalin's Syringe.")

You've heard of Polish jokes? Here is an actual Polish joke, from Poland: Where is the best view of the city of Warsaw? From the Palace of Culture and Science. Why? Because, from there, you can't see the Palace of Culture and Science.

Much like Colonial Williamsburg in America, Warsaw's "Old Town" was reconstructed. The project was the world's first attempt to resurrect an entire historic city core, and was included on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1980. 

Today, Warsaw is a thriving national capital, a metropolis of 1.8 million people, the 8th-largest in the European Union behind Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Bucharest, Paris, Vienna and Hamburg.  

April 19, 1943: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The best-known photo from the Uprising, after its failure.

The boy has never been positively identified,

and there is no way to know if he survived the camps.

April 19, 1943, 80 years ago: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins, the most famous resistance movement against an occupation of a nation by Nazi Germany.

The Nazis had invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, starting World War II. Overwhelmed, the country fell in 10 days, and the deportation of the country's Jews to concentration camps began -- first to use them as slave labor, and later to execute them in what became known to the Germans as "the Final Solution," and to the civilized world as "the Holocaust."

There were 2 main groups launching the Uprising, which would normally have been opposed to each other, but united in the face of a common enemy: The left-wing Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or ŻOB), and the right-wing Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, or ŻZW).

The ŻOB flag. The ŻZW flag was much the same,

but without the Star of David.

It was the largest single revolt by Jews during the War. Ultimately, the Uprising failed, due to being heavily outnumbered and outgunned: They killed 150 Germans, as opposed to losing 13,000 of their own people. Marek Edelman, the only surviving ŻOB commander, said the point of the revolt was "not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths."

By the time the Allies finally put an end to the Nazi state, 5.8 million Polish citizens had died during the War. About 90 percent of Jews living in Poland, around 3 million, died.