EASTERN THEATRE: Deutschland über Warsaw

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In the nostrils of the dauntless Mayor of Warsaw, "Stefan the Stubborn" Starzynski, as all Poles were calling him, stank last week the corpses of men and horses rotting in almost every street of Europe's fifth largest capital. More than 500 separate fires were blazing in Warsaw, covering the city with a choking lid of smoke and flame. The reservoirs were blasted and dry, the power plants smashed, and Nazi bombers, after destroying the Jewish Home for Crippled Children, had methodically blown to bloody smithereens all Warsaw hospitals, crammed with wounded.

In 1915 Russian Warsaw held out for 15 days against the Imperial German Army, and by last week Republican Warsaw had held out five days more than that against the Nazi Juggernaut. With food and ammunition almost gone, with pestilence and epidemics feared, it was time for even valiant Stefan the Stubborn to change his tune, and the Mayor did so literally. Suddenly the blasts of martial music at continuous intervals from Warsaw Radio, which had meant to all Europe that the city was holding out (TIME, Sept. 25), were replaced by deep-toned funereal hymns. It was not, however, Stefan's station but Berlin which finally and authentically announced "Warsaw has capitulated unconditionally!" then burst into a triumphant fanfare of Deutschland über Alles.

In the last hours of the siege, Warsaw's hungry defenders were tempted by huge German posters in Polish reading, POLES! COME TO US. WE WILL NOT HURT YOU. WE WILL GIVE YOU BREAD! Polish officers who finally came out with a flag of truce were received by German General Johannes Blaskowitz in his railway staff car in a scene reminiscent of the signing of World War I's armistice in the car of Generalissimo Ferdinand Foch. General Rommel, commanding the defense of Warsaw, had instructed his emissaries to ask only a brief truce for the evacuation of civilians and the wounded. After this he proposed to fight on, but General Blaskowitz refused to grant such a truce, obtained the unconditional surrender of Warsaw and demanded that General Rommel write an order to the besieged fortress of Modlin, about 20 miles away, directing its surrender too.

Just before midnight a Polish major arrived with the required order from General Rommel, set off escorted by a group of German officers for Modlin. Two German privates held high between two poles a broad white banner lit by glaring portable searchlights. Modlin was given until 6 a. m. to hoist a white flag of surrender, but failed to do so, and heavy German bombardment at once began. This continued until 7 a. m., when Modlin finally hoisted the white flag. In front of Warsaw the "stop firing" order had been given on both sides for 9 a. m. and fire punctually stopped, but due to some misunderstanding the Poles resumed fire with rifles, grenades, mine throwers and machine guns at 11 a. m. Heavy German artillery opened up in a final series of crushing blows and spunky Warsaw yielded at last.