During the times of the Second World War of all European capitals, Warsaw was probably the most affected. The restoration of the Polish capital was the first attempt in history to completely reconstruct not only the most valuable architectural monuments, but also the integral historical core of the city.
Warsaw was not destroyed instantly. Its destruction took place in stages. The city suffered its first losses in 1939, when the first German air raid was carried out. From this moment until the surrender of the city, enemy bombardments will be repeated every day. With the beginning of the siege of Warsaw, the Royal Castle, the cathedral, the Philharmonic building and a large number of residential buildings burned. On September 25, 400 planes attacked the capital at once: 562 tons of high-explosive and 72 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city. Due to the disrupted water supply during fires, many streets burn completely, along their entire length.
When the German troops entered the capital, the buildings were destroyed by 12%. Then the situation only worsens: the extermination of civilians, the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, and mass casualties. The entire population of the "Jewish quarter" is gradually taken to the death camps, the old and disabled are immediately disposed of by the occupiers.
Defense of Warsaw, September 1939
In February 1940, Hitler was presented with a plan for Warsaw as a "new German city", after which the planned destruction of the Polish capital began. According to the plans of the designers, labor camps for several hundred thousand Poles should now be located on the right bank of the Vistula. There was no place for the historical building in the new general plan: it was planned to be completely destroyed, with the exception of the Old Town, recognized by the Germans as typically theirs.
Buildings are blown up according to a clearly drawn scheme. Special attention is paid to architectural monuments, which have been specially described by German art historians. According to the same scheme, museum collections, libraries and archives are destroyed, a small part of which miraculously managed to be saved. Behind the chain, the typical building also disappears.
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The Germans are also methodically destroying the city's infrastructure: electric and water stations, cable networks, and even street landscaping. By 1944, after the Warsaw Uprising, the areas of the Old Town, Powisle, Sredmistia, Wola, where active battles were fought, were almost completely destroyed, and the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto was wiped off the face of the earth.
In 1945, according to experts, 84% of Warsaw was destroyed, 90% of industrial infrastructure and sights, and 72% of residential buildings. Of the 25,5 buildings that existed in 1939, a little less than half were completely destroyed, and about four thousand objects were partially destroyed. As for architectural monuments, out of 957 units, 782 were completely destroyed, 141 were partially destroyed, and only 34 survived.
Parade of the 1st Army of the Polish Army on Marschalkowska Street on January 19, 1945
The destruction of buildings was not evenly distributed. If Warsaw on the left bank is a giant rubble dump (20 million cubic meters), then on the right bank damage of varying degrees of severity was observed. The houses of the Prague district and the background buildings of the periphery were mostly affected here. The city center, dominated by old houses with wooden ceilings, suffered great losses.
After the fire, only the supporting structures remained from such buildings, which from time to time collapsed under the weight of the charred remains. Thanks to the strong structural basis of buildings in modern districts (Zholibozh, Mokotuv, and partly Okhota), part of the housing stock had a chance to be restored.
The state of the city's infrastructure was equally deplorable. All bridges, 98,5% of street lights, 85% of tram lines, 90% of industrial enterprises and 70% of cable networks were irretrievably destroyed.
The price of breath
On January 17, 1945, Soviet and Polish troops entered the territory where Warsaw once stood. At that time, the authorities of the Polish People's Republic were seriously thinking about moving the state capital to Lodz, and leaving Warsaw untouched, so that this terrible "lunar" landscape would serve as an anti-war monument for future generations. Deserted and deserted, it would be a visual page of history, reminiscent of a great tragedy.
Bugai Street in the Old Town of Warsaw, 1945
But they decided to rebuild the capital, rebuild it from scratch. On February 1945, XNUMX, the State Council adopted a resolution on the reconstruction of Warsaw. The main reason for this was the ambitions of Stalin, who wanted to enlist Polish support in the further distribution of German territory. But the enthusiasm with which the Poles took up the cause was not based solely on Soviet communist propaganda. The desire to reclaim the city, which was brutally taken and then destroyed, came from the townspeople themselves. Tired of cold and hunger, people who lost their loved ones and homes began to flock to Warsaw en masse.
The rubble from the former ghetto was used for the production of new bricks and the construction of modern quarters
It's hard to believe, but the only source of financing for the reconstruction of Warsaw was the voluntary donations of residents collected by the Public Fund for the Reconstruction of the Capital (Społeczny Fundusz Odbudowy Stolicy), which operated from 1945 to 1965. Donations came from all over the country. Workers came from different regions of Poland, many worked voluntarily. Those who were not professionals cleared the streets of debris and garbage. Despite the frost, the process was launched.
The rubble from the former ghetto was used for the production of new bricks and the construction of modern quarters. When there was a shortage of crushed stone, it was brought from nearby destroyed cities. At the initial stage, an inventory of losses was carried out, information boards were placed on the ruins of the most valuable buildings, and the least damaged houses were repaired, primarily in Zholibozh and Mokotuv. The planned action to clean up the central city arteries is taking place on the territory of Marschalkowska Street, Kraków Suburbs and Nowego Sviat.
"You have to love the city very much to restore it at the cost of your own breath," - Leopold Thirmand
By 1944, after the Warsaw Uprising, the districts of Old Town, Powisle, Sredmistia, and Woli were almost completely destroyed
We often hear the expression "Warsaw was built by the people." So it is. Warsaw residents who remained in the city lived among the ruins, where they often found the dead. The inhabitants were more likely to fall on transparent shadows with faded, fear-filled eyes. The air in the city was so polluted that clouds of dust actually suffocated the townspeople.
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Polish writer Leopold Thirmand said about this: "One philosopher calculated that every Warsaw resident inhales four bricks a year. One needs to love the city very much to restore it at the cost of one's own breath. Probably, that is why, from the ruins and ruins, Warsaw rose again as the old Warsaw, the eternal Warsaw... The people of Warsaw brought it back to life brick by brick, filling it with their own hot breath."
Saviour's Square is a round, star-shaped square in the center of Warsaw, located on the axis of Marschalkowska Street. Photo: Roman Kwiatkowski
History buffs vs modernizers
Until 1952, the conflict between the two camps continued in the Capital Reconstruction Bureau. The first protected the historical architectural heritage. Its leader was Professor Yan Zakhvatovych. The "modernizers" faction, which supported a completely new look for Warsaw, was represented by Roman Petrovskyi and his deputy Józef Sigalin. It is obvious that this division reflected the political mood of the architects.
Communist-oriented Petrovsky and Sigalin advocated a project that involved the complete destruction of old Warsaw in favor of a new model socialist city. This plan meant the destruction of pre-war buildings and the nationalization of land. Zakhvatovych's ideas revolved around the complete reconstruction of monuments. The new city was to become a copy of the former Warsaw. This large-scale project was later adopted, but significantly reduced. And only thanks to the persistence of specialists and the entire professional team, a huge part of the Old City and the Royal Tract was still recreated.
The Warsaw Royal Castle was restored from 1971 to 1988. Photo: Marcin Białek
Stages of recovery
In the period from 1945 to 1949, the principle "form follows function" prevailed in the construction of the city. In 1946, the concept of the "Warsaw Urban Complex" was laid as the basis of the new master plan, according to which the districts of Warsaw corresponded to certain functional zones. Thus, in the area of the Vistula River, it was planned to place administrative buildings and palaces of culture.
The center of Warsaw was intended for business and shopping districts, and residential areas were built on the outskirts of the city. The new architectural ensembles were connected by large transport arteries. Thus, the construction of the WZ line is considered a remarkable achievement of engineering thought, primarily thanks to the tunnel under Zamkova Square. For the visual unity of the right and left banks, it was proposed to place high-rise buildings that did not obscure the view of the Old Town.
Multimedia park of fountains in Warsaw. Photo: Unsplash
The advantages of this project were: the development of the city in the east-west direction, the preservation of the historical skeleton of the streets, the focus on residential construction and the development of infrastructure for it. However, the majority of experts were inclined to the fact that the city will not withstand strict functional zoning.
In parallel with the new construction of houses and roads, the old buildings and infrastructure are being restored. First of all, there are bridges and buildings of cultural institutions. In 1946, the Polish Theater was opened. Dozens of houses are being spontaneously restored by their former owners — in particular, on Novy Shvyat, Khmelna, Bratska and Marshalkovska streets. The latter is gradually turning into a shopping center, shops and benches occupy the first floors of burnt and dismantled buildings, and street trading is becoming a thing of the past.
"All this was supposed to resurrect the traditions of folk art, but in fact it served as a replication of sovov templates", - Yaroslav Zelinskyi
Warsaw, July 1948. Street trade in the post-war capital. Counters and tram No. 10 connecting Volya with Mokotuv. Photo: Stanislav Dombrovetskyi
However, many buildings that could still be restored are being dismantled. One of the reasons is the shortage of quality bricks among the thousands of tons of garbage that are taken away or processed. The second, as mentioned earlier, is the socialist idea of rejecting the "creations of soulless capitalism", the architecture of the XIX-XX centuries.
In 1950, a six-year plan for the reconstruction of Warsaw was approved. Then the doctrine of socialist realism began to be planted in architecture and art. In the book "Warsaw: Death and Revival" Yaroslav Zelinsky writes: "Its [Stalinist doctrine] design embodiment is the idea of turning the center of Warsaw into a kind of ancient forum that has grown excessively, with excessive spatial solutions and architectural forms foreign to the established appearance of the city. All this was supposed to resurrect the traditions of folk art, but in fact it served as a replication of sovov templates.
The construction of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw was completed in 1955. Photo: Unsplash
One of the iconic objects of socialist architecture is the Palace of Culture and Science, the construction of which was completed in 1955. This giant controlled the street system in the center of Warsaw and influenced the demolition of many buildings that stood out from the general ensemble. Another typical socialist technique is panel construction.
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It came here through the "Bricks for Warsaw" campaign: to solve the problem of acute housing shortage, large prefabricated houses were quickly erected. Plattenbau multi-apartment buildings avoided the former problem of colossal density of the capital and freed up space for green areas.
The Palace of Culture and Science subjugated the street system in the center of Warsaw and influenced the demolition of many buildings that stood out from the general ensemble. Photo: Unsplash
According to the original
The old city was rebuilt according to memory, as well as according to drawings, illustrations, and photographs. Warsaw made an impression not only with the scale of the works, but also with the precision with which the city was restored. The smallest details were taken into account. The famous landscapes of the Italian artist Giovanni Antonio Canaletto (Canaletto), as well as the works of his compatriot and colleague Bernardo Bellotto, were of particular importance in restoring the buildings to their original appearance.
For the first pencil sketches, Bellotto used a camera obscura, so the accuracy was somewhat distorted. However, it still made it possible to bring the reproduced image of the city as close as possible to the original. And although many objects of art that recorded the history of Poland were destroyed by the Nazis in order to "Germanize" the state, Bellotto's works were more fortunate. After the 1939 bombing, the staff of Burlington Magazine wrote about their fear for the Italian artist's paintings, but all 22 canvases survived the war. Since 1984, they have been exhibited in the Canaletto Hall of the Royal Castle.
Church of All Saints in Warsaw. Photo: Unsplash
It was possible to restore some original fragments of the buildings of the Old City thanks to the use of the remains of the remaining buildings. During the reconstruction, all surviving fragments of facades, small architectural details, and interior elements were used.
Despite the destruction during the war and the post-war reconstruction, many historic streets, buildings and churches have been recreated in their original form. In 1980, the historic Old Town of Warsaw was included in the UNESCO heritage list.
In 1980, the historic Old Town of Warsaw was included in the UNESCO heritage list. Photo: Unsplash
The Warsaw reconstruction project can really be called a phenomenon in history. If the idea of restoring and consolidating the leading position of the capital was the motivation of the political authorities, then the realization of this idea fell to a greater extent on the shoulders of ordinary townspeople, who rebuilt their city from scratch with their bare hands. This is an example of human feat and true patriotism, no matter how pathetic it sounds.
In shaping the image of post-war Warsaw, two philosophically opposite groups of specialists took part: defenders of architectural heritage and supporters of an exemplary socialist city. The compromise between these two concepts allowed, on the one hand, to preserve valuable historical buildings, and on the other hand, to quickly create comfort for the capital's residents.
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