BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW on The History Channel(R)

BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW on The History Channel(R)

September 25th from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. ET/PT

NEW YORK, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- The Warsaw Uprising was the largest and perhaps most heroic underground campaign of World War II. It was also one of the most desperate and little known battles of the war. Yet even as the Poles rose up against the Germans in the heart of Warsaw, they were callously betrayed. Not by their enemies but by their allies.

They were promised help that never came, so they took matters into their own hands. In the summer of 1944, more than 20,000 Polish Freedom Fighters and 220,000 Polish civilians died at the hands of the German Army during 63 days of hellacious battle in Poland's capital city of Warsaw. Now, the survivors of the Warsaw Uprising share the story of their courageous fight against oppression and occupation in BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW, airing Sunday, September 25th at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on The History Channel.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler's Nazi forces invaded Poland from the West, and two weeks later, Russia invaded from the east. There they formed a resistance movement with the hope of eventually overthrowing German occupation in their homeland and re-gaining freedom. Polish soldiers, who had escaped, joined Allied forces around the world to battle the Axis, while in German- occupied Warsaw, the Polish underground published newspapers; plastered the city with fliers urging resistance; bombed supply trains; assassinated German officials in public; and gathered a force of 400,000 known as The Home Army. The Germans responded with the brutality that was their trademark, setting up gallows around the city for public executions, rounding up suspected sympathizers and herding them onto trains bound for work camps and gas chambers.

By 1944, the Russians had switched sides and were allied to Britain and America. And as the Russians pushed the Germans out of Russian territory and back through Poland, the Polish underground prepared to rise up against the Germans in Warsaw. The plan was to liberate their capital just before the Russians reached Warsaw and liberate the city.

But to prevail the Poles would have to join forces with Joseph Stalin, the same man whose forces had massacred 22,000 Polish soldiers and buried them in mass graves only a few years earlier. On August 1, 1944 at 5 p.m., with the Russian army just miles away, The Home Army launched a surprise attack against the Germans ... the Warsaw Uprising was underway. Yet, just when the Poles expected the Russians to join the battle, the Russians stopped as the Germans in Warsaw decimated the Polish insurgents. There was a reason: Stalin had no use for the insurgents; his plan was to install a communist puppet government in Poland after the war. Yet perhaps the most appalling aspect of the story is that Churchill and Roosevelt let Stalin get away with it.

Consisting entirely of archival footage and interviews with survivors, BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW is an inspiring and heartbreaking retrospective of one of the greatest fights you've probably never heard about.

Highlights of BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW include:

-- The little-known Polish perspective on the latter years of World War II, when the under equipped Home Army struggled against superior German forces and waited for help from Allied forces that never seemed to come.

-- The historic summit in Tehran, in which Churchill and Roosevelt each separately promised Stalin that Poland would be his once Germany fell, paving the way for a half-century of Communist rule there after the War.

-- Tales of the heroic efforts of the Polish insurgents, including carrying the wounded to safety through the city sewers, the special efforts of the women of Poland both on the battlefield and as nurses in makeshift hospitals, and the efforts to find food and water in the war-torn streets of Warsaw.

-- Survivors share memories of German brutality, including pouring gasoline on living people and lighting them on fire. "These were not soldiers," one survivor recalls, "They were rapists and murderers."

-- The horribly botched efforts at support by the Russian and American Armed forces, which included supplying the Polish with thirty-year-old rifles that didn't work and dropping relief supplies directly into the hands of the Germans.

-- The eventual surrender of The Home Army to German forces, after which Hitler placed the entire remaining population in concentration camps and leveled the city, building by building.

-- The inspiring restoration of pride in Warsaw with the help of Pope John Paul II and the Solidarity movement in the 1980s, which finally allowed the people of Poland to understand the true story of the Warsaw Uprising.

BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW is produced by CBS for The History Channel. Executive Producer for The History Channel is Susan Werbe.

Now reaching more than 88 million Nielsen subscribers, The History Channel(R), "Where the Past Comes Alive(R)," brings history to life in a powerful manner and provides an inviting place where people experience history personally and connect their own lives to the great lives and events of the past. The History Channel has earned six News and Documentary Emmy(R) Awards and received the prestigious Governor's Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for the network's "Save Our History(R)" campaign dedicated to historic preservation and history education. The History Channel web site is located at http://www.historychannel.com/.

Source: The History Channel(R)

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