By the summer of 1944, the Polish capital, Warsaw, had been under brutal German occupation for almost five years. Poland had been one of the first European countries to fall into the Nazi grip, and the oppression and brutality of the occupiers led the Polish resistance to perform one last desperate act. On 1 August 1944, thousands of young Poles, many of them little more than children, rose up against the German garrison in Warsaw, armed with old rifles and rusty pistols. The primary objective was to liberate the Polish capital before the arrival of the Soviets and thus avoid the transition from German to Russian occupation.

The revolt and the heroism of the Polish insurgents was made even more dramatic by the fact that the leaders of the revolt expected support from the Allies in the west, but this never came. Warsaw turned into a gigantic battlefield, house-to-house battles were fought, barricades made of furniture or overturned trams were erected, women began to clandestinely weave Polish flags (forbidden during the occupation), to awaken national pride. The Armia Krajowa, the Polish National Army, fought hard against the Germans, who responded with unprecedented violence. Civilians were rounded up and massacred and the city subjected to methodical carpet-bombing by the Lutwaffe, which left not a single building standing, but only a heap of dust and rubble. The uprising cost the lives of almost 180,000 Polish civilians and around 20,000 German soldiers. For 63 days the insurgents resisted, but then had to surrender to the overwhelming forces of the Wermacht.

All survivors were rounded up and deported to concentration camps and on Hitler's orders not a single stone of Warsaw was left intact, but every building was blown up or set on fire as punishment for the uprising. What was once a modern and advanced European capital of about one and a half million inhabitants in 1944 was now just a pile of dust and corpses. Even today, the uprising is celebrated in Poland as a dramatic reminder of the national pride of the Polish people.