In August 1944, as the Polish Home Army rose up against Nazi occupation in Warsaw, the Red Army halted just across the Vistula River and watched. For 63 days, Stalin refused to aid the insurgents, even blocking Allied supply drops. Why did he let the city burn? This episode unpacks the Kremlin's cold calculus: the political goal of eliminating the non-communist Polish underground, the military pretext of supply lines and German counterattacks, and the tragic human cost of over 200,000 dead. We explore the role of General Zygmunt Berling's rogue Polish division, the Soviet air force's refusal to provide cover, and the parallel uprising in Lublin that Stalin supported. We also examine the aftermath: the Soviet-backed Lublin government replacing the Polish government-in-exile, and the decades of contested memory in Poland and Russia. Lucas and Luna discuss the key figures — Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Vyacheslav Molotov — and the controversial claim that Stalin deliberately prolonged the war to crush Polish resistance. This is the story of a betrayal that shaped Eastern Europe for half a century.
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