CNN's Warsw Rising: the Forgotten Soldiers of World War II

In the summer of 1944, an underground army of ordinary citizens in Warsaw rose up against their Nazi occupiers in the belief that the D-Day invasion in the west and Soviet advances in the east gave them a chance for freedom. Underground fighters, many of them teenagers, fought with homemade weapons against a heavily fortified German army. They believed their fight would last for only the few days it would take the Allies to come to their aid. Instead, the air-drops never materialized and they fought for 63 days on their own. "There was a sense of frustration and injustice," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor, whose relatives lived through the Nazi occupation in Poland.

When the Poles most needed Allied help, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin refused to let his troops cross the Vistula River to aid the Poles in liberating Warsaw. What were believed to be Underground Poland's allies, the United States and England, were reluctant to force the issue with Stalin. Unknown to Polish leaders and citizens at the time, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had struck a deal with Stalin at Yalta, ceding him control over Central Europe in return for his help fighting the Germans. But Stalin was happy to let his Red Army troops sit on the far side of the river while the Nazis slaughtered the mostly non-communist Polish resistance and razed Warsaw. More than 200,000 people were killed. Half a million were driven out of the city. More than three quarters of the Underground Army had perished, including much of the country's young intelligentsia and future leadership; many of the survivors ended up in Soviet prisons.

"The passion with which we participated in all those things was probably difficult to understand for people who never lost freedom," says Christine Jaroszewicz, a 19-year-old fighter at the time. "We had this terrific faith we were going to be free."   Yet for a long time the story of this tragic loss, like the story of Polish participation in the battles of Monte Cassino and the Battle of Britain, received little attention either at home or abroad during the Cold War. "For the Allies it was an embarrassment, and for the Soviets it was inconvenient, said Kathy Slobogin, managing editor of CNN Presents. The Allies didn't even invite Underground soldiers to the post-war victory parades. There was no official monument to the fighters in Warsaw until 1989. Through 'Warsaw Rising', we are hopeful the world will start to remember."

CONTACT: Marea Battle, CNN Atlanta, (404) 588-6510