There actually WERE machine guns and submachine guns.
A handful, literally. And the SMGs were quite rare even in the German army (most of the Germans had bolt-action Mauser rifles, even at the very end of the war after they have introduced G43 semi-automatic rifles and StG assault rifles). Anyway, most of the Jewish insurgents had handguns, at best (most had nothing).
Which was not untypical in the realities of Warsaw, Warsaw Uprising was the same (situations in this style: an "assault platoon" armed with an old Russian revolver and 8 bullets, 2 stick grenades and Molotovs, and that's all, at first).
Jurgen Stroop had every reason to minimize his losses in his reports to his commanding officers.
"his commanding officers": Heinrich F-g Himmler. "Oh, Herr Reichsfuhrer-SS, so you did find out I lied to you? Man, relax, come on. No biggie?"
Survivor and former ZOB leader Marek Edelman reports that hundreds of German and Auxiliaries were killed. Why is his word not to be trusted but that of a mass murderer is?
And why was (he's dead now) he not even mentioning ZZW (ZOB's semi-rival milita)? Oh snap.
There was an article in Haaretz how the ZOB survivors chose to not tell the whole thruth, for example how they were killing Jewish and Polish women and children alleged to be informants (later with no "trials", and sometimes even "not wasting bullets"), or how they were robbing rich Jews at gunpoint, how they were leaving civilians for death (an example: a crying infant in a burning building, they just walked right by without picking up him/her) and their friends too, how one of their commanders apparently stole all their food for himself after his group's escape to the forest (they wanted to kill him, he later returned to Warsaw and was killed by Germans), etc.
Do you think they were some kind of angels, uncapable even of lying? They weren't. They were humans.
And Uprising is a fantasy film.
There was also a lot of self-serving heroic myth-making about the Warsaw Uprising. ALL LIES. I even sort of believed in this, until I've read one honest memoir of a guy who went through the hell, and staying alive involved remnant of his unit going AWOL, and in the end him pretending to be a civilian. It was a shattering experience for me, but at least I'm no longer naive like you. I even wrote on this very board how the German losses were supposedly 16,000 killed. Well, NOT. More like 10-12,000 total, killed AND wounded (3,000 or so killed). There was an archival research of the real German losses. It's however supressed by these who believe in romantic *beep* of the German pyrrhic victory or whatever. Oh, and most of their losses was completely worthless trash, cannon fodder like forcibly conscripted criminals of Dirlewanger and eastern "volunteers". This, in exchange for much of the best of Polish youth. Depressing.
The truth is yes, this film is a
The truth is yes, this film is a stinking pile of bull-t. The Pianist is no much more honest (the original memoir too) and a much better film altogether too. About Warsaw Uprising watch Kanal (Sewer), it's an old film from 1957 but with no fantasy approach to the subject whatsoever. Here's how it ends:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VGFIsjGF9k (everyone dies, which is a proper end).
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