When centuries of Chinese knowledge were destroyed by a warlord who burned the capital
Xiang Yu’s razing of the Qin capital Xianyang, which left libraries full of vital texts in ruin, was echoed centuries later in Warsaw
Warsaw’s wartime destruction was not merely the consequence of battle, but a deliberate campaign by its Nazi German occupiers to erase much of the city. In August 1944, the Warsaw Uprising – a Polish armed revolt by the city’s underground resistance against German occupation – began with the aim of liberating Warsaw. German forces fought to crush it, subjecting the city to sustained bombardment.
When the uprising was finally suppressed after nine weeks, the surviving population was expelled, with tens of thousands of Poles sent to concentration camps. The emptied city was then systematically destroyed. German demolition units moved through Warsaw, wrecking or blowing up buildings that had survived the fighting. Churches, palaces, schools, theatres, libraries and historic monuments were reduced to rubble.
By January 1945, almost 90 per cent of the city’s buildings had been destroyed. The cultural losses were particularly devastating. Libraries containing centuries of Polish manuscripts, books, maps and other collections were deliberately burned, while countless works of art and historical records vanished. Warsaw was left in ruins, its historic centre a smouldering pile of debris.