On 4 January 1944 the Red Army crossed Poland's pre-war eastern border near Rokitno in Volhynia. For the Polish Home Army this was the signal for Operation Tempest (Akcja „Burza”): its units were to fight the retreating Germans and meet the Soviets as the hosts of the land. In Volhynia they began mobilizing later that month.
The plan
By late 1943 the Home Army, the underground army loyal to the Polish government in exile in London, expected the German front in the east to give way. On 20 November 1943 its commander, General Tadeusz Komorowski (code name Bór), issued the order for Operation Tempest.1
The plan was military and political at once. Home Army units were to fight the Germans and cooperate with the advancing Soviet forces. By acting as the hosts of the land, they were also to show that Poles loyal to the government in London were its rightful authorities, in the hope of winning Soviet recognition of that government and of Poland's pre-war eastern border.2
4 January 1944: the border is crossed
On the night of 3 to 4 January 1944 Soviet troops crossed the pre-war Polish-Soviet border, the line fixed by the Treaty of Riga, near Rokitno in Volhynia, east of Sarny. They belonged to the 1st Ukrainian Front. The IPN's article names Ivan Konev as its commander, but the front was then led by General Nikolai Vatutin: Stalin's order of the day of 5 February 1944 on the capture of Lutsk and Rovno is addressed to him.3
The crossing set the plan in motion. In January 1944 the Home Army's Volhynia District began to mobilize its units.4
The 27th Volhynian Infantry Division
The mobilized units became the 27th Volhynian Infantry Division of the Home Army, which fought in Volhynia and then in the Lublin region for more than half a year. Its strength is given differently: dzieje.pl puts it at about 6,000 soldiers, the IPN at more than 6,000 when it was concentrated, and the Ministry of Education's platform at about 7,000, the figure Markowski gives for early April 1944.5
In mid-April 1944 the division was encircled, and its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jan Wojciech Kiwerski (code name Oliwa), was killed. Part of the division broke out and went on to fight west of the Bug River, in the Lublin region. In July 1944 the Soviets disarmed it. Some of its soldiers were shot or deported to labor camps.6
What followed
The pattern was repeated further north and west. Home Army units under Lieutenant Colonel Aleksander Krzyżanowski fought for Wilno (now Vilnius) alongside the Red Army in July 1944 and were then disarmed, and their commander was arrested. In the Lublin region the Home Army freed several towns on its own and others together with Soviet troops, and around Lwów (now Lviv) its officers and soldiers were also arrested.7
Estimates of the number of Home Army soldiers who took part in Tempest vary: more than 60,000 outside Warsaw according to the Ministry of Education's platform, more than 100,000 according to dzieje.pl. Its political aim was not achieved: the Soviets disarmed the Home Army units and arrested their commanders instead of dealing with them as the army of an independent Polish state. In Warsaw itself the Warsaw Uprising began on 1 August 1944.8
