Nazi war crimes during the Warsaw Uprising were the mass murders of civilians and prisoners of war, attacks on undefended civilian targets, rapes, deportations, looting, destruction of property, and other serious violations of the international humanitarian law committed by German police and military units participating in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.

Historians estimate that between 150,000 and 180,000 civilian residents of Warsaw died in August and September 1944, of which at least 63,000 were killed outside of combat operations. Approximately 550,000 residents of the capital and 100,000 people from towns near Warsaw were expelled, of whom almost 150,000 were sent to forced labor or Nazi concentration camps. As a result of the fighting in August and September 1944, as well as the systematic demolition and burning of the city carried out in the following months by German destruction units, 55% of Warsaw's pre-war buildings were destroyed.

Hitler's order to destroy Warsaw

Warsaw was considered by the German occupiers to be the center of Polish resistance against the Nazi "new order." Although the former capital of Poland had been downgraded to the status of a provincial town in the General Government, Warsaw remained the center of Polish political, intellectual, and cultural life. It was also the seat of the Polish Underground State and the location of particularly strong and well-organized resistance structures. Governor-General Hans Frank wrote in his diary on 14 December 1943: "If we did not have Warsaw in the General Government, we would not have four-fifths of the difficulties we have to contend with. Warsaw is and will remain a hotbed of confusion, a point from which unrest spreads throughout the country."

As early as 15 July 1940, Frank declared that "the Führer has decided that the reconstruction of Warsaw as a Polish metropolis is absolutely out of the question. The Führer wishes that, along with the general development of the General Government, Warsaw should be reduced to the status of a provincial town." The so-called Pabst Plan assumed that the population of Warsaw would be reduced to 130,000 inhabitants and its area to 15 square kilometres. The defeats suffered by the Third Reich on all fronts meant that the "Pabst Plan" was not implemented. Adolf Hitler therefore told Frank during a conversation on 6 February 1944 that "Warsaw must be destroyed as soon as the opportunity arises."

In this situation, the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising on 1 August 1944 was treated by Nazi leaders as an ideal opportunity to solve the "Polish problem." During a speech to military district commanders and school commanders delivered in Jägerhöhe on 21 September 1944, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler mentioned that upon hearing the news of the uprising, he immediately went to Hitler, to whom he declared: "My Führer, the timing is not very favorable for us. From a historical point of view, however, it is a blessing that the Poles are doing this. In five or six weeks, we will get out of this. And after that, Warsaw, the capital, the head, the intelligentsia of this former nation of 16–17 million Poles will be destroyed, this nation that has been blocking our East for 700 years and has been in our way since the first Battle of Tannenberg. And then, historically, the Polish problem will no longer be a big issue for our children and for all those who come after us, or even for us ourselves."

Hitler's first reaction was to order the evacuation of all Germans from the city beyond its borders. Then, the German Luftwaffe was to "raze Warsaw to the ground through the mass use of all aircraft of the central front, including transport planes, and thus suppress the uprising." The task of organizing carpet bombing of Warsaw was given to the commander of the German 6th Air Fleet (Luftflotte 6), General Robert Ritter von Greim. However, it quickly became apparent that carrying out the order was unrealistic, since a number of German offices and military and police units had been cut off in the city, and their evacuation was temporarily impossible. In this situation, Hitler entrusted the task of organizing relief for the Warsaw garrison to Reichsführer-SS Himmler and the Chief of the General Staff of the Oberkommando des Heeres, General Heinz Guderian.

During a meeting held on the evening of 1 August 1944 or the following morning, Hitler gave Himmler and Guderian a verbal order to raze Warsaw to the ground and murder all its inhabitants. According to the account of SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach, who was appointed commander of the forces assigned to suppress the uprising, the order was roughly as follows: "Every inhabitant is to be killed, no prisoners are to be taken. Warsaw is to be razed to the ground, thus setting a terrifying example for the whole of Europe." In turn, von dem Bach's chief of staff, SS-Brigadeführer Ernst Rode, testified after the war that SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger – commander of one of the units sent to fight the uprising – received a handwritten order from Himmler in pencil, in which the Reichsführer-SS announced on behalf of Hitler that Warsaw would be razed to the ground and that Dirlewanger himself was authorized to "kill whomever he wanted, according to his liking." Hitler's order to destroy Warsaw was also received by the commanders of the German garrison in the capital. SS-Oberführer Paul Otto Geibel, SS and Police Leader (SS- und Polizeiführer) for the Warsaw District, testified after the war that as early as the evening of 1 August, Himmler had instructed him by telephone: "Destroy tens of thousands."

Hitler's order applied not only to the SS and police units subordinate to Himmler, but also to Wehrmacht units, of which Oberkommando des Heeres was fully aware. Although General Guderian, when questioned by a Polish prosecutor, claimed that he had treated Hitler's words as a rhetorical figure and that the order had been passed on to the fighting units without the mediation of the Oberkommando des Heeres, during a telephone conversation with Hans Frank (3 August 1944, 9:10 PM), he himself assured that "everything will be done to come to the aid of Warsaw, and then a verdict will be passed on this city with utter ruthlessness." When von dem Bach attempted to soften the order to destroy Warsaw, Guderian refused to intercede with Hitler on this matter.In his testimony at the Nuremberg trials, SS-Brigadeführer Rode described a conversation he and von dem Bach had with Guderian on 2 or 3 August 1944: "We wanted Guderian to intercede with the Führer to revoke the order. However, Guderian flatly refused to mediate in this matter. He told us that it was a clear order from Hitler and that it would be impossible to revoke it. In any case, he did not want to get involved at all and was afraid of the responsibility for interceding. Bach tried several more times to persuade him to do so, but always without success [...] Bach and I thought that Guderian would never want to take responsibility for the destruction of this city. However, it turned out that this was not the case" ().

Murder of prisoners of war and civilians Of the approximately 150,000–180,000 civilian residents of Warsaw who died during the Warsaw Uprising, at least one-third were victims of executions carried out by German police and military units. Maja Motyl and Stanisław Rutkowski, authors of the study Powstanie Warszawskie – rejestr miejsc i faktów zbrodni (Warsaw Uprising – Register of Sites and Facts of Crimes), calculated that during the uprising, at least 63,000 civilian residents of the capital died outside of combat operations. Captured insurgents were also routinely murdered, even though they fought openly and wore the military insignia required by law, thus fighting in accordance with the Hague Convention.

Nazi crimes in the first days of the uprising

German troops stationed in Warsaw committed a series of war crimes on the very first day of the uprising, even before Hitler issued the order to destroy the city. Insurgents who were taken prisoner were shot, and the wounded were finished off. On 1 August, many soldiers of the Home Army were killed in this way, especially those from units that had been broken up during unsuccessful assaults on heavily fortified German strongpoints. Among those murdered were all the captured or wounded soldiers from Lieutenant Kosma's company, which was wiped out during an attack on the Sipo headquarters on Szuch Avenue, prisoners from the groups of Lieutenants Ostoja and Gromada – surprised and defeated by the Germans while taking up their starting positions in Wola, as well as soldiers from Mokotów Subdistrict who were taken prisoner after a failed attack on German strongpoints on . The Germans also murdered soldiers of the Praga Subdistrict captured after a failed attack on the Poniatowski and Kierbedź bridges, wounded and captured insurgents from the Olza Battalion (defeated during the attack on Mokotów Fort) and the Karpaty Battalion (which attacked the horse racing track in Służewiec). Captured soldiers from the independent Subdistrict VI of the Home Army, which was defeated after a failed attack on Okęcie Airport, were also shot.

On 1 August, the first murders of civilians also took place. No special order from Hitler was necessary to begin them, since General Reiner Stahel, as commander of the Warsaw garrison, had the right to "use all means necessary to maintain peace, security, and order in relation to the civilian population of Warsaw." Immediately after the uprising began, Stahel declared a state of siege in the city and addressed the population (via the still functioning street loudspeakers) with a demand to remain calm. He threatened to demolish every house from which a shot was fired and to shoot every passerby on the street. These threats were carried out. German strongpoints were ordered to shoot without warning at any Pole within sight, regardless of whether they were participating in the fighting or not. German snipers (known as gołębiarze, "pigeon hunters") scattered throughout the city also terrorized the population from the very first hours of the uprising, killing many passersby. The first mass executions took place. On the night of 1–2 August, German soldiers stationed at Bema Fort shot 21 men from the house at 41 Powązkowska Street. From the buildings at 5 and 9 , police officers from dragged out and shot all men over the age of 14. In Mokotów, Luftwaffe soldiers belonging to the Fliegerhorst-Kommandantur Warschau-Okecie (the Warsaw-Okęcie military airfield command) rounded up several hundred civilians and took them to Mokotów Fort. Many residents of Bachmacka, Baboszewska, and Syryńska streets were murdered, as well as several residents of the house at 97 .

The executions intensified in the following days. Even before the arrival of German "relief forces," in the city, thousands of Warsaw residents were killed by soldiers and policemen belonging to the Warsaw garrison. Between 2 and 5 August 1944, the largest massacres took place mainly in Mokotów, Wola, and Śródmieście.

Mokotów

On 2 August, SS officers from the barracks on Rakowiecka Street (Stauferkaserne) shot approximately 600 prisoners held in the Mokotów Prison at 37 Rakowiecka Street. Faced with imminent death, some of the prisoners actively resisted the SS men, thanks to which several hundred inmates managed to escape and reach the area controlled by the insurgents. On the same day, SS men from Stauferkaserne also murdered several dozen people hiding in the Jesuit Writers' House at 61 Rakowiecka Street.