In 1939, Warszawa was the proud capital of a defiant Polish nation, newly reborn in the cleansing fires of the First World War. Home to nearly 1.3 million people, including around 350,000 Jews, it was a bustling center of Polish culture and history.

For the Germans, all this was nothing more than a huge target painted on this long-suffering city. Warszawa has been subject to a programme of systematic depopulation and destruction since the day it was occupied. Some residents starved. Others fled to other cities, or into the countryside to eke out a living on whatever land wasn't occupied by great German slave plantations. Those 350,000 Jews, of course, met a far worse fate.

Now known to the Germans as Warschau, this once-glorious city lies prostrate, shrunken and demoralized. It could not be a clearer symbol of the fate of its nation.