At the same time, in nineteen forty-four, the Soviets were attacking Germany from the east.Earlier, Soviet forces had succeeded in breaking German attacks at Stalingrad, Moscow and Leningrad.Soviet forcesre captured Russian cities and farms one by one. They entered Finland, Poland, and Romania.By the end of July, Soviet soldiers were just fifteen kilometers from the Polish capital, Warsaw.What happened next was one of the most terrible events of the war.Moscow radio called on the people of Poland to rise up against the German occupation forces.Nearly forty thousand men in the Polish underground army listened to the call. And they attacked the Germans.The citizens of Warsaw probably could have defeated the German occupation forces if the Soviet army had helped them.But Soviet leader Josef Stalin betrayed the Poles. He knew that many members of the Polish underground forces opposed Communism as much as they opposed the Germans.He feared they would block his efforts to establish a new Polish government that was friendly to Moscow.