When centuries of Chinese knowledge were destroyed by a warlord who burned the capital

Before I went to Warsaw, I knew little of the city beyond the fact that it was Poland’s capital. I had not realised that much of present-day Warsaw, including its beautiful historic centre, was rebuilt after World War II. 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 –...