Russia at war 1941-1945

attributable to the shortage of arms. The personnel and supplies that Moscow could send the partisans by air in 1942 were still very limited, and many partisan units had to be left entirely, or almost entirely, to their own devices, like raiding German arms dumps and depending on the more or less voluntary help of the peasantry.

Telpukhovsky readily admits that German policy in the occupied areas enormously

stimulated the partisan movement, notably in suitable "partisan country" like many parts of Belorussia or the Orel-Briansk forest zone. The régime of terror in the cities, the mass deportation of young people to Germany, which began as early as March 1942, deeply

affected the civilian population.

Obvious parallels for this can be found elsewhere; thus, in France, the biggest factor that swelled the ranks of the maquis was the introduction of forced labour in Germany. In Russia, the Untermensch treatment meted out to the population acted as an additional incentive to fight the Germans by joining the partisans. But, as in France, the number of effective partisans was inevitably limited for a time by the shortage of arms.

It would be idle to speculate about what motives were the most important in persuading people to take the desperately dangerous step of joining the partisans—pure disinterested patriotism? injured national pride? a desire to get away from the Germans and their

oppression and deportations? an attachment to the Soviet régime and to Stalin, now

identified more than ever with the idea of "Russia"? All these motives mattered, but their order of importance obviously varied from place to place. Much is made in present-day Soviet histories of the leading role played in all partisan activity by the Party—all the way from the Central Committee in Moscow to the clandestine party obkoms and raikoms (provincial and district committees) still operating in the German-occupied areas and to party members who were commanders of the various partisan units.

At the same time, there is a tendency to minimise the role played in the partisan

movement, especially in Belorussia, by the officers who, though encircled by the

Germans in 1941, had evaded capture and went on fighting as partisans instead.

We shall later deal with some specific cases of partisan activity in 1941, 1942 and 1943; but Telpukhovsky claims that as early as the summer of 1942 the partisans tied up

"enormous numbers" of German troops and police (either German, allied, or mercenary); that in the Briansk area alone 30,000 Hungarian troops were used for fighting the

partisans and that in the summer and autumn of 1942, the partisans in various parts of the Soviet Union had wrecked as many as 3,000 German trains. This sounds like an

exaggeration.

In September 1942, when things looked blackest in the south and south-east, Stalin issued a special order to the partisans saying, that, with German rail and road communications now longer and more vulnerable than ever, it was immensely important to start blowing up railways, bridges and trains; it is probable, therefore, that these big wrecking activities began towards the end of 1942, rather than in the summer.

1942 saw the development of "partisan regions"— partizanskie kraya—where there were no Germans and where the partisans had, in most cases, re-introduced the Soviet régime.

Such "partisan regions" were to be found in the northern (wooded) parts of the Ukraine, in large parts of Belorussia, in the Briansk forests, in the Orel province where 18,000

partisans (belonging to fifty-four detachments) controlled an area comprising 490

villages; in the Leningrad province and south of it, such as the famous "partisan region"

round Porkhov. Substantial areas in the Smolensk province were also controlled by

22,000 partisans belonging to seventy-two detachments. In the winter of 1942-3,

according to Telpukhovsky, the "partisan regions" accounted for as much as seventy-three per cent of the whole area of Belorussia (a proportion reduced to sixty per cent by the official History.)

Officially, the "partisan regions" were the "supply bases" for the partisan troops, and, by the middle of 1942, runways began to be built in these and were soon used by planes

bringing supplies from the "mainland" and evacuating wounded partisans and other persons. Supplies were also amassed locally; thus, on January 1, 1943, in the Baturinsk district in the Smolensk province there were supply dumps amounting to 207 tons of rye, 700 tons of potatoes and 1,000 head of cattle.

There is no doubt that by the autumn and winter of 1942 the partisans played an

important part in wrecking the long lines of German communication to the Stalingrad

area; we know, for instance, that the Manstein offensive of December 12 had been

delayed by the slowness—caused by partisan action—with which military supplies were

reaching the Don country.