Russia at war 1941-1945

Nevertheless, the partisans did not become an enormous mass movement until after Stalingrad. There was now an additional incentive to joining the partisans: the near certainty of fighting on the winning side and of not dying in vain. This was a motive which some partisans of older standing were later to treat with some bitterness. There was also the simple fact that in 1943 most of the partisan units were well-supplied by Moscow; they now had mortars and even heavy guns, including special anti-tank guns for destroying locomotives, more adequate food supplies and, very important, medical

supplies. One of the horrors of the early days of the partisan movement was the almost total lack of medical supplies, which condemned many of the even lightly-wounded to

death.

According to Telpukhovsky, "the partisan movement began to expand enormously after the Red Army had begun its Stalingrad counter-offensive". In this connexion he quotes the following significant figures for the largest partisan area, Belorussia:

February 1943, 65,000 armed partisans

June 1943, 100,000 armed partisans

October 1943, 245,000 armed partisans

December 1943 360,000 armed partisans

In the Ukraine, by the end of 1943, there were 220,000 armed partisans, and "many tens of thousands" in the parts of the RSFSR (i.e. Russia proper) still in German hands. Often, he says, whole families, or even entire villages would join the partisans, if only to evade ruthless German punitive expeditions.

On July 14, 1943, the Soviet Supreme Command ordered the partisans to start an all-out Rail War. Preparations for this had obviously already been made, for on July 20-21 great co-ordinated blows were struck at the railways in the Briansk, Orel and Gomel areas, to coincide with the Russian offensive against Orel and Briansk following the Kursk

victory. During that night alone 5,800 rails were blown up. Altogether, between July 21

and September 27, the Orel and Briansk partisans blew up over 17,000 rails.

In Belorussia the partisans did even better. Between January and May, even before the official Rail War had begun, they had derailed 634 trains. On August 3, the partisans started another great wrecking operation on the Belorussian railways, two-thirds of which were put out of action, sometimes for weeks on end. Thus, the Molodechno-Minsk

railway was blocked for ten days. Altogether, between August and November, 1943, in

Belorussia:

200,000 rails were blown up;

1,014 trains were wrecked or derailed;

814 locomotives were wrecked or damaged;

72 railway bridges were destroyed or damaged.

The Germans became increasingly alarmed by these developments. On November 7,

1943, Jodl admitted that in July, August, and September that year there had been 1,560, 2,121 and 2,000 railway-line explosions (Streckensprengungen) respectively; and these, he said, had had a great effect on military operations and the withdrawal of troops

(Räumungstransporte).

Telpukhovsky's semi-official History claims that in three years (1941-4) the partisans in Belorussia killed 500,000 Germans, including forty-seven generals and Hitler's High-Commissioner Wilhelm Kube (who, as we know from German sources—though the

Russians for some reason don't mention this—had a partisan time-bomb put under his bed by his lovely Belorussian girl-friend).

In the Ukraine, according to the same writer, the partisans killed 460,000 Germans,

wrecked or damaged 5,000 locomotives, 50,000 railway wagons, 15,000 automobiles,

etc. Some of these figures, especially the total of nearly one million Germans killed by the Belorussian and Ukrainian partisans, sound distinctly exaggerated.

According to Telpukhovsky and other official and semi-official Soviet histories, "all the main work of the partisans" was directed by the Party. In the parts of Belorussia still occupied by the Germans in early 1944, there were 1,113 primary party organisations in partisan detachments and brigades, 184 clandestine territorial party organisations,

including nine obkoms (provincial committees), and 147 town and district committees (gorkoms and raikoms). The membership of all these had risen during the war from 8,000

to 25,000. The number of party members among the Ukrainian partisans in 1943 was

14,000, and there were 26,000 komsomols—i.e. only about fifteen percent of the total number of partisans; the proportion of party and komsomol members among the

Belorussian partisans was even lower, if anything. Among the Belorussian partisans, we are also told, there were 1,500 Poles, 107 Yugoslavs, 238 Czechs and Slovaks, and some Rumanians and Italians, and even "many Germans".