Russia at war 1941-1945

In a Hitler order, dated December 16, 1942, and signed by Keitel, there is also the

following:

If the repression of bandits in the east, as well as in the Balkans, is not pursued by the most brutal means, the forces at our disposal will, before long, be insufficient to exterminate this plague. The troops, therefore, have the right and the duty to use any means, even against women and children, provided they are conducive to

success. Scruples of any sort are a crime against the German people and against the German soldiers... No German participating in action against bandits and their

associates is to be held responsible for acts of violence either from a disciplinary or a judicial point of view.

[TMGWC, vol. 7, p. 59.]

This directive was issued at the time of the Stalingrad encirclement and as the partisan movement was getting into its stride.

German savagery did not stop the development of the partisan movement which went

from strength to strength in 1943 and 1944. So numerous did the partisans become that the Germans even made some feeble belated attempts at winning them over with "anti-communist" propaganda.

With the Red Army approaching, the partisans sometimes occupied entire towns a day or two in advance, thus preparing the way for the regular Russian forces. When these

arrived the partisans were almost automatically drafted into the Red Army. It was fairly easy in the case of those young people who had joined the partisans at the later and

"safer" stage; the old guerilla fighters, with a mentality of their own, sometimes with an anarchist and even a "bandit" streak, inherited from the old Russian partizanshchina tradition, did not always find themselves at home in the regular army. It was not

altogether unlike the problem de Gaulle had in France in drafting the Home Resistance (the Francs-Tireurs-Partisans and other FFI formations) into the regular army. The big difference was that the FFI had no great respect for the regular French army, largely composed of ex-Vichyites; the Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian partisans—even

though they may have felt some bitterness at having been neglected by Moscow for so

long—were proud, all the same, in 1943 and 1944, to join the Red Army, with its

Stalingrad record behind it. Once in the Red Army, they were frequently used for

reconnaissance and other peculiarly "partisan" jobs.

Before being drafted into the Red Army, the partisans all had to undergo a medical test; not surprisingly, some twenty percent of them—many suffering from tuberculosis—were

unfit for military service after all the physical and mental strain they had gone through in the last one, two, or even three years.

These are just a few of the elements of a human drama forming part of the even vaster drama of the Soviet people between 1941 and 1945. The romantic figure of the partisan, as he had existed and had been built up in popular imagination, during the civil war was something of an anachronism in the context of World War II. "Joining the partisans"

could, in 1941, be a "personal solution" to many people with their backs to the wall; but as an effective fighting force, with a direct bearing on the progress of the war, the partisan movement did not become truly effective until late 1942, or rather, the spring of 1943.

The partisans were active in a great number of places—all the way from the Leningrad province to the Crimea; but the most important partisan activity inevitably took place in the geographically most suitable areas—the Russian forest country (Leningrad, Porkhov, Briansk), Belorussia, and some northern sections of the Ukraine.

[The partisans certainly succeeded in 1942, and especially 1943, in creating among the Germans a feeling of acute insecurity, particularly on roads and railways. Fernand de Brinon, the French quisling who was taken on a visit to Russia in 1943, describes the dread of partisans he observed among the German soldiers and officials who took him on his tour. {Mémoires, Paris, 1948, pp. 141 ff.)]

In addition to these "rural" partisans, with their traditional forest camps, there were the

"urban" partisans who are, however, often hard to distinguish from the Soviet

"underground" proper which, in varying degrees, existed in all towns under the occupation. The risks taken by these people were, in a way, even greater than those taken by the partisans proper.