Where the Iron Crosses Grow

In August 1941, Boris A. Borisov’s Communist Party (CPSU) committee in Simferopol, in conjunction with local NKVD authorities, began to discuss the possibility of partisan warfare in the Crimea, but no real action was taken for the next two months. Most of the available manpower had already been called up to fill the four militia divisions raised in the Crimea, and the CPSU was unwilling to arm the civil populace unless absolutely necessary. Everything changed when the Germans broke through at Ishun in late October, and Borisov’s committee in Simferopol realized that it was necessary to act immediately. The committee selected Aleksei V. Mokrousov to head the partisan movement in the Crimea – the very same anarchist sailor who had delivered Sevastopol to the Bolsheviks in December 1917 and ruthlessly murdered Tsarist naval officers and Tatar nationalists in 1918. Mokrousov did have experience in leading irregular warfare, having led a partisan group against Wrangel’s White forces in 1920, but he had no real military training, and discipline was not a strong suit for an anarchist. He had served in Spain as an advisor in 1936–37, but spent most of the interwar period in odd jobs for the Communist Party, including exploring Siberia. When the Germans reached the Crimea, Mokrousov was working as a hatchet man for Borisov’s CPSU committee in Simferopol, tasked with helping the NKVD to hunt down enemies of the state. He was almost certainly involved in the massacre of Tatar prisoners at the NKVD prison in Simferopol in October 1941. Given Mokrousov’s violent and erratic temperament, Borisov’s committee selected NKVD Major Georgy L. Seversky as his military deputy and trusted party member Serafim V. Martynov as political commissar. As the CPSU officials evacuated post haste to Sevastopol or Yalta, Mokrousov announced that there would be five partisan zones formed in the Crimea, and a total of 29 units created. Then he and his handful of lieutenants sped off to the Yaila Mountains in the south, with no plan or supplies.

During November 1941, the anti-German partisan movement began to coalesce in the southern Crimean mountains, based upon small groups of cut-off Soviet soldiers, NKVD Border Guards, and civilians who fled from the towns to avoid German round-ups. Commissars also encouraged underage Komsomol members from the Sevastopol–Balaklava area to join partisan units. The guerrillas went into the mountains with plenty of patriotic enthusiasm but little else, particularly food. Weapons were limited to small arms, without much ammunition. Major Seversky apparently led one of the first partisan attacks near Alushta, where a few German supply trucks were ambushed. However, Manstein was focused on taking Sevastopol and not interested in wasting resources chasing partisans in the mountains, so he left most of the rear-area security mission to the Romanian mountain-infantry units, who were well suited to this task. The Axis learned that lone vehicles were at risk from partisan attacks, but that groups of three or four were fairly safe.