Where the Iron Crosses Grow

Despite utter failure in 1942 and disappointments through much of 1943, the partisan movement began to revive once the Germans evacuated the Caucasus and the advance of the Red Army isolated the Germans in the Crimea in November 1943. Air resupply operations via short takeoff and landing aircraft like the Po-2 and R-5 biplanes increased in 1943, and succeed in preventing the partisans from either starving to death or running out of ammunition.²⁰ Lidiya I. Chyernih, a teenage girl from Yalta, joined the partisans in November 1943, at age 16. There were many female partisans, but Lidiya did not carry a weapon and served in a support role. She did note that, by this point, the partisans were forming into ten-person squads and were regularly receiving arms and supplies by air, as well as political commissars to direct them. Seven partisan brigades were formed in late 1943 and several clusters of active partisan areas appeared between Simferopol and Feodosiya. The partisans concentrated on attacking traffic on the Simferopol–Feodosiya and Simferopol–Sevastopol stretches of road, both of which ran through mountainous terrain. Most of the road security consisted of Feldgendarmerie and Schuma units. In late November 1943 the partisans began attacking in groups of up to 200 fighters, and inflicted 75 casualties on the Axis, but suffered 310 themselves.²¹ In December 1943 a partisan offensive inflicted another 155 casualties on the Axis, but lost over 200 of their own. For the first time, the Axis had to seriously worry about road and rail security in the Crimea. By January 1944 there were 3,700 Soviet partisans in the Crimea, of which at least 630 were Tatars. Partisan tactics were still quite amateurish, resulting in heavy losses, but they were becoming increasingly bold, and the Axis had to devote significant forces to secure their supply lines to Sevastopol.

Soviet-era claims about the achievements of the Crimean partisan movement are only appropriate for the last six months of their fight against the Axis occupation. Throughout 1941–43, the Crimean partisans were badly led and mostly ineffectual, and only became a threat once the Red Army had isolated the German forces in the Crimea.

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Nazi empire builders were not the only ones in the Third Reich that tried to convert fantasy into reality in the Crimea. Despite having done little to win the Crimea until the final weeks of Operation Störfang, the Kriesgmarine leadership became very interested in using the occupied Crimea to turn the Black Sea into a German-dominated lake, which could also provide future access to the Mediterranean. Although Sevastopol was a shattered ruin by the time it fell into German hands, the Kriesgmarine believed that it could be rebuilt into a “German Gibraltar” that would solidify the German hold on the region. Even before Sevastopol fell, Konteradmiral Heinz-Heinrich Wurmbach, titular commander of Kriesgmarine forces in the Black Sea, moved his headquarters from Bucharest to Simferopol. Wurmbach had a varied background, which included service on U-Boats in 1917–18, minesweepers, and diplomatic service in Rome in 1934–36, but at heart he was a “big ship” sailor and had commanded the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer just before the war began. When he arrived in Simferopol in late June 1942, Wurmbach had no intention of leading a “paper command” from a dusty and desolate Crimean provincial city.