Barbarossa 1941 by Frank Ellis

Author:Frank Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780700621460
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2015-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

Table 5.1. Status of Partisan Detachments in Belorussia, 26 June 1941

Operational Area Personnel Detachment Commander

Slutskii region 100 Captain Vasilevskii, NKGB

Lepel’skii region 101 Senior Lieutenant Sulima, NKGB

Dzerzhinskii region 51 Senior Lieutenant Starinov, NKGB

Osipovicheskii region 101 Captain Rubinov, Border Troops

Chervenskii region 50 Captain Zaitsev, NKGB

Berezinskii region 96 Lieutenant Iurin, NKGB

Belynichskii region 50 Junior Lieutenant Liakhov, NKGB

Krichevskii region 50 Lieutenant Simakhin, NKGB

Mogilevskii region 101 Lieutenant Pribyl’, NKGB

Vitebskii region 53 Senior Lieutenant Pasmanik

Shklovskii region 93 Senior Lieutenant Koba

Bykhovskii region 103 Police Lieutenant Kuzmenok

Orshanskii region 102 Police Captain Kozhemiakin

Bobruiskii region 111 Lieutenant Morozkin, NKGB

Source: OGB, 1941/1, № 368, 188–189.

An additional ten groups with about ninety members, composed of NKGB leaders and party officials, were formed and sent to the districts of Poles’e, Vitebsk, Minsk, and Gomel’. These districts were strategically important, and during the civil war they had been the site of much partisan activity. Other groups were formed to attack enemy aerodromes and to locate formations of the Western Front with which contact had been lost.

Additional measures were taken to set up rezidentury in areas vulnerable to occupation. The primary mission of these groups was sabotage and terrorism. A total of eight rezidentury were set up in the Vitebsk district. Typically, each group was controlled by a rezident with a small circle of contacts. For example, the first rezident, Stepan Il’ich Azarov, was in contact with only three people. Azarov had his own apartment and false documents and had been supplied with 40 Mills hand grenades, 16 kilos of ammonal, and 100 meters of detonation cord. The location of this equipment was known only to Azarov. All the rezidentury operated on the Leninist cell principle and thus were unable to compromise other groups in the event they were uncovered by German counterintelligence agencies. Alongside these preparations for behind-the-lines operations, the NKGB suspected 1,123 people of being spies, insurgents, and counterrevolutionaries in just the eastern districts of Belorussia. Of these, 434 had their cases referred to a military tribunal.73

A memorandum written by P. K. Ponomarenko, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Belorussian Communist Party and a member of the Military Council of the Western Front, provided additional details about partisan operations and the general situation in Belorussia in mid-July 1941. For example, he reported that as soon as the order had been given, cattle were moved away from the collective farms; a total 350,000 head of cattle had now been moved across the Dnieper and Dvina Rivers, thus vindicating the fears of the German planners who had hoped to exploit Soviet agricultural resources. Ponomarenko also reported that some 150,000 women and children were working on defenses along the Dnieper.

According to Ponomarenko, there was a mood of defiance among the collective farm workers, and they were requesting weapons so that they could fight the Germans. Everywhere, he claimed, partisan groups were being set up without any prompting. On its face, this spontaneous emergence of partisan groups seemed encouraging, but it was fraught with danger for Soviet power. There was no guarantee that these groups

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.