Fighting on all Fronts by Donny Gluckstein

Author:Donny Gluckstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909026940
Publisher: Bookmarks

The partisans

Partisans in occupied Soviet territory, like their counterparts elsewhere in Axis-occupied Europe, acquired a powerful reputation for anti-fascist activity. Yet their path to struggle was fraught. In the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet Union, marshalling the skills and experience of veterans from the civil war period, made considerable preparations for partisan warfare. However, as P K Ponomarenko, who led the Second World War partisan movement from Moscow later wrote, “Due to Stalin’s wrong and mistaken position, that we would only be fighting beyond our own frontiers…all that work was cast aside”.73 Many experts in partisan warfare were killed in the purges of 1937-1938. The movement developed in spite of these obstacles.

It is important not to idealise the red partisan movement. Sokolov suggests that it was often sheer survival under conditions of occupation that drove some to join. Some 60 percent were escaped POWs or Red Army soldiers overtaken by the swift enemy advance.74 The rest were local inhabitants. There were examples of partisans pillaging local villages, massacring the families of those believed to be collaborators, fighting each other or lapsing into passivity rather than confronting the enemy.75 Although the Nazi view that Slavs were “Untermenschen” (sub-human) was a drive towards resistance, defections in both directions indicate that ideological principle was not always the main motivation, with some choosing the path of working for the Germans as an alternative survival strategy.76

Nonetheless, between November 1942 and March 1943 some 125,000 fighters77 undertook 2,500 attacks on the enemy railway system, wrecking 750 locomotives and 4,000 wagons. In the summer of 1943 there were 142,000 partisans with 215,000 reserves.78 A German officer described the impact:

The struggle with the partisans is different to the fighting at the front. They are everywhere and nowhere…blowing up railways, communication routes, acts of sabotage at all existing enterprises, robbery etc. They become ever more brazen and unfortunately we don’t have enough security forces to act decisively against them. We only have the strength, with the Hungarians, to guarantee the main roads, railways and centres of population. Over broad swathes the partisans rule, with their own government and administration.79

Some partisan operations were on a grand scale. The destruction of the Savkino Bridge in March 1943 was the work of a 3,000-strong assault force.80

Such feats were often accomplished without external assistance, arms coming from supplies left behind by the retreating Red Army. In 1942 a commander in Belorussia sent this radio message: “Young men and women, the old, beg with tears in their eyes to be taken into the partisans, but the numbers we can take are limited by the supply of guns… We need armaments if we are going to put more people on the front line.” This plea was echoed by many others.81 And yet the risks of joining up were enormous. In the autumn of 1943 partisan brigades attempting to force the Dnieper lost 70 percent of their number in a few days.82 Captured partisans were tortured and killed. The Germans reported that:

In the overwhelming majority of cases the interrogation of partisans is very difficult.

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