Russia at war

by Alexander C Werth

  had been deported as slaves and all the women, children and old people murdered.

  When the partisans returned, there were corpses everywhere. Only those who had

  followed the partisans had survived. Many thousands had been murdered.

  [ Iz istorii partiz. dvizh. v Belorussii, p. 46.]

  The troops of the punitive expeditions were usually composed of German regulars, or SD

  and SS troops, sometimes with an admixture of Cossacks, German-appointed policemen,

  and even Slovaks. Some of these, as well as some Cossacks, went over to the partisans in a few cases.

  The atrocities committed against both captured partisans and allegedly pro-partisan

  peasants and their families must rank among the worst atrocities committed by the

  Germans and their stooges, and that is saying something.

  Few of these Partisan stories are well-written, and the themes are nearly always the same.

  And yet the general picture that emerges is harrowing enough. It is not only one of great bravery and enterprise —for it takes a brave man to join the partisans—but also one of a world in which human life is terribly cheap. There are many boasts of "hundreds" of Germans being killed even in some relatively small partisan engagement, and of dozens of trains being wrecked; there are lamentations over the extermination of thousands of women and children in the "partisan areas'" by Einsatzkommandos and other punitive troops; there are fewer references to the losses suffered by the partisans; but these must have been extremely heavy, especially at the beginning, when small improvised groups were either wiped out by the Germans, or died of cold and hunger and illnesses and

  wounds in the forest camps. These early units had mostly been improvised by Russian

  soldiers left behind the enemy lines, and by local communists.

  A glimpse into the German methods of dealing with partisans and "partisan regions" is also provided by a number of German documents. Thus, at the Nuremberg Trial a report was read from the (German) General Commission for Belorussia, dated June 5, 1943, on the results of an anti-partisan operation called "Cottbus". The figures given were: enemy dead, 4,500; dead suspected of belonging to bands, 5,000; German dead, 59.

  These figures (the report went on) indicate again a heavy destruction of the

  population... If only 492 rifles are taken from 4,500 enemy dead, this shows that among them were numerous peasants from the country. The Dirlewanger Battalion

  especially has the reputation for destroying many human lives. Among the 5,000

  people suspected of belonging to bands, there are numerous women and children.

  By order of the chief of the anti-partisan units, SS Obergruppenführer von dem

  Bach-Zelewski, units of the Armed Forces have also participated in the operation.

  [TGMWC, vol. 3, p. 174.]

  Von dem Bach, a Himmler nominee in charge of the anti-partisan operations in the Soviet Union, who was later to distinguish himself as No. 1 killer in the German repression of the Warsaw rising in 1944, giving evidence at Nuremberg, explained that the anti-partisan operations were mainly carried out by regular Wehrmacht formations, and that the high military leaders had ordered the greatest severity in dealing with partisans.

  Col. Telford Taylor {U.S. Prosecution): Did these measures result in the killing of an unnecessarily large number of civilians?

  Von dem Bach: Yes...

  Taylor. Was an order issued by the highest authorities that the German soldiers who had committed offences against the civilian population were not to be punished in a military court?

  Von dem Bach: Yes, there was such an order... The Dirlewanger Brigade consisted for the greater part of previously convicted criminals, among them murderers and

  burglars. These were introduced into the anti-partisan units partly as a result of Himmler's directives which said that among the purposes of the Russian campaign

  was the reduction of the Slav population by thirty millions.

  [TGMWC, vol. 4, pp. 26 ff.]

  Hence the destruction of hundreds of villages and the massacre of thousands of civilians, including women and children, in the "partisan regions". Among the "enemy killed", as the above report shows, there were thousands of unarmed peasants in this one operation only. And there were very many more. And most of this "anti-partisan activity", as Bach-Zelewski stressed was "mainly undertaken by Wehrmach formations", the "principal task of the Einsatzgruppen of the SD" being "the annihilation of the Jews, Gypsies and political commissars."

  [ Ibid., p. 26.]

  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 parti
san 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.

  The most famous case of urban resistance was that of the Young Guard in the mining

  town of Krasnodon in the Donbas; but this act of collective patriotism and martyrdom was by no means unique, any more than was that of Zoya who was hanged by the

  Germans in a village outside Moscow, in December 1941, and became, like the

  Krasnodon Heroes, a national symbol. The build-up of national heroes and martyrs was very much of a lottery; many fought and died, and never became famous.

  At the height of the partisan movement, in 1943—4, there were at least half-a-million armed partisans in the Soviet Union. How many partisans and how many persons

  "associated" with them lost their lives in combat, or as a result of the German punitive expeditions is very hard to say; but in Belorussia alone about a million persons are estimated to have been killed in the course of the partisan war.

  [ For further details see John A. Armstrong (ed.) Soviet Partisans in World War II. (Univ.

  of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1964.)]

  Chapter XII PARADOXES OF SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY IN

  1943—THE FALL OF MUSSOLINI —THE "FREE GERMAN

  COMMITTEE"

  On October 1943 the foreign ministers of the Big Three—Molotov, Cordell Hull and

  Eden—met in Moscow; this meeting was, among other things, intended to prepare the

  ground for the "Summit" at Teheran a month later. But during a great part of 1943, before clear decisions had been taken to hold these two conferences, the Soviet attitude to the Western Allies remained puzzling and full of apparent contradictions. This attitude was partly, at any rate, determined by what was happening at the time on the Russian Front.

  At the time of Stalingrad, Stalin had been full of praise for the Anglo-American landing in North Africa; in February, with the Germans about to start their Kharkov counter-offensive, he began complaining again of the absence of a Second Front. Then, in March, partly in response to Admiral Standby's complaint about Russian ingratitude, the Soviet press started playing up Western aid, and the breach with the London Poles was followed, as we have seen, by rapturous accounts of the Allied achievements in North Africa. Soon afterwards came the dissolution of the Comintern, a gesture intended to impress Western opinion.

  One cannot, however, escape the impression that this great cordiality shown to the Allies had something to do with the situation on the Eastern Front: on the eve of the Nazi

  offensive at Kursk, the Soviet public were very anxious, and, for once, it was apparently thought expedient to magnify, rather than minimise, the Western war effort.

  But, as we know from the Stalin-Churchill correspondence during that period, relations were in reality far from cordial. Churchill tried to cheer Stalin with stories of 400-bomber raids on Essen (March 13); but, while not denying the value of such raids, Stalin was not satisfied. On March 15 he complained of major operations in North Africa again being postponed, and said that "Husky", the planned landing in Sicily, "can't possibly replace the second front in France."

  The Soviet troops [he wrote] fought strenuously all winter. Hitler is taking all

  measures to rehabilitate and reinforce his army for the spring and summer. A great blow from the west is essential. There is grave danger in delaying the Second Front in France.

  Churchill went on sending him messages about "1,050 tons of bombs we've flung on Berlin" (March 28).

  Stalin thanked him for the information and then graciously added (or was he being

  heavily ironical?):

  Last night with my colleagues I saw Desert Victory. It splendidly shows how Britain is fighting, and skilfully exposes those scoundrels— we have them in our country too

  —who allege that Britain is not fighting but merely looks on. Desert Victory will be shown to all our armies at the front.

  But a few days later he blew up, after Churchill had told him that there would, for the present, be no more Arctic convoys, with the Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Lützow around. "I consider the step as catastrophic," Stalin wrote on April 2. "The Pacific and the Southern

  [Iran] routes can't make up for it."

  Again Churchill wrote (April 6) of 348 aircraft over Essen; Stalin welcomed the

  intensified bombing of Germany: "It evokes the most lively echo in the hearts of many millions in our country." On April 10, Churchill reported that 502 aircraft had attacked Frankfort, and promised to send films of bombed Germany "which might please your soldiers who had been in many Russian towns in ruins "; he also assured Stalin that the 375 Hurricanes and 285 Airocobras and Kittyhawks which were to have been delivered

  by the Arctic route, were being sent as quickly as possible through the Mediterranean.

  This strange blend of pleasantness and unpleasantness was followed by the Russian

  breach with the London Poles, with Churchill frantically pleading with Stalin not to make the breach final. Sikorski was a good man, he argued, and anyone replacing him would be worse. He also declared that, according to Goebbels, the Russians were now setting up a new Polish Government—a story that Stalin hastened to deny as "a fabrication" (May 4).

  On June 10, with the German offensive in the offing, Stalin grew furious with Churchill again. Writing to Roosevelt that day, he declared: "Now in May 1943 you and Churchill have decided to postpone the Anglo-American invasion of Western Europe till the spring of 1944. Now again we've got to go on fighting almost single-handed," and, on the 24th, in his letter to Churchill, he became really violent:

  The Soviet Government could not have imagined that the British and US

  Governments would revise the decision to invade Western Europe which they had

  adopted earlier this year... We were not consulted. The preservation of our

  confidence in the Allies is being subjected to a severe stress.

  On June 27 Churchill angrily replied that Stalin's reproaches left him "unmoved", recalled that England had to fight Germany single-handed till June 1941, and that,

  anyway "you may not even be heavily attacked by the Germans this summer. That would vindicate decisively what you once called the 'military correctness' of our Mediterranean strategy."

  Only a week later, the Germans struck out at Kursk.

  Stalin's anger and recrimination may partly be due to the nervousness he felt about the outcome of the battle; once this had been won, he no longer worried too much about the Second Front. His line now was that it would come when it came; that Russia, though

  losing a terrible number of men, should be thankful for whatever the West contributed—

  lend-lease, or the fall of Mussolini—and that she should meantime make preparation for a big Tripartite Conference. In view of the delays in the Second Front, Stalin was more determined than ever not to give way on a question like Poland. At the same time he felt that, on the German question, he might take certain purely unilateral precautions.

  It was while the successful Russian offensive, following the rout of the Germans at

  Kursk, was in full swing that Mussolini fell from power.

&nbs
p; Until then, the Russian press had treated the Italian campaign with a deliberate show of disdain. The invasion of Sicily was being pointedly and invariably referred to as

  "operations in the island of Sicily". But the fall of Mussolini, on the other hand, suddenly convinced the Russians that the Italian campaign, "miserable" though it was in purely military terms, could be extremely important politically. The effect on Germany and on her satellites of Mussolini's fall was not something that could be ignored.

  On July 27 Red Star commented on Mussolini's fall in the following pungent piece containing some phrases directly borrowed from Churchill (like "the jackal"), handsomely putting the importance of Mussolini's fall side-by-side with the victorious Russian summer campaign:

  ... this jackal, in June 1940, stabbed bleeding France in the back... Italy was hopeless even in her fight against little Greece. The fighting in Africa did not bring Mussolini any laurels either... The British offensive smashed the Italo-German army... The

  military situation of Fascist Italy became altogether hopeless when, like a fool, Mussolini threw himself into the adventure of conquering Russia, by Hitler's side...

  The best Italian divisions were sent there: Celere, Sforzesca, Giulia, and others; but they found their graves in the Don and Voronezh steppes. In Russia they lost

  100,000 men in killed and prisoners. Then came Tunis...

  And now... the British and Americans have, in a short time, overrun the greater

  part of Sicily. The jackal had boundless greed, but his teeth were rotten... And now he has been forced to abandon his post of Dictator... These twenty-one years of

  Mussolini's dictatorship are the gloomiest period in the whole of Italy's history...

  Mussolini sold Italy to Hitler.

  And the article already foreshadowed a lenient Russian attitude to the Italian people.

  The Germans, these sworn and time-honoured enemies of the Italian people, became

  masters of Italy through the services of their flunkey, Mussolini. Mussolini, the traitor to Italy's interests, will as such go down to his grave... The liquidation of the German offensive in the sast in the summer of 1943 was a mighty blow at Hitler.