The Growth of the Movement as the Luster of the Liberators Wore Thin The following is an excerpt taken from the Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 20-244, The Soviet Partisan Movement 1941-1944, by Edgar M. Howell. This excerpt chronicles the beginning of the movement and the German response to it. Early Russian Resistance and German Countermeasures The initial German attack in June 1941 was hardly underway before the first signs of guerrilla-like opposition appeared. There was no question of a popular rising: the mass of the people had no part in it. It consisted in the main of the continued resistance of groups of bypassed Red Army personnel, some scattered demolitions by small groups of saboteurs parachuted or infiltrated into the German rear, and the activity of hastily formed units of Communist Party members and officials of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) directed toward maintaining some sort of political control over the natives or completing the destruction initiated by the Red Army in its "scorched earth" policy. Barbarossa and the Partisans Introduction The First Resistance Early Partisan Operations German Counteractions German Occupation Policies in Operation Change in German tactics Back to Table of Contents -- Combat Simulation Vol 2 No. 1 Back to Combat Simulation List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Mike Vogell and Phoenix Military Simulations. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com