Barbarossa and the Partisans

The First Resistance

Bypassed Red Army Units

Of the groups offering the earliest opposition, the bypassed Red Army units posed the most immediate problem because for the most part they were still armed and in many cases retained some semblance of military organization. Tens of thousands of such personnel were scattered over the rear in troop units of all sizes, and while huge numbers were taken prisoner the nature of the terrain was such, especially in the central and northern sectors and to some extent on the left flank of Army Group South that the final elimination of all of their many small centers of resistance proved well nigh impossible.

The task, which would have been difficult for even the first-line infantry units in the face of difficult and relatively unmapped terrain and inadequate intelligence, became almost insurmountable for the security divisions and police battalions that took over the job as the fighting moved further to the east. The expanse of territory to be covered was too great an obstacle, and many enemy units remained a sizable reservoir of manpower to harass communications. Even as early as the first days of July their stubborn resistance to mopping up operations created many critical situations, and pockets continued to appear far to the rear as late as the midd1e of the month. The nuclei of these die-hard groups were Red Army officers and political commissars, who were often part or the entire staff of units that had been ordered to set up partisan organizations when cut off.

As early as the third day of the campaign Army Group Center reported that Red Army "straglers and guerrillas" were attacking supply routes and field hospita1s and striking at elements of the security divisions. And before the first of July, infantry units of Army Group North were harassed from all sides by bypassed Red elements. Numbers of Soviet troops were still roaming the swamps and forests, von Leeb reported to OKH (High Command of the Army), many in peasant clothes, and effective countermeasures were frustrated by the expanse and difficulty of the country and by manpower limitations. Even though this activity was sporadic and unorganized OKH became seriously concerned and OKW (High Command of the Armed Forces) worried to the extent of ordering captured French tanks transferred to the security divisions in the east for use against the "bandits."

Parachutists

Adding to the diversion caused by the Red Army groups were small units of parachutists dropped behind Army Group South on sabotage, espionage, and terrorist missions. (There were no reports of similar groups being parachuted in behind Army Groups Center or North.) Interrogation of prisoners indicated that they had been assigned tasks ranging from the collection of information on German and Romanian troop units and the reconnaissance of airfields and destruction of rail lines, bridges, highways, cable lines, and pipelines at strategic spots to terrorization designed to create panic in the rear and the marking of targets for bombing raids.

The groups normally comprised six to eight men, almost all of whom were former natives of the districts into which they were dropped. They had been given short periods of training in schools at Odessa, Cuipaiov, Nikolayev, or Moscow, and had received rudimentary parachute schooling consisting of one jump from a training tower. On several occasions they succeeded in blasting sections of trackage, but the manner in which they executed the demolitions indicated little technical knowledge of such work. Most of them were scattered widely in their drops, and few were jumped anywhere near their objectives.

Because of the short period of training, the carelessness of drops, the small numbers involved, and the variety of objectives, the entire action was regarded by the Germans as an experiment or wild idea conceived in the heat and confusion of the early days of the fighting and not as an attempt to foment unrest among the people and instigate a resistance movement.

Communist-Led Units

Other agents were infiltrated through the lines, especially in the northern sector. For the most part these were Communist Party functionaries of the middle and older age groups who had been given the task of organizing and directing partisan activity and political work in the overrun areas. Operating through local Communist Party cells and informal groups of pro-Soviet natives, they formed a number of loose-knit guerril1a organizations and set up a communications net of sorts. These partisan units comprised some 50 to 80 men, subdivided into 10-man groups. They were headed by local party 1eaders, members of the NKVD border guard, and managers of collective enterprises. Twenty-two such organizations were identified behind Army Group North prior to 13 July. Their general mission was to foment rebellion in the German communications zone, but they also offered some direct resistance in form of sabotage and launched a minor reign of terror among the natives, thereby creating considerable unrest and a decided reluctance on the part of many to collaborate with the invader in any way.

Annihilation Battalions

During this same period, armed units of another type began to appear, causing some disruption along the supply lines and considerable unrest among the natives. These were "Annihilation" or "Destruction" battalions, organized by the NKVD of Communist Party members, factory workers, overage members of the Red Army reserve, and volunteers. They averaged some 100 men and women to a unit, at least 90 percent of whom had to be party members or former members of the Komsomolsk, and the remainder reliable in a political sense.

Their primary mission was the maintenance of internal security in the Soviet rear, defense against German parachute attack, and the destruction of all installations not demolished by the Red Army in its retreat. In the event of the continued advance of the enemy, they were to allow themselves to be bypassed and then operate as partisan units in the German rear, carrying out sabotage missions and waging a campaign of terror among the natives to prevent political deviation.

They were normally formed into regiments of 10 battalions, each having its own commissar and surgeon. In addition to the commissar, or perhaps to supplement him, in each battalion there was one group entrusted with the political security of the unit with police power over the remainder. The battalions were further subdivided into five groups of 20 to 25 men each, including at least one man considered especially safe politically. A majority of the personnel wore civilian clothes, none a complete uniform. Although they were armed with Red Army ordnance, they were not trained for formal combat and were not expected to be used in the line. Under normal circumstances they lived off the land. At the end of July, the 285th Security Division reported it had identified 10 of these regiments in its area of responsibility alone.

The Soviets Organize the Movement

By the first days of August a definite pattern of insurgent activity was beginning to take form. The appearance of the annihilation battalions, the parachute agent groups, and the local bands formed around Communist Party cells and led by party functionaries and NKVD personnel was the first evidence of any attempt on the part of the Soviet government to set up and sustain a centrally directed irregular movement.

On 3 July Stalin had made his first public statement to the Soviet people since the German attack. In this radio broadcast he stated:

    In case of the forced retreat of Red Army units, all rolling stock must be evacuated; the enemy must not be left a engine, a single railroad car, not a single pound of grain or a gallon of fuel. Collective farmers must drive off their cattle, and turn over their grain to the safekeeping of the state authorities in transportation to the rear. All valuable property, including nonferrous metals, grain and fuel that cannot be withdrawn, must be destroyed without fail.

    In areas occupied by the enemy, partisan units, mounted and on foot, must be formed; sabotage groups must be organized to combat the enemy units, to ferment partisan warfare everywhere, blow up bridges and roads, damage telephone and telegraph lines, set fires to forests, stores, and transport. In occupied regions conditions must be made unbearable for the enemy and all his accomplices. They must be hounded and annihilated at every step, and all their measures frustrated.

He also announced that "in order to ensure the rapid mobilization of all the strength of the peoples of the USSR" a State Committee of Defense had been set up. The concentration of defense powers in this new agency was necessitated by the obvious need to stiffen the resistance of the entire nation at all levels. At the top of the list was the immediate improvement of the morale and combat initiative of the Red Army. But hardly second in importance was the necessity for reasserting control over the natives of territory overrun by the Germans--and thus no longer under control of the party-where the chances of deviation from Soviet principles under German propaganda were great. And finally the need to tighten direction of the Communist Party and NKVD units in the enemyoccupied areas which had been caught as unprepared as the Red Army and had their liaison with Moscow destroyed was recognized.

Such a reassertion of party domination behind the enemy lines with the clandestine reconstruction of an underground Soviet administrative and party organization there went hand in hand with the possibilities for developing an effective irregular movement under centralized control.

The effects of this tightening of control were felt almost immediately through the entire political structure of the Red Army. Reading into the continued defeats of the Army a lack of initiative on the part of the Army political commissar in matters of morale and leadership, General Mechlis, the head of the armed forces political system on 15 July issued stringent orders that political agitation and propaganda be immediately intensified, that commissars and party members among the troops be placed in the front lines for morale and leadership purposes, and units be made to understand that they were never to cease resisting and they had a definite mission of sabotage and terrorism behind the enemy lines should they be cut off. He further ordered all Army political officers to maintain an especially close relationship with local Communist Party organizations in order to be able to expand the partisan movement in the occupied territories and incite the people there to greater heights in undermining the enemy effort.

Establishment of Partisan Combat Battalions and Diversionary Units

On 10 July the Partisan Movement was officially organized and placed under the control of the Tenth Department of the Politica1 Administration of the Army, a portion of Mechlis command as chief of the Main Administration of the Political Propaganda of the Red Army, which in turn was under the direct control of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Great emphasis was continually placed on the need to bring all the irregular units under the central control of Moscow at the earliest possible date.

Almost immediately the effect of this central contro1 was perceptible. On 11 July Mechlis issued to the ranking political officers of all the army fronts and, apparently, to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in all the Soviet Republics endangered by the Germans detailed orders to form partisan units. These political leaders were directed to organize irregular groups in 'the main zone of operations ... where the principal units of the enemy troops [were] located.'

Depending on their commitment these groups were to be divided into partisan combat battalions and diversionary units. The combat battalions were to be well armed and of sufficient strength for offensive action. Comprising from 75 to 150 men, they were to be divided into 2 to 3 companies and the companies into 2 to 3 platoons. The normal combat unit was to be the company or the platoon.

Generally they were to operate only at night and from ambush. Their mission was to attack troop columns and assemblies, motorized infantry, camps, transports of fuel and ammunition, headquarters, air bases, and railroad trains previously halted by rail demolitions. They were to operate in regions where the terrain was broken enough or the cover was heavy enough to afford concealment for their movements and bases. They were to act only along the principal communication axes of the enemy. It was considered desirable that there be it least one combat unit per rayon (Soviet political subdivision sirnilar to American county).

In addition to the combat battalions, diversionary units of from 30 to 50 men each were to be organized in each rayon. These units were to consist of from 5 to 8 groups of 3 to 10 men each. They were to be so organized that the individuals comprising one group would not be acquainted with those of another. The small units were to be concentrated into a larger organization only to control their activity and to facilitate the formation of new groups in the rayon. Their fundamental mission was sabotage, cutting telephone lines, firing fuel and ammunition dumps, railroad demolition, and attacks on individual or -small groups of enemy vehicles.

In all areas still occupied by the Red Army, the local headquarters of the NKVD and the NKGB (Pepo1e's Commissariat for State Security) were directed to organize annihilation battalions to combat enemy air landings. In the case of a withdrawal by the Red Army, these annihilation battalions were to allow the German attack to pass over them and then operate as partisan units in the enemy rear.

Local Partisan Units

A similar order was passed down through the People's Commissars and the Central Committees of the Communist Party in the Soviet Republics that lay in the path of the German attack to all local administrative headquarters, both urban and rural. Partisan units were ordered formed in all industrial plants, in the transportation system, and in the state and collective farms. These were to be volunteer units, formed of men, women, and youths physically capable of serving. Organizationally, they were to be set up along the same lines as the Soviet local government.

The basic unit was to be the battalion, with battalion commanders chosen by local party councils from among the officer reserve of the Red Army, local leaders with previous military service, and commissars of proven political reliability. Staffs for the battalion commanders were to be formed in the jurisdictional Committees and the local Labor Councils. These battalions, further broken down into companies and platoons, were given the various missions of scouring industrial plants and state and collective farms, resisting river crossings by the enemy, destroying bridges and rail lines, and maintaining liaison between partisan groups and between the partisans and the Red Army. They were to live off the country and supply themselves with arms, clothing, and signal equipment.

Barbarossa and the Partisans

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