"The Partisan movement was the 'fourth arm' in the Great
Patriotic War." This is the standard claim by Soviet military
historians, and until the 20th Party Congress the credit for its
inauguration was given to Stalin's speech of 7th July. But the facts
are that no comprehensive plan for guerilla warfare in occupied
territory existed. The Soviet dictator's reluctance to encourage
independent paramilitary organisations was partly responsible,
together with the customary aversion of dictatorships to admit that
territory might ever be ceded—lest this should lead to
undesirable political speculation by the local population. Even the
Party-dominated
Osoaviakhim
was geared to the requirements of
the Red Army in "orthodox" warfare and the maintenance of
security behind the lines.
Consequently the origins of the movement were (dialectically
speaking) unheroic and slightly disreputable. Bands of soldiers, cut
off from their units, men often who had slipped out of some Panzer
encirclement at night and found themselves impossibly far from their
own lines, usually with a good leavening of deserters and local
militia who had simply gone to ground in country they knew well,
these were the stuff of the marauding groups which roamed White
Russia in the summer of 1941, pillaging and looting certainly, but
exchanging fire with the Germans only when necessary to save their
own skins. These men were cut off in every sense. They had no desire
to rejoin the main body of the Red Army, where, regardless of their
individual histories, they were likely to be shot as deserters or
relegated to punishment battalions.
Their fate at German hands lacked even this element of
uncertainty. When the first rumours of Partisan "warfare"
reached Hitler, he welcomed them. "It has its advantages: it
gives us a chance to exterminate whoever turns against us." The
SS was nominally responsible for "order" in the capital
territories, and the Regular Army was brought in on the act by an OKW
order of 16th July, 1941.
The leading principle in all actions and for all measures that
must be resorted to is the unconditional security of the German
soldier. . . . The necessary rapid pacification of the country can be
attained only if every threat on the part of the hostile civil
population is ruthlessly taken care of. All pity and softness are
evidence of weakness and constitute a danger.
As in the case of the "Commissar order," the fiction of
legality could be dispensed with, in favour of
The spreading of that measure of terror which alone is suited
to deprive the population of the will to resist.
Instead of leading to "rapid pacification" of the
country the repressive measures on which the Germans embarked with
such relish fanned a hot wind in which the Partisan movement grew
apace. Farms and villages no longer bolted their doors and hid their
food; the inhabitants who had first received the invader with
curiosity and, almost, relief turned against him with universal
hatred. In particular the "national" character of the
struggle, which Stalin was now exalting over ideological and Party
doctrines, acquired a particular significance. The wandering brigands
observed the brutality with which their innocent kinsfolk were
treated, and the news spread. They began to strike at the Germans not
simply for food and ammunition, but for revenge. A new dimension of
cruelty began to throw its shadow over the war in the East.
At the same time the
Stavka
came to appreciate the military
significance of the mass of men who were left behind the German
advance (the lowest estimates indicate that there were never fewer
than 250,000 armed Russians at loose in the occupied territories) and
to take progressive measures to organise and entourage them. Trained
"agitators" were dropped by parachute, regional commands
established, discipline was reasserted, wireless and explosives were
supplied. Within a few months the bands were thinking of themselves
not as repudiated stragglers but as national heroes.
The German reaction was predictable. Terror (described in this
document as "unusual hardness") must be intensified, and it
must be universal. To ease soldierly consciences the High Command
decreed:
In every instance of active opposition again the German
occupation authorities,
regardless of the specific circumstances
,
Communist origin must be assumed.
Once having got things onto an ideological footing, it was then
easier to order:
For the life of one German soldier, a death sentence of from
fifty to one hundred Communists [i.e., Russians] must be generally
deemed commensurate.
The means of execution must increase the
deterrent effect still further.
To this end it was ordered that firing squads should aim at or
below the waist—a practice which resulted in the majority of
the victims being buried alive and in agony from stomach wounds. So
much for increasing "the deterrent effect." There were also
practical grounds to "justify" the order, for
In cases where children are included among the hostages [aiming
at the normal height] such persons may escape execution altogether .
. . and would have to be despatched by hand of officer in charge of
the burial party.
Gradually the motives behind the terror campaign altered. At
first, confident in approaching victory, the Germans took a sadistic
pleasure in the repression. How agreeable to combine duty and sport;
to bask in the glow of the crusader while enjoying the particular
physical pleasure which so many Germans derive from the infliction of
pain. In the long summer evenings "man hunts" used to be
organised on the slightest pretext, villages surrounded, set alight,
and the inhabitants "beaten" like rising game birds and cut
down in the streets. Then it was rewarding to loot the dwellings for
"souvenirs" and to send these, and photographs of the
scene, to friends back in Germany.
. . . here is a lock of hair from a Russian guerilla girl. They
fight like wildcats and are quite subhuman [
Untermensch
].
[The term
Untermensch
was soon to embrace a whole
philosophy toward the Russians, and in particular toward prisoners of
war and forced labour. This subject is dealt with at some length in
Ch. 11.]
But gradually it dawned on the Germans that the war would not be
over so soon; that they were few, the Russians many, the territory
vast. Fear and guilt compounded exultation as the activity of the
Partisans and the sullen hatred of the civilian population became
daily more obtrusive. The Russian underground repaid its oppressors
in the same barbaric coin. A hospital train was derailed at night,
and the wounded burned with paraffin; a barracks had its water supply
poisoned.
While we were in the Mogilev region a rumour reached von dem
Bach that there was a quantity of gold at the Polyakovo state farm.
We went out there and tore the place to pieces looking for it.
[SS Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. His
name will be encountered again on these pages.]
The head of the settlement begged us to wait as he could get
the gold in 24 hours and if the buildings were all destroyed the
peasants would have nowhere to spend the winter. At dusk we left with
orders that the gold was to be produced the following day or the
entire population of the farm wou'd be placed under arrest. Fischer .
. . and a detachment of four men stayed behind to keep an eye on
things. The next day—no Fischer. We could not get him on the
short wave radio as they were with motorcycle outfits and the farm
was nearly 100 kilometres from Mogilev. So the following day we went
back there with 6 armoured cars. . . The place was burned to the
ground. One building, the office stood, and in it ... a leather box,
very heavy,
Gelb
scrawled on it in white paint. We opened it.
Inside were the heads of Fischer, Hahn, Neudeck and Grose.
Thus it can be seen that in two respects, long-range espionage and
security in their rear, the Russians already had an advantage over
their enemies—and one whose dividends would accumulate as the
war lengthened. But on a purely military assessment it must have
seemed at the start of the Vyazma-Bryansk battles that the end of the
war was still likely in the autumn of 1941. By the end of September,
Bock's army group was set up for a tank drive greater even than the
first days of
Barbarossa
. Kempf's 48th Panzer Corps had been
brought up from Army Group South and put, with the 9th Panzer and two
motorised divisions, under Guderian. And the whole of Hoepner's
Gruppe
had been taken from Army Group North. Long as the
attack frontage was by normal army group standards, it was but a
fifth of the line on 22nd June, yet the number of Panzer divisions
taking part was only three fewer.
[Including satellites, total German strength was 207 divisions—41
more than on 22nd June.]
Facing, them was the last of the Russian mass armies (for until
1944 the Red Army was to fight, as much out of scarcities as owing to
inexperience, in smaller units and along different tactical
principles). Thrown together in urgency and confusion, under a
divided command, it was dismally unprepared for its ordeal.
On the third day of the offensive Guderian noted, "... a
complete breakthrough has been effected."
Twenty-four hours later the tanks of the 4th Panzer burst into
Orel, to find the electricity still connected and the trams running.
Precious machine tools were stacked at the railway sidings, awaiting
shipment to the Urals. In the centre Hoepner, whose
Gruppe
had
been reinforced by SS
Das Reich
and
Gross Deutschland
,
had broken the Russian front irreparably into two, forcing the
severed mass of Koniev's "western front" around against the
upper Dnieper and into the path of the advancing armies of Kluge and
Strauss. Still farther north Hoth had wheeled his tanks down onto the
Vyazma-Gzhatsh highway, placing a "long-stop" behind the
Russian infantry. In these two pockets over five hundred thousand men
were pinned down for liquidation. It was the shortest and, it must
have seemed, the most surgical of all the amputations performed on
the Red Army that summer. Now the way to Moscow was truly wide open,
and it was no time to heed either the unfavourable weather forecasts
or the disquietingly high figures for vehicle breakdowns. An assembly
of foreign correspondents in Berlin was told by Goebbels, "The
annihilation of Timoshenko's [sic] army group has definitely brought
the war to a close."
Certainly there were very few in the German Army who now thought
of stopping before the Russian capital was reached. And some minor
portents went unnoticed in the general euphoria of victory. On 7th
October the first snow fell. It melted quickly. That day Guderian
sent army group an inquiry for winter clothing. He was told that he
would receive it in due course (actually he was never to get any) and
"not to make further unnecessary requests of this type."
And over the broken-up remnants of the Soviet "western front"
a new commander was appointed. His name, which went unnoticed by
German intelligence, Georgi Zhukov.
nine
| THE BATTLE OF MOSCOW
In the second week of October the enormity of their defeat in the
Vyazma-Bryansk battles had dawned on the Russians, and with it the
immediacy of their peril. On 12th October, Hoepner crossed the Ugra
River, now sluggish with forming pack ice, and forced a new and
agonising dilemma on the
Stavka
. Would the Germans wheel
right, to Kaluga, to bring off one more ruinous encirclement of the
bedraggled armies that faced Guderian? Or would they drive direct on
Moscow, through Maloyaroslavets? Or would they turn north, joining
Hoth's 3rd Panzer Army to crush the right flank of the Moscow armies
and expose the whole northeastern screen of the capital's defences?
Directly in Hoepner's path there were three skeletal Russian
infantry divisions. They had left their artillery on the west bank of
the river, had no tank strength whatever, and barely a brigade
equivalent in number of cavalry remnants—for the most part
exhausted and demoralised from units that had been smashed in the
previous week's fighting. Some eighty miles to the north another
small force, under Lieutenant General D. D. Lelyushenko, was falling
back from Gzhatsk, straining every muscle to hold off the weight of
Hoth's armour.
Upon these two groups—"armies" is too grandiose a
term, although Lelyushenko in particular carried the staffs of many
broken armies fighting with his forward elements—hung the
cohesion of the whole Russian front before Moscow. What strength the
Stavka
could still command in this sector was stranded out on
the wings, before Guderian at Orel or in the far north around the
headwaters of the Volga. Yet even if these divisions are included it
is plain that the Germans enjoyed a crushing superiority of numbers
to leaven their material ascendancy. Only 824 tanks remained to the
entire "western front," and of these it is unlikely that
more than half were fully operational, and still fewer were T 34 or
KV—the only types capable of taking on the Panzers.
As at Leningrad in September, the local Party Secretariat worked
twenty-four hours a day raising and organising "workers'
battalions," but once again the grinding shortage of equipment
limited their effectiveness. Five thousand rifles and 210 machine
guns were released by the Moscow garrison for these new formations,
but after this a new order decreed that no further grants of
equipment should be made by the regular forces. A typical battalion
of 675 men was ordered to the front with only 295 rifles, 120
(captured) hand grenades, 9 machine guns, 145 revolvers and pistols,
and 2,000 "Molotov cocktails," the crude gasoline-filled
bottles which had to be rolled down a tank's exhausts before they
were effective.