In 1941 the Nazis overran
vast stretches of the USSR. Their brutal policies encouraged
many civilians to become partisans and fight the occupiers. Originally produced
for Russian television in 2011, this is the story
of Russia’s Great Patriotic War and the Red Army’s long road
from defeat to victory. The sound of hammer blows
echoed through the dark forest, as German engineers worked
hurriedly to repair the rail track. The Germans were nervous. They kept their
weapons trained on the edge of the forest. In November 1942, the 6th Panzer Division was on route from France to reinforce
the German army at Stalingrad. But the safety of its rail transports
was a major concern for the Germans, even hundreds of miles behind the front. The division’s commander was General Raus. “The thing that most concerned me
was to make sure that the units we were transporting could go straight
into battle when they arrived. Therefore in partisan areas,
we proceeded with caution.” Trains had to go slowly,
so they could break in time to avoid derailing on sabotaged track. And there was the ever
present danger of an ambush. Raus’s division hadn’t even
reached the front yet, and already it was suffering
its first casualties. On 3rd July 1941, Stalin had made his first wartime
radio broadcast to the Soviet people: “Partisan detachments must be formed
in areas occupied by the enemy, to stir up guerrilla war everywhere,
to blow up bridges and roads, sabotage telephone and telegraph lines,
and to burn forests, stores and transports. We shall create intolerable conditions
for the enemy and his supporters — they must be pursued
and eliminated at every step”. To organise the partisan war, a special unit was formed within
Lavrenty Beria’s NKVD secret police. Set up by Pavel Sudoplatov,
the new unit was known as "OMSBON", short for Independent
Special Motorized Brigade. Its recruits included the best Soviet
sportsmen. They would help to form the nucleus of sabotage groups which
would be sent behind enemy lines. The recruits were sent to be trained
at a new school for guerrilla warfare. Its students included an international
battalion, made up of hundreds of dedicated anti-fascists from Spain, Germany,
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Just two weeks after Stalin’s directive, the Wehrmacht issued orders to combat
the threat from Soviet partisans. All Axis units were to maintain
a state of constant alert. Soldiers were forbidden from walking alone. Weapons were to be kept on their person
and ready for use at all times. In the 1930s, Soviet strategic
planning had assumed that in the event of war the Red Army would
attack, and fight the war on enemy soil. So caches of weapons and food to support a guerrilla war on home soil
had been destroyed. For the same reason, they had stopped
training experts in guerrilla warfare. In 1941, this infrastructure
had to be hurriedly re-established. Until it was,
what training partisans received — if any — came from Red Army officers, few of whom were specialists
in guerrilla warfare. And crucially, hardly any partisan
units were equipped with radios. Little or no training;
absence of radio communication; and lack of co-ordinated action,
meant that of 2,800 partisan units formed in the summer of 1941,
only 270 lasted into 1942. In Ukraine in 1941, the NKVD claimed to have established
778 partisan units and 622 sabotage groups. Theoretically,
they consisted of 29,000 personnel. By June 1942, just 110 of these units
were still in contact. In the midst of such chaos, only partisans
led by experienced commanders, like Vasiliy Korzh, proved successful. Vasiliy Zakharovitch Korzh
was a committed Byelorussian communist, who had fought as a partisan
against Polish forces in the 1920s. He was also a decorated volunteer
of the Spanish Civil War. When war broke out Korzh immediately
began organising local resistance, and just 6 days after the invasion, his partisans were the first to mount
an attack against German troops. In May 1942, the "Central Headquarters
of the Partisan Movement" was set up by the Stavka High Command. By November 1942, it recorded partisan
strength as 90,000 personnel, operating in 1,100 detachments. Central Headquarters
distributed 200 radio sets, which allowed it to communicate
directly with the partisans, to coordinate their actions,
and assign high priority targets. One such target
was Raus’s 6th Panzer Division. Central Headquarters had given
the task of impeding its movement to two separate Detachments,
led by Saburov and Kovpak. Sydor Artemyevitch Kovpak
was another experienced partisan leader, who had his detachment up
and running before the Germans arrived in his Ukrainian hometown
in the summer of 1941. In 1943 his unit conducted
the legendary Carpathian Raid, sabotaging supply lines
and wiping out isolated enemy garrisons in the course of a 600 mile advance
to the Romanian border. While planning the war
against the Soviet Union, Hitler had declared that the land was
to be exploited to its fullest potential. The Wehrmacht’s ultimate goal was a line
running from Arkhangelsk in the north, to Astrakhan in the south. Soviet territory was to be carved up
into zones of occupation. Certain strategic areas, like the Crimea,
would become part of a Greater Germany. All was outlined in the top secret
"Generalplan Ost" — "Master Plan East". The plan spelled out
a dark vision for Eastern Europe following the German victory over the USSR. It entailed a massive programme
of deportations, murder and enslavement
of the native populations, followed by the colonisation
of the land by Germans and other "racially acceptable" peoples. All senior figures in the Third Reich became
familiar with the "Master Plan East". “Generalplan Ost, Document number 1, issued by SS Reichsfuhrer
Himmler on 28th May 1940. Top Secret. National Importance. On 25th May I handed to the Fuehrer
a memorandum, outlining my thoughts on the treatment of local populations
in the occupied Eastern territories. The Fuehrer read
all six pages of my report, considered it correct
and warmly approved it.” Most of those who escaped extermination
were to be deported to western Siberia. A minority — 10% of Poles,
25% of Belarussians, 35% of Ukrainians — were considered
suitable for "Germanisation". Millions would be retained as slave labour. Generalplan Ost would never be implemented. But those living under Nazi occupation still
felt the effects of its brutal ideology. The Nazis planned to strip eastern
territories of all valuable resources. In 1941 Special Commissariats
were established for the purpose. The Special Commissariat in Byelorussia
was headed by Wilhelm Kube. Wilhelm Kube joined
the Nazi Party in the 1920s, when it was still on the fringe
of German politics. He rose to become Gauleiter — or regional
party leader — of Brandenburg. But he fell from favour after fabricating
charges against a party rival. In June 1941 he was given a chance
to redeem himself in Byelorussia. When the Germans moved
into a town or village, they would appoint a burgomaster
or village headman. Public notices printed in Russian
listed their responsibilities: “All burgomasters and village headmen
are responsible for safety in their area. Should the locals fail to ensure this,
at least twice the number of dead German soldiers will be taken from
the local population and shot." “In the event of damage being
done to roads, bridges or mines, at least three local people will be shot.” “Those who give shelter
or food to strangers — or render them any assistance
without permission of their burgomaster or village headman — will be hanged.” It didn’t take long for the brutality
of the new regime to be felt, driving a deep wedge between
invaders and the occupied. In the first winter of the war, the Germans began to deport hundreds
of thousands of workers to the Reich, where they were to be used as slave labour. One and a half million people, most of them
Ukrainians, were transported to the Reich. More than half a million girls
were sent to become domestic servants in German households. The treatment such workers were
to receive was outlined by Fritz Sauckel: “All these people must be fed,
housed and treated in such a way that the greatest results are achieved
with the minimum outlay.” SS chief Heinrich Himmler
put it even more starkly: “If 10,000 Russian women collapse from
exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch, it interests me only insofar that Germany,
at the end of it, has an anti-tank ditch.” At the Nuremberg Trials,
Fritz Sauckel was found guilty of crimes against humanity and hanged. Himmler escaped a similar fate
by committing suicide. In the spring of 1942, local police
came to the village of Yarmoshinki, near Smolensk,
looking for men of working age. When they entered the Egorov household,
18-year old Mikhail was out. The family had decided not to wait
for the deportations to begin. They packed their belongings and headed
for the forest to join the partisans. They met a group
of saboteurs in the forest. They were en route to the village
of Selivonenki to blow up a bridge. Mikhail said he knew the way. On 5th May 1942, his nineteenth birthday, Mikhail Egorov was accepted into
the Special Guerilla Regiment codenamed “The Thirteen”.
It was commanded by Sergey Grishin. Grishin began the war in a tank platoon. His unit became encircled
during Operation Barbarossa, but Grishin escaped and returned to his
home village to raise a partisan unit. It became Special Guerilla
Regiment “The Thirteen”, named after Grishin’s favourite
action film by director Mikhail Romm. At dawn on 13th May 1942, the partisans walked 15 miles to attack
the German garrison at Selivonenki. It was Mikhail Egorov’s baptism of fire. Despite several local successes, the partisans failed to have any significant
impact on the German supply chain. But the significance of their actions
could be measured in other ways. Thousands of German soldiers,
urgently needed at the front, had to be diverted to fight the partisans
and protect supply routes. German morale began to suffer too.
In the occupied territories, anyone could be on the side
of the partisans. No one could be trusted. Any suspicious noise could turn out
to be the start of a partisan attack. The partisans wore at the nerves and
resources of the German occupying forces. German reports state
that of the 3.6 million Soviet prisoners-of-war
they’d captured in 1941, by the spring of 1942,
only 800,000 remained fit for work. 60% had been murdered,
or had died of starvation or disease. In the spring of 1942,
thousands of Soviet prisoners of war sat or lay in the open
at the Suwalki camp in Poland. They were given almost no food. Some
had resorted to eating blades of grass. It was then that the former chief
of staff of the 229th Rifle Division, Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Rodionov,
decided to offer his services to the Nazis. He approached the Germans and offered to establish "a Fighting Union
of Russian Nationalists". Their aim would be,
“To overthrow Stalin’s regime and establish a Nationalistic Russian State
under the protectorate of Germany”. Rodionov’s offer was taken up
by the Nazi Security Service — the SD. Rodionov, who also used the alias "Gil", was joined by a hundred former
inmates of the Suvalki camp. They were issued
with Czech military uniforms, and became
"The 1st SS Russian Volunteer Detachment". The unit soon had 500 volunteers,
most of whom were ex-Red Army officers. To prove their fighting ability,
and their loyalty, their first missions
were conducted against Polish partisans. The detachment was later expanded
to a brigade more than 2,000 strong. But despite the inhuman conditions,
some prisoners remained steadfast. Nicolay Obrynba,
a medic serving with a militia battalion, was taken prisoner in 1941 near Vitebsk. “If you don’t want to lose yourself
in a desperate situation you must purge your soul of doubts. Regardless of your feelings towards
Stalin there are two camps, two ideas and two men leading those camps. And you shall support one idea, one camp,
and one man embodying this idea. You shall hold on to the end. For otherwise neither death nor torture
will justify you in your own eyes.” By the spring of 1942, the partisans were operating on a much
larger scale across occupied Byelorussia, Ukraine and western Russia. Soviet reports estimated 200,000 partisans
were now operating behind the German lines. Partisan units were especially active
in the rear of German Army Group North and Army Group Center. They made
their camps in the forests and marshland around Bryansk, Vitebsk, Smolensk,
Novgorod and Leningrad. A large partisan unit operated
in the mountains of the Crimea. The organisation and tactics
of the partisans were refined. A partisan detachment was a self-sufficient
unit consisting of 100-200 fighters. It had its own commander,
political officer and chief of staff. Each detachment had support
and medical services and could be divided into several platoons. Several detachments
formed a partisan brigade. Each brigade has its own
hospital and workshops, which produced camouflaged capes,
sheepskin jackets and boots. A brigade could be a few hundred
or a few thousand strong. The Byelorussian “Dubova” brigade,
for example, had 1,700 members. Several brigades formed a partisan group,
used for strategic operations. In some areas, the partisans drove out
local German forces completely, and established enclaves
wholly under their control. Near Polatsk in northeast Byelorrusia,
the partisans set up their own schools, telephone lines, mills and workshops. They printed their own newspapers
and pamphlets, which they distributed to the
80,000 civilians living within the enclave. They even opened an art gallery,
which exhibited the work of partisans including
Nicolay Gutiyev and Nicolay Obrinba — who had escaped from German captivity. Obrinba described what it
meant to the partisans: “The “Dubova” brigade
were proud of their paintings. That’s why they put them
in the headquarters, right next to the brigade’s banner.
We challenged the enemy. We can do anything, and our life
doesn’t depend on fear and death. We proclaim it for tomorrow and forever.” The partisans could only operate
with the help of the local population. Villagers brought them food
and sometimes information which was vital to both
their success and their survival. It required great courage
on the part of the villagers. If they were caught by the Germans,
not only they but their whole communities
might suffer brutal reprisals. On 13th May 1943, Hitler signed the orders approving
Operation Citadel — the Kursk offensive. As if in reply, the partisans blew up both
bridges over the River Desna near Bryansk, cutting the main supply route
to the build-up area for the offensive. It took 12 days for German engineers
to get both bridges back in action. This delay on the eve
of the offensive was serious. If it happened again — at the height
of the battle — it could be catastrophic. Therefore in the weeks leading up
to the Kursk offensive, the German High Command ordered
large-scale anti-partisan sweeps, using frontline combat troops,
including panzer regiments. The largest of these operations
took place around Bryansk, and was codenamed Operation Gypsy Baron. About 50,000 soldiers took part in the
operation, including local collaborators. They faced several partisan brigades with a
combined strength of approximately 11,000. The partisans were hindered
by the fact that many women, old people and children
had fled to the forests to join them. It made the partisans less mobile, and
less able to move their camp in a hurry. The Germans managed
to separate the partisan brigades and drive them against the Desna River. The Headquarters of the Partisan
Movement took immediate steps to assist. They flew in weapons,
ammunition and medical supplies, and evacuated about 900 wounded
partisans and others most at risk. Soviet aircraft bombed
enemy troop concentrations. But partisan casualties mounted rapidly.
They were outgunned, and outnumbered. On the night of 2nd June, fierce fighting
erupted at the Pionerskiy farm, as the partisan detachments attempted
to fight their way out of the trap. They succeeded, but at a heavy price. As soon as German regular
units returned to the front, partisan detachments
began to reform in the forest. That summer,
Central Headquarters used radio to co-ordinate a massive partisan
assault on the German rail network, at the very height of the Battle of Kursk.
It was codenamed Operation "Rail War". There was one problem.
To disrupt German rail transport on the scale envisaged would require
thousands of tons of explosives — more than could be flown in by air.
So the sabotage groups began to experiment. Before the war, it was thought
that between 200 to 400 grammes of TNT were needed to destroy a rail track. But experiments with different rhomboid
and trapezium shaped charges, showed that a rail track could be blown up
with as little as 75 grammes. This discovery reduced the quantity
of explosives needed by more than half, and made it an amount
that could be delivered by air. Operation “Rail War” began
on the night of 3rd August 1943. Railways were blown up across Byelorussia,
Leningrad, Orel and Bryansk. But the results of Operation Rail War,
and Operation "Concert" that followed in September,
were disappointing. The Germans soon learned how
to minimise any disruption. Trains travelled
with their own track repair crews, who would make quick temporary
fixes to get the train moving again. Once the unit was past,
the rails could be replaced. Ilya Starinov, a famous Soviet saboteur, questioned the wisdom
of blowing up the tracks. He thought it was better
to blow up the trains. But the rail war did have an impact. The Head of Transport for Army Group
Centre reported figures for August 1943: “Partisan activities in August resulted in
an average of 45 track demolitions per day, and damage to 266 locomotives
and 1,373 railroad cars.” One of the partisans’ greatest
achievements during the Battle of Kursk was to blow up the Osipovitchi
railway station. The mission was carried out by special
guerilla detachment “The Brave Men”, led by a colonel from OMSBON,
Alexander Rabtsevitch. A Russian engineer working for the Germans managed to attach two magnetic
mines to the fuel tanks. The explosion destroyed 33 fuel tankers,
65 ammunition wagons, 8 Tiger tanks, 7 armored vehicles,
12 food wagons, 5 locomotives and the entire rail junction. The station was burning for two days. The partisans were 200 metres
from the railway line. With the machine gun covering them, Mikhail Egorov and a comrade crawled
quietly towards the railway embankment. Wooden barricades lined
both sides of the track. They were hung
with barbed wire and tin cans, which would rattle and alert the German
sentries if anyone tried to sneak past. In the dark, working by touch, the
partisans carefully cut away at the wire. A German patrol passed by. It took them an hour to cut
their way through. Then they heard a train approaching. They rushed to the rails
to plant the explosives. They buried the TNT, then tied
a piece of string to the fuse pin, and attached the other end to a ramrod. This they drove into the ground
50 centimetres away. The Germans put empty wagons
at the front of the train, which would trigger a simple pressure
mine and take the force of the blast. But this mine was different. The empty wagons passed harmlessly
overhead. But the locomotive, whose running gear
overhung the side of the track, knocked down the ramrod
and pulled out the fuse pin. It was the latest example of ingenuity
in a constantly evolving war between Soviet saboteurs
and German transport officers. Soon the Germans
would devise a counter-measure, and the saboteurs would
have to think of something new. By the spring of 1944, Mikhail Egorov had
derailed 5 trains and destroyed 5 bridges. He was awarded the Red Star Medal,
the Medal of Glory Third Class, and the Partisan Medal — First Class. According to statistics from the German
General Directorate of Eastern Railways, partisans carried out approximately 500
raids and acts of sabotage in February 1943, rising to 700 in April, and to more
than 1,000 a month in May and June. A derailed train blocked
the line for about 8 hours, so to bring movement to a complete
halt required 3 derailings per day. This simple arithmetic was making
life hell for the Germans. A kite soared 300 feet above
the dark forests of Byelorussia. Up towards it crept
a little sail on wooden rollers. When it reached the kite,
its cargo of leaflets was knocked loose, and scattered across the forest below. Each leaflet was an appeal to the men of Lieutenant Colonel Rodionov’s
Brigade of Russian nationalists, urging them to join with the partisans. In fact many of these men had already
begun to question their new allegiance, after seeing the brutal way Germans
treated their fellow Russians. Rodionov himself had been shocked at the
way the Nazis were operating in the east. He had been promised an alliance.
He knew now it was all lies. He sent a delegation to make
contact with the partisans. Rodionov asked what guarantees the
partisans could give for his own safety, and that of his men. The partisans radioed Moscow. The reply came straight
from General Ponomarenko, Head of the Central Headquarters
of the Partisan Movement. Partisan leader Ivan Chetkov
met with Rodionov. As a result, almost his entire brigade
came over to the Soviet side. It was renamed the 1st Anti-Fascist
Partisan Brigade. Within weeks, the brigade was
in action against its former masters, attacking a German police garrison
in the village of Stujunka. The partisans attacked at dawn
with mortars and machineguns. By 7am they had stormed the village
and wiped out the German garrison. For this successful operation,
Rodionov was promoted to Colonel and decorated
with the Order of the Red Star. Many of the men in his unit went on to receive
the "Partisan of the Patriotic War" medal. Meanwhile, Generalkommissar Wilhelm Kube
continued his brutal reign in Byelorussia. In the summer of 1943, the NKVD Intelligence Department
made his assassination a top priority. The task was assigned to all partisan
units operating in the Minsk area. The hunt for Wilhelm Kube was on... On 22nd July a huge explosion
tore through the Minsk Theatre. Soviet intelligence reported
that 70 enemy soldiers had been killed, and 110 wounded, but that Kube had left the
theatre a few minutes before the explosion. Weeks later, a partisan unit ambushed Kube on his way to his country residence.
But he escaped again. The partisans suggested bombing
Kube’s residence from the air. The mission was assigned to 15 crews
from an elite long-range bomber unit. But Kube survived once more,
and moved his residence into the city. On 6th September,
a banquet was held in Minsk to mark the 10th anniversary
of Hitler’s rise to power. A bomb in the officers’ mess killed
36 military and government officials, but Kube wasn’t there. Then, Yelena Mazanik — Kube’s housemaid —
was contacted by partisan Maria Osypova. Maria told Yelena about the terrible crimes
for which Kube was responsible. She persuaded her to carry out
an act of revenge, and gave her a delayed-action mine. On the morning of Tuesday 21st September, Yelena Mazanik put the mine in her bag...
and went to work. Locals were always searched when
entering the Generalkommisar’s residence, but that day Yelena was lucky. She knew the supervisor —
the search was a formality. She went into Kube’s bedroom
and put the mine underneath the mattress, below where his head would lie. Maria Osypova, Yelena Mazanik
and her sister Valentina were smuggled out of the city
to a partisan safe house. That night, shortly before 1am,
Generalkommissar Wilhelm Kube was asleep in his Minsk residence...
when the mine exploded. The mine that killed Kube
had a directional force that ensured it only killed its target. Neither Kube’s pregnant wife, nor his children sleeping
in the next room, were harmed. By the beginning of 1944, Soviet records
showed 300,000 partisans under arms. There were nearly 150 radio sets
in use in Byelorussia alone. The partisans now had a dedicated air unit,
the 101st Long-Range Aviation Regiment, which flew 20 missions
to the partisans every night. In the spring of 1944,
the Germans planned a massive operation to destroy the partisan enclave
near Polatsk, in northern Byelorussia. They deployed 60,000 soldiers,
137 tanks, 236 guns, 70 aircraft and 2 armoured trains. 60,000 partisans and civilians
found themselves encircled by units of the German 3rd Panzer Army, which quickly seized control
of all their airfields. So the partisans built a new one —
on a hill, in the middle of the marshes. The partisans needed
to fill the bog with soil to make a strip at least 1,000 metres long. Logs were laid first, then tightly packed
brushwood, and then soil on top. 2,000 peasants from the local village,
supervised by Nicolay Obrinba, worked on the strip for three weeks. Pits were dig for fires,
to act as landing lights. Carpenters made hatches with iron bottoms.
To put the light out quickly, you pulled a rope tied to the prop
that held up the hatch. To support the partisans, the Soviet
air force carried out 354 missions. These included bombing raids
against German positions, ferrying in 250 tons of supplies,
and evacuating about 1,500 casualties. But the pressure from heavily-armed
German troops was relentless. At the end of April, the surviving
partisans attempted to break out. At first the partisan
brigades tried to co-ordinate their actions with the army high command.
But communications broke down, and each unit had to fight
its own way out as best it could. By 27th April, the Germans
had forced the last partisans into a pocket just 20 kilometres wide. The local commander ordered
the survivors to break out at all costs, and 8 days later they succeeded
in leading 15,000 civilians to safety. At the forefront of the fighting, was Colonel Rodionov’s
First Anti-Fascist Brigade. During his service
with the German security forces, Rodionov had led his brigade in punitive
actions against Byelorussian civilians, and had taken part in the destruction
of 5 villages along the Berezina River. Now Rodionov atoned
for these crimes with his own blood. During the breakout, Rodionov was killed while persuading his soldiers
to stand up and attack the enemy. His remains were rediscovered in 1992, and reburied in a communal grave
for partisans in the town of Ushachi. One month after the fall
of the partisan enclave, the Red Army launched Operation Bagration. Soviet regular forces drove
the enemy from all parts of Belorussia. Many partisans joined
the ranks of the Red Army. In the small hours of 1st May 1945,
one former partisan, Mikhail Egorov, alongside Sergeant Meliton Kantaria,
was in the heart of Berlin, climbing to the very top
of the Reichstag building. Egorov had brought
a sack containing the assault banner of the 756th Rifle Regiment
of the 150th Rifle Division. They were covered by their commanding
officer, Lieutenant Aleksey Berest. Behind Mikhail Egorov lay two years
of the deadly partisan war — a serious shoulder wound — and service as a Red Army infantry
scout in Poland and Germany. Ahead lay a few steps to the roof
of the Reichstag, and to victory.
