Resultado Descriptivo

Postwar experience, particularly in Malaya and the Philippines, has shown that one of the most effective antiguerrilla techniques is the use of small units of highly trained men who infiltrate the forests where guerrillas are established. The counterguerrillas have the support of all the

technical instruments of modern warfare, but they move in a random pattern in order to avoid breaches of security which might warn the guerrillas of their approach. Their attacks have a disruptive and demoralizing effect on all the guerrillas in the area of operation; but the prime targets are the leadership cadres of the guerrilla movement.

Occasionally the Germans employed this type of tactic with great success. The "Graukopf" unit, composed almost entirely of Russians, combined deception with infiltration. It played a

significant part in disrupting the large partisan concentration in the Yelnya-Dorogobuzh area although the latter was eventually destroyed by other methods. (See Chap. VII, Sect. V, A, 2.) There were a few similar instances. To some extent, Bronislaw Kaminsky's collaborator

organization in the southern Bryansk region employed infiltration tactics. Small units of Crimean Tatars, supported by German and Axis troops, harried the Soviet partisans in the Yaila

Mountains. The Ukrainian nationalist partisans (generally without German support), fought a truly bilateral guerrilla war against Soviet Partisans in the northwestern Ukrainian forests.

It is notable that in all these instances the burden of the counterguerrilla operations was borne by indigenous units, with the Germans playing at most a directing and supporting role. Recent experiences have demonstrated that counterguerrilla infiltrators need not be local men; but obviously strangers require a longer period of training and familiarization with the terrain. The Germans lacked the time and resources to become good infiltrators themselves. They were never willing permanently to divert even moderate numbers of first-rate troops to antiguerrilla warfare.

In view of the terrible manpower shortage at the front, the German position is understandable.

Yet only very vigorous, adaptable young men can stand the rigors of the infiltration type of counterguerrilla fighting. Older men, who predominated in the German security troops, were not only physically limited but had an inordinate dread of the dark forests. If the Germans had been willing to recruit Soviet citizens early in the war, they might have developed many effective units like those described in the preceding paragraph. But by the time Hitler's injunction against giving arms to the "inferior" Slavs was somewhat relaxed or evaded, there was too little time for the careful preparation which successful infiltration requires. The partisans were too well

entrenched; and the loss of morale among the anti-Soviet elements in the population of the occupied regions made it difficult to secure the high quality recruits required. Moreover, the special nature of Soviet partisan warfare would have made the infiltration technique somewhat dubious as the major tactic of the counterguerrillas. The large partisan brigades could have been harried, but they could not have been wiped out by small infiltration units. In addition, lacking air support or superior weapons the infiltrators' advantage over partisan units of equal size would have been much reduced.

2. Strongpoints, Encirclement, and Combing

The principal antiguerrilla tactics actually employed by the Germans were a combination

consisting of maintenance of strongpoints to guard vital roads and railroads plus periodical large-scale efforts to reduce the partisan forces by encircling and combing their forest strongholds. The first tactic was purely defensive, but it went a considerable way toward attaining the Germans' prime objective of keeping the partisans from seriously affecting the German war effort against the main Soviet military forces. In the northern, economically unproductive regions the Germans did not greatly care what happened in the areas away from the towns, highways, and railroads, so long as the latter remained secure. The towns were garrisoned by security troops, who set up posts at intervals along the roads. Small mobile units periodically patrolled the roads, or went to the assistance of strongpoints under attack. Ordinarily these defensive measures, combined with a very efficient system of repair, were adequate to keep open the lines of communication. The measures could not prevent isolated breaks in the highway and railroad system, nor could they (in 1943 and 1944) avert sudden concerted traffic interference over a wide area, but they could prevent protracted interdiction of movement.

The Germans were, of course, concerned with the potential of the partisans for disrupting traffic at a crucial moment of a campaign. Consequently, the German command recognized the need for some offensive action to restrict the development of the partisans' strength. The tactic of

encirclement and combing constituted the principal German response to this need. Large numbers of military units surrounded a forested area where partisans were based. When all the assigned units were in place, they began moving concentrically toward a point within the area, destroying all partisans whom they encountered. Theoretically, if the circle was kept intact and the area was carefully searched, there would be no partisans left when the operation was over.

Where the surrounding troops were very numerous, the area to be covered small, and the

partisans weak or inexperienced, the tactic occasionally worked. (See Chap. XI.) It also worked in one instance (the Yelnya-Dorogobuzh area) where the partisans were numerous and strong.

There an important factor seemed to be the conventional military qualities of the partisan organization, which had been reinforced by large numbers of regular Red Army troops. The Yelnya-Dorogobuzh partisans were so successful, well equipped, and trained in standard military operations that they played the Germans' game by standing and fighting. The partisans inflicted heavy losses on the Germans, but were wiped out themselves. It is notable that the partisan movement was never substantially revived in this area. (See Chap. VII.) Occasionally in later years the Germans caught considerable partisan groups like Naumov's and Kovpak's in open or inhospitable areas where they could be destroyed or almost destroyed by encirclement tactics. In the deep forests and swamps of the main partisan areas of operation, however, it was almost always possible for at least the hard core of encircled partisans to break through a weak point in the necessarily thin line of encirclement and to escape to nearby forest areas.

The German tactic, therefore, rarely eliminated many partisan units or leaders, and the rank and file could always be replaced. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the tactic was ill-chosen. It disrupted the partisans' build-up and planning; drastically weakened their morale, especially when it deprived them of their winter shelter, food reserves, and air contacts; and temporarily reduced the threat to the communication lines, The tactic took advantage of the weaknesses inherent in the partisans' reliance on fixed camps and airfields; it also utilized certain strengths in the German position. While the Germans were unwilling to assign more than a restricted number of second-rate security troops to permanent antiguerrilla warfare, they could at times afford to detach sizable numbers front-line troops for brief operations. The Yelnya

operation, which was exceptionally large and protracted, utilized two army corps for about two months. In the late spring of 1943 a force of about the same size was used for some weeks in the northern Bryansk area. Since the troops employed received no special training, the net loss of time was not much greater than the period of the operation itself. Similarly, enough airplanes for observation purposes could be obtained for relatively brief operations at times when front demands were not high.

3. Anticivilian Operations

Given the objective of security of communications rather than pacification of the country, the combination of tactics the Germans employed was not in itself a bad means of reducing partisan damage with minimum resources. The German tactics meant, however, practically abandoning the population of the partisan-held areas and the "twilight" zones adjoining them. Assuming that the Germans were willing to pay this price, they would probably have been wiser, even from a strictly military point of view, to have disturbed the helpless civilian population as little as possible during the course of antiguerrilla operations. In the remarkably successful Yelnya operation, civilians were in fact treated with consideration. Most of the time, however, the German counterguerrillas took the position that the civilians, since they had supplied the partisans with food and information, ought to be punished. The Germans also imagined that by destroying agricultural production they would starve the partisans. Consequently, horrible atrocities were committed against the civilian population, including the elderly, women, and children. Village-burning was the main feature of most of the combing operations. In addition, the Germans rounded up all able-bodied younger men and women for the Ostarbeiter program of labor in Germany. The combined effect of these measures was to turn neutral elements of the population toward the partisans, and particularly to send them a constant flow of new recruits seeking to escape the Ostarbeiter program. Theoretically, the Germans might have succeeded in isolating the partisans by complete evacuation of the areas where they could operate; but the size of the areas and populations involved, the difficulty of the terrain, and the strength of the

partisans themselves made such a "solution" impossible. The inhumane half-measures completed the alienation of the population from the Germans, and considerably eased the Soviet problem of regaining popular support.

4. Local Defense

An antiguerrilla tactic of some effectiveness is the arming of the local population for self-defense against the demands of the bands. Given the objectives of the Germans, this could have been at best only a secondary tactic. Where strongly anti-Soviet elements collaborated with the

Germans, as in Kaminsky's Lokot district of Bryansk or in the Yaila Mountains, village self-defense was combined with antiguerrilla infiltration at a fairly early stage. Slightly later, the Germans began to arm auxiliary native police (Ordnungsdienst) in the villages. These played a significant part in the continued maintenance of order in the Yelnya-Dorogobuzh areas. (See Chap. VII, Sect. V, C, 2.) Generally the police units were too poorly armed and too low in morale to be effective, but the "Wehrdoerfer" (fortified villages) introduced in some areas in 1944 were occasionally successful in beating off partisan attacks.

E. EVALUATION: THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PARTISAN MOVEMENT AS AN