Partisan Warfare

[3rd Herd]

Was the partisan war effort as successful as is generally believed? Kenneth Macksey in The Partisans of Europe, In the Second World War sheds some interesting light on the claimed accomplishments of the various resistance forces. In particular he refutes the claims of the French of their very active and successful role. In conjunction he raises similar points about the contribution of the Soviet partisan forces and their impact on the Eastern front. I found this book particularly interesting as he indicates more study needs to be done on this subject matter. David Glantz the noted Russian/Soviet historian also concurs stating "We had hoped with the democratization of Russia more access for western historians/researchers would be forth coming as the Soviets were excellent record keepers, sadly this has proven not to be the case". Is partisan warfare as effective as many claim it is?

 

[Michael OLeary]

An interesting query. I suppose further study must be prepared to address in detail the various avenues of:

- practical effect, i.e., real damage vs costs to deliver (both local, in terms of effort to provide requirements and cost on local populaces for retaliatory action, and global, i.e., cost by allied nations to provide and maintain support)
- the moral effect on the attacked occupying force
- the moral effect on the allied nations' ongoing war effort, principally, I suppose, through using it as part of propaganda campaigns

 

[pbi]

IIRC the Soviet partisan campaign placed a huge drain on the German resources, requiring them to dedicate manpower to rear area and LOC security formations, and keep the Eisenbahnpioniertruppen very busy fixing demolished sections of RR line instead of re-gauging and extending the existing USSR system. I believe that during the lead up to the battle of Kursk, the Soviet partisans cut the German RR lines in thousands of places. They also destroyed locomotives and rolling stock, killed train crews and took out signalling and support facilities. No doubt they probably ambushed road movements as well.

As a second order effect (but perhaps just as important) the partisan campaign probably provoked the Germans into arbitrary and counter-productive slaughter of civilians as a form retaliation/deterrence. This didn't help the Germans, and in the end the German civilians paid for it in 1944/45 at the hands of the Red Army.

But did they "defeat" the Germans? I don't know-I think they certainly contributed to Soviet success, and made life harder for the Germans. In that sense they were definitely a force multiplier for the Soviets.

The Yugoslav partisans (the Serbs, mainly) put up a very stubborn and long-lasting fight against the Germans, Italians, Bulgarians and Croats but again they didn't really defeat the Axis forces there. The Germans didn't pull out until very late in the war, and then IMHO really only because of the changing strategic situation. But, Tito's partisans definitely tied down Axis forces, and again the draconian Axis responses (exemplified probably most by the insanely bloodthirsty Croats, whose exploits were well remembered by Krajina Serbs when I served there in 1994) really didn't stop the partisans.

I agree that the French Resistance's role has been greatly overblown, both by Hollywood and IMHO by the understandable French national desire to somehow make amends for the truly disgraceful story of both Vichy and of the shameless but very enthusiastic cooperation of French authorities in the Occupied Zone. I am just reading Shirer's The Fall of The Third Republic: France in the late 1930s leading up to war was a corrupt, rotten, internally divided place that wanted only a kick from an invader to collapse, which is what happened. The French military high command seems to have been a bunch of doddering old cowards who from the Occupation of the Rhineland in 1936 reflexively discouraged French governments from doing anything of military value to stop Hitler or Mussolini before it was too late(Some of them were monarchists or neo-fascists who hated the idea of a Republic). There was not much will to continue resistance after the invasion of 1940, and a goodly amount of home-grown Fascism, right wing sentiment ant anti-Semitism with deep roots. In that sick and defeatist environment, IIRC it was mainly Communists who formed the backbone of the Resistance, not least IMHO because they had nothing to lose: neither the Germans nor the French liked them. Based on that, I don't think that until the Allies started the preparation for Overlord, the FFI really amounted to much that the Germans (aided by the Vichy Forces and the Fascist Milice) couldn't handle. I don't think that they contributed as much as the Soviet or Yugo partisans did, or fought as hard. I stand to be corrected.

Cheers

 

[3rd Herd]

PBI
thank you for your reply.
While it is agreed that the partisan effort on the Eastern Front did play a role I feel that shortages in production and the desire for the technological achievement was a greater factor. Especially in the battle of Kursk where the teething problems of the Panzer V became evident (rush to get into service) and the limited number of heavies coming off the production line in the Tiger series. Additionally the German supply system was hap hazard at the best of times from the beginning of the invasion of the Soviet Union.

As a military force multiplier lack of sufficient radio communications between the front and German occupied territory hampered partisan efforts. Lack of command and control or sycronizied effort produced a mosquito bite effect and gave the Germans time to repair rail cuts. Stalin's paranoia, often the first supplies dropped/flown into partisan bands was a "Commissar"  which slowed down the partisan military effort. In August of 1942 Stalin held a conference with the key partisan commanders stressing that they must maintain a high "vigilance against fascist idealism " and popular independence. In Russia's War (Richard Overy) exemplifies this with the battle between the Ukrainian nationalist forces and both Soviet and German forces.Political reliability came  first often enforced just as brutally as German reprisals.  Again political reliability affected the partisans as supplies were limited to them forcing them to rely on captured weapons, a QM nightmare. Mackesy quotes " as late as 1944 many partisan bands were still unarmed".

I agree with your synopsis of the French partisan war effort as does Mackesy. He provides an excellent study of this especially comparing the severance of transport/communication routes partisan verses allied air effort. John Parker in Inside the French Foregin Legion brings up yet again the theme of fractionalization with the battle between the 13th Demi Brigade and the 6th Division outside Damascus.

comments

 

[Spr.Earl]

Was the partisan war effort as successful as is generally believed? Kenneth Macksey in The Partisans of Europe, In the Second World War sheds some interesting light on the claimed accomplishments of the various resistance forces. In particular he refutes the claims of the French of their very active and successful role. In conjunction he raises similar points about the contribution of the Soviet partisan forces and their impact on the Eastern front. I found this book particularly interesting as he indicates more study needs to be done on this subject matter. David Glantz the noted Russian/Soviet historian also concurs stating "We had hoped with the democratization of Russia more access for western historians/researchers would be forth coming as the Soviets were excellent record keepers, sadly this has proven not to be the case". Is partisan warfare as effective as many claim it is?

In some case's yes the Partisan's were succseful tactily but it was the phsycological effect that was succesful by which I mean, under every beret in France was a partisan,that alone was demorilising for the occupation troop's.

 

[3rd Herd]

In some case's yes the Partisan's were successful tactily but it was the phsycological effect that was succesful by which I mean, under every beret in France was a partisan,that alone was demorilising for the occupation troop's.

and just how many partisans were there? France had one of the high rates of collaboration in the  occupied countries, quoting Mackesay "indeed there was a much higher chance of collaboration on the part of the Frenchmen than the other subjugated nations". Secondly there have been cases of wehrmacht soldiers depending on their political beliefs suppling weapons to the various factions of the so called resistance for use in their own internal war. The most notable case is featured in "Is Paris Burning". Further most of the resistance organization which had potential had removed themselves from urban areas allowing occupying troops restaurants, theaters and bordello's.

"Because it was hard to assess resistance strength, because German arrests could suddenly emasculate the movement, and because control of resistance activities was difficult and uncertain, the Allied planners decided to regard resistance help as a bonus rather than trying to use it to gain strategic objectives."

Many authors articulate that German morale did not shift until after the battle of Kursk and there was not the pronoun ed defeatism until after the D day landing in conjunction with allied air superiority. Given a wehrmacht solider a choice of service on the Eastern front or dealling with so called resistance in France it is obvious the answer. After all we are all familiar with the expression "service with a unit on the Eastern front equals a death sentence"

Lastly I wonder if allied soldiers in the battle for Caan felt German morale was low.

 

[Michael OLeary]

It would be interesting to see an objective analysis of actual partisan activities and the results.

I do wonder how much of what we generally believe about partisan effectiveness has not been the product of remarketing the French as an ally in order to minimize Vichy activities, and the effects of Hollywood (as well as other production sources) presentations in wartime and later movies.

 

[TheNomad]

To paraphrase Churchill

"The value of partisans lay not in how many troops they kill or how many things they blow up, but in how many troops they keep watching."

Every one of the troops employed on anti-partisan duties was another one not available for the front.

 

[pbi]

under every beret in France was a partisan,that alone was demorilising for the occupation troop's.

IMHO the real problem was that this was NOT the case, at all (Hollywood and French national pride to the contrary...). IMHO most Frenchmen, in either the Occupied Zone or in Vichy, were either apathetic or held some shade of right wing opinion that included, in many cases, collaborationism. A couple of years ago, I read a very interesting book on the fate of the Jews in post-1940 France. It quoted a report from the SS official in charge of rounding up Jews in France, praising the assistance of French authorities in the Occupied Zone and stating that the effort would not have been as successful as it was without them.
As I mentioned earlier, France in 1940 was IMHO a very, very sick and dysfunctional country and had been degenerating gradually since WWI. Reading Shirer's book, I have to wonder that if the Second World War had not wrecked France, civil war, a la Spain, would have. In that environment, only a very small number Frenchmen even felt motivated to resist, never mind facing the huge danger of actually taking the fight to the occupier.

So, I am not so sure that the resistance tied down significant German forces that would have been useful in Russia. IIRC, most of the formations in France, up until near to D-Day, were pretty low calibre static defence outfits, with second rate or captured equipment. It seems to me that the Germans found a goodly number of Frenchmen quite happy to do their work for them.

I am not in any way denying the bravery and sacrifice of those who did resist: I just don't think that there were near as many, nor that they were as effective, as conventional wisdom and propaganda would have us think.


Cheers

 

[3rd Herd]

Terms of the Armistice June 22, 1940
Article 3
".....The French government will immediately  request all authorities and French administrative services of the occupied territory to conform to the regulations issued by the German military authorities and to collaborate with the latter in a correct manner"

As pbi states in the above post this was fullfilled with a certain zeal. in Carrell"s Invasion They're Coming he states that Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr received a copy of the invasion orders to the resistance in the form of a poem  by Paul Veraines. As with military intelligence it's value is the greatest if acted upon. As we know this did not occur to a great extent.

As to addressing the value of action Dr. Jean-Leon Charles states that in the sabotage carried out in French factories in 1943 and 1944 equaled a single mosquito bomb load and would have not required the 150 attempts made in this time period. Until early 1944 Field Marshall Von Rundstedt states that there was minimal effect on the German forces in occupied France, but after this time frame it became necessary to escort supply convoys. (Barry, R.H., Major General, Helping the Resistance)

 

[larry Strong]

Sort of going off on a tangent here, but what part do you all figure the "Rote Kappell" and the supposed spies in the OKH or AH's inner circle had in contributing to the defeat at Kursk?

 

[3rd Herd]

Larry,
Interesting questions and I do not believe it is a digression from the theme of this thread.I shall be referring to seven or eight sources here and will put a full citing at the end of this post. In addition to your mention of the 'Red Kappel' organization there where conjunctively several other intelligence sources supplying information to the Stavka as early as 1929.(Read/Fisher). This being Richard Sorge who was running the far east section of the GRU. Next we have Rudolph Rossler who many refer to as Lucy.(Caidin) Lastly, we have the 'Red Kappel' organized and run by Leopold Kepper known as 'Le Grand Chef'. Additionally, the Soviets were also receiving direct copies of deciphered enigma traffic through their penetration of the British Security services from John Cairncross. Cairncoss was the 'fifth man' in the infamous 'Cambridge Spy Ring'.(Overy) This all cumulating as Zhukov describes as a "vast mass of data" and may give some credence to the theory that their was no single 'super spy' in Hitler's inner circle.

According to Read and Fisher, Richard Sorge was born of a German father and Russian mother and became a professional journalist. Becoming a 'loyal' Nazi in 1934 he was employed by the German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung and obtained his information primarily from the German ambassador in Tokyo Major General Eugen Ott. Interestingly enough he forwarned Stalin of the Barbarossa attack to the exact date.

As for the Lucy operation in addition to Rossler based in Lucerne, Cadin indicates there were ten more members all officers in the post world war one German Armed Forces. Of these ten," eight rose to vital positions in the high comand, five  of which achieved achieved the rank of general, and two others became high ranking Luftwaffe officers".Two of these ten have been indentified as Lieutenant General Fritz Theile, a senior officer in the Wehrmacht's communications branch, and Colonel Freiherr Rudolf von Gersdorff, who eventually became intelligence officer of Army Group Center on the eastern front.(Brown)

Their information conduit was from Berlin to Switzerland and then onto Moscow. As an aside so well informed was this group that the French command in 1940 received a complete copy of Von Manstein's 'Plan Yellow' on March 10, 1940 and the extact attack date on May 1st.(Vader) By 1942 the German high command was aware of Switzerland being the transmission point of information through the use of radio monitoring. And at one point threatend the invasion of Switzerland itself as the Germans were unsure if it was a Soviet organization or the Swiss themselves passing information to Moscow.(Vader)
In addition to the administering of the Lucy ring, Rossler also had contact with our last ring, 'the 'Red Kapelle'. This sometimes leads to the mistaken assumtion that both the Lucy and "Red Kapeele' where one in the same.

Lastly a brief explanation of the 'Red Kappel' group. This group was based in France and the Low countires and obtained information in two ways.The first based on sources from German divisions in France who were in the process of resting and refitting prior to transferring east.(Delarue). In parallel with the Lucy operation a section of the 'Red Kapelle' under Haro Schulze-Boysen operated in Berlin. Manvell and Fraenkel describe the Berlin operation as consisting " of well connected members from German families working in various ministries". This group was eventually discovered by Canaris's Abwher and was rounded up,much to the embarrassment of Himmler.

As to the contribution the various intelligence assets made to the German defeat at Kursk it could be summoned up as follows. By having as Zhukov described a "vast mass of data" the Soviet command had a detailed picture of the forces which could possibly be employed in an upcoming attack two weeks prior to Hitler signing 'Operations Order Number Six'. In regard to this order Cadian states " Copies of Operations Order Number Six reached Zhukov and other Russian leaders before the same operations order was recivied by German army field commanders." This advanced warning allowed the Soviets time to move reinforcements into the area which were lacking across the entire front.(Koltunov) It also gave the Soviet command time to study the German plans and compile both a tactical and strategic response. Tactical in the way the defense of the Kursk salient was to be handled and strategically in the overall destruction of German units and the winning of the war in the east.

In reference to the theme of this thread the battle of Kursk and the prior information received resulted in a increase in partisan support from the Soviet high command but initially in the form of improved communications. Zhukov and the other Soviet generals were still unsure of the exact date of the commencement of the German attack(eventually a two month wait).(Overy) Orders were transmitted to try and obtain this information through the capture and interrogation of German troops. Mackesay, gives credit to the Lucy spy ring for providng incontrovertible information of the impending attach and therefore "guided other intelligence agenices in search for detailled information of German arrangements..." Werth, ascribing to Soviet historians "as this being the period of the beginning of a highly organized partisan movement". In Moscow came Stalin's decree of "the Battle of the Railroads" in an effort to slow down the build up of German forces and supplies. To what success this decree had is still open for debate.

Sources:
Brown Paul "Report on the IRR File on the Red Orchestra" (article)
Caidin Martin "The Tigers are Burning"
Delarue Jacques "The Gestapo, A History of Horror"
Koltunov G.A. Colonel, "Kursk, The Clash of Armour"(article)
Mackesy Kenneth "The Partisans of Europe"
Manvell Roger, Fraenkel Hienrich, "Himmler"
Overy Richard "Russia's War"
Read Anthoney, Fisher David, "The Deadly Embrace"
Varder John, "The Lucy Spy Ring" (article)
Werth Alexander "Russia at War"
Zhukov Georgi K " Marshal Zhukov's Greatest Battles"

 

[a_majoor]

In more general terms, Partisan warfare, like most forms of Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), requires some sort of secure "rear area" or allied nation willing to provide sanctuary and resources.

In WW II, the British could only provide minimal sanctuary and resources to the French or Yugoslavians (regardless of their actual numbers or effectiveness), since they were separated by the English Channel and Mediterranean sea. The vastness of Russia provided sanctuary for those partisans (including the Ukranian "Greens" who fought the Germans and Red Army).  Post war actions were also limited by these factors, for example the Russians could not supply the Greek Communists in that civil war, the Malaysia and Borneo emergencies could be relatively contained since China did not have direct access to Malaysia and the topography of Borneo limited the ability of the Indonesians to support locally recruited forces.

Success stories like the Ingrim in Palestine and EKOA in Cyprus need to be looked at in the broader context of the British losing resolve to maintain their Empire and making plans to wind down regardless. The "successful" revolutionary wars like Viet Nam required high level of support from their sanctuaries, and even now, with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia acting as conduits and supporters of the Jihadis, it seems the Iraqis and the Coalition have the momentum behind them. So long as the three nations provide support for the Jihadis, that insurgency will not come to an end, however.