Soviet Partisan 1941-44

By Nik Cornish

The partisan war in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944 has been the subject of considerable political manipulation in the decades following 1945. In great part this was due to the need to project the image of a country united behind Joseph Stalin and the Communist regime when the truth was much more complex than that. The opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa had exposed the lack of unity in the Soviet Empire as nationalist and anti-Communist groups emerged in the western provinces such as Belo Russia, Galicia, Bukovina, Ukraine and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Consequently it was vital for the survival of the Soviet Union that such groups were countered in situ and that the authority of Moscow was maintained in what were known as the Occupied Territories. During the summer of 1941 plans, dormant since the 1930s, for the conduct of partisan warfare behind the lines of an invading force were resurrected. The plans were intended to make life for the invaders as problematic as possible by acts of sabotage, but most important of all to maintain the physical presence of Soviet authority.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781472801456

Nik Cornish

Nik Cornish is a former head teacher whose passionate interest in the world wars on the Eastern Front and in Russias military history in particular has led to a series of important books on the subject including Images of Kursk, Stalingrad: Victory on the Volga, Berlin: Victory in Europe, Partisan Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1944, The Russian Revolution: World War to Civil War 1917-1921, Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1941-1942 Barbarossa to Moscow, Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1942-1943 Stalingrad to Kharkov and Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front 1943-1944 Kursk to Bagration.

Reviews for Soviet Partisan 1941-44

[ericlee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In some parts of Europe, the stunning victories enjoyed by Hitler's armed forces resulted in docile, subservient populations that were keen to avoid any further trouble. Whole countries remained safe havens for German troops, who faced little serious opposition, and certainly no armed opposition. Though the civilian populations in these countries may have hated the Nazi occupiers, they sometimes seemed content to wait for someone to liberate them. But this was not the case in the occupied regions of the Soviet Union, where thousands of armed partisans did their very best to wreck havoc and terrorize the occupiers. Many Soviet citizens collaborated, hundreds of thousands of them even serving eventually in the German armed forces. But many more fought against the Germans -- eventually defeating the Third Reich and bringing it crashing down in Berlin. In this short book, Nik Cornish gives a good overview of the Soviet partisan movement. I learned much -- for example, I was not aware that partisans were often deployed by aircraft, and that the Soviets could even manage to fly partisan commanders to Moscow for a conference with Stalin. Nor did I know that the partisan movement was formally dissolved in 1944 -- presumably when there were no longer any occupied territories for them to operate in as the war was now being fought in Germany itself. The book is full of illustrations of partisan equipment and weapons which will be of interest to specialists.