Stalin's Guerrillas

Stalin's Guerrillas

Author: Kenneth Slepyan

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13:

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A detailed study of the operations, politics, culture, and autonomy of Soviet partisans (or guerrillas) who fought the German army in WWII. Blending military, political, social, and cultural history, Slepyan also provides a prism for viewing relations between the suffocating Stalinist state and its independent partisan warriors.


Partisan's Companion

Partisan's Companion

Author: U.S.S.R. Communist Party

Publisher: Paladin Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781581604634

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Learn how regular citizens fought back against Hitler's army in this exclusive translation of the first guide for Soviet partisans. Illustrations show hand-to-hand combat techniques, how to fight with bayonets and entrenching tools, how to destroy tanks and bridges, survival tactics and more. A valuable piece of history


War in the Wild East

War in the Wild East

Author: Ben Shepherd

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0674043553

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In Nazi eyes, the Soviet Union was the "wild east," a savage region ripe for exploitation, its subhuman inhabitants destined for extermination or helotry. An especially brutal dimension of the German army's eastern war was its anti-partisan campaign. This conflict brought death and destruction to thousands of Soviet civilians, and has been held as a prime example of ordinary German soldiers participating in the Nazi regime's annihilation policies. Ben Shepherd enters the heated debate over the wartime behavior of the Wehrmacht in a detailed study of the motivation and conduct of its anti-partisan campaign in the Soviet Union. He investigates how anti-partisan warfare was conducted, not by the generals, but by the far more numerous, average Germans serving as officers in the field. What shaped their behavior was more complex than Nazi ideology alone. The influence of German society, as well as of party and army, together with officers' grueling yet diverse experience of their environment and enemy, made them perceive the anti-partisan war in varied ways. Reactions ranged from extreme brutality to relative restraint; some sought less to terrorize the native population than to try to win it over. The emerging picture does not dilute the suffering the Wehrmacht's eastern war inflicted. It shows, however, that properly judging ordinary Germans' role in that war is more complicated than is indicated by either wholesale condemnation or wholesale exoneration. This valuable study offers a nuanced discussion of the diversity of behaviors within the German army, as well as providing a compelling exploration of the war and counterinsurgency operations on the eastern front.


Soviet Partisan vs German Security Soldier

Soviet Partisan vs German Security Soldier

Author: Alexander Hill

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-10-31

Total Pages: 81

ISBN-13: 1472825640

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The savage partisan war on the Eastern Front during World War II saw a wide variety of forces deployed by both sides. On the Soviet side, civilian partisans fought alongside and in co-operation with Red Army troops and Red Army and NKVD 'special forces'. On the German side, German Army security divisions, with indigenous components including cavalry, fought alongside SS police and Waffen-SS units and other front-line troops employed for short periods in the anti-partisan role. In addition to providing the background history of the forces of both sides, this study focuses upon three examples of German anti-partisan operations that show varied success in dealing with the Soviet partisan threat. Notably, it covers a major operation in north-west Russia during the spring of 1943 – Operation Spring Clean – that saw Wehrmacht security forces including local components fighting alongside troops under the SS umbrella against a number of Soviet partisan brigades. During the fighting, German forces even employed captured French tanks from earlier in the war against the partisans. Featuring specially commissioned artwork and drawing upon an array of sources, this is an absorbing account of the brutal fighting between German security forces and their Soviet partisan opponents during the long struggle for victory on World War II's Eastern Front.


The Red Army's Do-It-Yourself, Nazi-Bashing Guerrilla Warfare Manual

The Red Army's Do-It-Yourself, Nazi-Bashing Guerrilla Warfare Manual

Author: Lester Grau

Publisher: Casemate

Published: 2011-05-28

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 1612000207

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The WWII Soviet guerilla training manual that became an essential text for freedom fighters across the globe—complete with illustrations. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union during World War II, the Red Army began recruiting local partisans to help mount a resistance. This edition of The Partisan’s Companion is the last and best Red Army manual used to train these men to fight Nazi invaders. Besides field craft, it covers partisan tactics, German counter-guerrilla tactics, demolitions, German and Soviet weapons, scouting, camouflage, anti-tank warfare, and antiaircraft defense for squad and platoon-level instruction. It contains the Soviet lessons of two bitter years of war and provides a good look at the tactics and training of a mature partisan force. While this handbook was a vital part of Soviet victory over the Nazis, its usefulness outlived the Second World War. It was later used to train guerrilla groups in the developing world during their wars of national liberation in the 1950s–70s. Even the fedayeen guerrillas who fought US and coalition forces in Iraq relied on this manual for training, tactics, and general approach to combat. A selection of the Military Book Club.


The War Behind the Eastern Front

The War Behind the Eastern Front

Author: Alexander Hill

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780714657110

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A study, based on Soviet and German archival sources, of Soviet partisan activities in the rear of the German Army Group North 1941-44.


Women and Yugoslav Partisans

Women and Yugoslav Partisans

Author: Jelena Batinić

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-05-12

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1107091071

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This book focuses on the mass participation of women in the communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance during World War II.


Red Partisan

Red Partisan

Author: Nikolai I. Obryn'ba

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2006-10-19

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 1781597073

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A memoir of a Soviet artist who became a resistance fighter against Nazi Germany during World War II. The epic World War II battles between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are the subject of a vast literature, but little has been published in English on the experiences of ordinary Soviets?civilians and soldiers?who were sucked into a bitter conflict that marked their lives forever. Their struggle for survival, and their resistance to the invaders’ brutality in the occupied territories, is one of the great untold stories of the war. Written late in the author’s life, Nikolai Obryn’ba’s unforgettable, intimate memoir tells of Operation Barbarossa, during which he was taken prisoner; the horrors of SS prison camps; his escape; his war fighting behind German lines as a partisan; and the world of suffering and tragedy around him. His perceptive, uncompromising account lays bare the everyday reality of war on the Eastern Front. Praise for Red Partisan “[Obryn’ba’s] descriptions of life in a German POW camp offer unique insights into a little-discussed aspect of the Eastern Front.” —Military Review “Obryn’ba’s simple and candid yet gripping memoir presents a credible mosaic of vivid images of life in the Red Army during the harrowing first few months of war and unprecedented details about his participation in the brutal but shadowy partisan war that raged deep in the German army’s rear. A must read for those seeking a human face on this most inhuman of twentieth-century wars.” —David M. Glantz, historian of the Soviet military


The Unwomanly Face of War

The Unwomanly Face of War

Author: Светлана Алексиевич

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0399588728

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"Originally published in Russian as U voiny--ne zhenskoe lietiso by Mastatskaya Litaratura, Minsk, in 1985. Originally published in English as War's unwomanly face by Progress Publishers, Moscow, in 1988"--Title page verso.


Surviving the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish Partisans

Surviving the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish Partisans

Author: Jack Kagan

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780853034162

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Two cousins relate their experiences with Bielski's partisan brigade in war-torn Russia during the Second World War. Natives of Novogrodek, part of present-day Belarus, they describe Jewish life before the Holocaust and furnish a most moving account of how a thriving and prosperous Jewish center was decimated by the Nazis and local collaborators. Initial joy when their hometown was taken over by the Soviet Union disappeared when the Germans ran the Russians out of town and started implementing policies to eradicate all Jews and anything Jewish. Dov (Berl), the elder of the cousins, whose account comprises the first section of the book, lost his immediate family in the early days of German occupation and escaped from ghetto life in November 1942 to join the partisans in the dense forests of the area. He joined the Kalinin brigade and spent the rest of the war fighting the Germans and Russian sympathisers. Jack (Idel), seven years his junior, remained in the ghetto with the remnants of their once-large family. After a failed attempt in December 1942 to escape to reach the partisans - in an episode which nearly cost him his life - Jack joined an escape effort from the ghetto in September 1943, successfully reached the partisans as a member of Bielski's partisan brigade and was reunited with his cousin. This second section features many original documents from Russian archives and elsewhere, about the partisan bands' structure and their activities. The authors provide a unique view, not only of actual incidents, but of how two different people react to events and experiences. Updated in this second edition by a new preface and appendix, this is their story: a tale of tragedy, courage and triumph.