Notes & Comments
I read Edward Westermann's review of The War Behind the Eastern Front: The Soviet Partisan Movement in North-West Russia, 1941– 1944,JMH 70 (April 2006): 235–37, with interest. In the first instance I would like to note that I certainly do not actually argue against the view "that it was the harsh nature of German occupation policy that turned the local population against the invaders and catalyzed a growth of the Soviet partisan movement," but that the relative importance of this factor varied over time. Certainly by late 1943, as I note, it was "unsurprising in the light of German pillaging of human and material resources and the trail of destruction left behind as German forces pulled back . . . , [that] the mood of the population became increasingly openly hostile towards German forces and pro-partisan" (p. 155).
Whilst the principal focus of my monograph is on the partisan movement and the civilian population, the portrayal of German policy and practice is important in understanding the environment in which the partisans operated and civilians lived. This portrayal is based on a broad range of German-language archival materials and indeed published documents, many from former Soviet archives or translated in Russian-language publications. However, Soviet sources are also crucial in building up a picture of the nature of the German occupation regime, and this work is one of the few which uses Soviet sources to this end. On occasion it even proved possible to match Soviet and German accounts of particular events, as in the case of Operation Spring Clean carried out by the 281st Security Division in April 1943 (pp. 140–41).
In the light of Soviet sources it simply cannot be claimed, for the territory occupied by Army Group North, that German forces were fighting either a "partisan war without partisans," or indeed therefore that the German antipartisan war served as a "mere pretext for the Nazi regime's larger annihilative aims in the East." In the pursuit of the partisans, as the partisans regularly noted, German forces were willing to accept considerable "collateral-damage." Their tolerance of "civilian" casualties may in numerous instances have been influenced by the Nationalist Socialist ideology, and undoubtedly many "partisans" killed were not active participants in the partisan war. However, the propensity for genuine partisans to hide weapons in order to blend in with the civilian population [End Page 1099] when encircled, as documented in Soviet sources, cannot be ignored (p. 141), and Soviet sources show that instances where brutality was meted out by Wehrmacht forces without any link whatsoever to genuine partisan activity are few and far between, at least for this case study area. Regardless of personal ideological dispositions at grass roots level, in an organisational sense Wehrmacht troops were directed towards the principal concerns of dealing with the partisan threat, maintaining order, and maximizing return from the occupied territories, no matter how brutally.
Whilst Himmler was given "central authority for the collection and evaluation of all information concerning action against bandits" in Führer Directive Number 46 of 18 August 1942, to which Westermann refers, he was only given "sole responsibility for combating banditry in the Reich Comissioners' territories."1 The dominance of the Wehrmacht in "operational areas" established in March and April 1941 over military matters (as opposed to "state security"), was not superseded, despite the potential for the Reichsführer-SS to define what "state security" actually meant with regard to the civilian population (pp. 43–44). In this regard, Heydrich's orders to the Higher SS and Police Leaders of 2 July 1941, despite the catch-all category of "other extremist elements," focussed the attention of forces under the Reichsführer-SS in "operational areas" on the Communist Party and "Jews in the service of Party or State," with focus on Jews per s-e coming later (p. 44).
Whilst forces under the auspices of the Reichsführer-SS did operate on the territory of Army Group North...
