the soviet partisan movement 1941-1944 by edgar m. howell

172 THE SOVIET PARTISAN MOVEMENT
of bands concentrated in the Pripyat south of the Gomel-Luninets railroad
whose strength the Germans had not determined. 100
The Security Commands
The sector, including the Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, at this
time comprised something more than 90,000 square miles, roughly twice
the size of the state of Pennsylvania. In the area were 2,300 miles of
railroads and 1,700 miles of roads which the Germans considered important
enough to require security. For all security tasks, including the
coverage of these lines of communication, the combined Wehrmacht
and political security commands had an assigned strength of 163 miscellaneous
battalions, of which two-thirds were German, two were French
and the remainder Hungarian and native.
On the basis of experience which had shown that one German security
battalion with a strength of 350 men could "barely" provide static security
for 25 kilometers of railroad or 50 kilometers of road, 210 German
security battalions were required for these traffic routes alone, making
a paper deficit of 47. The actual deficit, however, was much greater,
for the 163 needed more than 14,000 replacements to bring them up to a
strength of 350 per unit, 15 of the total were in the front lines, and the
Hungarian and indigenous units were of such poor quality that their
combat effectiveness was considered to be less than one-half that of
their German counterparts. The aggregate effect was to reduce the true
strength of the combined security commands to no more than 100 battalions,
enough for static security of one-half the roads and rail lines,
and nothing for anything else. 101
This critical shortage of security forces was due in no small part to
the widespread defections of the personnel of the native volunteer units.
The morale of these natives had never been of the best, and during the
summer months they had proved unable to withstand the psychological
effects of the continuing German reverses and the terror campaign
waged by the partisans against their families. The upshot of it was
that all indigenous units became suspect and most were removed from
partisan-endangered areas.
In September the whole question of the reliability of the Osttruppen
was reviewed by OKH 102 and the decision was made to exchange Ost
units from the east for German units in France on the basis of two Ost
100 Bandenlage im Bereich der H. Cr. Mitte, Stand: 30.IX.43., H. Gr. Mitte, Ic/AO
(Aker.), Bandenlisten, Sept. bis Des. 43. 65003/5.
101 Bandenlage, Okt. 43, H. Cr. Mitte, Ia. Nr. 13097/43 g. Kdos., 9.X1.43., Anl. z.
KTB, H. Gr. Mitte, Fuehrungsabt., Akte XXIII, Heft 12, 1.X.-31.XII.43. 65002/24.
102 See:Folder, Osttruppen, OKH/Org. Abt., Nr. 11/12593/43, 11/12595/43.
Foreign Studies Br, OCMH.