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

GERMAN OCCUPATION POLICIES IN OPERATION 77
least this seems to have been the case during December and the first three
weeks of January, for during that period supply difficulties never became
so acute that either OKH or the army groups ever considered using line
units to protect communications. Matters at the front were far too
desperate. Rather, on 30 December, OKH ordered security units pulled
from the rear and committed at the front in an attempt to restore the
situation there. 78 A month later OKH considered changing the gauge
of the Smolensk-Vyazma line where partisan pressure was reported to be
the heaviest. 79
The Beginning of Partisan Cooperation With the Red Army
As the Red Army continued to press its advantage in the last days
of January, the bands in the central sector came more boldly into the
picture. With the temperature moderating somewhat-from – 47 o F.
on 20 January to + 5 o ten days later-- 80 they began moving northward
out of their forest bases about Bryansk in some numbers and appearing
between Smolensk and the rear of the Fourth Army. Here they joined
forces with a number of Red Army parachute units dropped into the same
area and were gradually pulled under the provisional command of General
Belov, a Red Army cavalry corps commander who had broken
through the German front with his divisions. Belov had established his
headquarters at Dorogobuzh between Smolensk and Vyazma, and many
of the bands set up their command posts in the vicinity. From this
area a combined force of partisans, parachutists, and cavalry caused such
disruption along the Smolensk-Vyazma rail line and highway, the principal
supply line for the army group, that the Germans were forced to
pull out elements of the 5th and 11th Panzer Divisions to right the
situation. 81
Belov, under orders from Moscow, constantly pressured these bands
to increase their size and tighten up their organization in anticipation
78
Ibid., VII, p. 245.
79
Ibid., p. 263.
80 These temperatures are overwritten in crayon on the OKH operations maps for
the dates indicated. See: Lage Ost. 20.I.42, and Lage Ost. 30.I.42.
81 "Halder's Journal," op. cit., VII, p. 263; see also Lage Ost. 20.I.42 and Lage
Ost. 1.II.42. The thesis has been advanced that since these airborne units nowhere
attacked in closed formations they were intended to serve as cadres for and to stiffen
the morale of the partisan units as well as reinforce Russian ground troops who had
broken through the German lines. See: MS P-116 "Russian Airborne Operations."
(Hist Div, EUCOM). OCMH, Foreign Studies Br. The Lage Ost maps for the
period bear out the fact that the airborne brigades were widely scattered in their
drops. However, considering the very tenuous liaison between the Red Army and
the partisans at the time it seems more reasonable that the scattering of the parachutists
was due more to Russian inexperience with airborne operations than to a
design to reinforce the irregulars. It is more probable that the partisans were
ordered north to work with the airborne troops.