Osprey Men-at-Arms 142 : Partisan Warfare 1941-1945

During 1941 the Germans occupied first Greece and Yugoslavia, then enormous areas of European Russia. The front line troops soon moved on, but the struggle was far from over, for bands of resistance fighters sprang up and waged a ceaseless war against the occupation forces until their final withdrawal. The term 'partisan' is associated with Communist-led bands, and it is true that Communists provided many of the most determined resistance fighters. In Russia they were inevitably the most fanatical defenders of the Soviet regime. In the Balkans, the Party had long been harried by the pre-war police, and its members were skilled in the techniques of evasion. After Germany attacked Russia their duty was clear - to hinder the German war effort by any means possible. Their influence was enhanced by the fact that their ideology had not been contaminated by association with the pre-war regimes, moreover, it cut across the regional differences. However, there were also non-Communist resistance groups which were nationalist and broadly constitutionalist. They tended to hate the Communists as much as they did the Germans, and in some areas a complicated three-sided war developed. Nigel Thomas and Peter Abbott examine the partisan forces of the occupied territories, with plenty of photographs and illustrations throughout, including eight full page colour plates by Mike Chappell accompanied by ten pages of commentaries on uniforms and insignia.

Contents

• Introduction
• Poland
• Russia
• Yugoslavia
• Greece
• Albania
• The Plates