German anti-partisan operations in World War II
While the worst atrocities in terms of scale occurred in the Eastern theater of the war, the Nazis employed "anti-partisan" tactics in Western Europe as well.
[1] A. Dirk Moses notes that the German security warfare was an extreme version of strategies and tactics pursued by other colonial powers against anti-colonial resistance.
[5][4] Some scholars have noted that in the East, the anti-partisan operations gave Germans a pretext for ideologically motivated ethnic cleansing.
[5][6] The first resistance movements were created as early as late 1939 in occupied Poland (see the Separated Unit of the Polish Army).
In Operation Tempest, Polish partisans challenged the Germans in a series of open battles for the control of vital strategic areas.
[4] The policies of 1941 were aimed more at a potential threat than a real one, as the Soviet partisans were only just organizing in the aftermath of the German invasion.
[4] With the German failure to topple the Soviet Union in the first year of the war, the anti-partisan policy changed, switching from short-term to a more long-term view.
[4] Nazi propaganda and similar tactics were employed in order to influence the local populace and make them more friendly towards the Germans (and less towards the partisans).
[4] The advance of the Red Army and liberation of the remaining Soviet territories from under the German occupation prevented the full implementation of this policy.
[citation needed] In their attempts to suppress the Resistance, German and Italian Fascist forces (especially the SS, Gestapo, and paramilitary militias such as Xª MAS and Black Brigades) committed war crimes, including summary executions and systematic reprisals against the civilian population.
Only 10 percent agreed to cooperate with the Third Reich, with the remainder refusing to enroll or continue fighting for Germany and were instead interned under terrible conditions.
The actions of the Italian soldiers who refused to further cooperate with the Nazis were eventually recognized as an act of unarmed resistance.
The Partisans were a communist-led movement propagating pan-Yugoslav tolerance ("brotherhood and unity") and incorporating republican, left-wing, and liberal elements of Yugoslav politics.
Former Yugoslav historiography recognized seven major offensives, of which the fourth and the fifth came close to defeating the partisan forces, and the seventh almost captured their headquarters.
[5] Around 1943, as the French Resistance grew in size (due to the Vichy regime accepting the deportation of Frenchmen for forced labor in Germany), German anti-partisan operations in France became more serious.
[5] Despite this defeat and London's advice to avoid head-on confrontation, in the aftermath of the Allied invasion of France (D-Day) the French Resistance openly challenged German forces in several areas.
[5] Once seriously threatened, German forces resorted to brutality and terror that had been mostly unheard of previously on the Western front (but commonplace on the Eastern).
[5] German terror tactics proved successful in the short term, as the shocked Resistance pulled back.
