Munoz, Antinio Hitler's War against the Partisans during Operation Bagration

Stalin's Offensive: Spring and Summer of 1944

After the disastrous Battle of Kursk in July 1943, the Soviets went on the offensive. A series of counterattacks began along the entire Eastern Front, which would eventually lead the Red Army to the German capital in less than two years. One of these offensives, Operation Bagration, which took place between 22 June and 19 August 1944, resulted in the greatest defeat in German military history. Working in coordination with these vast Soviet forces, partisans played a key role in destroying railway lines, communication routes, and German ammunition and supply depots behind German lines before the Red Army launched its attack. Often, increased partisan activity behind the lines revealed to the Germans exactly where the Red Army's next offensive would take place. By early 1944, it was clear to all but the most naive or fanatical that Germany had its back to the wall; the war in the East was not going well for the Wehrmacht. One did not have to see the disasters that befell the German Eastern Army at the front to realise this. One only had to look at the increasing threat from the partisans and the growing chaos behind German lines to recognise this fact. From the German point of view, something drastic had to be done. In the spring of 1944, the Germans launched a series of new anti-partisan offensives in their rear areas. Their aim was to eliminate the partisan threat, which not only hindered the arrival of soldiers and supplies at the front, but also posed a danger to German troops if they had to retreat. Nowhere was this danger to German troops more evident than in Belarus, where some 180,000 guerrilla fighters were now operating. In fact, entire regions of the German rear were completely controlled by the partisans. By the time Stalin launched the Bagration offensive, the battle behind the lines had undoubtedly become a war within a war. Drawing on hundreds of archival documents, Dr Munoz examines in detail this kaleidoscope of bitter fighting, merciless cruelty and danger as the final year of the partisan war in the Soviet Union unfolded.