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Abstract
There was not, except in the very broadest sense, a unified ‘Allied’ grand strategy regarding any aspect of World War II. British–American strategy and Soviet strategy were formed in isolation. This was certainly true of the strategy of anti-German insurgency. Aside from geographical and ideological factors a major source of difference was that Britain was at war with Germany from September 1939, while the USSR and the USA became involved two years later. There were major asymmetries: Moscow's insurgency strategy for most of the war was in practice applied to its own national territory, while British (and later American) insurgency strategy was applied to foreign countries occupied by Germany. It will be argued, however, that in different parts of the Grand Alliance the path of insurgency strategy followed a similar trajectory, even if this strategy was not synchronised in time or space. In London, Moscow, and Washington, high hopes were initially placed on popular rebellion in German-occupied territory. It was only months after the entry of their countries into the war that the high commands, both west and east of the Reich, came to the conclusion that insurgent forces could only be used as an auxiliary to huge conventional armies.
Notes
1Classic accounts in English are: M.R.D. Foot, Resistance: An Analysis of European Resistance to Nazism, 1940–1945 (London: Eyre Methuen 1976); Jørgen Hæstrup, Europe Ablaze: An Analysis of the History of the European Resistance Movements, 1939–45 (Odense UP 1978); Henry Michel, The Shadow War: European Resistance, 1939–1945 (New York: Harper & Row 1972).
2For examples of new research that looks, in different ways, at the social underpinnings of insurgency see: Juliette Pattinson, Behind Enemy Lines: Gender, Passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War (Manchester UP 2007); Kenneth Slepyan, Stalin's Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (Lawrence: UP of Kansas 2006).
3The seminal English-language account here is Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare (London: Macmillan 1985). The most recent major work is Philip W. Blood, Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe (Dulles, VA: Potomac 2006).
4For British efforts the standard works are W.J.M. Mackenzie, The Secret History of SOE (London: St Ermin's Press 2000), and David Stafford, Britain and European Resistance, 1940–1945 (London: Macmillan 1980). The Mackenzie book was an in-house history completed in 1948; it was graded secret for 50 years. L.D. Grenkewich, The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941–1944: A Critical Historiographical Analysis (London: Frank Cass 1999), is the latest overview in English of the operational aspects of the insurgency in the USSR. For an introduction to the American side see Richard Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press 1972).
5See the documents in N.S. Lebedev and M.M. Narinskii (eds.), Komintern i vtoraia mirovaia voina, 2 vols. (Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli 1998). Hereafter Komintern. Also uniquely valuable is The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933–1949 (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2003); Dimitrov was the head of the Comintern and of its successor organisation, the OMI (Otdel mezhdunarodnoi informatsii). The 1942 head of the the internal Partisan movement, P.K. Ponomarenko, gave an unusually candid interview which appeared in G.A. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym: Otkrovennye svidetel'stva (Moscow: Bylina 1999). A large number of documents are available in Partizanskoe dvizhenie v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: Dokumenty i materialy[The Partisan Movement in the Years of the Great Patriotic War: Documents and Materials] in the series Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia, vol. 9 (Moscow: Terra 1999). Hereafter RA/VO, vol. 9.
6For reasons of space this article is concerned with insurgency in regions occupied by Germany, rather than in Germany itself.
7[Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives], CAB[inet papers] 80/11, COS(40)390, ‘British strategy in a certain eventuality. Report’, 25 May 1940.
8Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years: Memoirs 1931–1945 (London: Frederick Muller 1957), 366.
9Cited in M.R.D. Foot, SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France: 1940–1944 (London: Whitehall History Publishing/Frank Cass 2004), 9.
10Cited in Stafford, Britain, 29.
11CAB 79/12, JP(41)444, 14 June 1941, ‘Future Strategy: Review’, 37–8.
12Stafford, Britain, 63.
13CAB 79/13, JP(41)649, 9 Aug. 1941.
14CAB 69/4, ‘Memorandum on the Future Conduct of the War’, 2–3.
15Mackenzie, Secret History, 748.
16[Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives], HS [Records of Special Operations Executive] 8/9, ‘Summary of agreement between British S.O.E. and American S.O.’, June 1942.
17Stafford, Britain, 78.
18CAB 80/62, COS(42)133(0), 12 May 1942.
19CAB 80/68, COS(43)142(0), 20 March 1943.
20Brian P. Farrell, The Basis and Making of British Grand Strategy, 1940–1943: Was There a Plan?, vol. 2 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press 1998), 622.
21CAB 80/68, COS(43)142(0), 20 March 1943. The Far East was the sixth and lowest SOE priority.
22Michael Howard, ‘Strategic Deception', in Hurry Hinsley (ed.), British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5 (Cambridge: CUP 1990), 103–66.
23Foot, SOE in France, 339–67. For a concise account of the contribution of SOE in France, see Mackenzie, Secret History, 617–25.
24Foot, SOE in France, 315–8, 344–7.
25Ibid., 364–7.
26M.R.D. Foot, SOE in the Low Countries (London: St Ermin's Press 2001), 379–82.
27 Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 6 Dec. 1944, col. 929–30.
28Michael Howard, The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War (London: Greenhill 1993), 14.
29In memoirs written in Cold War retirement the phrase ‘This “democratic international” must use many different methods ’ became ‘We must use many different methods’. (Dalton, Fateful Years, 368).
30Dimitrov, Diary, 124 [21 Jan. 1940].
31I. V. Stalin, O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow: GIPL 1951), 31 [6 Nov. 1941]. Hereafter Stalin, OVOVSS.
32Ibid., 42 [23 Feb. 1942].
33 RA/VO, vol. 9, doc. 59 [30 May 1942], 114–5; doc. 79 [6 Sep. 1942], 135, doc. 174 [7 March 1943], 277–8, doc. 178 [17 April 1943], 281–2.
34Kumanev, Riadom, 127–32. Ponomarenko had been 1st Secretary of the Belorussian SSR.
35 Komintern, vol. 2, doc. 25, 146–7. See also Ivo Banac's introduction to Dimitrov, Diary, xxxvi–xxxvii.
36Mackenzie, Secret History, 393–4.
37Stalin, OVOVSS, 16.
38CAB 80/60, COS(43)212(0), 21 April 1943.
39Dimitrov, Diary, 228 [20 June 1942].
40Alexander Hill, The War behind the Eastern Front: The Soviet Partisan Movement in North-West Russia 1941–44 (London: Frank Cass 2005), 8–24, provides an excellent general historiographical discussion.
41 RA/VO, vol. 9, doc. 1 [29 June 1941], 17–8.
42Stalin, OVOVSS, 15 [3 July 1941].
43Slepyan, Stalin's Guerrillas, 104.
44Kumanev, Riadom, 127–8.
45 RA/VO, vol. 9, doc. 78 [5 Sep 1942], 132–5.
46Stalin, OVOVSS, 81 [7 Nov. 1942].
47Dimitrov, Diary, 207 [30 Dec. 1941].
48HS 4/334, ‘Agreed record of discussions between British and Soviet representatives on the question of subversive activities against Germany and her allies’.
49Mackenzie, Secret History, 397.
50Ibid., 399.
51 Komintern, vol. 2, 41–2, doc. 57, 196–7.
52‘K Pervomu maia 1942 goda’, Kommunisticheskii internatsional, 3–4 (1942), 6–7.
53 Komintern, vol. 2, 50f, 228, doc. 74 [7 June 1942]. See also Dimitrov, Diary, 224 [7 July 1942].
54 VOV/VIO, vol. 3, 139.
55Stalin, OVOVSS, 95 [23 Feb. 1943].
56Ibid., 127 [6 Nov. 1943], 132 [7 Nov. 1943], 141 [23 Feb. 1944], 147 [1 May 1944], 152–69 [6 Nov. 1944].
57Stalin, Sochinenie, vol. 2/15, 104–5.
58Dimitrov, Diary, 280 [12 June 1942].
59 Komintern, vol. 2, 74–5. See also G.M. Adibekov, E.N. Shakhnazarova, K.K. Shirinia, Organizatsionnaia struktura Kominterna. 1919–1943 (Moscow: ROSSPEN 1997), 228–41.
60 Komintern, vol. 2, 82–7, doc. 174 [1 March 1944], 426–32; Dimitrov, Diary, 303–4 [4–5 March 1944], 342–3 [19 Nov. 1944].
61Dimitrov, Diary, 291 [26 Dec. 1943]. ‘Is it true that a partisan army known as ELAS … actually represents a consistent democratic force fighting for the common cause of the anti-Hitler coalition?’
62 Komintern, Vol. 2, 78, doc. 188 [21 Oct. 1944], 474.
63Dimitrov, Diary, 345 [8, 9 Dec. 1944], 353 [10 Jan. 1945].
64Mark Wheeler, ‘Pariahs to Partisans to Power: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia’, in Tony Judt (ed.), Resistance and Revolution in Mediterranean Europe, 1939–1948 (London: Routledge 1989), 110–56; Geoffrey Swain, ‘The Cominform: Tito's International’, Historical Journal 35/3 (1992), 641–64.
65Mawdsley, Thunder, 353–5.
66The standard account in English, critical of Home Army planning and motives, is Jan M. Ciechanowski, The Warsaw Rising of 1944 (Cambridge: CUP 1974).
67Alexander Werth, Russia at War 1941–1945 (London: Barrie & Rockcliff 1964), 878.
68Foot, SOE in France, 317.
69John Keegan, The Second World War (London: Hutchinson 1989), 483–96.
70Matthew Cooper, The Phantom War: The German Struggle against Soviet Partisans, 1941–1944 (London: Macdonald & Jane's 1979), 162.
71John A. Armstrong (ed.), Soviet Partisans in World War II (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin 1964), 39.
72Foot, SOE in France, 380.