The Partisans of the Bryansk Forests and the Rail War

The forests behind the Orel bulge

The great forests around Bryansk lay behind the German Second Panzer Army and Ninth Army in the Orel bulge, north of the Kursk salient. Partisan brigades had sheltered there since 1941, and in the summer of 1942 they controlled more than 14,000 square kilometers. They were a mixture of local volunteers, Red Army soldiers cut off in the encirclements of 1941, party and NKVD officials, and men and women sent in from the Soviet side, organized into detachments and brigades and directed by radio and liaison officers (Chapter 2).

From 30 May 1942 the movement answered to the Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement in Moscow under Panteleimon Ponomarenko, the Communist Party chief of Belarus, and to partisan staffs at the fronts. It was supplied by air: in June 1943 the Soviet air forces flew more than 800 night sorties to the partisans, bringing weapons, explosives, radio sets and officers (Newton). By Soviet figures partisan strength across the occupied territories passed 550,000 in 1943, a number the movement’s own historians admit was inflated by local reporting.

Eyes and explosives before Citadel

Before Kursk the partisans’ main tasks were intelligence and the railways. Their intelligence was mostly local, gathered by observation, patrols and the questioning of villagers, and the German security services kept them away from headquarters; but they reported troop trains, depots and movements that helped Soviet staffs build their picture of the German concentration around Orel (Chapter 2).

Their attacks on the railways were more visible. In June 1943, by figures repeated by Zetterling and Frankson and by Clark, partisans destroyed 298 locomotives, 1,222 railway wagons and 44 bridges behind Army Group Center and made 1,092 attacks on railways in the Kursk sector. The figures are Soviet. The German historian Sebastian Stopper, comparing partisan reports with German records, found that partisans reported 5,886 rails destroyed by the end of July 1943 where the Wehrmacht recorded fewer than 500 demolition sites. The partisans hurt German supply, but much less than Soviet histories later claimed.

Gypsy Baron

Their indirect effect on Citadel may have been as important. In May and June 1943 the German command mounted large sweeps in the forests behind the Orel bulge. The largest, Operation Zigeunerbaron (“Gypsy Baron”), ran from 15 May to 6 June south of Bryansk, with the Desna as its blocking line. The XLVII Panzer Corps conducted it with the 4th and 18th Panzer Divisions, the 7th and 292nd Infantry Divisions and the 10th Motorized Infantry Division, with Hungarian troops, a Brandenburg battalion, eastern volunteer units, part of the French volunteer legion and the collaborationist militia of Bronislav Kaminski. Against them stood six partisan brigades of about 6,000 people (German Wikipedia, citing the OKW war diary, Klink and Hesse).

The OKW war diary claimed 3,152 partisans killed, 569 deserters, 207 camps and 2,930 bunkers destroyed, and 15,801 civilians “evacuated,” which in practice meant deported from their homes. The brigades were scattered but not destroyed, and they resumed their attacks. Two panzer divisions and three infantry divisions that might have been resting and training for Citadel spent three weeks of the spring in the forests instead (Chapter 2).

Such sweeps were part of the German war against the civilians of the occupied East. Under the doctrine of Bandenbekämpfung, “bandit fighting,” army security divisions, police battalions, SS units and collaborationist formations encircled forest districts, shot those they caught, burned villages and deported their inhabitants for labor. Kaminski’s militia, from the collaborationist Lokot district in the Bryansk forests, became notorious for its brutality. In Belarus, on 22 March 1943, Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 and the SS Special Battalion Dirlewanger burned the village of Khatyn and killed 149 of its people, 75 of them children (Chapter 8).

The partisan war had a harsher side of its own, which Soviet histories left out. Partisans conscripted villagers by threat, killed suspected collaborators and sometimes their families, requisitioned food from villages that could not spare it, and sometimes provoked German reprisals on purpose. Villagers were caught between the two (Slepyan; Shepherd).

Kovpak and the raids west

Farther west, the large Ukrainian formations of Aleksei Fedorov, Aleksandr Saburov and Sidor Kovpak were ordered in 1943 to leave their bases in the northern forests and carry the war to the railways of central and western Ukraine. Kovpak, a peasant’s son from Kotelva who had won two Crosses of St. George in the First World War, had headed the local government of Putivl in the 1930s. In 1941, already in his fifties, he took a small detachment into the forests near Putivl and built it into one of the largest partisan formations in Ukraine. He was made a Hero of the Soviet Union on 18 May 1942 (Chapter 2).

In June 1943, as the Germans massed for Citadel, his formation set out from the Polesie forests on a raid toward the Carpathians, attacking railways, bridges and the Galician oil industry far behind Army Group South. It lost heavily: his commissar and second-in-command, Semyon Rudnev, was killed that summer, and the survivors broke out in small groups. Kovpak received a second Gold Star on 4 January 1944. The raid’s effect on Kursk was indirect at most, and its story rests heavily on his own memoirs and those of his successor, Petro Vershigora.

The Rail War

After Citadel failed, the movement launched the largest coordinated sabotage operation of the war. The plan, Rail War (Relsovaya voina), was ordered by Ponomarenko’s headquarters and approved by the Stavka in July 1943. Instead of attacking the railways piecemeal, brigades across the occupied territory would cut the rails themselves at thousands of points on the same nights, so that the German repair organization would be overwhelmed at the moment of the Soviet offensives (Glantz and House; Slepyan; Chapter 7).

In the Orel and Bryansk regions partisans began attacking the lines in late July in support of Operation Kutuzov. The mass attacks came on the night of 3 August 1943, the day the Rumyantsev offensive began, in Belarus, the Smolensk, Orel, Kalinin and Leningrad regions and parts of Ukraine. By Soviet accounts some 167 brigades and detachments with about 100,000 members took part, blowing about 42,000 rails on the first night and some 215,000 by mid-September; a second phase, code-named Concert, followed from 19 September. These are claims compiled from partisan reports that had every incentive to count generously. German records give lower figures, but German reports describe thousands of demolitions in the first nights and lines behind Army Group Center closed for days at a time.

The Rail War strained German logistics at the moment of the Soviet offensives, tied down security troops and repair crews, and slowed the movement of reserves. It did not stop that movement. German railway troops repaired cut rails quickly, often by cutting out the damaged section and closing the gap with a shorter rail, and rail stocks, unlike locomotives, were plentiful. The demolitions expert Ilya Starinov argued at the time that the same explosive would have done far more harm in mines that wrecked trains. His critique is told on the engineers’ page.

The insignia, rendered

Illustration Original insignia-style artwork made for the Lake Norman Brief. It is not the unit’s official emblem. Partisan brigades had no standard unit patch; the railway motif refers to the Rail War and is not based on any partisan emblem.

Timeline

1. 18 May 1942Sidor Kovpak is made a Hero of the Soviet Union.
2. 30 May 1942The Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement is formed under Panteleimon Ponomarenko.
3. Summer 1942Partisans control more than 14,000 square kilometers of the Bryansk forests.
4. 22 March 1943German police and SS units burn Khatyn in Belarus and kill 149 of its people.
5. 15 May–6 June 1943Operation Zigeunerbaron sweeps the forests south of Bryansk; 15,801 civilians are deported.
6. June 19431,092 attacks on railways in the Kursk sector, by Soviet figures; more than 800 supply sorties are flown to the partisans.
7. 12 June 1943Kovpak’s formation sets out on its raid toward the Carpathians.
8. Late July 1943Partisans in the Orel and Bryansk regions attack the railways in support of Operation Kutuzov.
9. 3 August 1943The Rail War opens with mass attacks on the German railways.
10. 19 September 1943The second phase, Concert, begins.

People of the unit

Read the full story

• Chapter 2: The Soviet Fortress: Minefields, Strongpoints and the Waiting Armies
• Chapter 7: Citadel Called Off: Kutuzov, Rumyantsev and the Liberation of Orel, Belgorod and Kharkov
• Chapter 8: Behind the Front: The Waffen-SS, the Einsatzgruppen and the Occupied East
• The Battle of Kursk collection and atlas

By the numbers

The partisans and the Rail War by the numbers

14,000+square kilometers of the Bryansk forests under partisan control in the summer of 1942

800+night supply sorties flown to the partisans in June 1943

~6,000partisans in six brigades south of Bryansk when Operation Gypsy Baron struck in May 1943

15,801civilians the Germans “evacuated,” that is deported, in that single sweep

167brigades and detachments, about 100,000 people, in the Rail War of August 1943, by Soviet count

149people of Khatyn, 75 of them children, killed when German police and SS units burned the village

Operation Gypsy Baron, 15 May–6 June 1943

What the OKW war diary claimed for one anti-partisan sweep south of Bryansk, set against the partisan strength in the area. German claims; the “partisans killed” were not checked and the brigades survived

Civilians “evacuated” (deported from their homes)

15,801

Partisans in the six brigades, about

~6,000

Partisans claimed killed

3,152

Bunkers claimed destroyed

2,930

Deserters claimed

569

Source: German Wikipedia, “Unternehmen Zigeunerbaron,” citing the OKW war diary (ed. Schramm), Ernst Klink (1966) and Erich Hesse (1993); Chapter 2

Reports and records

Soviet partisan reports against German records. The reported figures are Soviet and were compiled from local reports that had every reason to count generously

Rails partisans reported destroyed, to end of July 1943

5,886

Railway wagons reported destroyed behind Army Group Center, June 1943

1,222

Attacks on railways in the Kursk sector, June 1943

1,092

Demolition sites the Wehrmacht recorded, to end of July 1943

under 500

Source: Sebastian Stopper, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59 (2011); Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson, Kursk 1943 (2000); Lloyd Clark, The Battle of the Tanks (2011)

In pictures

More photographs

In the art of World War II

Insignia, posters and art

“Red bandits – Stalin’s last hope!” “Hitler returns your land to you!” “Doloi bolshevizm!” (Down with Bolshevism!) “Everyone must be fed!” Fifty hostages hanged near Warsaw, October 1942

Explore the Art of World War II →

Sources

• Kenneth Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006); Ben Shepherd, War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans (Harvard University Press, 2004).
• Sebastian Stopper, “Die Straße ist deutsch,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59 (2011); German Wikipedia, “Unternehmen Zigeunerbaron,” citing the OKW war diary (ed. Schramm), Ernst Klink, Das Gesetz des Handelns (1966) and Erich Hesse (1993).
• David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, The Battle of Kursk (1999); Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson, Kursk 1943: A Statistical Analysis (2000); Lloyd Clark, The Battle of the Tanks (2011); Steven H. Newton, Kursk: The German View (2002).
• John A. Armstrong, ed., Soviet Partisans in World War II (1964); Wikipedia, “Sidor Kovpak,” “Soviet partisans” and “Lokot Autonomy.”
• Ilya G. Starinov, Over the Abyss (1995).
• Photographs: ukrmap.kiev.ua, RIA Novosti, the State Catalogue of the Museum Fund of Russia and the Bundesarchiv, via Wikimedia Commons.