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[–] 17157060? ago 

If there's one book I urge to read about the Soviet side of the war its this.

As early as June 29, 1941, the Council of the People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the VKP (b) gave instructions that all forces of the "Soviet" population were to be mobilized in the struggle against the Germans, and that an extensive people's war was to be organized in the enemy hinterland. The face of this "people's war" is representatively revealed, in addition to many similar worded proclamations, by a directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of White Russia of July 1941, communicating the following data relating to the incipient "partisan movement:"

<"Every link to the enemy hinterland msut be destroyed, bridges and streets must be blown up or damaged, fuel and food warehouses, vehicles and aircraft must be burned, railway catastrophes must be arranged, all enemies must be exterminated: they must receive no rest either day or night; they must be exterminated everywhere, wherever they are surprised, they must be killed by any means that comes to hand: axes, scythes, crowbars, hay forks, knives…, you must not shrink from using any means in the extermination of the enemy: strangle them, hack them to death, burn and poison the fascist scum."

According to the testimony of the captured partisan Kozlov on October 1, 1941, the member of the Central Committee of the Party, Kazalapov from Khol'm, also demanded that German soldiers and wounded be "further tortured by mutilation prior to shooting."

It was not only the partisan unites and partisan groups, some of them recruited by force from among the male population under the threat of being shot, that now began an illegal guerrilla war in crass violation of the letter and spirit of the Hague Convention on Land Warfare. The entire civilian population was irresponsibly drawn in, as revealed by a proclamatin directed at all residents of "enemy-occupied territory" by the Commander-in-Chief of the West Front, Marshal of the Soviet Union Timoshenko, and with him, Member of the Military Council, Bulganin, on August 6, 1941. The "workers, farmers, and all Soviet citizens" were ordered to "attack and destroy german rear connections, transports, and columns, burn and destroy bridges, tear down telegraph and telephone lines, set fire to houses and forests." "Beat the enemy, torture him to death with hunger, burn him with fire, destroy him with bullets and hand grenades… to carry out the destruction of ibridges in the rear of the enemy, use mostly local means, use expedients involving explosives… burn warehouses, destroy the fascists like mad dogs." All very easily said by persons who knew that they were in safety; the people would suffer the consequences. No army in the whole world would have tolerated such actions without the severest reprisals. Page 133