The situation of the partisans at the moment is not good, and the greatest difficulty is not the encirclement and suppression of the German army, but the extreme blockade from the blockade - fascism, but we have to admit that the methods of the Germans worked well for them!

In the dense forests and uninhabited swamps of northwestern Ukraine and southwestern Belarus, where the terrain was favorable to the partisans, if a partisan was captured by the German clearance forces, the Germans either shot them or hung them in public with a sign around their necks as a warning to others - the fascists generally preferred the latter!

With the exception of a very small number of real partisans, many more died under the fascist butcher's knife than the uncountable number of civilians - the Germans retaliated for the attacks of the partisans by massacring civilians. Pen ~ fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info It is said that in the southwest of Ukraine, some Cossacks defected to the German army and became accomplices of the fascist massacre of the Soviet people: this made the comrades of the 53rd Division extremely indignant!

In Belarus and western Ukraine, the fascists massacre entire villages in cold blood, sometimes with absurd excuses: traces of skiing were found in the snow in a village; Being shot at by a sniper in another village and so on - and in many cases, the Germans did not need a reason to carry out the massacre.

Last month, the German 707th Infantry Division in western Belarus shot more than 10,000 "partisans" in a month in retaliation for the loss of two soldiers in a partisan attack. Comrades who had just joined the partisans from the vicinity of Pinsk said that within a few tens of kilometers of the entire vicinity of Pinsk, at least half of the villages had ceased to exist and had been completely burned down. The Soviets who didn't leave there were slaughtered, the snow was littered with dead bodies, and dead people hung from every tree near the burned village that could be used as a gallows!

The Germans did not bother to dispose of the corpses at all, and now the crows there were no longer afraid of people, because the flat-haired beasts had found a new winter food - human flesh!

The fascists did not treat the Soviets as human beings at all, and carried out massacres indiscriminately - but it was atrocities of this magnitude that made the local population even more anti-against the Germans, including those of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, who were still suspicious and hostile to the Soviets.

Moscow has now set up a special guerrilla warfare command to guide the movements of countless guerrilla units in the west, printing leaflets and dropping them into the guerrilla zones, giving instructions on everything from blowing up railroads to surviving on tree bark and moss in the freezing cold of tens of degrees below zero.

Moscow has tried to discipline the scattered guerrilla forces, but the results have been achieved, and the number of partisans and partisans has indeed increased. Because of the performance of the German authorities, many of the new partisans joined the partisans out of sincere patriotism or out of deep hatred aroused by the atrocities they witnessed. Of course, there were also many new partisans who joined the guerrillas simply because they had nowhere to go.

The Jews who escaped from the fascist butchers also provided a source for the growth and expansion of the partisan ranks: in Poland and Belarus, they were divided from the Jewish enclaves (special areas in the cities by the Germans. And the countryside fled into the dense forests of Belarus. At the beginning of the month, the second detachment of the 53rd Cavalry Division, operating near the Polish border, encountered a "partisan" force composed mostly of Jews, led by a pair of brothers surnamed Bijerski. The Bijersky brothers gathered the fugitives together and armed them, men and women, young and old - although they were not guerrillas in the ordinary sense of the word, since their main goal was to escape the massacre of local Jews by the Germans.

Because of a small episode, the second detachment helped the Jews as much as they could, gave them some food and weapons, and reminded them that if the situation was critical, they could move to the east of the Everglades, where they would be safer, because the Jews named their organization "Plunyakov Partisans".

The comrades of the 53rd Division looked down on the Jews because of their different aims, and because the Jews lived by begging from the local peasants or simply robbing them, and were in a constant flow to avoid the German counter-guerrilla sweeps, they were really not guerrillas. However, because of the common enemy, and because the Jews named their ranks after their own military gods, the comrades of the 53rd Division would not embarrass those poor people.

However, there was one thing that made the cavalry comrades admire the Jews a little, because the gathering of those people began, and for several months the team had not lost many men in hiding in Tibet, and the ability to survive was quite outstanding.

The 53rd Guards Cavalry Division is a seed of great vitality, because it has such strength and appeal, as well as its pride, it affects all guerrillas of different natures in the area of the Swamp. In addition to the cavalry, in addition to the original disbanded Red Army, the core force of the 53rd Division was a staunch communist with great skills, because Melnik's combat units needed to maintain a certain combat effectiveness and absolute discipline, which was relatively difficult for the partisans of other elements to do, and could only become "guerrillas on the periphery".

The Major General had to admit that, in addition to his own four detachments, among the dozens of guerrillas large and small in the Swamp and the surrounding forested areas, there were some "guerrillas" who did not live up to their names: they lived in constant fear of the enemy's discovery - the fascists were sometimes able to buy spies and informers for very little money; They fought with rudimentary weapons and powerful enemies, and the guerrillas eventually took control of large areas and re-established some primitive form of communism, but they did not want to attack the fascists so as not to endanger themselves. More often than not, the "partisans" turned their guns on local traitors, such as the local leaders who collaborated with the Germans and easily handed over food to the enemy, or peasants who worked for the enemy, and so on.

Among them, the contingent of Jews was one of them—and some had to do this in order to survive. However, the men of the 53rd Division do not need to be so shabby and passive, they have the ability to carry out large-scale attacks and get what they need. Of course, a very small number of violations of discipline also occur, such as "borrowing" part of the grain from local farmers, which cannot be avoided, all in order to survive.

But the Jewish "partisans" had already changed their name to "Red October", because Melnik could not tolerate a detachment that hid in Tibet and spent most of its time only thinking about survival by being named after the deputy commander - you know, the title of "Guards" of the 53rd Separate Cavalry Division was earned by Marshal Plunyakov for his comrades! As the leader of the guerrilla warfare in the area, the Major General ordered the Jews to change their names with unquestionable orders, and the Jews gave in.

Melnik did not resent, even though he and his troops did not care what the Jews thought: they were given some captured German medicines, and the contingent was formally subsumed into the periphery of the 53rd Division's command. The Jews did not trust themselves, and neither did Melnik and his men—as long as they were nominally under their own command, each taking care of each other, and following a large group of people who were not even stragglers, would reduce the combat effectiveness of the troops. Since the Jews were willing to live on their own, give them a piece of territory, and the existence of which people would give the German fascists a headache anyway.

Sometimes, commanders also need to deal with practical problems in a realistic way.

Now the 53rd Division has a large number of personnel from other branches of the armed forces, as well as the original civilians, and for this reason the guerrillas have long since been reorganized -- the original unit structure was only nominally retained, and in fact the main force was divided into four detachments: the first detachment was directly under the division headquarters, which was its camp, and the strength was also the strongest, and the main force was cavalry.

The second detachment operates in the border areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, and sometimes even enters the territory of Poland for guerrilla operations, and most of them are cavalry.

The third detachment operated in the Pripyat forest district in southern Belarus, mainly infantry.

The conditions in which the detachment was located were the most hostile, and the main area of activity was in the area north of Livve, Korets in Ukraine, because nowhere was the relationship between the partisans and the locals more tense and dangerous than there! There were part of the "partisans" there who were Ukrainian nationalists, fighting for the independence of Ukraine and fighting against the Germans and the USSR at the same time: sometimes with the Germans, sometimes with the Germans, sometimes with the Germans, very chaotic!

Although Melnik is now in the north of Ukraine, Belarus is a few dozen kilometers to the north, and there are no Ukrainian nationalists here - his attitude towards the nationalists is clear: if possible, destroy all assembly groups controlled by nationalists!

Melnik must not be soft on his enemies, any enemy that threatens his own security, and this is what he learned during the civil war! Nationalists, extremely dangerous, must be completely eliminated!

Because of the blockade, there were not many supplies on the side of the main camp, and it was in urgent need of replenishment, and attacking the small German strongholds was the best option: the Acting Military Council member gave two options - Ratno or Kamen-Kasilsky.

The former is an important settlement on the main road leading to Brest in western Ukraine, and the latter is a "guillotine railway station" in southwestern Ukraine. The former was now clearly more important for the Germans, the latter was safer for the attack, and the Germans did not have many of them there.

"Attack Ratno, so that at least it can cooperate with the big counteroffensive in the east." Melnik made the final decision: this "cooperation" is also a bit big, but if Kamen-Kasilsky is chosen as the target, not only will he be able to obtain very few materials, but he will not even be qualified to "cooperate". (To be continued.) )