At the beginning of the rising, Golian had at his disposal twenty thousand regular soldiers in central and eastern Slovakia; in the western part of the country his appeal had found little echo. There were also some twenty-five hundred partisans; within the next few weeks their number rose to seven thousand. The German advance did not go too well during the first ten days of fighting; but by mid-September the tide turned in its favor, and while operations lasted until late October, the outcome was no longer in doubt. The insurgents received small quantities of arms from both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. But they had expected the arrival of the Soviet army, or at least Czech units fighting with the Soviet army, and neither of these joined them in time to avert the disaster. The most they were given was occasional air support by Czech pilots operating from Soviet airfields. During October the Soviet army tried to force the Dukla Pass, which would have allowed of rapid advance into Slovakia. But they encountered unexpectedly heavy German resistance which they overcame only after the Slovak rising had ended. As the rising collapsed, several thousand Slovak soldiers joined the partisans in the mountains, but they no longer constituted a military danger for the Germans.
The story of the Slovak rising has been written and rewritten several times since the end of the war. Communist historiography in the Stalin period has it that the Slovak rising had been led by the Communists but had failed owing to the incompetence and the intrigues of the bourgeois elements which had been involved. The party line was modified in the 1960s and a collection of documents published which showed fairly accurately what had actually happened in 1944.42 Seen in perspective, it was a case of bungling and bad timing; there was no deliberate attempt to sabotage the rising. The Soviet command could not have known that it would face such determined German resistance in the Carpathian Mountains, and that the advance into Slovakia would take so long. The Communist partisans' decision to launch the insurrection prematurely for political reasons certainly did little good to their own cause. They would have helped the Russians more by intensifying partisan warfare; it is doubtful that this would have provoked a German invasion. In the fighting against the Germans the partisans played only a secondary role; the Slovak army units bore the brunt of the German attack. Had they employed partisan tactics, occupying the mountain heights rather than trying to defend a front of some hundred and thirty miles, they would certainly have held out longer, although it is less guaranteed that they would have been able to resist the Germans for the further seven months until the Soviet troops at last arrived.
Warsaw
The Warsaw rising in 1944 was the one major urban insurrection of World War II. The resolve of the Polish Home Army (AK) to accelerate the struggle against the German occupiers reaches back to late 1943. As the Germans retreated from the eastern regions of Poland, the AK appeared more or less openly in the countryside and in some cities such as Vilna. For the Polish leadership this operation, Burza (the Storm), was of the greatest political significance. For centuries Russia, the occupying power, had been the enemy par excellence, and to the Polish eye the attitude of the Soviet Union differed in no essential respect from that of Tsarist Russia. As the Soviet troops advanced into Poland, the people's fear was that they were come not to liberate the country, but to occupy it. The arrests of Polish Home Army commanders and the execution of some of them by the Russians proved that these fears were not groundless.
The decision to mount the Warsaw rising was rooted m the assumption that the Soviet army would very soon be at the gates of the Polish capital; the Home Army would forestall it, thus creating a political fact. There was no unanimity about this decision; Sosnkowski, the Polish minister of defense, strenuously opposed it; one of his chief reasons was that the insurgents could not count on Allied help. Warsaw was still outside the effective range of Allied aircraft, and the Soviet Union refused to give the Allies landing rights for supply missions to Warsaw. The rising began on 31 July 1944 with an attack of between twenty-five hundred and three thousand Poles against German strongpoints; of the twelve thousand members of the Home Army in Warsaw, only every fourth one was armed.43 The city was defended by five thousand German soldiers who were supplemented inside a week. There was no moment of surprise, the Germans had foreseen what was coming. "The expected rising has started," ran their army report.44 The insurgents' intelligence and communications system was totally inadequate; orders scarcely ever reached the units at the right time. The Germans repelled attacks against almost every strategic point.
In effect, the rising was defeated on the very first day, when the Poles lost one-half of their manpower and failed to seize a single bridge or the airfield. Yet against all odds the struggle continued for another fifty days. Fighting courageously, the Poles received reinforcements from other towns and they still hoped that the Russians would perhaps after all come to their rescue or that the Allies would somehow assist them. The Germans, who for all their more professional equipment had nonetheless too few forces to quell the rising entirely within their predicted day or two, resorted to calling in the most notorious cutthroats such as the Dirlewanger brigade and the Kaminski Russian volunteer units for antipartisan operations. In one Warsaw region alone, Vola, ten thousand civilians were killed. As a result of these atrocities, the Polish will to resist stiffened all the more.
Meanwhile the Russians were camping just outside Warsaw, on the opposite shore of the Vistula. They had not stirred the inhabitants of the Polish capital to rise (as some of the Poles later claimed) in order to watch them being killed by the Germans. But equally, they had not the slightest intention of coming to their aid. Stalin told Churchill and Roosevelt that the whole enterprise was a "contemptible adventure," the Home Army was not an army; it could do no more than hide in the forests, and was quite incapable of challenging the German army. Even earlier, Soviet spokesmen had declared that there was no fighting in Warsaw; it was all an invention by the Polish government in exile in London.
The fight for Warsaw ended in early October. A hundred and fifty thousand Poles were killed in the rising, among them some sixteen thousand members of the Home Army. German casualties were eleven thousand including two thousand killed. The German conditions of surrender were curiously and surprisingly magnanimous; prisoners were not to be shot but to be accorded combatant status. The Germans had of course every incentive to bring the struggle to a quick end for they were aware that the Russians might at any moment resume their offensive. Hitler's instructions were that Warsaw was to be razed to the ground, to "disappear from the face of the earth." Soon after it was all over, the Soviet army entered a ghost city.
It is only too easy in retrospect to conclude that the rising was doomed from the start. Even had the insurrection succeeded on the very first day, and even had the Russians come to its help, a Stalinist regime would have been imposed on Poland. The Poles lost thousands of victims and their capital was destroyed, but even a military victory would not have affected the political outcome; there was no hope of Poland regaining its independence. In purely military terms, however, the rising proved once again that failing the element of surprise and sufficient arms and ammunition, an insurrection cannot succeed. (The insurgents had initially ammunition for five days only.) But it also demonstrated simultaneously that, given equal determination on both sides, it is very hard indeed, short of overwhelming military superiority, for regular army units to reimpose their control on a major city.
Albania
The development of the Albanian resistance movement during the war much resembles that in Yugoslavia. The Communists were the strongest group and they revealed not only greater military ability but also considerable political acumen. They outmaneuvered, isolated and ultimately destroyed their enemies of the Balli Kombe tar. There was in Albania a guerrilla-banditry heritage dating back to the Middle Ages which had never been altogether stamped out. The topography of the country made it all but impossible for any invader to establish effective control unless he had almost unlimited manpower at
his disposal. Since the country was neither rich nor strategically important, it had usually escaped the worst effects of foreign domination.
Italian and German control during the war was always limited to the major towns and lines of communication. In large parts of die country the partisans could operate virtually without hindrance. The Communists were at first undeniably handicapped by their lack of military experience, and they had great difficulty in acquiring arms and supplies. The existence of deep ethnic conflicts made it, in addition, anything but easy for the Albanian Communists (as for their Yugoslav comrades) to establish a unified guerrilla command. Initially they based themselves mainly on the landless peasants among the Tosks; their primary foe, Abas Kupi (the Albanian Mikhailovich), belonged to the Gheg, the rival tribe. Born in the same little town as Skanderbeg, he had fought in World War I with a little guerrilla band behind the Austrian lines.
The Yugoslav Communists already had an active party organization to draw upon when the war broke out, not to mention two decades of political and conspiratorial experience. The Albanian Communist party, on the other hand, came into being only during the war. Its backbone was two to three thousand young urban intellectuals; as in China, they constituted the leadership which mobilized the peasants.45
Julian Amery, who was a British liaison officer with the Albanian resistance, has pointed to the social and political roots of the partisan movement in Albania; a new class of officials and merchants had emerged in the 1920s and 1930s whose children had received a European education, either in Albania or abroad (frequently in Paris).
These young men had no roots in landed property or among the tribes and could find no outlet for their energies within the narrow limits of independent Albania such as the Ottoman Empire had offered earlier generations. They were thus peculiarly susceptible to the influence of revolutionary ideas. In other countries such young men often inclined to Fascism, but in Albania Fascism was the creed of the foreign overlord and, in their search for faith and discipline, they therefore turned to the Communists.46
Operating under the cover of a "National Liberation Movement," founded at a conference in Peza in September 1942, the Communists gradually subverted and took over the other bands — a considerable achievement by any standards. Their contribution to the Allied war effort in 1941-1942 was negligible apart from such projects as cutting telegraph lines in July 1942. Boasts by Albanian spokesmen that they had detained a hundred thousand Italians and seventy thousand Germans can hardly be taken seriously. Some Italian and German troops were kept in Albania as a precaution against an Allied invasion, not to fight the partisans.
The great hour of the Communist partisans came in the summer of 1943 when Italy capitulated to the Allies, and much of Albania, including some of the major cities, passed into the partisans' hands. Paradoxically, they came under much greater pressure toward the end of the war, for whereas the Italians had not been that eager to fight, the Germans, with relatively small forces, launched a counteroffensive in November 1943 which almost proved fatal for the partisans. They were pushed back into the mountains where they had to spend a most uncomfortable winter. But by 1944 Germany was no longer in a position to squander its men and resources in so very minor a combat area; its troops were gradually withdrawn and by November 1944 no more German units were left in the country. Some of the non-Communist guerrillas escaped abroad, others were seized and shot, a few continued their struggle in the mountains. To all intents and purposes the victory of the Communists was complete by late 1944.
The Albanian Communists had received both guidance and support from Yugoslavs during the war, but this did not prevent their turning violently against Tito in later years. In the Khrushchev era their country became the last bastion of Stalinism in Europe. This was not altogether surprising in view of the cultural level of development of the country, but the spirit of defiance cannot perhaps be explained entirely in terms of political, cultural and social backwardness. The case of Albania is yet another to illustrate that a partisan movement coming to power mainly through its own efforts will still remain stubbornly independent and strongly nationalist in inspiration quite irrespective of its internationalist slogans.
Greece
As in other European countries, the resistance against the Axis powers in Greece was split; most of the guerrilla fighting was done, in the event, after the war had ended. Great claims were later made with regard to the Greek contribution to the Allied war effort. But the German War Diary noted on 5 November 1943 that "nationalist and communist bands, altogether some 12-15,000 men, oppose each other; British officers in both camps have been unable to bring about unity of action. So far these operations have been of little significance."47 The Greek Communists (ELAS) were the sturdiest of the partisan movements; their party had been in existence since the early 1920s, and they were among the first to take to the mountains after the Russians had entered the war. Their closest rivals were EDES under General Napolean Zervas, the "National Band" of General Serafis, and EKKA commanded by Colonel Psaros. Serafis was taken prisoner by the Communists and joined them subsequently, Psaros was killed by ELAS. Only the units commanded by Zervas survived the war more or less intact, primarily owing to British support. Zervas and the Communists collaborated from time to time, as in the first major action of guerrilla warfare — the mining of the Gorgopotamos railway viaduct in October 1942 under the direction of a party of British parachutists. But fighting each other was their more frequent occupation.48 The Germans later maintained that even the mining of Gorgopotamos was of no military consequence, because the British assumption that this was the main supply line to the Afrika Korps no longer held good; Rommel had already retreated from El Alamein.
According to Colonel Woodhouse, second in command of the British military mission among the partisans at the time, the value of the guerrilla operations was not inconsiderable in 1943; they created the impression that an Allied landing was about to take place in Greece rather than in Sicily, and thus drew into southern Greece a German armored division which the Germans could not withdraw in time when it was needed elsewhere. But in 1944, again to cite Woodhouse, partisan activities were not important in scale, and this despite the guerrillas having grown substantially in strength and their seizure of great quantities of Italian arms and ammunition.49 The Communists were being more farsighted than their rivals and the British, whose overriding concern was to win the war as quickly as possible. The Communists realized that the decisive contention for power would take place only with the end of the war. Their fundamental task was therefore to increase their strength and, if possible, to destroy their own internal antagonists before the war should be over. Although the Communists fought the Italians and the Germans only on rare occasions, they still were more active than other Greek resistance groups; since the British command appears to have been oblivious of the Communists' postwar ambitions, it seemed only natural to send them more supplies than the other factions.50
As in Albania, partisan life was neither particularly strenuous nor risky under Italian occupation. The situation changed radically after the Italian surrender; during the last months of 1943 the Germans launched an offensive in Thessalia, Epirus and the Peloponnese which involved the partisans for the first time in heavy fighting and compelled them to retreat to distant mountain hideouts. But the overextended German forces were no longer in a position to sustain a prolonged campaign and the partisan movement survived this difficult winter.
The Communists feared, not without reason, that the British would support the restoration of the monarchy after the war; they also suspected, quite mistakenly, that the British intended to destroy Communism. In fact, the British merely insisted on a plebiscite to decide the future of the monarchy; they were quite ready to accept its results. What the British were not willing to accept was a Communist coup; it was this fatal misreading of the situation that led first to the Communist refusal to disarm and subsequently to the insurrection in Athens in December 1944 with its tr
agic consequences.51 Years later, the Communists were to regret their precipitate action; Siantos, who had led the insurrection, was denounced by his colleagues as a traitor, enemy agent and British stool pigeon.52
The partisan experience in Greece during the war reveals a picture similar to that in other European countries. Relatively weak before the war, if with a sounder nucleus than the rest, the Communists emerged as the most dynamic party, the best prepared psychologically and organizationally to operate in illegal conditions. The prestige of the party grew by leaps and bounds during the war; its military contributions to the victory had been small, but it had still done more than the rival groups. Since the Axis forces were not numerous enough to occupy the whole of Greece, the Communists stepped into the vacuum and eventually dominated about half of the mountain regions. During the war years new cadres were trained for the postwar struggle and, by war's end, the Communists had become a powerful military force. For three years they were to engage the Greek army in a bloody and costly guerrilla war.
France
Frenchmen resisted the German occupation by collecting information of military value for the Allies, by acts of sabotage and individual violence. Guerrilla warfare played only a minor role in the French resistance, except in the weeks following the Allied landings in 1944 and again during the liberation of France. On 6 June 1944 when it received its orders to move to Normandy, the 2nd SS Panzer Division (Das Reich) was stationed near Toulouse. Owing to resistance harassment, railway sabotage and RAF attacks, it reached the battle zone only sixteen days later. But the price that had to be paid when it did arrive was high; it was this division which destroyed Oradour-sur-Glane and killed its inhabitants. It has been argued that it was not a very good division anyway and its presence at the front did not make much difference.53 While giving their blessing to the various Maquis, most of which had sprouted spontaneously, both the Gaullist leadership and the Communists had reservations about the military value of large partisan concentrations. These doubts were only too justified. The north of France was, with some exceptions (the Ardennes and the Vosges), unsuitable for guerrilla operations, quite apart from the fact that many German divisions were stationed in this area. Certain sections of the south, on the other hand, were thinly populated and the rough terrain favored the defender. This was true of the Massif Central, for instance, and the Vercors, an Alpine plateau to the south of Grenoble. But while the Maquis were relatively safe in these mountainous areas, their ability to strike from there at the main lines of communication was limited.
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