Partisans Were Unsung Heroes of World War II

If World War II partisans and their stories were as widely read as Anne Frank’s Diary, or watched as often as movies like Schindler’s List, they would not be unsung heroes. This came to mind when Poland commemorated its 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a revolt against Nazi Germany. Although it ended in defeat, it was one of many armed revolts which caused enormous damage to the German war machine. The Allies like to think of themselves as heroic saviors. But partisan fighters contradict this notion. “For the towns and villages burnt down, for the death of our women and children, for the torture, violence and humiliation wreaked on my people, I swear to take revenge…,” was sworn by tens of thousands of Partisans throughout Nazi occupied Europe and Russia.

In 1941, German warplanes bombed Belgrade killing almost 20,000 civilians. They raided Yugoslav airfields, destroying most of the country’s 600 combat aircraft. At the same time, twenty-four German army divisions and 1,200 tanks drove into Greece. But it was not the United States nor its allies that liberated the Balkans. Instead, elite Nazi forces and Hitler’s Storm Troopers were defeated by an unexpected opponent, unforeseen powers, that unfortunately still remain hidden from Western history texts to this day. Along with savage terrains and mountainous strongholds in Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Greece, Lithuania, Russia, and Albania, moral indignation and suicidal vengeance made it improbable for Nazi Germany to completely pacify these regions.

Yugoslavia’s partisans liberated their country with little aid from the Allies. From mountain strongholds, Josip Broz’s, “Tito”, National Liberation Army wreaked havoc on German forces. Like other partisan forces across Europe, they blew up railways, ambushed German forces, and destroyed major military installations. German and Italian forces were nearly driven into the Adriatic Sea. Comrade Tito and his partisan divisions resisted five major German offensives. By the end of the war, his forces numbered 250,000. Collective memory, liberation, and retaliation can sometimes be more powerful than conventional armies. partisan battles and disruptions were incalculable. Since history is written and dominated by the victors, they will never will be fully credited.

Yet even as the Ukrainian and Estonian Fronts were liberating their nations through armed rebellions, in Greece and Albania the Germans found themselves being cut off from the Third Reich. Being slowly strangled to death, many German divisions were either ordered or had to retreat. The courage and military successes of thousands of Partisan groups encouraged more and more European nations to fight for their own liberation and then declared war against the Nazi regime. The Greek National Liberation People’s Liberation Army harassed retreating German forces, as did other armed groups, inflicting heavy damage and casualties. In Albania, guerillas swooped down from mountain strongholds and soundly defeated Germany’s elite XXI Mountain Corps.

Proportionally, Poland’s population suffered the most. More Poles were killed than Russians, Hungarians, Romanians, the French, the British, Americans, Germans, even Jews. Having been attacked and occupied in 1939, the partisan resistant movement and Polish Home Army remained the largest underground force in all of Nazi-occupied Europe. Along with disrupting supplies to both Eastern and Western Fronts, they admirably fought while providing much needed information for the Allied Powers. Dozens of other Polish armed groups, all totaling 650,000[1], were able to tie up millions of German troops while expending their supplies and ammunition. It will never be knows how many Allied soldiers were saved for their heroic efforts.

Heroic partisan fighters and victories were many during World War II. Many have never been named or recorded, nor have they been properly recognized for their roles in helping to defeat the Third Reich. For every Partisan hanged or gunned down by the Nazi war machine, there were a thousand more that swore revenge. When Paris celebrated the end of Nazi occupation, the first tanks and armored cars that entered the city did not have American or British names written on them. The names scrawled in white paint on those armored cars and tanks were: “Madrid,” “Don Quixote,” “Guadalajara,” “Ebro,” and “Teruel.”[2] The first liberators of Paris were Spanish Republicans, along with other liberation fighters that from around the world that had joined them.

If history is not remembered completely or correctly, it is then remembered in bias fragments, even incorrectly. It too can become just another ideological trap filled with lethal and misguided justifications. Was the U.S. the heroic savior of World War II? Millions of Partisan fighters challenge this notion. Neither was America the heroic savior after world after WWII. Is the same true today? Heroic pretenders and messianic complexes can be extremely deceptive, ever so lethal. Political and military imbalances, including collectivized grandiose ambitions to purge the world of what a society deems as impediments, can be other- and self-destructive. The Third Reich discovered this, as did past empires. Present and future empires will do the same.

(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John‘s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for "World News." You can read more of Dallas’ writings at his website and World News.)

Polish Home Army, Polish Resistance Movement,
WW II Partisans.
Galeano, Eduardo. Children of the Days. New York, New York: Nation Books, 2013., p. 250.