It's 1943, I'm a young male speaking with my Army recruiter in the Soviet Union. He sends me to a "partisan" unit - What were these?

by [deleted]

[deleted]

BRIStoneman

That's not really how partisans work. Soviet Partisans have more in common with, say, the French Resistance than a conventional Red Army unit. Typically made up of civilians caught in Nazi-occupied territory who organised themselves to fight a guerilla war against the German forces, partisan forces operated largely independently of the regular Red Army. In some cases, the Soviet military was able to supply these units with equipment and even some specialists to help train them, and in others, Partisan groups were themselves formed around Red Army units who had been caught behind enemy lines, but for the most part, they consisted of Russian civilians armed with whatever weapons they had available, and later what they were able to scavenge from German dead.

The Red Army did fight alongside partisan units as it advanced - after all, they would have had useful intelligence on enemy dispositions, useful locations, topography and such - but after an area was liberated, many Partisan units were officially disbanded and, in many cases, their fighters enrolled into the regular Red Army.