What does Operation Concert mean? The largest operations carried out during the partisan movement

Partisan operation "Concert"

Partisans - people who voluntarily fight as part of armed organized partisan forces in the territory occupied by the enemy - sabotage brigades behind enemy lines. Russian partisans terrified the invaders at all times. During the Great Patriotic War, the mass resistance of the population to the Nazis, the combat and sabotage actions of the partisans were of great importance: the partisans destroyed large Nazi garrisons, mined the rails and undermined the bridges and warehouses of the Nazis.

The year 1943 went down in the history of partisan struggle as the year of massive strikes against the railway communications of the Nazi troops.

The partisans actively participated in major operations on enemy communications - "Rail War" and "Concert".
"Concert" is the code name for the operation of the Soviet partisans in the fall of 1943.
193 partisan formations (brigades and detached detachments, in total over 120 thousand people) participated in the operation. The leadership was carried out by the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement.
The task of the operation "Concert" was to put out of action large sections of the railway tracks in order to disrupt the enemy's military transportation.
193 partisan formations participated in the "Concert" - in total over 120 thousand people! The leadership was carried out by the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement.

Each partisan formation received a specific combat mission, which included blowing up rails, organizing the collapse of enemy military echelons, destroying road structures, disabling communications, water supply systems, etc.
Detailed plans for combat operations were developed and mass training of partisans in the production of subversive work was organized.

Partisan formations in the fall of 1943 literally fell upon the enemy's railway communications.
The bulk of the partisan formations began hostilities on the night of September 25, having defeated the enemy's guards and having mastered the railway lines, they proceeded to massive destruction and mining of the railway track.
The command of the German troops, shocked by the scale of the partisan operation "Concert", made tremendous efforts to restore traffic on the railways.
The Nazis hastily transferred new railway reconstruction battalions from Germany and even from the front line, and the local population was driven to repair work. Rails and sleepers were delivered from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, but the partisans again and again undermined the repaired sections.

During the operation "Concert" in only one Belarusian direction, the partisans blew up about 90 thousand rails, derailedmore than 1000 enemy echelons destroyed 72 railway bridges. All this caused a serious complication in the transport of Nazi troops.

and Kalinin region

Operation goals achieved

Operation "Concert"- the code name of the operation of the Soviet partisans, carried out from September 19 to the end of October of the year, the continuation of Operation Rail War.

Geography of the operation

The operation involved 193 partisan formations (over 120 thousand people) from Belarus, the Baltic States, Karelia, Crimea, Leningrad and Kalinin regions. The length of the operation along the front is about 900 kilometers (excluding Karelia and the Crimea) and over 400 kilometers in depth. This operation was closely connected with the upcoming offensive of the Soviet troops in the Smolensk and Gomel directions and the Battle of the Dnieper. The leadership was carried out by the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement.

The purpose of the operation

Disabling large sections of railway tracks in order to disrupt enemy military transportation.

Operation preparation

Each partisan formation received a specific combat mission. Mass training of partisans in mine-subversive work was established. Due to the worsening weather conditions, Soviet aviation delivered only 50 percent of the planned cargo to the partisans by September 19, so the start date of the operation was postponed to September 25.

Operation progress

Part of the partisan brigades reached their starting lines and, on the night of September 19, struck at the railway communications. The bulk of the partisan formations began hostilities on the night of September 25 . The fascist command made efforts to restore traffic by rail: new railway restoration battalions were transferred to Belarus, and the local population was driven to repair work. Rails and sleepers were delivered from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, but the partisans again disabled the repaired sections. The operation was abandoned due to lack of explosives.

Operation results

During the operation, about 150 thousand rails were blown up (out of 11 million that were in the occupied territory on January 1, 1943). Only Belarusian partisans blew up about 90 thousand rails, 1041 echelons, blew up 72 railway bridges, defeated 58 garrisons. As a result of partisan actions, the capacity of the railways decreased by 35-40 percent, which greatly hampered the regrouping of fascist troops and provided great assistance to the advancing Red Army.

As noted by the famous Soviet saboteur Ilya Starinov, switching the main efforts of the partisans to the destruction of rails with a lack of explosives (due to which the winter stage of the operation had to be canceled) led to a reduction in train crashes and ultimately contributed to an increase in road capacity, but made it difficult for the Red Army to restore them in the course of the offensive.

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Notes

Literature

• "Concert" // / ed. M. M. Kozlova. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1985. - S. 367. - 500,000 copies.
• Rail war // Railway transport: Encyclopedia / Ch. ed. N. S. Konarev. - M .: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 1994. - S. 363. - ISBN 5-85270-115-7.

An excerpt characterizing Operation "Concert"

“Concert” is the code name for the operation of Soviet partisans on September 19 - November 1, 1943. The operation was carried out on the territory of Belarus, Karelia, Leningrad and Kalinin regions, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Crimea, occupied by Nazi troops, covering about 900 km along the front ( excluding Karelia and Crimea) and to a depth of over 400 km. It was closely connected with the upcoming offensive of the Soviet troops in the Smolensk and Gomel directions and the battle for the Dnieper. 193 partisan formations (brigades and separate detachments, in total over 120 thousand people) participated in the operation; leadership was carried out by the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement. The task of the operation "Concert" was to put out of action large sections of the railway tracks in order to disrupt the enemy's military transportation. Based on the general plan of the operation, each partisan formation received a specific combat mission, which included blowing up rails, organizing the collapse of enemy military echelons, destroying road structures, disabling communications, water supply systems, etc. Detailed plans for combat operations were developed and a massive training of personnel in the production of demolition work.

The success of the partisans in the rear, on the communications of the Nazi armies depended on their timely supply with the necessary amount of ammunition and subversive means. The State Defense Committee entrusted this work, in addition to Aeroflot and the Air Force, to long-range aviation. The commander of the ADD allocated three air regiments flying on Li - 2 to provide the partisans.

Since January 1943, by order of the commander of the ADD, all data on communications with partisans and signals that were supposed to indicate partisan sites converged to the headquarters of the 101st - GO aviation regiment (chief of staff, Major A. M. Verkhozin). Here, in the 101st regiment, there were representatives of all the republican headquarters of the partisan movement with their loading teams and cargo prepared for landing.

At that time, most partisan formations and many large detachments already had radio stations, with the help of which they maintained contact with the mainland. But these radio stations were, unfortunately, shortwave and low power. We could not search for partisan detachments lost in the forests with their help: the radio compasses and radio semi-compasses installed on the aircraft received signals only in the wavelength range of 200 - 2000 meters. Therefore, partisan detachments and formations used only light signaling. Fires lit in a predetermined order were arranged in the form of triangles, squares, rhombuses, envelopes or in a line - three, four, five, sometimes more. Bonfires were often supplemented with rockets, "bat" lanterns, and bonfires laid out away from the main identification signals. Additional signals were needed: the enemy carried out intensified reconnaissance of partisan areas from the air and often discovered the detachment's sites by light signals. German pilots either bombed these points or reported to their command post about their location and appearance. And the Germans laid out the same signals not far from the partisan ones - in order to disorientate our pilots. Sometimes they succeeded. Having found several identical light signals in a given area, our pilots were forced to return to their airfield without completing their tasks. To prevent this from happening, the partisans reported in advance on additional signals or changes in the location of the main fires. As soon as partisan observation posts saw their aircraft approaching the landing site, they lit or extinguished one of the main fires or gave the agreed signal with rockets. Simple additions to the signaling system made it impossible for the enemy to mislead our aircraft.

Due to the deterioration of meteorological conditions, by September 19, Soviet aviation delivered only 50% of the planned combat cargo to the partisans, so the start date of the operation was postponed to September 25. However, part of the partisan brigades had already left their base areas for their starting lines and, on the night of September 19, struck at enemy communications. The bulk of the partisan formations began hostilities on the night of September 25th. Having defeated the enemy's guards and having mastered the railway lines, they proceeded to massive destruction and mining of the railway track. The fascist German command made efforts to restore railway traffic: new railway restoration battalions were transferred to Belarus, the local population was driven to repair work, rails and sleepers were delivered from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany. But the partisans again undermined the repaired areas. During the "Concert" only Belarusian partisans blew up about 90 thousand rails, derailed 1041 enemy echelons, destroyed 72 railroads. bridge, defeated 58 enemy garrisons, killed and wounded over 53 thousand Nazis, Operation Concert caused serious complications in the transportation of Nazi troops; the capacity of railways decreased by 35-40%. This made it much more difficult for the fascist German command to carry out maneuvers on its own and provided great assistance to the advancing Soviet troops. Operation "Concert" intensified the struggle of the Soviet people against the fascist invaders in the occupied territory; in its course, the influx of the local population into partisan detachments increased.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Belarus in June 1943 adopted a resolution "On the destruction of the enemy's railway communications by the method of rail war", which proposed a plan for the destruction of rails by a simultaneous mass strike, thereby making it impossible for the enemy to quickly restore the railway tracks. The rail war was supposed to be accompanied by train wrecks, bridge explosions and destruction of station buildings. Partisan formations fighting in the occupied territory widely used elements of rail warfare, but the actions of partisans in the following operations had the most significant impact on the course of the war:

1. Operation Rail War- a major operation carried out by Soviet partisans from August 3 to September 15, 1943 in the occupied territory of the RSFSR (Leningrad, Smolensk, Kalinin, Orel regions), the BSSR and part of the Ukrainian SSR to assist the Red Army in completing the defeat of the Nazi troops in the Battle of Kursk 1943 of the year and the development of a general offensive in the Belgorod-Kharkov direction. Only in Belarus, railway traffic was paralyzed for 15-30 days. Echelons with troops and military equipment, urgently heading towards Orel, Belgorod and Kharkov, got stuck on the way and were often destroyed by partisans. Enemy traffic was reduced by 35-40%. The invaders suffered huge losses in locomotives, wagons, rails, sleepers, manpower.

2. Operation "Concert"- the operation of the Soviet partisans, which was carried out from September 19 to the end of October 1943, is known as the second stage of the Rail War operation and coincided with the autumn offensive of the Red Army. During this operation, tens of thousands of rails were blown up, more than 1000 echelons were derailed, 72 railway bridges were destroyed, 30 thousand German soldiers and officers were killed.

3. Operation "Bagration"- a large-scale Soviet offensive of June 23-August 29, 1944, named after the Russian commander of the Patriotic War of 1812, Pyotr Bagration. Known as the third stage of the "rail war", during which the most important railway lines were completely disabled, the enemy's transportation on all roads was partially paralyzed.

For the first time in the history of wars, according to a single plan, large groupings of partisan forces simultaneously attacked the enemy’s railway communications over a vast territory stretching about 1000 km along the front and up to 750 km in depth (in Operation Concert, the front of simultaneous partisan actions exceeded 3 thousand km). The struggle of the guerrillas and the underground on the enemy's communications, in its scope and results, has outgrown the tactical framework and acquired operational-strategic significance.

The term "Rail War" later extended to all other partisan operations associated with the destruction of the railway track, including those committed before August 1943.

False partisans

The partisan movement organized during the Great Patriotic War did not give the Nazis peace either day or night. The partisans derailed trains with weapons, blew up fuel depots, and often supported the operations of the regular Red Army with fire. To fight them, the Nazis created detachments of pseudo-partisans, whose tasks included conducting an armed struggle against the partisans and compromising them before the population: violence, robbery, robbery.

The detachments were formed from gendarmes and regular units of the SD security service, as well as from reliable, proven and knowledgeable in the affairs of the "natives" of local policemen. They were dressed in the uniform of the Red Army, and a well-trained Gestapo agent was placed at the head of each detachment.

In counter-partisan schools, the Nazis taught their agents a special subject: “Measures to embitter the population against partisans,” which recommended, under the guise of partisans, to rob and set fire to villages, kill citizens, rape women, senseless slaughter of livestock, deprive peasants of the opportunity to carry out agricultural work, looting and etc. In order to reduce the combat activity of the partisans or distract them from the most effective methods of struggle, the invaders published and distributed false appeals to the partisans,

False partisan detachments conducted minor combat activities in order to gain the trust of the locals and attract into their ranks those who would like to fight the invaders. Then the patriots were killed, and the local population was intimidated. Arranging ambushes, pseudo-partisans destroyed lone fighters and small partisan groups.

The creation of false partisan detachments began in the autumn of 1941 and continued until the Nazis left the territory of the Soviet Union.

By the end of the war, the Germans changed tactics. Instead of destroying individual detachments, they decided to decompose partisan formations from the inside. This tactic was invented by an Abwehr officer, a teacher at a sabotage school in Vitebsk, Max Buchholz. The Nazis began to create large detachments, which were staffed with well-trained saboteurs with elaborate legends. The units had to enter into the confidence of the locals, find the partisans, unite with them and destroy them from the inside.

However, all pseudo-partisan and sabotage detachments did not last long. They were identified and destroyed.

Output

The struggle of partisans behind enemy lines was a vivid manifestation of Soviet patriotism and devotion to their Fatherland. The significance of the partisan movement in the Great Patriotic War was determined by the great assistance it rendered to regular troops in achieving victory over the enemy. In this war, the concept of "partisan movement" as spontaneous and independent actions of individual groups and detachments disappeared. The leadership of the partisan movement was centralized to a strategic extent. Unified leadership of the combat activities of partisans with stable communication between the headquarters of the partisan movement and partisan formations, their interaction with the Soviet Army on a tactical, operational and strategic scale, the conduct of major operations by partisan groups, the widespread use of modern mine-blasting equipment, the systematic training of partisan personnel, the supply of partisans from the rear of the country, the evacuation of the sick and wounded from the enemy rear to the "mainland", the actions of Soviet partisans outside the USSR - these and other features of the partisan movement in the Great Patriotic War greatly enriched the theory and practice of partisan struggle as one of the forms of armed struggle.

German generals participating in the war in the book “Results of the Second World War” write: “The history of wars does not know a single example when the partisan movement would play the same big role that it played in the last world war. In its size, it was something completely new in the art of war. Due to the colossal impact that it had on the front-line troops and supply problems, the work of the rear and administration in the occupied areas, it became part of the concept of total war. The partisan movement ... influenced the character of the entire Second World War.

Bibliography

1. Bychkov L.N. Partisan movement during the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945: (Short essay) / Bychkov L. N. - Moscow: Thought, 1965. - 454 p.

2. Antonov V.S. Women's fate of intelligence 2012 - Moscow: Veche, 2012. - 337 p.

3. Ponomarenko P.K. National struggle in the rear of the Nazi invaders 1941-1944. Moscow: Nauka, 1986. - 484 p.

Geography of the operation

The operation involved 193 partisan formations (over 120 thousand people) from Belarus, the Baltic States, Karelia, Crimea, Leningrad and Kalinin regions. The length of the operation along the front is about 900 kilometers (excluding Karelia and the Crimea) and over 400 kilometers in depth. This operation was closely connected with the upcoming offensive of the Soviet troops in the Smolensk and Gomel directions and the Battle of the Dnieper. The leadership was carried out by the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement.

The purpose of the operation

Disabling large sections of railway tracks in order to disrupt enemy military transportation.

Operation preparation

Each partisan formation received a specific combat mission. Mass training of partisans in mine-subversive work was established. Due to the worsening weather conditions, Soviet aviation delivered only 50 percent of the planned cargo to the partisans by September 19, so the start date of the operation was postponed to September 25.

Operation progress

Part of the partisan brigades reached their starting lines and, on the night of September 19, struck at the railway communications. The bulk of the partisan formations began hostilities on the night of September 25 . The fascist command made efforts to restore traffic by rail: new railway restoration battalions were transferred to Belarus, and the local population was driven to repair work. Rails and sleepers were delivered from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, but the partisans again disabled the repaired sections. The operation was abandoned due to lack of explosives.

Operation results

During the operation, about 150 thousand rails were blown up. Only Belarusian partisans blew up about 90 thousand rails, 1041 echelons, blew up 72 railway bridges, defeated 58 garrisons. As a result of the actions of the partisans, the capacity of the railways decreased by 35-40 percent, which greatly hampered the regrouping of fascist troops and provided great assistance to the advancing Soviet Army.

Literature

• Great Patriotic War 1941-1945: Encyclopedia.- / Ch. ed. MM. Kozlov. -M.: Sov. Encyclopedia, 1985. -832 p. with illustration, 35 sheets. ill.
• Rail transport: Encyclopedia / Ch. ed. N.S. Konarev. -M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 1994. ISBN 5-85270-115-7

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• Road to Berlin. "From victory to victory", Isaev Alexey Valerievich. Night of January 12, 1945. The Red Army is ready to launch a decisive offensive on the Vistula. The noise of engines in the last regroupings on the Sandomierz bridgehead is masked by loud music through ...