In central and eastern Europe the resistance was more immediately
and more resolutely committed to direct action, but it
was also disabled by internal conflict which sometimes verged on
civil war. During the first year of the war, while Soviet Russia was
enduring almost continuous defeat, large units were separated
from the main army but were not captured. The government and
institutions of the Soviet regime were swept away. Dispersed
troups had to be reformed and the Communist Party restored.
After this band of several thousand partisans attacked behind
the immense German front. They manoeuvred in areas which
were too vast for thorough-going occupation. Their role was to
cut the German supply lines, which had been overstretched, and
to divert a large number of German divisions from the principal
front, while the Red Army was preparing a counter-offensive.
These operations were undertaken in an atmosphere ofpatriotic
exultation. They marked the fulfilment of the Bolshevik regime's
integration with traditional Russia.
President Benes of Czechoslovakia skilfully preserved national
unity, by reaching an agreement with Soviet Russia outside
and with the communists inside his country. The Slovak
insurrection in summer 1944 was to be a great triumph in the
European resistance movements.
National unity could not be achieved in Poland, Yugoslavia or
Greece, where the exiled governments and their partisans at
home quarrelled with the communist partisan groups. In Poland,
rhe memory of the Russo- German Pact and the Russian and
German occupation which followed it drained the Poles' pro-
Russian sympathies, especially those who had joined the government
in exile. Efforts at a reconciliation bogged down when the
corpses of several thousand Polish officers were discovered at
Katyn. Thereafter Stalin gave support exclusively to the communist
partisans. In August 1944 he even allowed the Germans
to crush the Warsaw uprising. Tito, the leader of the partisans in
Yugoslavia, was underpinned by the English, not the Russians.
He fought against the Croat and Serbian collaborators and the
'Cetnici' resistance of Mihailovic, as well as the occupying forces.
The partisans readiness to fight gave them an edge. Their
struggle moulded Yugoslavia after the war. As in Soviet Russia,
Yugoslav resistance operations constituted a separate front. In
Greece communists fought constantly and bitterly with anticommunists.
The British wished to assure their control of the
Mediterranean and intervened against the communists, whom
Stalin, by an agreement with Churchill, allowed the British to
crush.
While the Axis powers were at war, opposition to the regime
was regarded as high treason. This policy produced moral conflicts
which paralysed the exiled Germans for a long time. Although
the opposition inside Germanv had largely been herded
into concentration camps, some sabotage work was accomplished
and information was collected on behalf of the Russians.
On 20 July 1944, however, when defeat was imminent, a handful
of German military chiefs tried to assassinate Hitler and to seize
power. They failed and paid for their desperate attempt with
their lives.
Anti-fascist emigration from Italy was larger and more re
solute, but ii was fragmented. As Italian defeats mounted, the
anti-fascists returned and the various factions sensibly joined
forces. Bui Mussolini was finally toppled without their intervention.
The formation oi the Liberation Committees after Mussolini's
fall gave them a more active role to play. In reconquered
Italy, they tried to persuade the Allies to turn their backs on King
Victor Emanuel, whom they held responsible for fascism. In the
parts of Italy under German occupation, the Committees organized
partisan groups. They fought in the same conditions as
the French and Yugoslav partisans and sometimes linked operations
with them.
World History
