Anti-partisan operations in World War II

Anti-partisan operations during World War II were counter-insurgency operations against the various partisan resistance movements. During World War II those operations were primarily carried out by the invading and occupying Axis powers, although with changing fortune of the wars, the Soviet Union and the Allied powers also had to deal with partisans.

Resistance movements and corresponding anti-partisan operations by occupying authorities were a common occurrence during the war, particularly in the territories occupied by the Nazi Germany. Specifically on the Eastern Front, the term "partisan" was applied by Nazi Germany's security apparatus to Jews and Communist officials (so-called Jewish Bolsheviks), Red Army stragglers and others. Anti-partisan military operations were often indistinguishable from massacres of innocent civilians.

As most of the war consisted of Axis occupying Allied territories, and not the other way around, much less material exists regarding the Allied anti-partisan operations. In the end, the Axis powers were unable to implement any serious plans for the resistance movement, hence the Allies never needed to devote significant resources to developing and implementing anti partisan policies.

Allies based much of their anti-partisan policies (often untested) on harsh German policies; for example, in early 1945, Allied policy in the light of a potential German uprising on occupied German territories was to shoot captured German partisans on the spot. However, the Allies never considered collective punishment of the local populace to deprive partisans of potential support, as was the German policy.

A separate issue involves anti-Soviet resistance in territories occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of the war. Such resistance groups formed in the Baltic states, Poland (a former Allied country) and Romania. Such groups were active in the first post-war decade, and were eventually destroyed by the Soviets and their local communist puppet state-allies.

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