Operation "Rail War" is the code name of the operation of Soviet partisans carried out from August 3 to September 15, 1943 in the occupied territory of the RSFSR, BSSR and part of the Ukrainian SSR. Contents 1 Purpose of the operation 2 Preparation of the operation ... Wikipedia
Rail warfare is the action of partisans with the aim of disrupting the operation of the enemy’s railway transport and disabling manpower, equipment and materiel transported by rail. Contents 1 The Rail War during the Great ... ... Wikipedia
- (“Rail War”) 1) actions of partisans behind enemy lines with the aim of disrupting the work of his railway. d. transport and disablement of manpower, military equipment and materiel transported by rail. 2) Name of the major operation... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
"Rail War"- RAIL WAR, 1) actions of partisans to disrupt the work of the railway. d. transport and decommissioning of goods transported by railway. d. manpower, equipment and material resources. 2) Code name of a major operation carried out by the Sov. partisans August 3... Great Patriotic War 1941-1945: encyclopedia
Great Patriotic War Date September November 1943 Place Belarusian SSR, Leningrad region, Kalinin region ... Wikipedia
This term has other meanings, see Concert (meanings). Operation “Concert” Great Patriotic War Date September 19 end of October 1943 ... Wikipedia
Main article: Great Patriotic War Operation Barbarossa Great Patriotic War Second World War ... Wikipedia
Great Patriotic War Second World War ... Wikipedia
World War II Great Patriotic War Date September 9 November 1941 Place Moscow region ... Wikipedia
Books
- Second World War. Kursk Bulge. Rail War (DVD), Denikina Anna, Philip Sergey. Second World War. Kursk Bulge. Rail War Documentary film In the history of the Great Patriotic War, the Battle of Kursk is especially noted. It is called the turning point in the war, after which...
- Rail War, Tamonikov A.. Trouble threatens the Russian city of Cherensk. A group of terrorists, financed by a Turkish emissary of Al-Qaeda, is preparing a monstrous terrorist attack - an explosion of a train transporting oil. Explosion…
Rail war - this name usually refers to actions to destroy railway tracks in order to disrupt the operation of enemy transport.
Such actions became most widespread at a time when railway transport was the most widespread and cheapest means of transportation and was actively used by the German conquerors.
Major operations to eliminate railway tracks were the following:
- Operation Rail War - August - September 1943;
- Operation Concert - September - October 1943;
- - June - August 1944.
All these actions were carried out by Soviet partisans who wanted to assist the Red Army in the fight against the invaders.
Operation Rail War
Leningrad, Kalinin, Belarusian and Ukrainian troops took part in this large-scale campaign. The central headquarters of the partisan movement prepared 167 units, for which it determined the objects and goals of action. The units were supplied with demolition equipment, explosives, fire cords and other necessary attributes.
During the first night alone, 42 thousand rails were blown up, and their total number is estimated at 215 thousand. A huge number of Nazi trains were blown up: in Belarus alone, 3 armored trains and 836 trains were destroyed.
Guerrilla actions reduced enemy transport by as much as 40 percent. The only thing the command made a mistake was that it considered that the Germans had too few rails of their own. In fact, there were enough of them to restore the tracks; new rails arrived from Germany and Poland, for which hundreds of locomotives were used.
The “Rail War” thoroughly battered the enemy’s forces:
- it took considerable time and human resources to restore the railways; additional detachments were brought in to protect them;
- The Germans were forced to turn many double-track sections into single-track ones.
Subsequently, the operation made it difficult for the enemy to retreat. Despite the subversive equipment the partisans had, it was not enough. The saboteurs had to get out and look for unconventional ways to fight. Special wedges were used to destroy trains, and the rails were often dismantled by hand.
WWII. Rail war guerrillas photo
Subsequently, the so-called “devil’s kitchens” began to multiply, in which the partisans smelted fat. Mines were made from unexploded shells. Many partisans during the “Rail War” risked their own lives in carrying out the task assigned to them.
17-year-old Nikolai Goyshchik accomplished a real feat by throwing himself directly under an enemy train with a mine in his hands: heavy security prevented him from mining the rails in advance. The news of the feat soon became known throughout Belarus. In addition to the partisans, the civilian population was also actively involved in the fight against enemy forces. And in addition to railways, highways and dirt roads were also attacked.
Various means were used: burning bridges, creating rubble, scattering thorns on the roads to damage the tires of enemy vehicles. It should be borne in mind that the roads in the Soviet Union themselves were in poor condition, especially compared to the German autobahns, and the subversive activities of the partisans further complicated enemy movement across Soviet territory.
On August 3, 1943, Operation Rail War began. About 100 thousand Soviet partisans began to destroy railway communications and rolling stock in the Nazi-occupied territories of the USSR. Sabotage activities made it possible to reduce the volume of enemy railway transportation by 40% by the fall. From September 1943 to August 1944, two more stages of the operation were carried out - “Concert” and “Bagration”. According to experts, the “Rail War” played a fundamentally important role in supporting the offensive of the Soviet troops, which turned the tide of the Great Patriotic War. How Soviet partisans thwarted the plans of the Nazis - in the RT material.
- The Germans inspect a train blown up by partisans.
- RIA Novosti
The turning point
The summer of 1943 became a kind of moment of truth in the Great Patriotic War. The Nazis suffered painful defeats at Moscow and Stalingrad, but the German military machine continued to function, and the Nazis hoped to seize the initiative at Kursk.
Thanks to the coordinated actions of the special services, the Soviet command was well informed about the plans of the Wehrmacht. Therefore, it was not a surprise for Moscow that the Nazis concentrated about 900 thousand manpower in the Kursk area, as well as large volumes of armored vehicles, artillery and aviation. In response, the Soviet side built eight lines of defense, and also put about 1.3 million soldiers and officers on alert.
At the same time, there remained a chance that, having failed to cope with the task of breaking through the Soviet defense, the Nazis would try to transfer reserves to the Eastern Front, which would allow them, if not to achieve an advantage at Kursk, then at least to stop a potential counter-offensive of the Red Army. Each extra regiment redeployed from Europe in the summer and autumn of 1943 could have cost the Soviet troops dearly. In order to make rail transportation across the territory of the USSR as difficult as possible for the Wehrmacht, the command decided to mobilize partisans.
By that time, they already had some experience in attacking enemy railway communications, but in 1943 such attacks began to occur systematically. The idea of massive destruction of enemy trains and thus blocking transport communications was supported by Colonel Ilya Starinov.
Ilya Starinov was born in 1900 in the village of Voinovo, Oryol province. In 1918 he was drafted into the Red Army, was captured, escaped, and was wounded. After recovery, he was transferred to a sapper company of an engineering battalion, as part of which he took part in the defeat of the Whites in the Crimea. This appointment largely determined Starinov’s future fate. In 1921, the young Red Army soldier entered the Voronezh School of Military Railway Technicians and a year later became the head of the demolition team of the 4th Korosten Red Banner Railway Regiment. After training at the Leningrad School of Military Railway Technicians, Starinov was promoted to company commander.
In the 1920-1930s, as a military expert in subversive affairs, he trained specialists in the installation of mine-explosive barriers, and then future saboteurs. In 1933, he was transferred to serve in the Main Intelligence Directorate under the General Staff, and then entered the Military Transport Academy. After graduation, he became deputy military commandant of the Leningrad-Moskovskaya station.
However, Starinov did not like administrative work. In 1936, he was sent to Spain, where he personally prepared large-scale sabotage operations against the Francoists and conducted mine-explosive training for Republican fighters. Upon returning to his homeland, Starinov became the head of the central scientific testing site of the railway troops, and then took part in the Soviet-Finnish war. In 1940, he was appointed to the post of head of the mining and barriers department of the Main Military Engineering Directorate.
- Ilya Starinov
- Wikipedia
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Starinov led the work on constructing barriers and mining, first on the Western and then on the Southwestern Front. Thanks to the “surprises” left by Starinov and his subordinates in Kharkov, a number of high-ranking German officers were eliminated. In November 1941, Ilya Starinov was appointed deputy chief of staff of the engineering troops of the Red Army, and then, having changed several more “sabotage” posts, including command of an engineering special forces brigade, in May 1943 he became deputy chief of the Ukrainian headquarters of the partisan movement.
Over the years of service, Starinov accumulated a wealth of personal experience in sabotage work using explosives. In addition, he summarized and analyzed all the key episodes of the activities of his subordinates. Starinov constantly advocated increasing the supply of mines and explosives to the partisans to organize large-scale sabotage on the railways.
"Rail War"
In the summer of 1943, on the eve of the Battle of Kursk, Starinov’s ideas were accepted for consideration by the country’s top military leadership. However, some adjustments were made to them, which, as Starinov later noted in his memoirs, he perceived negatively. Thus, in the course of organizing sabotage on the railway tracks, it was decided to focus on destroying the rails, while Starinov himself believed that first of all, enemy trains should be derailed and bridges blown up.
In June 1943, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus adopted a resolution “On the destruction of enemy railway communications using the method of rail warfare.” The document proposed inflicting a massive sabotage strike on the enemy.
On July 14, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command decided to conduct Operation Rail War, and on August 3, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement began to implement it. 167 partisan brigades and separate detachments with a total number of about 100 thousand people were involved in the operation. It was carried out on the territory of the BSSR, Ukrainian SSR and the occupied regions of the RSFSR.
On the very first night of the operation, 42 thousand rails were blown up, and during the entire period of its implementation - about 215 thousand out of 11 million located in the occupied territories. In addition, on the lands of Belarus alone, the partisans derailed 836 Nazi trains and 3 armored trains. By the fall, the volume of enemy transportation had decreased by 40%. The capacity of the railways decreased, and the Nazi command had to send additional forces to their defense, which never made it to the front.
“The actions of the partisans seriously complicated the life of the German command. So, in the rear of Army Group Center from August 3 to 6 (at the height of the Soviet... RT) railway communication was completely stopped. General Kurt von Tippelskirch, who at that time headed the 12th Corps of Army Group Center, later recalled that the actions of the partisans were one of the key factors that disrupted the interaction between Army Groups South and Center, especially in Section 2 th Army,” Sergei Belov, scientific secretary of the Victory Museum, candidate of historical sciences, told RT.
"Concert" and "Bagration"
Already on August 11, 1943, Hitler’s headquarters gave the order to create a system of defensive structures in the Dnieper region. On August 26, Soviet troops began implementing a set of interconnected strategic operations known as the Battle of the Dnieper. The Nazis struggled to stop the Soviet advance on the Ukrainian Left Bank and give their engineering units time to prepare new defensive lines on the Dnieper.
The first stage of the "Rail War" ended on September 15. But giving a break to German transport workers was unacceptable. The second stage of the operation was called “Concert”. Already 193 partisan units, numbering about 120 thousand people, took part in it. The rail “Concert” was supposed to begin on September 19, but the delivery of explosives was complicated by bad weather conditions, and the start of the operation was postponed to the 25th.
The “concert” covered almost the entire front, with the exception of Karelia and Crimea. The partisans sought to provide Soviet troops with conditions for an offensive in Belarus and in the battle for the Dnieper. During September-October 1943, the partisans managed to destroy another 150 thousand rails. In Belarus alone they derailed over a thousand trains. However, the operation was then stopped due to a shortage of explosives.
- Demoman places explosives under the rails
- RIA Novosti
The scope of the partisan movement is evidenced by a number of major operations carried out jointly with the Red Army. One of them was called “Rail War”. It was carried out in August-September 1943 on the enemy-occupied territory of the RSFSR, the Belarusian and part of the Ukrainian SSR with the aim of disabling the railway communications of the Nazi troops. This operation was connected with the plans of the Headquarters to complete the defeat of the Nazis on the Kursk Bulge, conduct the Smolensk operation and an offensive to liberate Left Bank Ukraine. The TsShPD also attracted Leningrad, Smolensk, and Oryol partisans to carry out the operation.
The order for Operation Rail War was given on June 14, 1943. Local partisan headquarters and their representatives at the fronts assigned areas and objects of action to each partisan formation. The partisans were supplied with explosives and fuses from the “Mainland”; reconnaissance was actively carried out on the enemy’s railway communications. The operation began on the night of August 3 and continued until mid-September. The fighting behind enemy lines took place over an area of about 1,000 km along the front and 750 km in depth; about 100 thousand partisans took part in them with the active support of the local population.
A powerful blow to the railways in territory occupied by the enemy came as a complete surprise to him. For a long time, the Nazis were unable to counteract the partisans in an organized manner. During Operation Rail War, over 215 thousand railway rails were blown up, many trains with Nazi personnel and military equipment were derailed, railway bridges and station structures were blown up. The capacity of the railways decreased by 35-40%, which thwarted the Nazis' plans to accumulate material resources and concentrate troops, and seriously hampered the regrouping of enemy forces.
The partisan operation codenamed “Concert” was subordinated to the same goals, but already during the upcoming offensive of Soviet troops in the Smolensk, Gomel directions and the battle for the Dnieper. It was carried out from September 19 to November 1, 1943 on the fascist-occupied territory of Belarus Karelia, in the Leningrad and Kalinin regions, in the territory of Latvia, Estonia, Crimea, covering a front of about 900 km and a depth of over 400 km.
It was a planned continuation of Operation Rail War; it was closely connected with the upcoming offensive of Soviet troops in the Smolensk and Gomel directions and during the Battle of the Dnieper. 193 partisan detachments (groups) from Belarus, the Baltic states, Karelia, Crimea, Leningrad and Kalinin regions (over 120 thousand people) were involved in the operation, which were supposed to undermine more than 272 thousand rails.
On the territory of Belarus, more than 90 thousand partisans took part in the operation; they had to blow up 140 thousand rails. The Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement planned to throw 120 tons of explosives and other cargo to the Belarusian partisans, and 20 tons to the Kaliningrad and Leningrad partisans.
Due to the sharp deterioration of weather conditions, by the start of the operation it was possible to transfer only about half of the planned amount of cargo to the partisans, so it was decided to begin mass sabotage on September 25. However, some of the detachments that had already reached the initial lines could not take into account the changes in the timing of the operation and began to implement it on September 19. On the night of September 25, simultaneous actions were carried out according to the plan of Operation Concert on a front of about 900 km (excluding Karelia and Crimea) and in a depth of over 400 km.
Local headquarters of the partisan movement and their representation at the fronts assigned areas and objects of action to each partisan formation. The partisans were provided with explosives and fuses, mine-explosive classes were held at “forest courses”, metal was mined from captured shells and bombs at local “factories”, and fastenings for metal bombs to rails were made in workshops and forges. Reconnaissance was actively carried out on the railways. The operation began on the night of August 3 and continued until mid-September. The actions took place on an area with a length of about 1000 km along the front and 750 km in depth, about 100 thousand partisans took part in them, who were helped by the local population. A powerful blow to the railway. lines was unexpected for the enemy, who for some time could not counteract the partisans in an organized manner. During the operation, about 215 thousand rails were blown up, many trains were derailed, railway bridges and station buildings were blown up. The massive disruption of enemy communications significantly complicated the regrouping of retreating enemy troops, complicated their supply, and thereby contributed to the successful offensive of the Red Army.
The objective of Operation Concert was to disable large sections of railway lines in order to disrupt enemy transport. The bulk of the partisan formations began hostilities on the night of September 25, 1943. During Operation Concert, Belarusian partisans alone blew up about 90 thousand rails, derailed 1041 enemy trains, destroyed 72 railway bridges, and defeated 58 invader garrisons. Operation Concert caused serious difficulties in the transportation of Nazi troops. Railway capacity has decreased by more than three times. This made it very difficult for the Nazi command to maneuver their forces and provided enormous assistance to the advancing Red Army troops.
It is impossible to list here all the partisan heroes whose contribution to the victory over the enemy was so noticeable in the common struggle of the Soviet people over the Nazi invaders. During the war, wonderful partisan command cadres grew up - S.A. Kovpak, A.F. Fedorov, A.N. Saburov, V.A. Begma, N.N. Popudrenko and many others. In terms of its scale, political and military results, the nationwide struggle of the Soviet people in the territories occupied by Hitler's troops acquired the significance of an important military-political factor in the defeat of fascism. The selfless activities of the partisans and underground fighters received national recognition and high praise from the state. More than 300 thousand partisans and underground fighters were awarded orders and medals, including over 127 thousand - the medal “Partisan of the Great Patriotic War” 1st and 2nd degree, 248 were awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
One of the most effective means of fighting Soviet partisans against German occupation forces during the Great Patriotic War was the Rail War. These actions implied disruption of the functioning of the railway communication, which led to difficulties in transporting military equipment and enemy soldiers. The apogee of such actions were the events carried out by Soviet partisans in the period of 3.08. – 09/15/1943, which received the name “Operation” Rail War in history.” This operation was carried out in the occupied territory of modern Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.
The main objective of the operation was to assist Soviet troops in the final defeat of Nazi troops during the Battle of Kursk and the further advancement of the offensive, by preventing the supply of material support to strengthen the defense capability of German troops and transferring the main forces of the Germans to guard the railway.
To carry out Operation Rail War, partisan formations from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were brought in. One of the developers of the operation was P. Ponomarenko, the order to start the operation was given on July 14, 1943. The partisan units were provided with explosives and demolition equipment and other ammunition. In total, more than one hundred thousand partisans were involved in the operation, who launched active activities in the rear of the German armies “South”, “Center” and “North”. Operation "Rail War" stretched along the front for a thousand kilometers and in depth for more than seven hundred and fifty kilometers. The operation itself was carefully developed, each detachment had a specific goal, all actions were planned down to the minute. The massive undermining of rails by Oryol partisans on July 22, 1943 became a kind of “rehearsal” for the operation.
From the first day of the operation, the partisans launched extensive subversive activities. At the same time, explosions occurred on many sections of the railway, and the Germans, who did not expect such large-scale actions, began to restore the railway only three days later. In the first 24 hours alone, more than forty thousand rails were destroyed. The success of the operation was colossal; during the period July-September 1943, the partisans managed to destroy 1,529 railway trains and 115 bridges. The partisans in Belarus alone managed to blow up three enemy armored trains and destroy more than 810 German trains. The partisans were able to reduce the capacity of the railway pavement by 71%. Some sections of the railway were completely destroyed, so the occupiers could now transport cargo from Kovel to Berdichev only through Odessa. The partisans managed to permanently paralyze railway traffic at such important junction stations as Kovel, Sarnensk, Shepetovka, Zdolbunovsk. In total, the operation plan provided for the destruction of 230 thousand rails, that is, 1330 km of railway tracks in one track; the plan was carried out almost 100%.
The results of the operation were a sharp reduction in the supply of material and manpower to the enemy. To at least partially restore the destroyed railway surface, German troops had to convert double-track sections into single-track sections and weld damaged rails. Rails from Germany and Poland were urgently brought to the occupied territories, and this in turn increased the tension of transportation. To guard the roads, the Germans had to deploy additional forces, which made it difficult to regroup and supply the retreating troops.
A great contribution to the vision of Operation Rail War was made by such Soviet partisans as S. Kovpak, A. Fedorov, F. Lysenko, V. Yaremchuk, and five more demolition men were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the operation.
