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Soviet Partisans in Summer Dress

During the first 20 years of their rule the Bolsheviks worked so "productively" with their people that after the war, named by Joseph Stalin the "Great Patriotic War", began in June 1941, partisan units behind enemy lines had to be initially created entirely out of members of the NKVD secret police, engaged not so much in sabotaging the communications of the Wehrmacht as in terrorizing the population of the occupied territories, who were no longer Soviet subjects, and thus had lost some value in the eyes of the communist authorities. By the spring of 1942 most of these units have been destroyed - not without the help of the local population. In this situation, Hitler rushed to "help" Stalin out. People in the occupied territories were blatantly told that now service to representatives of the "master race" was their sole occupation. In the same way as under Stalin's rule, the much detested collective farms were realised to be perfectly suitable for the purposes of predatory invaders, while mass executions and forced deportations strengthened a sense of national anger. Then, and only then, did the “club” of the people's war rise in all its menacing and majestic power and hammer at the intruders until the end of the invasion.