The Unknown War S01E10 - The Partisans

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, he captured Moscow; but Russia's men and women, banding together behind his lines, turned the French invaders' lives into a living hell. The same thing happened in 1941 when Hitler's legions smashed into the Soviet Union and vast areas of Russian land fell into their hands. Like mushrooms after a rain, a people's underground sprang up to attack Nazi formations, to blow up their ammunition dumps and to wreck their trains. The partisans operated everywhere -- in the marshes and deep forests of Belorussia, in Odessa, where they set up an underground command post in the city's catacombs. On the shores of the Black Sea, a group of young people carried out operations against the Nazi invaders until the last member of the partisan band had been captured or shot. Nowhere were the Germans safe from the attacks of the Soviet partisans.