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Lastdingo
06-15-2007, 05:48 PM
http://akmilitaergeschichte.de/Aktuell/2007/2007_partisanwarfare.htm



Partisan and anti-Partisan Warfare in German-occupied Europe, 1939-1945

Glasgow Caledonian University, United Kingdom, 21st-22nd June, 2007

In an age of total warfare, as belligerents have sought increasingly not just to defeat their enemies militarily, but also to subjugate and exploit conquered territory, partisan and anti-partisan warfare have assumed increasing importance. They are important not just because they can influence the outcomes of wars, but also because they impact upon civilian populations and blur the distinction between combatant and non-combatant, raising complex moral questions for those involved. Both effective military measures and securing the population's co-operation, or at least acquiescence, are crucial to success in partisan warfare. This conference will examine the forces that shaped the conduct of partisan warfare from the perspective of both occupying forces and partisans in German-occupied Europe during the Second World War.

The forms which both partisan and German anti-partisan warfare took were shaped not just by the protagonists' military tactics and strategic aims, but by further factors also. These included ideology; the changing, increasingly destructive nature of twentieth-century warfare; the conditions in the field which both partisan and anti-partisan forces faced; each side's economic needs; cultural and psychological factors, and the political structures of the Third Reich and the occupied countries. Resulting activities on the part of occupation forces and partisans ranged from the Germans' brutal mass reprisals and the partisans' use of terror measures to compel popular co-operation, to more conciliatory attempts to win 'hearts and minds.'

The conference is an opportunity to present and discuss new research in this field. Papers should address as their theme one or more of the range of factors, and not solely military ones, that shaped conduct in partisan and/or anti-partisan warfare in German-occupied Europe. Papers will be presented as part of one of the following conference panels:

1. The pre-war historical development of partisan and anti-partisan doctrine;
2. German and Allied policies at the level of high command;
3. Regional case studies: France and north-western Europe;
4. Regional case studies: the Soviet Union and eastern Europe;
5. Regional case studies: the Balkans and Italy.