ABSTRACT
The immense scale of Soviet defeats in 1941 precluded partisan warfare from having any signifi cant impact on operations that year. The vast Ger man encirclement battles that shattered Soviet defenses left several million Soviet soldiers trapped behind enemy lines. The majority of those isolated troops were captured by the Germans and shipped to POW camps. The remainder, particularly Red Army officers, Zampolits (party political officers), and NKVD personnel, formed the trained (if tem porarily disorganized) nucleus that set the stage for a revival of partisan operations in early 1942.
