Stalins Commandos

In this book, Alexander Gogun looks at the forces operating in Ukraine during World War II. The Nazi atrocities were often matched by partisan brutality. The author examines the indiscriminate use of scorched earth tactics by the partisans, the destruction of their own vollages, partisan-generated Nazi reprisals agaoinst civilians, and the daily incidents of robbery, drunkenness, rape and bloddy internal conflicts that were reported to be widespread amopngst the red opartisans, Gogun also analyzes allegations of the use of bacteriological waepons and ecen instances of cannibalism. He shows that all these practices were not a product of the culture of warfare nor a spontaneous 'people's response' to the unremitting brutality of Nazi rule but a specific feature of Stalin's total war strategy.