Late-arriving divisions – how to measure the "rail war"
In September 1943, Soviet partisans set off tens of thousands of explosions on railways. Army Group Center's transport service moved 2029 trains in the same month. Both figures are correct. But one measures effort, the other measures surviving function. The true impact of the war on communications lies between them.
In the previous material of the series - "The Home Front Under Attack: How the Survivability of Railways Was Calculated" — We measured German attacks on the Soviet network by the time it took to stop movement. Now let's turn the same measuring device in the opposite direction: toward the Soviet aviation, partisans and German communications in 1943–1944.
First up, the strong version
The familiar notion of "rail warfare" didn't arise out of thin air. By 1943, the partisan movement had acquired headquarters, radio communications, supplies from the mainland, and the ability to simultaneously strike across vast areas. A scattered sabotage operation turned into an operation. The Germans had to protect thousands of kilometers of track, restore bridges and stations, slow trains, change routes, and remove rails from unimportant sections.
The Soviet side itself articulated its objectives with utmost clarity. Order No. 0042 of July 14, 1943, issued by Panteleimon Ponomarenko, Chief of the Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement, called for massive, widespread attacks to completely disrupt the railways. The destruction of rails was declared the mechanism. The underlying hypothesis was also clearly stated: the enemy was already experiencing a shortage of rails.
The hypothesis was followed by a metric. A typewritten order with Ponomarenko's handwritten signature required that the number of broken rails be recorded for each partisan, detachment, and brigade. It was even proposed to link this to an award. Thus, a clear accounting unit was created: a rail could be seen, blown up, and recorded in a register. For a vast, distributed army in the forests, this was convenient.
This figure was already being debated at the time. Ilya Starinov, deputy chief of the Ukrainian Partisan Headquarters for sabotage, later recalled a report from the Central Directorate of Military Communications. According to the data he cited, there were over four million rails in occupied Ukrainian territory, while fewer than five thousand serviceable locomotives remained in the entire occupied USSR. The Ukrainian mission covered approximately two percent of the available rails and required almost all available explosives.
This is a participant's later recollection, not a document discovered in 1943. Therefore, it doesn't cancel the order with a single stroke. However, the general premise of an irreparable general rail shortage was not confirmed. On certain overloaded routes, shortages did arise: the German service removed one track of a double-track line, dismantled secondary sections and station tracks, in order to restore the main line. A general rail shortage is not visible. A localized one is.
Aviation was assigned a related, yet distinct, target. People's Commissariat of Defense Order No. 0328 of May 4, 1943, declared the suppression of rail and truck transport a permanent mission. Pilots were instructed to first disable locomotives, then destroy the cars. Unlike rails, a locomotive was moving, was more difficult to hit, and much more difficult to replace.
The result was a two-tiered system. A guerrilla attack would rip up the track and create a traffic jam. Air strikes would hit the station, the traction, and the accumulated trains. At best, repairs would come under further attack, and the temporary disruption would become an operational delay.
This is the strong version. It is supported by enemy documents. But it is not supported everywhere and not uniformly.
Tens of thousands of explosions and a working network
After the war, Hermann Teske, Chief of Rail Transport for Army Group Center, compiled a detailed report on the logistics of Operation Citadel and the subsequent retreat. He was no neutral observer. Teske was defending the professional reputation of his own service. However, he worked with transport documents and left behind a rare monthly account of trains, interruptions, and countermeasures.
In May 1943, the Zhlobin-Gomel section was attacked 69 times. According to Teske, the total blockage lasted 156 hours on the single-track line and 222 hours on the double-track line. 35 locomotives and 106 cars were lost. Here, the numbers are more accurate: not just the actual detonation, but the length of time the line was out of service.
In August, the scale of the situation grew. The German service was forced to reduce speed, switch to daytime service only, group trains, run them within sight, and divert them to side lines. Some supply trains were cancelled. One track of the double-track main line was dismantled to repair the other. The network operated, but it paid for it with speed, rails, locomotives, guards, and repair crews.
September yielded even more dramatic results. German records show 255 instances of line closures lasting more than twelve hours, and 18 instances with interruptions lasting more than a day. On the Zhlobin-Babruisk line, guards were posted approximately six meters apart. The explosions continued.
On the night of September 18-19, the original start date for Operation Concert, 130 evacuation trains became stuck near Gomel. Due to weather and delays in cargo delivery, the main attack was postponed until September 25, but some units had already reached the lines and were operating according to the original deadline. The Red Army was a few kilometers away. Partisans were disrupting the lines, Soviet aircraft were striking the junctions, and retreating troops were overloading the stations. Three pressures converged.
But the next massive wave did not arrive immediately. The transport command gained a respite and withdrew all 130 trains. By comparison, in August, Army Group Center's transport system handled 2951 troop and supply trains, while in September it handled 2029, including 713 evacuation trains. This difference cannot be attributed entirely to sabotage: the territory was shrinking, the transport structure was changing, and the retreat was underway. Edgar Howell, who worked with German documents after the war, counted 21,348 successful bombings out of more than 26,000 attempts during the same period. The Germans carried out two successive withdrawals in a controlled manner.
This doesn't make the bombings a waste of explosives. Trains were slower. Supply trains were fewer. Rolling stock wore out and died. Thousands of people guarded and repaired the tracks instead of doing other work. But the newspaper narrative of complete paralysis is stronger than the facts here. In 1943, the German network was seriously ill and yet continued to transport troops.
Less disruption, more results
The most important counterexample didn't come from a major operation. In January and February 1944, partisans operated behind the German 18th Army's lines, between Lake Ilmen and Lake Peipus. Howell counted 1564 explosions—an order of magnitude fewer than the summer rampart behind Army Group Center's lines.
Nevertheless, the lines along which reinforcements were routed at the critical moment were chosen. One of the two most important railway links was paralyzed. The 8th Jäger Division had to cover approximately 180 kilometers in one to two days. Trains stopped, units unloaded ahead of schedule and marched on foot. By January 20, only one battalion had arrived. The division entered the battle piecemeal.
12-I tank The division was stuck for more than a day and missed the campaign's biggest battle. The 58th Infantry Division also failed to arrive in time: it was forced to move across rugged terrain, where its columns were again attacked and ambushed.
The partisans didn't win this operation instead of the Red Army. The German front was thin, reserves were insufficient, and Soviet superiority on the attack axes was decisive. Howell himself acknowledged this. But the bombings prevented the German command from closing the gap that had already opened. They didn't create a weakness on the front—they prevented it from being closed in time.
That's why 1564 explosions can mean more than 21. In one case, the damage occurred to a large network that retained bypasses and repair supplies. In another, it affected several critical lines and a short window, when the division's delay was measured by the outcome of a specific battle.
Tons of bombs also need a denominator
With aviation, the temptation to use a round figure is even stronger. In August 1943, the Soviet Air Force carried out over 7100 sorties to disrupt German airlifts. The official story Reports of destroyed trains, vehicles, and slowed movement were reported. But Valery Gorbach's research adds an inconvenient chronology: the most organized attacks occurred on August 7, when most of the German tank divisions had already approached Kharkov. The air force made little change to their combat composition. The train was hit, but the main objective—preventing the reserves from engaging in combat—was not achieved.
In the summer of 1944, the scale of operations grew. During the Belorussian Operation, long-range aviation carried out 3200 sorties against major railway junctions in ten days. Frontline aviation added hundreds of strikes against stations and trains. However, the number of sorties again reflects the effort, not the outcome.
This is particularly evident in Sergei Kopyl's study of the 7th Long-Range Aviation Corps' raids on Polotsk. Over four nights, the corps carried out 283 sorties and dropped 269,25 tons of bombs on the station. The reports list fires, explosions, and damaged tracks and trains.
But within these same documents, there are discrepancies that the popular retelling usually glosses over. On the night of June 27, bad weather stretched the aircraft formation, and some of the flares targeted the city rather than the station. The analysis noted that the bombing was ineffective and unconcentrated. Subsequent strikes were rated higher, with photographs sometimes confirming hits on tracks. The same wing, the same target, consecutive nights—and different actual results.
Even a direct hit didn't guarantee a long break. During the retreat of Army Group Center, a Soviet bomb destroyed the bridge at the Berezina. German engineers restored it in seven hours, erecting emergency bridges and reopening ferries while the repairs were in progress. The facility was damaged, but its functionality was partially preserved.
Aviation became especially dangerous when operating on a route that had already been halted. A line break, a traffic jam, an overcrowded station, a bridge without a proper detour—then a follow-up attack and the rapid approach of Soviet tanks. There, the repair service lost its main advantage: time.
Before Bagration: a strong blow and a short pause
The night of June 19–20, 1944, saw the largest simultaneous partisan attack on German communications. Estimates vary. A 1951 American brochure, based on the memoirs of German officers, cites 15 attempted and 10,5 successful detonations. An academic history of Germany based on OKH documents cites 9600 explosions and 2500 defused charges. Averageing these estimates is pointless.
The overlapping portion is more important. Double-track lines were blocked for about a day, single-track lines in some places for longer. Minsk-Orsha and Mogilev-Vitebsk were almost paralyzed. A German academic history reports a partial supply outage lasting more than 24 hours.
But even here, the count requires a second half. The following night, German documents record only 892 explosions. There was no significant recurrence after that. By June 27, several main highways remained open or were reopened, and reinforcements were moving through them. The blow was powerful, but repairs took about two days to respond.
According to the Soviet operational chronology, the main offensive began on June 23. Partisan breaks merged with artillery A breakthrough, the dominance of Soviet air power, and the rapid encirclement of the enemy's strongholds. In this situation, even a restored line could soon fall behind Soviet tanks. Transport stability no longer saved the front, which was prohibited from retreating in a timely manner and lacked reserves.
Therefore, "Bagration" cannot be explained by rail bombings. The scale of Soviet superiority, the decisions of the German command, and the actions of the fronts were more important. But the communications campaign also cannot be discounted. It accelerated the already short reaction time, warned the German rear of the attack, and simultaneously prevented them from exploiting this information.
What remains after recounting
The strong version doesn't disappear after verification. The main point remains true: partisans and air forces forced the German transport system to operate more slowly, carefully, and at a higher cost. They destroyed traction and rolling stock, tied up guards, sappers, and railway battalions, and narrowed the available capacity. Sometimes—as in the winter of 1944—they delayed the very divisions that were needed that day.
The price of this resilience fell not only on the German railway and security units. Protecting communications was accompanied by anti-partisan operations, forced recruitment of local residents to repair the lines, and repression against the population. This account was not included in the transport records, but it cannot be excluded from the history of the rear.
John Armstrong proposed a cautious general formula: vital routes were not completely cut off, which slowed traffic, reduced supply lines, and caused rolling stock to wear out. This assessment preserves both halves of the picture—the actual damage and the continued function.
The scale of a statement changes. A blown rail is not the same as a derailed train. A burned-out train is not the same as a late division. A ton of bombs is not the same as an hour's stop. Between action and result, there were always repairs, detour, supplies, and time until the next battle.
After the recalculation, there remains one reliable unit of "rail warfare"—not a rail or even a train. It's a solution that the enemy hasn't had time to implement.
The next article in the series is From the Headquarters to the Army: Automobile Supply in the Offensives of 1944–1945In it, we'll examine what happened after the train was unloaded: how the cargo was transferred to army roads, how many vehicles it required, and where the advance was forced to wait in its rear.
Literature
- Gorbach V. G. Above the Fiery Arc: Soviet Aviation in the Battle of Kursk. Moscow: Yauza; Eksmo, 2007.
- Kopyl S. P. Participation of the 7th Bryansk Long-Range Aviation Corps in the Liberation of Polotsk in the Summer of 1944 // Bulletin of Polotsk State University. Series A. Humanities. - 2019.
- Ponomarenko P.K. Order No. 0042 "On partisan rail warfare on enemy communications", July 14, 1943 // At Victory Headquarters. Book 3. - M., 2020.
- Starinov I. G. Notes of a Saboteur. - M.: Almanac "Vympel", 1997. No. 3.
- Armstrong JA, ed. Soviet Partisans in World War II. —Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.
- Germany and the Second World War. Vol. VIII: The Eastern Front 1943–1944. — Oxford University Press, 2017.
- Howell E.M. The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941–1944. - Washington: Department of the Army, 1956.
- Teske H. Railroad Transportation // Newton SH, ed. Kursk: The German View. — Da Capo Press, 2002.
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