GULAG Operation
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (November 2008) |
GULAG Operation (translated from a news article on "Desant na GULAG"), was a German military operation in which German and Soviet anti-communist troops were to create an anti-Soviet resistance movement in Siberia during World War II, by liberating and conscripting prisoners of the Soviet GULAG system.
Origins
The plan was designed in mid-1942 by Soviet POWs in German captivity in the Hammelburg POW camp, primarily by an NKVD officer, Brigade Commander Ivan Georgievich Bessonov,[1][2] and a Red Army officer, Colonel Mikhael Meandrov.[3] The plan, part of the German efforts to create anti-communist resistance behind Soviet lines, called for a naval and air invasion of Siberia by allied German and anti-Soviet Red Army forces, targeting the GULAG penal system camps, recruiting more anti-Soviet forces from the prisoners, and thus opening a second front in the war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union.[1][2][3]
The plan was analyzed and tentatively approved by the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA), and steps were taken towards implementing it.[1] About 150 Soviet POWs were conscripted into the units that were to be used in the operation: two assault groups of 50-55 people each, the group of the radio operators of 20-25 people and the support (medical) female group of 20 people.[3]
The plan called for the creation of an insurgent activity in the extensive region from the Northern Dvina River to the Yenisey and from the extreme north to the Trans-Siberian Railway. The region of the planned actions was divided into three operational zones: Northern (right shore of the flow of northern Dvina), central (near the Pechora River) and eastern (from the Ob River to the Yenisey).[3] Landing force members had to seize the GULAGS, free and arm the prisoners and deportees and move with them in the general direction to the south.[1][2]
Implementation
On 2 June 1943 a first group of 12 former Soviet POWs, trained by the Germans, were dropped by an air transport in the Komi Republic. They were dressed as fake NKVD troops. On 9 June the group was however found (two killed, rest taken prisoner) by real NKVD troops.[1][2][3]
Aftermath
Soon after this failure, the Germans decided to abandon the operation; the anti-communist group that Bessonov founded in the POW camp was disbanded, and he himself was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.[1][3]
Some of Bessonov's organization members were employed in other German anti-Soviet operations, without any notable successes. Bessonov and Meandrov survived the war to be executed by the Soviet authorities after being transferred to their custody.[2][3]
See also
- Anti-Soviet partisans
- Yugoslav Partisans, a communist-led World War II resistance movement
References
- Michael Parrish, The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939-1953, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996, ISBN 0-275-95113-8, Google Print, p.160
- Michael Parrish, Sacrifice of the Generals: Soviet Senior Officer Losses, 1939-1953, Scarecrow Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8108-5009-5, Google Print, p.44
- Bessonov
External links
- Bessonov
- Template:Ru icon Biography of Meandrov
- Template:Ru icon Melenberg, Aleksandr (1 March 2004). "Desant na GULAG". Novaya Gazeta (in Russian).