All language subtitles for Soviet.Storm.WWII.in.the.East.Series.2.5of9.The.Partisan.War.1080p.WEB-DL.h264.AC3.MVGroup.Forum_[eng]

In 1941 the Nazis overran
vast stretches of the USSR.

Their brutal policies encouraged
many civilians to become
partisans

and fight the occupiers.

Originally produced
for Russian television in 2011,

this is the story
of Russia s Great Patriotic War

and the Red Army s long road
from defeat to victory.

The sound of hammer blows
echoed through the dark forest,

as German engineers worked
hurriedly to repair the rail
track.

The Germans were nervous. They
kept their weapons trained on
the edge of the forest.

In November 1942, the
6th Panzer Division

was on route from France to
reinforce the German army at
Stalingrad.

But the safety of its rail
transports was a major concern
for the Germans,

even hundreds of miles
behind the front.

The division s commander
was General Raus.

The thing that most concerned
me was to make sure that the
units

we were transporting could go
straight into battle when they
arrived.

Therefore in partisan areas,
we proceeded with caution.

Trains had to go slowly,
so they could break in time

to avoid derailing
on sabotaged track.

And there was the ever
present danger of an ambush.

Raus s division hadn t even
reached the front yet,

and already it was suffering
its first casualties.

On 3rd July 1941,

Stalin had made his first
wartime radio broadcast to the
Soviet people:

Partisan detachments must be
formed in areas occupied by the
enemy,

to stir up guerrilla war
everywhere, to blow up bridges
and roads,

sabotage telephone and telegraph
lines, and to burn forests,
stores and transports.

We shall create intolerable
conditions for the enemy and his
supporters

they must be pursued
and eliminated at every step .

To organise the partisan war,

a special unit was formed within
Lavrenty Beria s NKVD secret
police.

Set up by Pavel Sudoplatov, the
new unit was known as "OMSBON",

short for Independent
Special Motorized Brigade.

Its recruits included the best
Soviet sportsmen. They would
help to form

the nucleus of sabotage groups
which would be sent behind enemy
lines.

The recruits were sent to be
trained at a new school for
guerrilla warfare.

Its students included an
international battalion, made up
of hundreds of dedicated

anti-fascists from Spain,
Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia
and Yugoslavia.

Just two weeks after
Stalin s directive,

the Wehrmacht issued orders to
combat the threat from Soviet
partisans.

All Axis units were to maintain
a state of constant alert.

Soldiers were forbidden
from walking alone.

Weapons were to be kept on their
person and ready for use at all
times.

In the 1930s, Soviet strategic
planning had assumed

that in the event of war the Red
Army would attack, and fight the
war on enemy soil.

So caches of weapons
and food to support

a guerrilla war on home soil
had been destroyed.

For the same reason, they had
stopped training experts in
guerrilla warfare.

In 1941, this infrastructure had
to be hurriedly re-established.

Until it was, what training
partisans received

if any came from
Red Army officers,

few of whom were specialists
in guerrilla warfare.

And crucially, hardly any
partisan units were equipped
with radios.

Little or no training;
absence of radio communication;

and lack of co-ordinated action,
meant that of 2,800 partisan
units

formed in the summer of 1941,
only 270 lasted into 1942.

In Ukraine in 1941,

the NKVD claimed to have
established 778 partisan units
and 622 sabotage groups.

Theoretically, they consisted
of 29,000 personnel.

By June 1942, just 110 of these
units were still in contact.

In the midst of such chaos, only
partisans led by experienced
commanders,

like Vasiliy Korzh,
proved successful.

Vasiliy Zakharovitch Korzh was a
committed Byelorussian
communist,

who had fought as a partisan
against Polish forces in the
1920s.

He was also a decorated
volunteer of the Spanish Civil
War.

When war broke out Korzh
immediately began organising
local resistance,

and just 6 days
after the invasion,

his partisans were the first to
mount an attack against German
troops.

In May 1942, the "Central
Headquarters of the Partisan
Movement"

was set up by the
Stavka High Command.

By November 1942, it recorded
partisan strength as 90,000
personnel,

operating in 1,100 detachments.

Central Headquarters
distributed 200 radio sets,

which allowed it to communicate
directly with the partisans,

to coordinate their actions, and
assign high priority targets.

One such target
was Raus s 6th Panzer Division.

Central Headquarters had given
the task of impeding its
movement

to two separate Detachments,
led by Saburov and Kovpak.

Sydor Artemyevitch Kovpak was
another experienced partisan
leader,

who had his detachment up and
running before the Germans
arrived

in his Ukrainian hometown
in the summer of 1941.

In 1943 his unit conducted
the legendary Carpathian Raid,

sabotaging supply lines and
wiping out isolated enemy
garrisons

in the course of a 600 mile
advance to the Romanian border.

While planning the war
against the Soviet Union,

Hitler had declared that the
land was to be exploited to its
fullest potential.

The Wehrmacht s ultimate goal
was a line running from
Arkhangelsk in the north,

to Astrakhan in the south.

Soviet territory was to be
carved up into zones of
occupation.

Certain strategic areas, like
the Crimea, would become part of
a Greater Germany.

All was outlined in the top
secret "Generalplan Ost"
"Master Plan East".

The plan spelled out
a dark vision for Eastern Europe

following the German
victory over the USSR.

It entailed a massive programme
of deportations,

murder and enslavement
of the native populations,

followed by the colonisation
of the land by Germans

and other "racially
acceptable" peoples.

All senior figures in the Third
Reich became familiar with the
"Master Plan East".

Generalplan Ost,
Document number 1,

issued by SS Reichsfuhrer
Himmler on 28th May 1940.

Top Secret. National Importance.

On 25th May I handed to the
Fuehrer a memorandum, outlining
my thoughts

on the treatment of local
populations in the occupied
Eastern territories.

The Fuehrer read
all six pages of my report,

considered it correct
and warmly approved it.

Most of those who escaped
extermination were to be
deported to western Siberia.

A minority 10% of Poles,
25% of Belarussians,

35% of Ukrainians were
considered suitable for
"Germanisation".

Millions would be
retained as slave labour.

Generalplan Ost would
never be implemented.

But those living under Nazi
occupation still felt the
effects of its brutal ideology.

The Nazis planned to strip
eastern territories of all
valuable resources.

In 1941 Special Commissariats
were established for the
purpose.

The Special Commissariat in
Byelorussia was headed by
Wilhelm Kube.

Wilhelm Kube joined
the Nazi Party in the 1920s,

when it was still on the fringe
of German politics.

He rose to become Gauleiter or
regional party leader of
Brandenburg.

But he fell from favour after
fabricating charges against a
party rival.

In June 1941 he was given a
chance to redeem himself in
Byelorussia.

When the Germans moved
into a town or village,

they would appoint a burgomaster
or village headman.

Public notices printed in
Russian listed their
responsibilities:

All burgomasters and village
headmen are responsible for
safety in their area.

Should the locals fail to ensure
this, at least twice the number
of dead German

soldiers will be taken from
the local population and shot."

In the event of damage being
done to roads, bridges or mines,

at least three local
people will be shot.

Those who give shelter
or food to strangers

or render them any assistance
without permission of their
burgomaster

or village headman
will be hanged.

It didn t take long for the
brutality of the new regime to
be felt,

driving a deep wedge between
invaders and the occupied.

In the first winter of the war,

the Germans began to deport
hundreds of thousands of workers
to the Reich,

where they were to be
used as slave labour.

One and a half million people,
most of them Ukrainians, were
transported to the Reich.

More than half a million girls
were sent to become domestic
servants

in German households.

The treatment such workers were
to receive was outlined by Fritz
Sauckel:

All these people must be fed,
housed and treated in such a way

that the greatest results are
achieved with the minimum
outlay.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler
put it even more starkly:

If 10,000 Russian women
collapse from exhaustion while
digging an anti-tank ditch,

it interests me only insofar
that Germany, at the end of it,
has an anti-tank ditch.

At the Nuremberg Trials, Fritz
Sauckel was found guilty of
crimes

against humanity and hanged.

Himmler escaped a similar fate
by committing suicide.

In the spring of 1942, local
police came to the village of
Yarmoshinki,

near Smolensk,
looking for men of working age.

When they entered the Egorov
household, 18-year old Mikhail
was out.

The family had decided not to
wait for the deportations to
begin.

They packed their belongings and
headed for the forest to join
the partisans.

They met a group
of saboteurs in the forest.

They were en route to the
village of Selivonenki to blow
up a bridge.

Mikhail said he knew the way.

On 5th May 1942, his
nineteenth birthday,

Mikhail Egorov was accepted into
the Special Guerilla Regiment
codenamed

The Thirteen . It was
commanded by Sergey Grishin.

Grishin began the war
in a tank platoon.

His unit became encircled
during Operation Barbarossa,

but Grishin escaped and returned
to his home village to raise a
partisan unit.

It became Special Guerilla
Regiment The Thirteen ,

named after Grishin s favourite
action film by director Mikhail
Romm.

At dawn on 13th May 1942,

the partisans walked 15 miles to
attack the German garrison at
Selivonenki.

It was Mikhail Egorov s
baptism of fire.

Despite several local successes,

the partisans failed to have any
significant impact on the German
supply chain.

But the significance of their
actions could be measured in
other ways.

Thousands of German soldiers,
urgently needed at the front,

had to be diverted to fight the
partisans and protect supply
routes.

German morale began to suffer
too. In the occupied
territories,

anyone could be on the side of
the partisans. No one could be
trusted.

Any suspicious noise could turn
out to be the start of a
partisan attack.

The partisans wore at the nerves
and resources of the German
occupying forces.

German reports state
that of the 3.6 million

Soviet prisoners-of-war
they d captured in 1941,

by the spring of 1942, only
800,000 remained fit for work.

60% had been murdered, or had
died of starvation or disease.

In the spring of 1942, thousands
of Soviet prisoners of war

sat or lay in the open
at the Suwalki camp in Poland.

They were given almost no food.
Some had resorted to eating
blades of grass.

It was then that the former
chief of staff of the 229th
Rifle Division,

Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir
Rodionov, decided to offer his
services to the Nazis.

He approached the
Germans and offered

to establish "a Fighting Union
of Russian Nationalists".

Their aim would be,
To overthrow Stalin s regime

and establish a Nationalistic
Russian State under the
protectorate of Germany .

Rodionov s offer was taken up by
the Nazi Security Service the
SD.

Rodionov, who also
used the alias "Gil",

was joined by a hundred former
inmates of the Suvalki camp.

They were issued
with Czech military uniforms,

and became "The 1st SS Russian
Volunteer Detachment".

The unit soon had 500
volunteers, most of whom were
ex-Red Army officers.

To prove their fighting ability,
and their loyalty,

their first missions were
conducted against Polish
partisans.

The detachment was later
expanded to a brigade more than
2,000 strong.

But despite the inhuman
conditions, some prisoners
remained steadfast.

Nicolay Obrynba, a medic serving
with a militia battalion,

was taken prisoner in
1941 near Vitebsk.

If you don t want to lose
yourself in a desperate
situation

you must purge your
soul of doubts.

Regardless of your feelings
towards Stalin there are two
camps,

two ideas and two men
leading those camps.

And you shall support one idea,
one camp, and one man embodying
this idea.

You shall hold on to the end.

For otherwise neither death nor
torture will justify you in your
own eyes.

By the spring of 1942,

the partisans were operating on
a much larger scale across
occupied Byelorussia,

Ukraine and western Russia.

Soviet reports estimated 200,000
partisans were now operating
behind the German lines.

Partisan units were especially
active in the rear of German
Army Group North

and Army Group Center. They made
their camps in the forests and
marshland

around Bryansk, Vitebsk,
Smolensk, Novgorod and
Leningrad.

A large partisan unit operated
in the mountains of the Crimea.

The organisation and tactics
of the partisans were refined.

A partisan detachment was a
self-sufficient unit consisting
of 100-200 fighters.

It had its own commander,
political officer and chief of
staff.

Each detachment had support
and medical services

and could be divided
into several platoons.

Several detachments
formed a partisan brigade.

Each brigade has its own
hospital and workshops,

which produced camouflaged
capes, sheepskin jackets and
boots.

A brigade could be a few hundred
or a few thousand strong.

The Byelorussian Dubova
brigade, for example, had 1,700
members.

Several brigades formed a
partisan group, used for
strategic operations.

In some areas, the partisans
drove out local German forces
completely,

and established enclaves
wholly under their control.

Near Polatsk in northeast
Byelorrusia, the partisans set
up their own schools,

telephone lines,
mills and workshops.

They printed their own
newspapers and pamphlets,

which they distributed to the
80,000 civilians living within
the enclave.

They even opened an art gallery,
which exhibited the work

of partisans including Nicolay
Gutiyev and Nicolay Obrinba

who had escaped from
German captivity.

Obrinba described what it
meant to the partisans:

The Dubova brigade
were proud of their paintings.

That s why they put them
in the headquarters,

right next to the brigade s
banner. We challenged the enemy.

We can do anything, and our life
doesn t depend on fear and
death.

We proclaim it for
tomorrow and forever.

The partisans could only operate
with the help of the local
population.

Villagers brought them food
and sometimes information

which was vital to both their
success and their survival.

It required great courage
on the part of the villagers.

If they were caught by the
Germans, not only they

but their whole communities
might suffer brutal reprisals.

On 13th May 1943,

Hitler signed the orders
approving Operation Citadel
the Kursk offensive.

As if in reply, the partisans
blew up both bridges over the
River Desna near Bryansk,

cutting the main supply route to
the build-up area for the
offensive.

It took 12 days for German
engineers to get both bridges
back in action.

This delay on the eve
of the offensive was serious.

If it happened again at the
height of the battle it could
be catastrophic.

Therefore in the weeks leading
up to the Kursk offensive,

the German High Command ordered
large-scale anti-partisan
sweeps,

using frontline combat troops,
including panzer regiments.

The largest of these operations
took place around Bryansk,

and was codenamed
Operation Gypsy Baron.

About 50,000 soldiers took part
in the operation, including
local collaborators.

They faced several partisan
brigades with a combined
strength of approximately
11,000.

The partisans were hindered
by the fact that many women,

old people and children had fled
to the forests to join them.

It made the partisans less
mobile, and less able to move
their camp in a hurry.

The Germans managed to
separate the partisan brigades

and drive them against
the Desna River.

The Headquarters of the Partisan
Movement took immediate steps to
assist.

They flew in weapons,
ammunition and medical supplies,

and evacuated about 900 wounded
partisans and others most at
risk.

Soviet aircraft bombed
enemy troop concentrations.

But partisan casualties mounted
rapidly. They were outgunned,
and outnumbered.

On the night of 2nd June, fierce
fighting erupted at the
Pionerskiy farm,

as the partisan detachments
attempted to fight their way out
of the trap.

They succeeded, but
at a heavy price.

As soon as German regular
units returned to the front,

partisan detachments
began to reform in the forest.

That summer,
Central Headquarters used radio

to co-ordinate a massive
partisan assault on the German
rail network,

at the very height of the Battle
of Kursk. It was codenamed
Operation "Rail War".

There was one problem.
To disrupt German rail transport

on the scale envisaged would
require thousands of tons of
explosives

more than could be flown in by
air. So the sabotage groups
began to experiment.

Before the war, it was thought
that between 200 to 400 grammes
of TNT

were needed to destroy
a rail track.

But experiments with different
rhomboid and trapezium shaped
charges,

showed that a rail track could
be blown up with as little as 75
grammes.

This discovery reduced the
quantity of explosives needed

by more than half, and made it
an amount that could be
delivered by air.

Operation Rail War began
on the night of 3rd August 1943.

Railways were blown up across
Byelorussia, Leningrad, Orel and
Bryansk.

But the results of Operation
Rail War, and Operation
"Concert"

that followed in September,
were disappointing.

The Germans soon learned how
to minimise any disruption.

Trains travelled with their
own track repair crews,

who would make quick temporary
fixes to get the train moving
again.

Once the unit was past,
the rails could be replaced.

Ilya Starinov, a famous
Soviet saboteur,

questioned the wisdom
of blowing up the tracks.

He thought it was better
to blow up the trains.

But the rail war did
have an impact.

The Head of Transport for Army
Group Centre reported figures
for August 1943:

Partisan activities in August
resulted in an average of 45
track demolitions per day,

and damage to 266 locomotives
and 1,373 railroad cars.

One of the partisans greatest
achievements during the Battle
of Kursk

was to blow up the Osipovitchi
railway station.

The mission was carried out by
special guerilla detachment The
Brave Men ,

led by a colonel from OMSBON,
Alexander Rabtsevitch.

A Russian engineer
working for the Germans

managed to attach two magnetic
mines to the fuel tanks.

The explosion destroyed 33 fuel
tankers, 65 ammunition wagons,

8 Tiger tanks, 7 armored
vehicles, 12 food wagons,

5 locomotives and the
entire rail junction.

The station was
burning for two days.

The partisans were 200 metres
from the railway line.

With the machine
gun covering them,

Mikhail Egorov and a comrade
crawled quietly towards the
railway embankment.

Wooden barricades lined
both sides of the track.

They were hung
with barbed wire and tin cans,

which would rattle and alert the
German sentries if anyone tried
to sneak past.

In the dark, working by touch,
the partisans carefully cut away
at the wire.

A German patrol passed by.

It took them an hour to cut
their way through.

Then they heard a
train approaching.

They rushed to the rails
to plant the explosives.

They buried the TNT, then tied a
piece of string to the fuse pin,

and attached the other
end to a ramrod.

This they drove into the ground
50 centimetres away.

The Germans put empty wagons
at the front of the train,

which would trigger a simple
pressure mine and take the force
of the blast.

But this mine was different.

The empty wagons passed
harmlessly overhead. But the
locomotive,

whose running gear
overhung the side of the track,

knocked down the ramrod
and pulled out the fuse pin.

It was the latest example of
ingenuity in a constantly
evolving war

between Soviet saboteurs
and German transport officers.

Soon the Germans
would devise a counter-measure,

and the saboteurs would
have to think of something new.

By the spring of 1944, Mikhail
Egorov had derailed 5 trains and
destroyed 5 bridges.

He was awarded the Red Star
Medal, the Medal of Glory Third
Class,

and the Partisan
Medal First Class.

According to statistics from the
German General Directorate of
Eastern Railways,

partisans carried out
approximately 500 raids and acts
of sabotage in February 1943,

rising to 700 in April, and to
more than 1,000 a month in May
and June.

A derailed train blocked
the line for about 8 hours,

so to bring movement to a
complete halt required 3
derailings per day.

This simple arithmetic was
making life hell for the
Germans.

A kite soared 300 feet above
the dark forests of Byelorussia.

Up towards it crept
a little sail on wooden rollers.

When it reached the kite, its
cargo of leaflets was knocked
loose,

and scattered across
the forest below.

Each leaflet was an
appeal to the men

of Lieutenant Colonel Rodionov s
Brigade of Russian nationalists,

urging them to join
with the partisans.

In fact many of these men had
already begun to question their
new allegiance,

after seeing the brutal way
Germans treated their fellow
Russians.

Rodionov himself had been
shocked at the way the Nazis
were operating in the east.

He had been promised an
alliance. He knew now it was all
lies.

He sent a delegation to make
contact with the partisans.

Rodionov asked what guarantees
the partisans could give for his
own safety,

and that of his men.

The partisans radioed Moscow.

The reply came straight
from General Ponomarenko,

Head of the Central Headquarters
of the Partisan Movement.

Partisan leader Ivan Chetkov
met with Rodionov.

As a result, almost his entire
brigade came over to the Soviet
side.

It was renamed the 1st
Anti-Fascist Partisan Brigade.

Within weeks, the brigade was in
action against its former
masters,

attacking a German police
garrison in the village of
Stujunka.

The partisans attacked at dawn
with mortars and machineguns.

By 7am they had stormed the
village and wiped out the German
garrison.

For this successful operation,
Rodionov was promoted to Colonel

and decorated
with the Order of the Red Star.

Many of the men in his unit

went on to receive the "Partisan
of the Patriotic War" medal.

Meanwhile, Generalkommissar
Wilhelm Kube continued his
brutal reign in Byelorussia.

In the summer of 1943,

the NKVD Intelligence Department
made his assassination a top
priority.

The task was assigned to all
partisan units operating in the
Minsk area.

The hunt for Wilhelm
Kube was on...

On 22nd July a huge explosion
tore through the Minsk Theatre.

Soviet intelligence reported
that 70 enemy soldiers had been
killed,

and 110 wounded, but that Kube
had left the theatre a few
minutes before the explosion.

Weeks later, a partisan
unit ambushed Kube

on his way to his country
residence. But he escaped again.

The partisans suggested bombing
Kube s residence from the air.

The mission was assigned to 15
crews from an elite long-range
bomber unit.

But Kube survived once more, and
moved his residence into the
city.

On 6th September,
a banquet was held in Minsk

to mark the 10th anniversary
of Hitler s rise to power.

A bomb in the officers mess
killed 36 military and
government officials,

but Kube wasn t there.

Then, Yelena Mazanik Kube s
housemaid was contacted by
partisan Maria Osypova.

Maria told Yelena about the
terrible crimes for which Kube
was responsible.

She persuaded her to carry out
an act of revenge,

and gave her a
delayed-action mine.

On the morning of
Tuesday 21st September,

Yelena Mazanik put the mine in
her bag... and went to work.

Locals were always searched when
entering the Generalkommisar s
residence,

but that day Yelena was lucky.

She knew the supervisor
the search was a formality.

She went into Kube s bedroom and
put the mine underneath the
mattress,

below where his head would lie.

Maria Osypova, Yelena Mazanik
and her sister Valentina

were smuggled out of the city
to a partisan safe house.

That night, shortly before 1am,
Generalkommissar Wilhelm Kube

was asleep in his Minsk
residence... when the mine
exploded.

The mine that killed Kube
had a directional force

that ensured it only
killed its target.

Neither Kube s pregnant wife,

nor his children sleeping
in the next room, were harmed.

By the beginning of 1944, Soviet
records showed 300,000 partisans
under arms.

There were nearly 150 radio sets
in use in Byelorussia alone.

The partisans now had a
dedicated air unit, the 101st
Long-Range Aviation Regiment,

which flew 20 missions
to the partisans every night.

In the spring of 1944, the
Germans planned a massive
operation

to destroy the partisan enclave
near Polatsk, in northern
Byelorussia.

They deployed 60,000 soldiers,
137 tanks, 236 guns,

70 aircraft and 2
armoured trains.

60,000 partisans and civilians
found themselves encircled

by units of the German
3rd Panzer Army,

which quickly seized control
of all their airfields.

So the partisans built a new one
on a hill, in the middle of
the marshes.

The partisans needed
to fill the bog with soil

to make a strip at least
1,000 metres long.

Logs were laid first, then
tightly packed brushwood, and
then soil on top.

2,000 peasants from the local
village, supervised by Nicolay
Obrinba,

worked on the strip
for three weeks.

Pits were dig for fires,
to act as landing lights.

Carpenters made hatches with
iron bottoms. To put the light
out quickly,

you pulled a rope tied to the
prop that held up the hatch.

To support the partisans, the
Soviet air force carried out 354
missions.

These included bombing raids
against German positions,

ferrying in 250 tons of
supplies, and evacuating about
1,500 casualties.

But the pressure from
heavily-armed German troops was
relentless.

At the end of April, the
surviving partisans attempted to
break out.

At first the partisan
brigades tried to co-ordinate

their actions with the army high
command. But communications
broke down,

and each unit had to fight its
own way out as best it could.

By 27th April, the Germans had
forced the last partisans into a
pocket

just 20 kilometres wide.

The local commander ordered the
survivors to break out at all
costs,

and 8 days later they succeeded
in leading 15,000 civilians to
safety.

At the forefront
of the fighting,

was Colonel Rodionov s
First Anti-Fascist Brigade.

During his service
with the German security forces,

Rodionov had led his brigade in
punitive actions against
Byelorussian civilians,

and had taken part in the
destruction of 5 villages along
the Berezina River.

Now Rodionov atoned for these
crimes with his own blood.

During the breakout,
Rodionov was killed

while persuading his soldiers to
stand up and attack the enemy.

His remains were
rediscovered in 1992,

and reburied in a communal grave
for partisans in the town of
Ushachi.

One month after the fall
of the partisan enclave,

the Red Army launched
Operation Bagration.

Soviet regular forces drove the
enemy from all parts of
Belorussia.

Many partisans joined
the ranks of the Red Army.

In the small hours of 1st May
1945, one former partisan,
Mikhail Egorov,

alongside Sergeant Meliton
Kantaria, was in the heart of
Berlin,

climbing to the very top
of the Reichstag building.

Egorov had brought a sack
containing the assault banner

of the 756th Rifle Regiment
of the 150th Rifle Division.

They were covered by their
commanding officer, Lieutenant
Aleksey Berest.

Behind Mikhail Egorov lay two
years of the deadly partisan war

a serious shoulder wound

and service as a Red Army
infantry scout in Poland and
Germany.

Ahead lay a few steps to the
roof of the Reichstag, and to
victory.