In 1941 Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany invaded Joseph Stalin's nation. While lacking in military preparation for the war, Stalin realized the threat guerilla warfare posed. He also knew that many countries, including Germany regarded guerilla warfare as impractical. Hitler assured German defeat and paid little attention to the partisan threat in his "Barbossa Plan" to invade the Soviet Union. Stalin refuted to his people and encouraged that, .
This [guerilla warfare] is often not felt, but these people live, they exist, and they must not be forgotten, for it is dangerous to forget them. Do not forget that if in the rear of Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel and Yudenich [battles of the Russian Revolution where guerilla warfare took place] we had not had the so-called "aliens", the oppressed peoples, who disorganized the rear of these generals by their tactic sympathy for the Russian proletarians-comrades, this is a specific factor in our development, this tactic sympathy, which nobody hears or sees, but which decides everything-if it were not for this sympathy, we would not have nailed a single one of these generals. (Internet).
In the month after the invasion, the German army encountered little resistance and penetrated 600 kilometers into Soviet territory. Stalin and the Communist Party, while frantically trying to develop the inadequate Soviet war machine, issued a direct order to rural Soviets stating, " the Communist Party order the immediate mobilization of units of the People's Defense (Partisans) for the support of the Red Army according to the decree of Comrade Stalin." (Dixon 59). Aside from the Party's orders, the Partisan movement grew as a result of the German treatment of Soviet population.
