Strelets Soviet Partisans in Winter Dress M084

Soviet Partisans in Summer Dress M085. Scale 1:72

When Stalin ordered the formation of partisan groups to operate behind German lines following their invasion of the Soviet Union and its occupied territories in 1941 Hitler was delighted because, as he pointed out, it gave him the ideal excuse to eradicate everyone who opposed him. Of course it went much further than that, for the Germans planned and implemented a programme to enslave Slavs and exterminate Bolsheviks, Jews and others. As a result the considerable initial good will felt by some of the people in the occupied areas rapidly evaporated and the partisan movement grew to be a very real thorn in the side of the German forces as they increasingly struggled to cope with the resurgent Red Army. Everyone knows how much of a part the Russian winter played in the ultimate defeat of the Germans, but while the Germans suffered in the cold and the wet so did many of the partisans, who often lacked adequate supplies. Yet they too operated in winter of course, and so a set of such fighters dressed for winter is highly appropriate, and that is what we have here.