Soviets and Wehrmacht Deserters in the Apennine Resistance

  • 5

by Daniele Baggiani

Content index

World War II is a treasure trove of events where political ambitions, battles, and operational capabilities intertwine with the daily lives of men raised on the hope of an ideal. These stories remain largely unknown; they elude partisan simplifications, revealing an idealistic and human side of the clash between peoples in territories far from the safety of the hearth. One need only think of the face of the very young Nikolaj Bujanov, who at Gaggio Montano chose to remain alone with his machine gun to cover the withdrawal of civilian women and children, or the strange, blended tongue spoken in the stables of Ca’ di Guzzo, where Imolese peasants and Red Army soldiers shared the same black bread before the assault. For many reasons—some understandable, others inscrutable—these stories are almost unheard of. This is why they deserve our attention: to restore to the history of the war in Italy and the Apennines a complexity sufficient to nourish our critical thinking.

A Mosaic of Nationalities Under the Red Star

The Italian Resistance was not merely a civil war or a national liberation struggle; it was a true crossroads of peoples. It is estimated that approximately 5,000 Soviet soldiers fought within the partisan ranks in Italy. Of these, over 400 fell in combat. In the Tuscan-Romagnolo Apennines, the density of these fighters was among the highest, turning brigades such as the 36th “Bianconcini” or the 62nd “Camicie Rosse” into laboratories of military integration. They were not only Russians: the “Soviets” included Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians. Many of them had been drafted by the Germans into the so-called Ostbataillone (Eastern Battalions), auxiliary units of the Wehrmacht formed from prisoners of war who were offered the choice between death by starvation in the camps or service as second-line troops. Once they arrived in Italy, their mass desertion to the mountains dealt a severe psychological and logistical blow to the German high command.

The tangible reality of this mosaic is embodied in figures like the Yugoslavian “Gildo,” who, after September 8th, escaped from Fascist internment camps to become one of the most skilled saboteurs in the borderlands between Tuscany and Romagna, bringing to the field his experience from the Balkan wars. Alongside him, German deserters faced the most dramatic of choices. Consider Heinz Heidemann, who in the valleys near Bologna did not merely desert, but became an instructor for the Italian partisans, teaching them how to master the very same MG42 he had previously wielded for the Wehrmacht. Even more unique was the case of the Turkestani units who, sent by the Germans to garrison the villages of the Santerno Valley, ended up defecting en masse to the partisans, bringing with them heavy weapons and mules laden with ammunition. These men were not just seeking freedom, but a form of human redemption against a uniform they felt was alien to them. Their presence transformed the Apennine trails into a Babel of languages, where the enemy was fought not only for territory, but for civilization.

Vladimir Pereladov’s “Assault Battalion”

The case of Captain Vladimir Pereladov, nicknamed “il capitano russo” (the Russian Captain), warrants a technical analysis. Arriving at the 36th Brigade in June 1944 after a daring escape from the Modena prisoner-of-war camp, Pereladov did not merely join the fight. He obtained permission from the brigade command—Luigi Tinti (“Bob”) and Guido Gualandi (“Il Moro”)—to form an autonomous unit: the Soviet Assault Battalion. This unit became the brigade’s “shock force” for several reasons. First and foremost, they possessed extraordinary expertise in explosives. Many of the Soviets were experienced combat engineers, capable of mining bridges and tracks with improvised charges—a skill set that the young Italian peasants lacked. Furthermore, the men possessed formidable physical endurance: accustomed to the extreme climates of the Eastern Front, the Soviets were better equipped to handle the Apennine winter, conducting operations even when Allied troops were bogged down by foul weather.

Among them are names that have made history. Alongside Pereladov, figures such as Ivan Logvinenko—the hero of Monte Battaglia—and Nikolaj Dem’jančenko, known as “Nicolaj,” stand out; the latter’s audacity in combat became legendary among the local civilians. Their martial imprint was left in lightning-fast actions like that of the Fontanelice bridge, where Pereladov’s Russians, moving in the absolute silence of the night, managed to mine and blow up the infrastructure right under the noses of the German sentries, severing a vital artery for enemy supplies to the front. But it was at Ca’ di Guzzo that the battalion proved its mettle: surrounded by superior forces, the Russians did not limit themselves to defense but unleashed a series of bayonet counterattacks that disoriented the Wehrmacht grenadiers. It is said that “Nicolaj” Dem’jančenko himself, during the clash at Monte Carnevale, managed single-handedly to silence an enemy machine-gun nest by crawling through the ravines and leaping into the German foxhole with such ferocity that he forced the survivors into an immediate surrender. These men did not fight only for victory, but for an idea of redemption that came through absolute mastery of the terrain and their weapons.

German Deserters: The Shadow of Sippenhaft

While the Soviet soldier was a "natural ally," the German deserter was a tragic and liminal figure. Recent studies by the Parri Institute have identified over 1,200 documented cases of Germans and Austrians who defected to the Resistance. This is a subject that is truly never discussed. To reflect on the tragedy of these men is an act of humanity.

One of the most emblematic cases in the Appenines areas is that of Rudolf Jacobs, a German Navy officer stationed in La Spezia. Disgusted by the massacres, he defected to the partisans of the “Muccini” brigade and died leading an attack against a Black Brigade barracks. But he was not the only one. In the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, the Bavarian Hans Schmidt operated—a non-commissioned officer who, after witnessing a summary execution of civilians in Crespellano, fled toward the lines of the 63rd “Bolero” Brigade. Schmidt did not stop at providing intelligence: during a German attack on a partisan detachment near Monte San Pietro, he utilized his profound knowledge of Wehrmacht flare signals to launch counterfeit rockets, tricking the German artillery into shelling their own advancing units. Within the 36th “Bianconcini,” figures like Heinz Heidemann also operated, choosing to turn their weapons against their former comrades. Alongside him, we must remember the Austrian Peter, known as “Lupo” (Wolf), who became the nightmare of German garrisons in the Palazzuolo sul Senio area. Thanks to his perfect German and the uniform he continued to wear during raids, Peter was able to approach enemy sentries, exchange a few passwords, and neutralize them before they could sound the alarm.

Their choice carried an immense burden. Sippenhaft, or collective family responsibility, mandated the arrest and often the deportation of a deserter's relatives in Germany. For this reason, many German deserters requested to be deployed in the most dangerous actions or far from the sectors where their original units operated to avoid recognition. They often fought with their faces covered or under Italian aliases to protect their parents or children back home. Many of them died in anonymity on the trails of Monte Grande or Monte Cerere, buried under noms de guerre that erased their origins but preserved their honor.

The Soviet Model of Tactical Integration in the Apennines

Today, we can assert—while investigating specific inputs and contributions on a case-by-case basis—that foreign influence changed the military face of the Resistance. These foreigners introduced various improvements in the conduct of irregular warfare, transforming bands of rebels into combat units. Take, for example, the guard shifts. Before their arrival, partisan vigilance was often approximate, left to the exhaustion of boys who would fall asleep in haylofts. The Russians, mindful of the ruthlessness of the Eastern Front, imposed military-style sentry rotations ("sentry go"), with passwords changing every four hours. It was a rigor that saved many lives at Ca’ di Malanca, where the Soviet Lieutenant “Karaton” (the nom de guerre of a Georgian officer) organized a “hedgehog” defensive perimeter. This allowed the brigade to avoid being caught by surprise while they slept, successfully repelling a nocturnal infiltration by German paratroopers who aimed to silently slit the throats of the sentries.

Then came the systematic use of heavy weapons. The recovery and operation of MG42 machine guns or 81mm mortars captured from the Germans was made possible only through the training provided by the deserters and the Soviets. In Poggio and the beech forests of Campanara, actual "firing schools" were held: while the Italian partisans were accustomed to small arms (Sten guns and carbines), the former artilleryman Pereladov taught how to calculate the elevation of stolen mortars to strike convoys on the Via Montanara without wasting precious ammunition. It was thanks to this technical instruction that, during the defense of Monte Battaglia, the partisans managed to turn German Maschinengewehre against the very Wehrmacht units attempting the ascent, with devastating effect.

Finally, there was the so-called “War of Nerves.” German deserters were often utilized to shout false orders or calls for surrender in German during combat, creating fatal confusion. A famous episode occurred near Casola Valsenio: during a violent firefight, an Austrian deserter known as “Hans il Lungo” (Long Hans) crawled close to the enemy lines and screamed in German the order to “Cease fire and retreat to height 600.” The momentary bewilderment of the German grenadiers, who obeyed the order believing it came from their own officer, allowed the partisans of the 36th to break out of a deadly encirclement, vanishing into the fog before the deception was discovered.

The Tragedy of Repatriation and Stalin’s Filter

The epilogue for the Russians of the 36th "Bianconcini" of Imola was heartbreaking, marked by a double-edged truth. After the Liberation parade in Bologna, where they were cheered as liberators, the climate changed abruptly. They were rounded up and transferred to collection centers managed by the Soviet military authorities (the NKVD), such as the camp set up in the former seaside resort of Riccione or the Modena Racecourse. There, the festive atmosphere faded: their weapons were confiscated, not as one would with veterans, but as one would with suspects.

For Stalin, having been taken prisoner by the Germans—even if one later escaped to fight—was synonymous with treason, according to the infamous Order No. 270 of 1941. The return journey, often by ship from Taranto to Odessa, was a psychological ordeal. Italian partisans tried until the very last moment to provide them with "certificates of merit" signed by the CVL (Corpo Volontari della Libertà), hoping those scraps of paper could protect them. It was in vain. Once they disembarked in the USSR, many of the fighters who had received medals for valor in Italy were stripped of everything, subjected to "filtering" in SMERSH (counter-intelligence) camps, humiliated during interrogations, and sent to "labor battalions" in Siberia or the Far North.

Their story remained buried for decades under the weight of the Cold War. Neither the USSR—which refused to admit the existence of massive numbers of prisoners who had surrendered to the Germans—nor Republican Italy—embarrassed by those "Red" ties in the midst of the Atlantic Alliance—wanted to emphasize the role of soldiers who had operated outside of central control. It was only in the 1960s, and later with Perestroika, that the survivors were able to return to Imola and Castel del Rio, weeping before the monuments of their fallen comrades, finally free to tell the world that their war had not ended on April 25th.

Historiographical Reflections

In their diverse nationalities, these “foreign” partisans can be considered the human glue of a struggle that aspired to be universal. Their presence definitively refutes the notion of an isolated and provincial Resistance, or the caricature of a "jacquerie" of ignorant and clueless peasants, haphazardly mobilized by former Royal Army officers seeking redemption. The reality of the Gothic Line provides a far more complex picture: not just young draft dodgers of the RSI (driven by the Graziani Decree) or monarchists loyal to the "King of the South," but a transnational fighting force. During those eight months of winter and mud, a brotherhood of arms developed that anticipated, through blood, the idea of a Europe of peoples as opposed to a Europe of nations.

Modern historiography invites us to read these events no longer merely as a "National Liberation War" (expelling the foreigner), but as a true European Civil War. From this perspective, the German deserter who fires upon the Wehrmacht or the Soviet captain who dies for an Emilian village are not anomalies, but proof that the fault line did not run along geographic borders, but through consciences. It was a clash between two worldviews: Nazifascism on one side, and a confused but powerful aspiration for freedom and social justice on the other. This "International of the Poor," born in the stables of the Apennines, still awaits full recognition in school textbooks—which are often too focused on patriotic rhetoric to admit that Italy's freedom was, in part, the work of those who were not Italian.

Bibliography

Monographs and Essays:

  • M. CARRATTIERI, I russi in Appennino, saggio contenuto in “E-Review”, rivista degli Istituti Storici dell’Emilia-Romagna.
  • M. CARRATTIERI, I. MELONI, Partigiani della Wehrmacht. Disertori tedeschi nella Resistenza italiana, Bari, Laterza, 2021.
  • M. GALLENI, I sovietici nella Resistenza italiana, Editori Riuniti, 1970 (L’opera pionieristica sul tema).
  • M. GRIBAUDI, Terra bruciata: i russi nella Resistenza italiana, Torino, Einaudi, 2015.
  • G. GUALANDI (Il Moro), La 36ª Brigata Garibaldi “Alessandro Bianconcini”, Imola, University Press, 2004.
  • V. PERELADOV, Il Cavaliere della Stella Rossa: Cronache del battaglione d’assalto sovietico in Italia, Edizioni La Pietra, 1987 (Raro).
  • V. PERELADOV, I russi della Resistenza: il battaglione d’assalto sovietico della 36a brigata Garibaldi, Bologna, Pendragon, 2011.
  • M. STORCHI, Anche contro il vento: La Resistenza a Reggio Emilia e sull’Appennino, Marsilio, 2016.

Documentary Websites:

  • 5