EN
The Soviet-led partisan war against the Germans behind the Eastern Front has been the subject of many controversies and inconsistencies in historiography, especially in assessments of consequences of the partisans’ activities. Very often, authors arrive at conclusions that partisan attacks were the main cause of German repressive forces’ harsh interventions against civilians. However, research focusing on analysis of the German repressive apparatus (police and paramilitary forces and the Wehrmacht itself ) very clearly illustrates that partisans can hardly be singled out as an isolated subject of research in the overall context of the Nazi offensive against enemies behind the front. The present study aims to analyze the crimes committed by Nazi repressive forces under the central term Bandenbekämpfung, which is usually understood as a synonym for the Nazis’ efforts at stamping out the partisans. The study interprets this term consistently on the basis of its physical forms, and it introduces it as an ideologically burdened concept, directly related to the concept of a war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg) waged by Nazi Germany in the USSR.