This is coolbert: Fourth Arm III.

Having made the decision to employ the fourth arm forces in a partisan campaign against the communist governed countries of eastern Europe, the western powers primarily involved, the U.S., and Britain, began a series of events that they had hoped would "roll back communism". In England, this was called "positive interventionism".

Several examples are illustrative of the "roll back" campaign and the aftermath of same. These examples can best be described in hindsight as misadventures.

The first misadventure to occur was in Albania.

Analysis indicated that the one communist occupied country of eastern Europe that was most susceptible to an insurgency was Albania. Thus, for a variety of reasons. Albania became the first target of the fourth arm guerilla campaign.

In the late 1940's, fourth arm forces recruited, trained and dispatched squad size units [10-12 men] of resistance fighters to Albania. The hope was that these units would become the nucleus of larger and larger partisan bands whose military actions would lead to the eventual overthrow of the communist Albanian government. This was not to be!! Unit after unit of partisan fighters were sent into Albania, by all means available, to include parachute drops, beach landings from boats, and border crossings from Greece into Albania. These squad size units without exception were betrayed from the start, ambushed by security forces of the Albanian communists, and wiped out. Very, very few unit members survived the ambushes and were able to return to friendly territory. This sort of thing, infiltration, betrayal and ambush, went on for two years!! The fourth arm, having assessed that gains were zero and the losses were staggering, called the attempt off, but the damage was done.

The second misadventure of the fourth arm was in the Ukraine.

It must first be appreciated that the Ukrainians already had a resistance movement within the Soviet Union in place at the end of World War Two, and had so since the end of World War One. For almost three decades, to some degree, Ukrainian resistance to Soviet communist rule had survived and thrived, with success. It seems the Ukrainians had a well established network where couriers, walking alone and taking mountain trails, could walk from western Germany or Austria to the Ukraine and back, while avoiding detection. A continuous stream of such couriers allowed the resistance to flourish inside and outside of the Ukraine.

Fourth arm forces of the western powers, having established contact with the Ukrainian resistance [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN]], hoped to foment further resistance in the Ukraine, and by doing so, create headaches for the Soviets within their own country. This must have seemed like a win-win situation for both the fourth arm and the OUN. The fourth arm forces would be in league with a successful resistance movement that was already in place, and the OUN now had the backing of powerful sponsors.

However, once again, as in Albania, the relationship between the fourth arm forces and the Ukrainian resistance, rather than being a boon to all involved, became a nightmare. A nightmare where things went catastrophically wrong:

"the western agencies offered small arms, radio sets, codes, and in isolated cases, forged documents . . . almost immediately, the operation that had been so tight and efficient began to go wrong . . . the infiltration patterns should be changed to provide for self-supporting groups of from three to eight men, equipped and trained to live for long periods without having to depend on any assistance from the local population. The new system did not work. As in the Albanian operation, the Ukraine authorities seemed to know when the OUN teams were coming . . . the debacle continued. In 1954, a large team of infiltrators was ambushed and wiped out in the Carpathian Mountains."

After this latter loss, the OUN broke off all contact with the fourth arm forces and that was that.

Again, the source of the defeat and the catastrophic losses was treachery.

It should be seen that these attempts to "set eastern Europe ablaze", rather than igniting a fire, snuffed the match out before it was even lit!!!

To be continued.

coolbert.