Franc-de-tireur.

This is coolbert:

According to Lucas, in his book, "War on the Eastern Front", the German Army has always had a particular abhorrence of the guerrilla/partisan/irregular/insurgent.

I had mentioned this previously in my blog entry concerning the franc-de-tireurs and the burning of the library at Leuven, Belgium.

An abhorrence that results in the German reacting in a disproportionate and unfortunate manner. Gratuitous and unjustified violence that often creates a backlash later regretted by German commanders.

[my definition of the franc-de-tireur is the trained marksman, acting more or less in a solo manner, engaging the invading enemy as a sniper, having prepared in advance to do so.]

According to Lucas:

"Partisans and their operations can be viewed in two lights. The army under attack sees them as francs-tireurs, as the enemies of the native population which has accepted defeat . . . The nation which puts the partisans into the field sees these men as freedom fighters and as soldiers of a special type who have no Geneva convention to protect them . . . . To the German military mind there has always been something abhorrent in partisan warfare . . . the German Army has always fought in a traditional fashion and this inability to understand the concept of guerrilla operations may have been the root cause of their lack of absolute success in anti-partisan operations."

And from a German document concerning anti-partisan operations:

"This struggle has nothing to do with military chivalry or the limitations of the Geneva convention . . . if this battle is not fought using the most brutal means . . . then we shall not master the plague."

And lastly, from the book, "Devil's Guard", German soldiers [including SS men] conversing about the SS destruction of the Czech town of Lidice:

"I know the SS destroyed Lidice. I have not been there, but if they did it - - they had a reason . . . Maybe it was because for the assassaination of Heydrich, maybe it wasn't but there must have been a reason for it."

Conventional armies ever since antiquity seems to have been stymied and frustrated by the partisan form of warfare. A similar situation exists in Iraq right now, as we speak.

The German in particular has a revulsion for the partisan? Perhaps so!

coolbert.