As soon as the realization of this fact becomes the common knowledge of troops, they will regularly be able to cope with these occurrences in short order; otherwise their efforts achieve no decisive results and become purposeless.
Even though under a different name, England and America have decided upon a similar kind of warfare, while the Russian attempts to put partisan troops behind our front by land and only in exceptional cases uses air transportation to land men and to drop supplies, England and America use this method of warfare primarily by landing sabotage troops from submarines or pneumatic boats or by means of parachute agents. Essentially, however, this form of warfare does not differ from the activities of the Russian partisans. For it is the task of these troops:
1. to build up a general espionage service with the assistance of willing natives,
2. to organize troops of terrorists and supply them with the necessary weapons and explosives,
3. to undertake sabotage activities which by destruction of traffic installations, not only continuously disrupt our communications, but also, when things become serious, make troop movements absolutely impossible and eliminate our communications system.
Finally, these troops are to make attacks on war-important installations, in which, according to a scientifically worked out program, they destroy key works by dynamiting, thereby forcing whole industries into idleness.
The consequences of these activities are of extraordinary weight. I do not know whether each commander and officer is cognizant of the fact that the destruction of one single electric power plant, for instance, can deprive the Luftwaffe of many thousand tons of aluminum, thereby eliminating the construction of countless aircraft that will be missed in the fight at the front and so contribute to serious damage of the Homeland as well as bloody losses of the fighting soldiers.
Yet this form of war is completely without danger for the adversary. Since he lands his sabotage troops in uniform but at the same time supplies them with civilian clothes, they can, according to need, appear as soldiers or civilians. While they themselves have orders to ruthlessly remove any German soldiers or even natives who get in their way, they run no danger of suffering really serious losses in their operations, since at the worst, if they are caught, they can immediately surrender and thus believe that they will theoretically fall under the provisions of the Geneva Convention. There is no doubt, however, that this is a misuse in the worst form of the Geneva agreements, especially since part of these elements are even criminals, liberated from prisons, who can rehabilitate themselves through these activities.
England and America will therefore always be able to find volunteers for this kind of warfare, as long as they can truthfully assure them that there is no danger of loss of life for them. At worst, all they have to do is to successfully commit their attack on people, traffic installations, or other installations, and upon being encountered by the enemy, to capitulate.
If the German conduct of war is not to suffer grievous damage through these incidents, it must be made clear to the adversary that all sabotage troops will be exterminated, without exception, to the last man.