VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: As I have already said, ever since 1941, even before I was Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units, not only I but also General Von Schenkendorff, continually sent numbers of memoranda containing suggestions. Moreover, in the Russian Army Group Center, for instance, we organized schools for fighting partisans, where the troops were to be trained along these lines. Schenkendorff and I, together, worked out a series of regulations for fighting partisans, but they were never published. Immediately after I was appointed Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units, that is, in the beginning of 1943, my staff began to prepare a new series of regulations for fighting partisans. Many months passed, however, before these regulations were finally published, in 1944, when they were already practically useless.
DR. STAHMER: Who issued these regulations?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: These regulations were published by the Wehrmacht, in the form of an ordinary Wehrmacht directive.
DR. STAHMER: They were issued by the Wehrmacht?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: They came out in 1944.
DR. STAHMER: What were their contents?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: They were entitled, Regulations for the Fighting of Partisans (Bandenkampfvorschrift).
DR. STAHMER: What were their contents?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: They comprised the whole of partisan warfare; thus they contained reconnaissance, operational details, differences between small-scale, medium-scale, and large-scale operations.
DR. STAHMER: Since these partisan combat regulations did not appear before 1944, was it not your task, as you had all anti-partisan forces in the whole East, to instruct your forces directly on their conduct?