The Rude Pundit - Sorry, Gun Nuts: Hitler Actually Relaxed Most Gun Laws

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. The most effective weapon in 20th century insurgencies was NOT the firearm, but the mine,

the bomb, the secreted explosive. At best, the makeshift rocket.

Moreover, while there's a good case to be made that the behind-the-lines partisans substantively affected the German war effort in the East, but this was only because

1) The initial pushes of Barbarossa and subsequent campaigns depended on strategies of rapid advance and encirclement, leaving vast pockets of actual (military) units in the rear areas to be dealt with "later" and

2) the Wehrmacht actually had to deal with a massive mechanized military force to their front.

Where partisan groups were not comprised primarily of stranded military and the front pressure was less severe (for instance, in Poland), German units - sometimes even so-called police battalions rather than front line combat units - destroyed all rear area "resistance" with relative ease, whether the inhabitants of the area were armed or not. People who invoke the asinine claim about the difference armed resistance would have made against the Wehrmacht are, quite simply, ignorant.