By Scott Longman
Lt. Colonel Vladimir “Popski” Peniakoff ranks among the most creatively unhinged military commanders in history. Through quirks of the WWII British military system, he ended up with a special command that, had he played by the rules, he never would have had. He employed it brilliantly and extensively for behind-enemy-lines guerilla raids, with damn little in the way of adult supervision.
At one point in Italy, he became aware of an entire German division garrisoned in a medieval mountain town. A division would have well over 10,000 men. In contrast, Popski had only a couple dozen. So, his usual traditional guerrilla hit-and-run ambush tactics wouldn’t do much, especially because the Italian mountains did not offer the same escape and evasion opportunities as the enormous desert of North Africa, where he had developed his tactics. But then, he had one of his crazed brainstorms.
The whole strategic point was taking real estate, forcing the enemy back. What if he just scared them off? And, maybe, say, stole their trucks?
This occurred about the same time he’d met a local Italian partisan commander, a Major Ferri. He and Popski immediately agreed to throw in together, and an audacious plot was hatched. Many partisan commanders often executed captured Germans, but Ferri had instead held his as prisoners.
Hatching the Perfect Wartime Deception
Popski set up a fake headquarters office, put up a big map, and had one of the brighter German officer captives brought in for apparent interrogation. While Popski enthusiastically feigned doing just that, some signaling officers came in behind him and proceeded to mark the map, showing huge, completely non-existent Allied advances, to include those approaching the German division’s town, in significant detail, to include specific unit identifiers. Popski then had someone pull him out of the room for a notional urgent call, leaving the German with only one bored guard, which gave him a good chance to soak in the map.
When Popski came back in, he railed in indignation that his captive had given him no information, and he threatened the captive with a brutally grim future when they moved him to another facility, which was to happen the next day.
Then, Popski locked up the German in a room with a window that could, with little effort, be defeated. The German went for it. Popski’s outer security had been instructed that if they saw the escaping man, to fire extensively, but inaccurately. He did, and they did.
With Phase One complete, Popski proceeded to Phase Two, establishing an ever-increasing flow of wildly bogus wireless transmissions, from multiple locations, doing an awfully good job of sounding like all the units on his fake map, including the use of their actual callsigns. That didn’t confuse the actual units because the high mountain ranges confined the signals.
For Phase Three, Popski had his new compadre, Major Ferri, put his partisans to good use by channeling their inner lumberjacks. Turns out, the medieval town where the division was garrisoned was surrounded by heavy, thick woods. There was only one road into the town from the front, and only one road from the back, but impassable all the rest of the way around.
Popski’s Private Army Engaged
Popski had the partisans quietly cut lanes through the trees, almost up to the edge of the woods. And a lot of them. What that meant was that his men could come roaring up in one of his heavily armed jeeps, fire a bunch of rounds, then duck back out and do it again from another position at high speed moments later, multiplied by a whole bunch of jeeps, essentially appearing to be the size of the forces on his fake map. Of course, from the German perspective, the sources of those fires simply had to be dismounted infantry, because there were no roads at any of those places.
Coupled with the intel from the escaped prisoner and the radio intercepts, the German general made the hard decision: much better to conduct a tactical retreat rather than to be annihilated or captured.
So, the Germans started bolting out via the back route. Of course, Popski had planned for just exactly that, and had set up accordingly.
He let some of them go, then had his partisans blow a key bridge. Overlooking the bridge, he’d set up the partisans in rocky highground positions, and that force then rained down holy hell on the stopped remains of the convoy. Rather than die in place, the Germans left their vehicles, did a professional job of setting up a rearguard, and mostly escaped across the river on foot. But that was the idea.
After the essential goal of simply getting them to run, Popski’s second goal was to steal their vehicles, which worked perfectly. Popski and his partisans suffered zero casualties. The Germans had a whole bunch, to include the commanding general of the division.
As Popski’s later wrote: “We kept his [the German general’s] staff car, bullet-ridden but still in running order, as a souvenir.”
