The Bryansk forests, autumn 1941

Summer has tipped into disaster. Ever since Operation Barbarossa was unleashed in June, the Wehrmacht has surged eastward, encircling entire armies and leaving behind whole regions handed over to the occupier. Here, in the vast wooded expanse stretching around Bryansk, the front has passed like a wave, abandoning the villages to a German military administration that requisitions the harvests, registers the men, and posts warning notices at the crossroads. The land, for its part, does not wait for the war: the rye must be brought in, the cow tended, the winter prepared that is already drawing near over Russia.

But the woods are not empty. Soldiers who escaped the encirclement pockets, Party cadres who stayed behind, men fleeing forced labor sink beneath the high timber and begin to organize. There is talk of an appeal issued from Moscow this summer, urging the population of the occupied territories to harass the invader. By night, silhouettes are seen passing; by morning, a bridge has been blown, a convoy has been derailed. And every blow struck calls forth its answer: the occupier burns farms, takes hostages, shoots at random to break those who would help the men of the forest.

The peasant you embody knows every path, every barn, every family of the hamlet. People come to him asking for bread, a roof for a night, a piece of intelligence on the patrols. To refuse may be to save his own; to accept is to risk losing everything. The occupation authorities, for their part, promise peace to whoever keeps quiet. Winter is rumbling, and every grain counts. A decision must be made.