Meach Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 I was told that Germany used penal troops, other nations probably did as well. Should these be featured in CMBB, CMAK? Does anyone have any info regarding such units? Did they actually exist in frontline combat units and were they just cannon fodder or mine clearance units? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richie Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 I know the Russians used penal battalions. It's often mentioned in reference material for Stalingrad. They were often backed up by troops with maxims just to make sure no-one turned and ran. Charming. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddball_E8 Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 Well i have a small question on the subject... i assume we can all agree that the Hassel books are fictional, but i wonder if there actually existed any Panzer penal units? did the germans really waste all the good panzer trained folks that happened to be convicted of crimes during the war (falsely or not) or did they use them in penal units that had armor? weeeeell... just wondering... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holman Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 Why not just use unfit conscript infantry? Did penal battalions have a special TO&E? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c3k Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 Not sure about the TO&E, but, I do remember some stuff off the top of my head. The Soviet Penal Battalions were attached at different levels. Now, I'm not sure, but I think each Army had a Penal Battalion, and each Front. The Army level battalions were reserved for lower ranking personnel. The Front level were for the high ranking individuals. So, a divisional commander would find himself in a Front Penal Battalion, a cook would be in the Army Penal Battalion. There was a, albeit, small chance of rehabilitation. Although, the honor of leading the Front's attack was consolation enough, one supposes. Now, all the above is dimly remembered. Ken 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meach Posted May 25, 2003 Author Share Posted May 25, 2003 Sven Hassel himself said the books are fictional but based on real life people he served with. Whether this is true that is another debate but I don't think penal troops would have been different from any other TO&E chart for there regiment type as they had a job to perform, prisoners or not. I can rightly assume they existed tho? As for the tiger equipped panzer penal rgt...How many novels were they actually equipped with tanks let alone tigers? I think they were mainly footsloggers with a panzer title. I have read the entire series but it was many years ago. I did not want to start the Sven Hassel true or false debate but german penal troops and the 27th Panzer (penal) Regiment seem to go hand in hand. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddball_E8 Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 well they were equipped with tanks about 50% of the time if i recall correctly... although different tanks at different times (once even with an armored car in paris...) I havent done much research on the hassel books, but it would be fun to know if the 27th penal panzer rgt actually existed... about being footsluggers with a panzer title i dont think that was too rare in the end of the war... penal rgt or not... about being true or false i recall reading an article by a danish journalist that pointed out hassel (by his real name... not sven hassel) as a danish gestapo informer during ww2 and that he based his stories on interrogations of prisoners... dont know about the truth but i think it would be strange that an informer would be present during interrogations... :confused: 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 Penal formations were used on both sides, but combat was not their typical mission. They were more often used as construction battalions, "press gangs" building fortifications and the like. They were kept in rear areas and used for disagreeable hard labor. It was not any tenderness toward the men that kept them out of combat for the most part, but practical expediency. The combat value of prisoners tends to be rather low, and to push one into hard, front line combat is to invite mass surrender during the first night they are left in the line. Sometimes enemy treatment of prisoners, or opinions about that subject rather than facts, was itself so bad this wasn't a problem. But compared to loyal units obeying orders, the combat value is still questionable. And in combat, you rely on nearby units holding up their end. All units around them suffer if they fail, not just the unit itself. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
White Phosphorus Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 Weren't Soviet platoon and maybe squad level officers, regulars (read this in a memoir). Who had no qualms about shooting their men? And didn't they have blocking detachments following them around Enemy at the Gates style (in EATG the troops were regulars, so it didn't make any sense)? From personal accounts it appears that the Penal battalions were made up of volunteer convicts, although punished soldiers were forced to serve in them. The Airforce's version of penal duty was to fly as the gunner on IL-2s. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fitz Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 The only German penal unit That I know of was the 999 leichte Afrika-division. The troops were made up of men who had been court-martialed for minor offences such as black market activities. The officers and nco's were all hand picked. The division consisted of 2, possibly 3 motorised infantry regiments Afrika-schutzenregiments 961,962 and possibly 963, an artillery regiment and an engineer battalion, both numbered 999. The disiciplinary soldiers wore no insignia, i.e. no breast and cap eagles, collar-patches or shoulder straps. they even wore plain belt-buckles. The division served in Tunisia. For those of us in yhe UK its quite ironic that a penal division was numbered 999! Sources-"The Armies of Rommel" by George Forty, "The German Armies of 1939-1945(2) North Africa & Balkans" by nigel Thomas Cheers Fitz 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarmo Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 Originally posted by Oddball_E8: about being true or false i recall reading an article by a danish journalist that pointed out hassel (by his real name... not sven hassel) as a danish gestapo informer during ww2 and that he based his stories on interrogations of prisoners... dont know about the truth but i think it would be strange that an informer would be present during interrogations... :confused: Matches pretty well to what I've heard. I think it was tss (not sure), who had done some digging about Hassel. According to him, Hassel was indeed a danish informer. For some reason he tried to pass for a german officer, dressed up and all. The germans threw him in jail and he spent the war inside. Then came peace and the danes threw him back in for being an informer. So possibly not from "stories on interrogations of prisoners", but rather stories by fellow inmates. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddball_E8 Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 hmmm... interesting... wonder why he would dress up as a german officer... i wish someone had done some more reserch on this... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hansson Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 That time when he (Hassel) dressed up as a German soldier apparently was the only time in his life he wore a German military uniform. The occupational authorities thought he was a nuthead and he was later released. Do a search on google newsgroups and you'll find several articles about it. Edit: I just reread the post I was refering to, and saw that he indeed was caught several times imposting a german officer... [ May 25, 2003, 06:37 PM: Message edited by: Hansson ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grisha Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 There are references that indicate for violations of military discipline the Gemans incarcerated or executed a significantly larger percentage of their overall combat personnel than the Red Army, by a factor of over 2:1. Were there German penal units? Of course there were. Where do you think the Soviets got their term for penal units, Shtraf? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Dorosh Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 As usual, JasonC is on the mark - the idea of entrusting tanks to prisoners is a remarkable fantasy. If they couldn't keep good units like LAH, GD, HG or Pz Lehr fully equipped, the idea that petty thieves would be given tanks seems to stretch the imagination a little too far. Reread Hassel's account of Monte Cassino - complete with US Marines chopping off heads with Samurai swords. Great fun, poor history! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meach Posted May 26, 2003 Author Share Posted May 26, 2003 There seems to be quite an enigma attached to the auther of these books but I for one totally enjoyed reading them and look forward to his new offering but in his own words "I am an old man now and do not write quickly.." Whether he was a raving loon or not his novels captured the savagery and comradeship of war rather well I thought and the tanks to prisoner units does seem far fetched. If you look beyond the historical inaccuracies and the fact that they all died in the very first book.."legion of the damned" I think it was, there is a very, very deep interwoven brotherhood between the platoon which makes for excellent reading. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAUS_TD Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 Hi nice thread, i read some articles about the german penal compagnies,they had normaly only german soldiers or officers who had light sentences who wanted to get reinstated again later on. They had to do the most difficult jobs like mineclearing and stopping russian panzers with only a grenade. When they survived a couple of battles they were reinstated. But the causulty rate was so high very few got back to there own div. There is a movie about the penal div in russia. i dont know the name if somebody knows it pls reply it i want to have that movie 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 Mine clearing definitely qualifies as a disagreeable, labor intensive job. For marginal, light offense, mostly loyal personnel trying to prove themselves I can see it. For harder cases, it seems pretty reckless. There are plenty of accidental looking "fragging" opportunities in a minefield. I wouldn't want to be one of the supervising officers. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meach Posted May 26, 2003 Author Share Posted May 26, 2003 Maus, are you thinking of the film "Wheels of Terror" which is the film of the Sven Hassel book? Pretty bad film but nice to see the guys in the flesh so to speak. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Dorosh Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 Originally posted by Meach: Maus, are you thinking of the film "Wheels of Terror" which is the film of the Sven Hassel book? Pretty bad film but nice to see the guys in the flesh so to speak. At least they had WW II tanks in it....unlike some other Hollywood offerings! Didn't the Germans do battle in Russian assault guns in that one? The only scene I honestly remember is the one where the guy scrapes his jackboots and blows his nose into his buddy's soup; and how faithful that was to the same scene in the book. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meach Posted May 26, 2003 Author Share Posted May 26, 2003 Yeah they capture or are given (canna remember totally) a SU-122 i think and are behind russian lines when a platoon of Ivan come out of the woods and knock on the tank...Tiny answers holding the cat and the LT asks it's name and he tells her "STALIN" and gets a slap for it something terrible..lmao. Did u see the bit where they "bury" the brownshirts with there panzer by backing into a wall and covering them with rubble..pure class, shows the contempt they had for nazi's. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddball_E8 Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 hmmm... i wonder why everyone is so hung up on the fact that everyone dies in the first book... the first book comprises the whole war... the other books are just parts of the war... so in a sence all of the books after the first are just more "detailed" descriptions of parts of the war while the first one is the entire stretch... then again its just fiction so who cares??? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreas Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 Originally posted by Oddball_E8: hmmm... interesting... wonder why he would dress up as a german officer...To do a bank heist? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meach Posted May 26, 2003 Author Share Posted May 26, 2003 The reason about the first book getting such attention is that the main group get killed on an armoured train and later on there is mention of the said same people going off and doing other stuff after the war, Tiny and the legionairre go back to the foreign legion for example. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddball_E8 Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 Hmmm... did not know that... havent read them all yet... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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