ShtrafBat(penal battalion) and worse

[John Kettler]

This surfaced while searching for something else. Not only is the subject highly pertinent here, but the Volkogonov discoveries are simply stunning. (Fair Use)

"The prominent Russian military historian Dmitry Volkogonov obtained classified information from Russian state military archives verifying that over 120,000 Soviet soldiers were sentenced to capital punishment and another 800,000 were ordered to penal battalions. In fact, nearly two million Red Army combatants were thus murdered by “their own” Soviet

NKVD units during 1941-45.”

The math's way off (maybe the rest were simply mown down by NKVD barrier detachments?), but still, the scale of even capital punishment by the Russian Army during wartime is simply astounding, let alone the astronomic numbers sent to ShtrafBat.

http://www.quikmaneuvers.com/red_army_tactics.html

While we're on such things, a translation of Vysotskiy's song about the penal battalion men

Vladimir Vysotskiy - Penal Battalions

They're only giving the shelling an hour.

Just an hour of respite for the infantry.

Just an hour until the most important of matters:

Who gets a medal, and who gets the gallows.

For an hour we don't write a single line.

We prayed to the gods of war - to the artillerymen!

Since we aren't regulars, we're penal soldiers.

They don't write us: "Count like a communist".

Before the attack - vodka? Alright here!

We drank ours up in civilian life.

So we won't shout "hurrah!",

We'll play with death quietly.

Penal soldiers have only one law, only one ending -

Chop up that Fascist tramp!

And if your chest doesn't catch some lead,

Your chest will catch a medal "for courage".

You strike with a bayonet, but it's better to strike by hand -

It's more reliable, yes and quieter.

And if you remain alive,

Walk in the trench even higher!

The enemy thinks that we're morally weak.

Behind him lay burned forests and cities.

You should have chopped the forest into the coffins -

Penal battalions now enter the breach!

Now it's O-six-hundred, and there's the barrage.

Well, god of war! Do it without respite!

Only an hour until the most important matters:

Who gets a medal, and who gets the gallows.

This is extremely worthwhile, and somebody's numbers are wrong, since I rather doubt Volkogonov had two separate sets. The below link says this:

"But after the prominent Russian military historian Dmitry Volkogonov had obtained classified information from state military archives, he said that approximately 60,000 were sentenced to capital punishment and another 600,000 were ordered to penal battalions. But one has to admit that quite a few of them were later pardoned as those who had expiated their guilt."

http://www.vor.ru/55/Stalingrad/History_4_eng.html

Wiki seems to prefer the second set of values, but notes, (as does the incisive ShtrafBat review below, by their depiction in the series) that estimates indicate as many as a million zeks from the Gulag got sent into combat via ShtrafBat, which may well explain the enormous numerical disparities in the records. Am pretty sure the Red Army wouldn't bother counting zeks, just its disgraced own.

Here's a terrific analysis of the ShtrafBat TV series, from a variety of useful perspectives.

http://www.kinokultura.com/2006/13r-strafbat.shtml

Really want to read PENALTY STRIKE! Anyone here read it?

http://www.amazon.com/PENALTY-STRIKE-Memoirs-Commander-Memories/dp/1874622639

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

Sent to a penal battalion doesn't mean capitally punished by any stretch of the imagination. Nor was the typical use of a penal battalion a suicidal charge.

Men sent to a penal battalion served a definite time there or until they had performed some meritorious enough service that they were returned to regular units. Typically being wounded in action, sometimes it was enough to participate in an assault "with honor". But the battalions themselves got all sorts of other duty before that - labor details especially, but also hazardous duty like lifting mines.

Moreover, there were special penal units exclusively for officers, where the officers served in the ranks, and could be returned to officer status and regular duty for merit or wounds. One per front - there were mutiple penal companies at army level for enlisted men.

The whole idea that Russian penal service was a form of enforced suicide or meant machinegunning by your own side for failing to attack, is German wartime propaganda. It was both meant to stiffen German defenders and to induce surrender by Russians.

Penal units and "blocking detachments" have no relation to each other. The latter was largely about morally and physically preventing routs, and was an emergency order sort of thing in 1941 and 1942. In the 1942 campaign, they were widely flouted and ineffective, and as a result most of the bypassed Russian forces got away safely. Running was actually a smarter thing to do once the Germans broke through and had tanks rampaging in the rear, but the higher muckety-mucks wouldn't believe it and kept ordering hold at all costs, not a step back, yada yada yada, because you know, that worked so well in 1941.

As for the scale of capital punishment, men were being sent to the gulag with 10 year sentences for criticizing Stalin's conduct of the war in personal mail. Don't confuse the draconian injustice of the one-party state, with some military strategy or technique. Also, remember that the Germans had at least 400,000 citizens of the USSR serving them as outright collaboraters in the Hiwis. There was plenty of actual outright treason to deal with, that wasn't made up at all.

[costard]

In the period of the war, for an army of how many? (I lack grogness, I know, its a failing)

For crimes like being asleep whilst at post? Rape, looting - what other crimes go with the unleashing of violence in men?

120 000 sounds about right.

[M1A1TC]

I bought this TV serial few years ago - very cool.

[John Kettler]

M1A1TC,

What's your take on the ShrafBat situation in light of Volkogonov's discoveries and the new to me Gulag angle? As for the series, what little I saw in the Lube video looked fantastic.

Per this, though, the English subtitles are awful. Still, they'd have to be beyond ghastly to exceed the misery I went through reading a machine translation of A.V. Tonkikh's ANTITANK DEFENSE. There, practically every key word had as many as three, often poorly chosen, meanings listed.

http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-films-tv/15811-shtrafbat.html

Here's someone's own compilation of footage to go with the Lube song. The priest evidently made an impression on the compiler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2tfpqLFQ2M

Regards,

John Kettler

[Stalins Organ]

There's a listing of penal unit allocations and designations on the RKKA site here and a commentary in Russian here - a 3.5mb pdf that looks like it is where the unit list came from but the text hasn't been translated.