Soviet Penal Battalions

Soviet Penal Battalions

Penal Battalion Break Through Units

Every Soviet attack on the Eastern Front was spearheaded by Penal battalions. Those battalions of the damned were the most expendable of the Red Army. Like certain British units who stormed castles during the Peninsular War, Soviet penal battalions were “Forlorn Hope” units.

After the Red Army’s penal battalions were sprawled in ripped and torn bloody heaps all over the battlefield, the Soviet regular infantry advanced into the devastating fire of German MG-42s.
Only when the field was completely covered in Soviet corpses and a small breakthrough had been achieved, did the Soviet Guards Divisions advance, wading and sloshing through great pools of blood.Excerpt From: Army of Darkness by Breaker McCoy, www.quikmaneuvers.com

The real story of what happened on the Eastern Front in World War II has not yet been told. The Soviet High Command accomplished great feats of military art there, yet the cost was much higher than the 27 million dead that Gorbachev admitted to in May of 1991. "...the total was considerably higher. A large portion of these millions reached their destiny through the sausage machine of the penal battalions..."

Any praise of Soviet military genius must be leavened with a sober look at the number of lives that they wasted to gain victory. Perhaps there is genius in willingness to expend lives too?

The realization that the USSR was able to suffer over thirty million dead, and three times that wounded, and yet win the war, and go on to seize nearly half the world, terrifies many people. There are few nations extant which are willing to wade through rivers of their own blood for the sake of imperialism. Are there?

It is true that the German Army, after the first six months of combat, fought on in a greatly debilitated condition that prevented it from defending itself in the depth necessary. It is also true that the German Army never mastered the art of operational defense, their reserves for example, existed only at the tactical and strategic level.

There is also a third truth, in spite of being able to infiltrate huge formations through gaps in the sparsely defended German lines, the Soviets still had to pay dearly for their relentless offensive action with many casualties.
Soviet Penal Battalions
Soviet casualties were always terrific, a fact which motivated Stavka, in 1942, to increase the number of penal battalions in each Front and require that they be used only for offensive and counteroffensive action. "...By 1942 each Russian front commander had ten to fifteen penal battalions at his disposal..." Each penal battalion was composed of 360 men organized into an administrative group, a guard company and three penal companies. The inmates of these units consisted of officers and men who were sentenced for a variety of real and imagined offenses. Soviet penal battalion members were expended, by the tens of thousands, in frontal assaults on Axis lines. "...The most brilliant victories achieved by the Soviet Army were bought with the blood of the penal battalions...They would break through the enemy's defenses, and then, trampling on their corpses, would come the elite Guards divisions..."Kept under heavy guard in assembly areas near the front, penal units were brought forward and issued weapons moments before they were ordered: "...Advance to attack!..." Then their machine-gun-armed guard companies would herd them into the teeth of German fire. "...They often attacked through minefields as 'tramplers,' whose bodies by the score marked the passage of the Red Army through a minefield...In most Soviet attacks, several penal battalions were completely wiped out..."

Most Red Army victories, including the cunning Soviet encirclement of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, were bought and paid for with the blood of thousands of penal inmates. For example, the Soviet 21st Army expended 16 penal battalions and the Soviet 65th Army expended 23 penal battalions more in battles around Stalingrad. (See, Secrets of Stalingrad, www.quikmaneuvers.com)

During the Operational Bagration encirclements in Byelorussia, the 5th Guards Tank Army, fighting as a Front level Operational Mobile Group, expended 34 penal battalions, the equivalent of four divisions. Thus over 40,000 penal slaves died to breakthrough the German front so that Soviet mobile groups could thrust into the German operational depth. Very few of the penal battalion members, "...survived the engagement and...of course, those who were fortunate enough to live through this battle were almost certainly killed in the next one..."