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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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The USSR did not actually kill retreating men in the field. Blocking detachments were mainly made up of the worst soldiers in a unit and were primarily used to round up malingerers and send them back to the front. There were also roughly 100-250 men in each blocking detachment, and each group was expected to enforce no-retreat orders on a regiment of roughly 40,000-50,000 men. The primary politcal goal of blocking detachments was to persuade officers from ordering panicked retreats in order to prevent the front line from collapsing. If individual units needed to fall back, they would be allowed to.
If a solider was suspected of serious desertion, they would be arrested and tried under court martial, not shot on the spot.
The only caveat to this is that Penal troops were followed by armed NKVD officers which would kill them on the spot for attempting to either surrender to the Germans, or escape from captivity.
yeah