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Description

At the mention of these units, and contrary to recent stereotypes, punishment battalions were by no means poorly managed gatherings of criminals. On the contrary, in the Red Army there were no more disciplined and combat-ready units as it sounds paradoxically penalty battalions were the army elite.
Alexander Vasilyevich Pyltsyn according to official documents spent 12 years on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, in fact Alexander Vasilyevich fought only 2 years from 1943 to 1945 but in accordance with the provision on penalty battalions of the active army their commander every month of service was counted for six. The losses of these units were also approximately six times higher than in the combat units and such soldiers also fought for six men.
The Germans knew that they were facing the penalized soldiers. We go to the attack, when we come back the Germans are gone. They were afraid, they left in advance.
Semyon Basov was a penalty officer - he remembers well his last fight in the Penal Corps. The fight when he was wounded by shell splinters, one of those splinters as a lifelong reminder of the war remained in his head. On an assault on a German trench they came out 150 people, 20 reached the target.
In defense stood with the Germans, they shot every square meter of neutral palasa and hit without a miss. And when the attack began, the fountains of earth began. An explosion lifts a man, an explosion lifts a man in front of my eyes. We rushed in, the Germans did not accept hand-to-hand combat. In the trenches quickly ran away.
Hitlerites already knew that mortal combatants from the fine-battalion were not afraid of wounds or mutilation. A wound meant rehabilitation. He had to wash away his guilt before the Motherland with his own and the enemy's blood, regardless of whether the penal officer had really done something wrong or had been condemned on a ridiculous occasion. The penal officers were ruthless. According to the memories of Alexander Pyltsin.
They used everything: sapper blades and chopped and bayoneted those who had them, automatic rifles and grenades. In such a hand-to-hand fight you look "And who won, who took the upper hand?" and you see that ours are standing more, and Germans are lying more. So, we won, we stood our ground in this melee.
Penalty battalions and penalty companies were formed on July 28, 1942 by the order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR number 227. In the text of this order it was emphasized that the Germans to combat cowardice and instability of their fighters use penalty battalions and barrier units and that the presence of these penalty units has a beneficial effect on improving discipline in the ranks of the Wehrmacht.
The Germans had penalty battalions, officers' battalions, and there were battalions for privates and non-commissioned officers. And it is interesting that we had terms of one month, two or three months. And they sometimes had indefinite stay in the penalty battalions. I've seen a German machine gunner chained up in a penalty battalion.
The effectiveness of the German penal battalion created in the critical days of the battle of Moscow showed the Soviet leadership the way to solve problems in their army. Then it was decided to create something similar in the USSR. However, Soviet soldiers and officers did not have to be driven forward, they were eager to fight.
There were two kinds of penalties. The first battalions, which are sent military officers and political workers 10 percent of all battalions. The second companies with soldiers, those were used to the fullest, there were not spared.
During the Great Patriotic War several hundred thousand people who were in prison were amnestied and sent to the army. There was a practice of deferred sentences for criminals convicted of felonies. Criminals were sent to the front, if they were wounded, they were sent to the front line, and there were cases when some of them were taken away to serve their time (although the conditions were milder). There was no difference between ordinary conscripts and those who had been convicted before
We simply did not pay any attention. We were not even interested in what article he had been tried under, it was important for us that this soldier, having joined our ranks, fulfilled his military duty.
Only officers who were guilty as it was said in Stalin's order - in violation of discipline due to cowardice or instability - were sent to penalty battalions. Does this mean that the fine battalion was staffed with cowards, no, we need to turn to another document. August 16, 1941 was issued the famous Order of the Stavka of the Supreme High Command No. 270. The order was signed by Chairman of the State Defense Committee Joseph Stalin, Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee Vyacheslav Molotov, Marshals of the Soviet Union Semyon Budyonny, Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Timoshenko, Boris Shaposhnikov and Army General Georgy Zhukov.
In it, Stalin gives an example of those units that, despite losses or encirclement, were able to break through to their own and continue fighting in the ranks of the Red Army. Given and examples of those who surrendered with entire units.
The order was to be read in all units of the armed forces of the USSR. According to it, representatives of the command staff and political workers who during the battle tore off their insignia, surrendered or became deserters, were considered to be malicious deserters and were to be shot on the spot, and their families were to be arrested. Those who were surrounded were ordered to resist to the last possible opportunity, to save their weapons, to fight their way to their own, and to destroy commanders or Red Army soldiers who wanted to surrender by all means. The families of such traitors were to be deprived of state benefits and aid. The order obliged to demote cowardly commanders and political workers down to privates or even to shoot them (if necessary). And in their place to nominate brave and courageous people from the junior command staff or even distinguished privates.
In the future, all those who had been in captivity were sent to penalty battalions, it was done in order to identify saboteurs. According to the declassified reports of the NKVD they were not few. Part of the prisoners went to serve as punishers. About 65 percent of the Penal Corps were encircled.
There were other cases, for example: A naval officer, head of the ship's radio repair workshops, once caught Goebbels' speech and translated his speech from German into Russian at the request of his coworkers. He was convicted for his assistance to German propaganda. Another example was:
A lieutenant was at the front, was wounded and went to the hospital. He wrote to his wife that he was wounded in a hospital nearby and asked her to come. The wife referred to some domestic circumstances, for which she could not come to her husband. He suspected something bad, ran home from the hospital, showed up unexpectedly, found his wife in a very unsightly position with some new roommate. So he shot them both. Went to the penal battalion for murder. There was a pilot, one of his subordinates began to make some manipulations with the airplane in the air, whether he was checking it on some modes, or he decided just to perform a dead loop. In the end he crashed the airplane and died. His commander was sent to a penal battalion for lack of discipline in the unit.
The court-martial could give an officer one of three possible sentences. For crimes that in peacetime were punished with ten years of imprisonment, 3 months of punishment were given, 5-7 years of imprisonment were equal to two months, instead of a term of up to 5 years, one month was given. In any case, a soldier should not have spent more than 3 months in a fine-bat.
At the time of service in the penal battalion in which each soldier was a high-class professional stern and battle-hardened commanders and order-bearers showed considerable heroism. The former officers had a huge combat experience and instantly assessed the combat situation, thanks to them the fine-bat became the army elite and therefore they did not need any barrier detachments.
For example, on the river Ugra - Smolensk region, there was a fortified defensive line of the German Army Group "Center" - the most powerful of the three groups of armies of the Wehrmacht. As recalls
Alexander Buyanov, who in this performance commanded a company of the 192 Rifle Division:
They certainly equipped there to the full program so to speak. Machine guns were mowed down just like wheat by a combine harvester. And I was looking for these firing points with a sniper rifle also tried to suppress machine gunners or whoever there are these firing points. And only after sunset, we got into the front line, all day long we overcame these 500 meters. You know the whole field was strewn with the corpses of our soldiers.
Later Alexander Buyanov learned that it was here on this section of the front clashed two waves of suicide shtrafbat against German machine gunners. Hitler's machine gunners dug themselves individual trenches - funnels. They had no chance to leave such trenches, but it was not easy to smoke them out of there, even snipers could not reach them. Only frontal attacks were left to destroy them.
When all these suicide solders were killed. Only then we could get up, you understand. I came to these trenches and looked. There are dead Germans in every trench and they have machine guns. And our guys were lying in a wedge in front of each machine gun, shot in the forehead, because it was impossible to crawl.
Ivan Ryzhikov, a senior adjutant of a rifle battalion of the 150th Rifle Division, the same one that later took the Reichstag in 1945, participated in the storming of the Zaozernaya Heights in the Kalinin region.
Three rows of trenches, wire barriers, minefields and a convenient location on the terrain from the height viewed the space of 8-12 kilometers around, and well shot. The Germans considered it impregnable.
We were given two companies of penalties. The order came to liberate this height, and we went after the penalized men. We were told to go into battle, not to retreat a step back, and so they went. And we followed them. Half of them almost died, half survived. But there were only officers. Those who remained and those who died were rehabilitated.
One of the most controversial questions about the penalty battalions of the Great Patriotic War, whether the penalized soldiers could be rehabilitated without serious injury or death. Formally, of course, yes, they were entitled to restoration of all rights of ranks and awards and for the feat or simply in connection with the end of the term of stay in a penal battalion.
After the battle I looked at the lists and there were 698 of us. In the end 630 were killed and only 68 survivors were released. There were times when they were released only after being wounded.
The commanders were only combat officers, many of them had awards. They were addressed only according to the military regulations. Some fighters were awarded with the gold medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union (they gave it only to those who died).
Through the penalty units passed 428000 people, which is a little more than 1% of all who took part in the Great Patriotic War, but the losses in the penalized units were higher than in the combat units in 6 times. Penal officers were sent to the most difficult dangerous and responsible combat missions, where they did not hesitate to give their lives for the common victory over the enemy.

Description

At the mention of these units, and contrary to recent stereotypes, punishment battalions were by no means poorly managed gatherings of criminals. On the contrary, in the Red Army there were no more disciplined and combat-ready units as it sounds paradoxically penalty battalions were the army elite.
Alexander Vasilyevich Pyltsyn according to official documents spent 12 years on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, in fact Alexander Vasilyevich fought only 2 years from 1943 to 1945 but in accordance with the provision on penalty battalions of the active army their commander every month of service was counted for six. The losses of these units were also approximately six times higher than in the combat units and such soldiers also fought for six men.
The Germans knew that they were facing the penalized soldiers. We go to the attack, when we come back the Germans are gone. They were afraid, they left in advance.
Semyon Basov was a penalty officer - he remembers well his last fight in the Penal Corps. The fight when he was wounded by shell splinters, one of those splinters as a lifelong reminder of the war remained in his head. On an assault on a German trench they came out 150 people, 20 reached the target.
In defense stood with the Germans, they shot every square meter of neutral palasa and hit without a miss. And when the attack began, the fountains of earth began. An explosion lifts a man, an explosion lifts a man in front of my eyes. We rushed in, the Germans did not accept hand-to-hand combat. In the trenches quickly ran away.
Hitlerites already knew that mortal combatants from the fine-battalion were not afraid of wounds or mutilation. A wound meant rehabilitation. He had to wash away his guilt before the Motherland with his own and the enemy's blood, regardless of whether the penal officer had really done something wrong or had been condemned on a ridiculous occasion. The penal officers were ruthless. According to the memories of Alexander Pyltsin.
They used everything: sapper blades and chopped and bayoneted those who had them, automatic rifles and grenades. In such a hand-to-hand fight you look "And who won, who took the upper hand?" and you see that ours are standing more, and Germans are lying more. So, we won, we stood our ground in this melee.
Penalty battalions and penalty companies were formed on July 28, 1942 by the order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR number 227. In the text of this order it was emphasized that the Germans to combat cowardice and instability of their fighters use penalty battalions and barrier units and that the presence of these penalty units has a beneficial effect on improving discipline in the ranks of the Wehrmacht.
The Germans had penalty battalions, officers' battalions, and there were battalions for privates and non-commissioned officers. And it is interesting that we had terms of one month, two or three months. And they sometimes had indefinite stay in the penalty battalions. I've seen a German machine gunner chained up in a penalty battalion.
The effectiveness of the German penal battalion created in the critical days of the battle of Moscow showed the Soviet leadership the way to solve problems in their army. Then it was decided to create something similar in the USSR. However, Soviet soldiers and officers did not have to be driven forward, they were eager to fight.
There were two kinds of penalties. The first battalions, which are sent military officers and political workers 10 percent of all battalions. The second companies with soldiers, those were used to the fullest, there were not spared.
During the Great Patriotic War several hundred thousand people who were in prison were amnestied and sent to the army. There was a practice of deferred sentences for criminals convicted of felonies. Criminals were sent to the front, if they were wounded, they were sent to the front line, and there were cases when some of them were taken away to serve their time (although the conditions were milder). There was no difference between ordinary conscripts and those who had been convicted before
We simply did not pay any attention. We were not even interested in what article he had been tried under, it was important for us that this soldier, having joined our ranks, fulfilled his military duty.
Only officers who were guilty as it was said in Stalin's order - in violation of discipline due to cowardice or instability - were sent to penalty battalions. Does this mean that the fine battalion was staffed with cowards, no, we need to turn to another document. August 16, 1941 was issued the famous Order of the Stavka of the Supreme High Command No. 270. The order was signed by Chairman of the State Defense Committee Joseph Stalin, Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee Vyacheslav Molotov, Marshals of the Soviet Union Semyon Budyonny, Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Timoshenko, Boris Shaposhnikov and Army General Georgy Zhukov.
In it, Stalin gives an example of those units that, despite losses or encirclement, were able to break through to their own and continue fighting in the ranks of the Red Army. Given and examples of those who surrendered with entire units.
The order was to be read in all units of the armed forces of the USSR. According to it, representatives of the command staff and political workers who during the battle tore off their insignia, surrendered or became deserters, were considered to be malicious deserters and were to be shot on the spot, and their families were to be arrested. Those who were surrounded were ordered to resist to the last possible opportunity, to save their weapons, to fight their way to their own, and to destroy commanders or Red Army soldiers who wanted to surrender by all means. The families of such traitors were to be deprived of state benefits and aid. The order obliged to demote cowardly commanders and political workers down to privates or even to shoot them (if necessary). And in their place to nominate brave and courageous people from the junior command staff or even distinguished privates.
In the future, all those who had been in captivity were sent to penalty battalions, it was done in order to identify saboteurs. According to the declassified reports of the NKVD they were not few. Part of the prisoners went to serve as punishers. About 65 percent of the Penal Corps were encircled.
There were other cases, for example: A naval officer, head of the ship's radio repair workshops, once caught Goebbels' speech and translated his speech from German into Russian at the request of his coworkers. He was convicted for his assistance to German propaganda. Another example was:
A lieutenant was at the front, was wounded and went to the hospital. He wrote to his wife that he was wounded in a hospital nearby and asked her to come. The wife referred to some domestic circumstances, for which she could not come to her husband. He suspected something bad, ran home from the hospital, showed up unexpectedly, found his wife in a very unsightly position with some new roommate. So he shot them both. Went to the penal battalion for murder. There was a pilot, one of his subordinates began to make some manipulations with the airplane in the air, whether he was checking it on some modes, or he decided just to perform a dead loop. In the end he crashed the airplane and died. His commander was sent to a penal battalion for lack of discipline in the unit.
The court-martial could give an officer one of three possible sentences. For crimes that in peacetime were punished with ten years of imprisonment, 3 months of punishment were given, 5-7 years of imprisonment were equal to two months, instead of a term of up to 5 years, one month was given. In any case, a soldier should not have spent more than 3 months in a fine-bat.
At the time of service in the penal battalion in which each soldier was a high-class professional stern and battle-hardened commanders and order-bearers showed considerable heroism. The former officers had a huge combat experience and instantly assessed the combat situation, thanks to them the fine-bat became the army elite and therefore they did not need any barrier detachments.
For example, on the river Ugra - Smolensk region, there was a fortified defensive line of the German Army Group "Center" - the most powerful of the three groups of armies of the Wehrmacht. As recalls
Alexander Buyanov, who in this performance commanded a company of the 192 Rifle Division:
They certainly equipped there to the full program so to speak. Machine guns were mowed down just like wheat by a combine harvester. And I was looking for these firing points with a sniper rifle also tried to suppress machine gunners or whoever there are these firing points. And only after sunset, we got into the front line, all day long we overcame these 500 meters. You know the whole field was strewn with the corpses of our soldiers.
Later Alexander Buyanov learned that it was here on this section of the front clashed two waves of suicide shtrafbat against German machine gunners. Hitler's machine gunners dug themselves individual trenches - funnels. They had no chance to leave such trenches, but it was not easy to smoke them out of there, even snipers could not reach them. Only frontal attacks were left to destroy them.
When all these suicide solders were killed. Only then we could get up, you understand. I came to these trenches and looked. There are dead Germans in every trench and they have machine guns. And our guys were lying in a wedge in front of each machine gun, shot in the forehead, because it was impossible to crawl.
Ivan Ryzhikov, a senior adjutant of a rifle battalion of the 150th Rifle Division, the same one that later took the Reichstag in 1945, participated in the storming of the Zaozernaya Heights in the Kalinin region.
Three rows of trenches, wire barriers, minefields and a convenient location on the terrain from the height viewed the space of 8-12 kilometers around, and well shot. The Germans considered it impregnable.
We were given two companies of penalties. The order came to liberate this height, and we went after the penalized men. We were told to go into battle, not to retreat a step back, and so they went. And we followed them. Half of them almost died, half survived. But there were only officers. Those who remained and those who died were rehabilitated.
One of the most controversial questions about the penalty battalions of the Great Patriotic War, whether the penalized soldiers could be rehabilitated without serious injury or death. Formally, of course, yes, they were entitled to restoration of all rights of ranks and awards and for the feat or simply in connection with the end of the term of stay in a penal battalion.
After the battle I looked at the lists and there were 698 of us. In the end 630 were killed and only 68 survivors were released. There were times when they were released only after being wounded.
The commanders were only combat officers, many of them had awards. They were addressed only according to the military regulations. Some fighters were awarded with the gold medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union (they gave it only to those who died).
Through the penalty units passed 428000 people, which is a little more than 1% of all who took part in the Great Patriotic War, but the losses in the penalized units were higher than in the combat units in 6 times. Penal officers were sent to the most difficult dangerous and responsible combat missions, where they did not hesitate to give their lives for the common victory over the enemy.