Deserters, serial murderers, and the clinically insane — NOT people who make good soldiers. But
for the manpower-strapped nations of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union,
any man (or woman) who could hold a weapon was required to do their duty.
In this video, we delve into the dark depths of the Nazi and Soviet penal
legions of the Second World War. A warning, though: this is going to get pretty grim.
For a quick overview, penal legions were units composed of soldiers, as well as officers,
who had been convicted of military crimes. The crimes were varied, from something as
simple as making a defeatist comment to *murdering* an officer — a capital offence.
The Nazis and Soviets most commonly deployed penal legions behind the lines,
although they were sometimes thrown into combat. The Eastern front saw the heaviest use
of penal legions, but German penal units were active on the Western front too.
The officers commanding penal units all followed the same code:
that even a soldier convicted of the worst crimes could be redeemed through bloodshed.
Discipline was enforced with an iron resolve, and often the soldiers of a penal unit could
be summarily executed by their officers for ANY infraction. Penal unit officers
were some of the toughest and most dedicated leaders in the entire Wehrmacht AND Red Army.
The first German penal unit was the Sonderabteilungen.
These were special units set up by Hitler personally, in 1935. Any conscript who
didn’t seem committed enough to Nazi ideals could be sent to the unit. The officers were
tough disciplinarians but didn’t strive to make the conscripts lives miserable; instead,
their goal was to instill a sense of Nazi pride and honour in their men. Between 3,000 and 6,000
conscripts passed through the unit and came out as Nazis. The 320 who wouldn’t accept indoctrination
were quietly transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp — never to be heard from again.
As the Second World War got into full swing, Sonderabteilungen was replaced by
the “Bewährungsbataillon 500.” This unit was created as a probationary battalion
in which convicted soldiers could earn their way back into their old units
through acts of extreme bravery. Convicted soldiers lost their rights as German citizens
and were only able to regain them through service in the Bewährungsbataillon 500. As heroism was the
only path to redemption for these condemned men, their combat morale was extremely high.
As the war dragged on and the military situation in the East deteriorated for the Wehrmacht,
recruits for the Bewährungsbataillon 500 were pulled from ordinary civilian prisons. Even those
sentenced to death could serve in the penal unit, and through a heroic act, have their life spared.
In classic Soviet fashion, Stalin watched what the Wehrmacht was doing and decided to copy it,
while also cranking the brutality up to 11.
It was July 1942, and the Soviets had suffered massive losses during the first year of Operation
Barbarossa. Stalin was furious with his men, issuing the infamous Order 227, popularized as
“Not one step back!” This gave Soviet officers permission to summarily execute
ANY soldier who retreated without permission.
Stalin also noted the Wehrmacht's use of penal legions and decided the Red Army needed some too.
Life in a Soviet penal legion was nothing like life in a Wehrmacht one.
Instead of being indoctrinated with a sense of duty to the Fatherland,
the Soviet penal troops were seen as cowards who had abandoned the Motherland in her time of need.
This was a *most grievous sin*, and it had to be atoned for in blood.
A penal soldier typically left the unit in two ways: by being wounded in combat — severely
enough to be incapacitated and carried off the battlefield — or by actions so heroic
that a medal should be awarded. Soldiers could leave a penal at the end of their sentence,
which was often three months or less, but this was rare.
For example, 3,348 soldiers passed through the 1st Independent Penal Company of the 57th Army between
August 1942 and September 1945. Out of these, 25% were killed or went missing, 58% were wounded,
14% were pardoned for outstanding conduct, and 3% were released after serving their sentences.
Officers were often convicted of cowardice because they ordered a retreat.
Their troops were often let off the hook, as they were simply
following orders as usual. These officers were stripped of their ranks and thrown into a penal
*battalion* whilst ordinary soldiers convicted of cowardice were placed in penal *companies*.
You’d be forgiven for thinking of the penal units as disposable — thrown into the frontline
only to be killed immediately — but this was far from the case. The penal battalions were
*elite shock troops*. Red Army officers were generally experienced and knew
how to work together with other units. Having lost rank, pay, and privileges,
they had the most to gain from being reinstated to their original units. When you put hundreds
of men desperate to redeem themselves together, you get an elite “stormtrooper” force. If the
only path to redemption is an Order of Lenin or a stretcher, you fight harder than anyone else.
That said, attrition rates were higher in Soviet penal units than for
*all other* Soviet infantry units. They were the worst in the penal companies,
units designed only for convicted soldiers, not officers. Discipline in these units was far
harsher than in the battalions due to their lower combat morale. Without decent pay and privileges,
these soldiers had far less to fight for — most of them just trying to stay alive.
These soldiers lived on a knife’s edge between life and death
every day. The following are three examples of a *normal* day for a soldier of a penal company:
The 123rd Independent Penal Company.
Ordered to assault a bridge with their full unit strength of 670 soldiers.
They failed to take the bridge, having only 47 men left alive at the end of the day.
The 61st Independent Penal Company. Four days after they failed to attack a German position,
three soldiers were picked out while on parade. They
were shot in front of the whole company to “motivate” the rest.
The 128th Independent Penal Company. Lost nearly its entire strength — 54
killed and 193 wounded, in six days during February 1944. It also changed commanders
five times between January 1st and April 10th of that year,
the commanders lasting 11 to 35 days before being severely wounded or killed.
While the Soviet penal legions were ruthless, they weren’t *pure evil*. No,
that title *accurately* describes a penal unit under SS command. Almost putting Japan’s Unit
731 to shame in terms of barbarity, we're referring to the Dirlewanger Brigade.
It’s difficult to describe just how evil the Dirlewanger Brigade was.
It’s commander, the convicted child rapist Oskar Dirlewanger, recruited
the most sadistic prisoners and Wehrmacht rejects he could find in German territory.
These included convicted arsonists, murders, rapists, and the clinically insane.
The brigade was usually assigned to guard duties or anti-partisan activities behind front lines.
They were first sent to Poland, where they slaughtered, raped,
and looted their way across the countryside. After a complaint by a high-ranking SS official, they
were moved to Byelorussia. Dirlewanger continued his terror campaign against the locals. His
favourite method? Forcing civilians into a barn before setting it on fire, then machine-gunning
those who tried to run. He was also fond of personally executing the locals with his pistol.
Occasionally the brigade was ordered to the front lines. All their murdering
experience hadn’t made Dirlewanger’s men good soldiers. In every engagement,
they took extremely heavy casualties and were labelled as “inept” by regular German soldiers.
This ineptitude cost the Dirlewanger brigade dearly, and if not for a constant supply of
sadistic murderers, the unit would have been wiped out several times.
This brings us to the darkest fact about the penal legions of the Second World War: that they
often committed the most atrocious war crimes imaginable, and were seldom held accountable.
As both Soviet and German penal units were made up of convicted criminals, they were *expected*
to commit war crimes such as slaughtering civilians, mass rape, and executing POWs.
When these crimes were committed, they were rarely reported to high command. Punishments usually
weren’t harsh, and the blame was often placed with officers for failing to supervise their troops.
Soviet units were never held accountable for the war crimes they committed.
In their six-year rampage, the Dirlewanger brigade killed upwards of 30,000 civilians.
The unit acted with such barbarity that even the SS launched an investigation, which was blocked by
Gottlob Berger, an SS chief and close personal friend of Dirlewanger. The brigade was mostly
destroyed during the retreat back to Germany, but some of its men survived, in hiding and as POWs.
Very few were held accountable for their war crimes. Dirlewanger himself was killed in June
1945 while detained in Altshausen detention centre, a POW camp run by French and Polish
soldiers in Germany. It’s unclear whether he was killed by French, French colonial,
or Polish guards, but it’s likely that he was identified by a Polish communist network,
who ordered the guards to torture him to death. I reckon he got what was coming to him.
That was the dark truth of the Nazi and Soviet penal legions of the Second World War,
and we didn’t even get into the really bad stuff Dirlewanger and his
nut-jobs [alternative: men] got up to. But what do YOU think? Do
you reckon penal legions are a good idea? Let us know in the comments!