“If the enemy does not surrender.
He Will be annihilated,’ is the brutal and disgusting motto of a paramilitary group of
soldiers deployed by the Soviet Union during the Second World War.
Known as the Destruction battalions’ they were a group of soldiers that dealt very roughly
with many people during the conflict, and their actions were incredibly shocking and
harrowing.
Their name connotes carnage and chaos, and the Battalions were initially created with
the intention as the secure the rear of the red army.
It was said that, ‘The destruction battalions have no mercy for our enemies – bandits
and other fascist cankers.
They shall be not just destroyed, but sent directly under the ground, where is their
right place.
In every village and settlement, the destruction battalion has a number of tasks in addition
to directly breaking the enemy.
With bolshevist grimness, everybody who imparts provocational rumours or generates panic,
must be extirpated.
Everybody, who directly or indirectly helps the enemy, must be found out and exterminated.’
But what is the story of the Destruction battalion’s?
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Following Operation Barbarossa and as the German tanks and infantry rampaged into the
Soviet Union on the 22nd June 1941, Stalin was shocked.
He never believed that the Germans and Hitler would launch an invasion of his lands, but
a state of war was immediately declared in the western lands of the country.
With this, two days later an order was issued warning people and soldiers against enemy
paratroopers and how they would mix with dissident parts of the population to conduct sabotage
and cause chaos to the Red Army.
Many capitalist kulaks as they were known were considered the enemy’s of Stalin’s
ideas, and many of these it was believed still held weapons and would turn against the Red
Army.
With this, the Red Army strengthen defences around head quarters, army buildings and communication
lines.
The destruction battalions were formed of volunteers as well as soldiers who were forced
to staff the groups.
There were no entry requirements and there were a number of ranks and also some criminals
were drafted into the detachment.
Fighters were trained for dozens of hours, and each fighter battalion was armed with
two light machine guns, rifles, pistols and grenades.
There were a lack of weapons, so they ended up using old weapons and anything they could
get their hands on, including even sabers and swords.
During July 1941 following the launch of Operation Barbarossa, 1755 destruction battalions were
formed across all different parts of the front line,
and 328,000 men were part of these.
Further groups were created in Belarus, and they were also formed inside annexed and occupied
lands of Estonia, Lativa, Lithuania and East Poland.
The destruction battalion were given missions and tasks to protect the security of the Eastern
Front and what happened behind the Red Army who were fighting the Wehrmacht fiercely.
They took very strong actions against Anti Soviet partisans and used a scorched earth
policy to terrorise civilian populations.
They burned down many homes and small villages, and carried out a large amount of executions
of people who they considered possible bandits.
Ultimately these were men, women and children who were civilians, and the NKVD issued orders
that any bandit who attacked should her shot and executed on the spot, to also detract
possible saboteurs helping the German war effort.
They would carry out large scale killings and destruction to put people off going against
the Soviet war effort.
Inside of Estonia, they conducted huge scale killings.
During the Battle of Kautla, in which the Soviet destruction battalions took on the
Estonian forest brothers, the Soviets conducted civilian killings.
The battalion murdered around 30 civilians and set fire to farms, after carrying out
the systematic murder of civilians in the region.
They burned all their buildings and the Kautla farm was burned down with the family members
and staff inside who owned it and worked on it.
Some were even tortured for more information, but more horror occurred in Estonia.
One Estonia School boy had all his bones in his hands broken by the Soviets, and then
was bayonetted for carrying an Estonian flag, and another man was subjected to an acid attack.
Inside an Estonia village named Viru-Kabala, all the residents were killed including young
children.
But these events and killings led to Partisan groups rebelling against them and wanting
to get revenge on the Red Army with thousands of men joining the Forest Brother’s resistance
group.
During times, the destruction battalions burned many people alive, and murdered 1850 people
in Estonia with all of them being either innocent civilians including women and children, and
also members of the partisans.
The aim of the destruction battalions was to take the fight to armed resistance, and
people who were rising up.
This included terrorising the civilians and they saw this as a huge threat to their chances
of forcing the German Army back.
They also took part in active combat in areas where the Germans broke through, and also
established ambush points and secret guard posts as well as carrying out recon and searches.
In lands where the war had not reached, they kept guard and regular watches and did arrest
and torture many different individuals.
Despite being very large in their size, they were not seen as an efficient or active armed
force in the Second World War, and they did not quickly eradicate resistance in Estonia
and defeat the Forest Brothers.
They did provide assistance in the Second World War, and many people drafted in to the
destruction battalions were local people who knew the local landscape and the people of
the area.
The NKVD and Army officials at times did not have great knowledge of the local landscapes,
and because of this the use of the local men inside of the Destruction Battalion was considered
invaluable and useful.
They did take part in campaigns after the war did turn against the Germans.
They also took control in occupied lands after areas were liberated from the Germans.
Stalin’s destruction battalions were supposed to be forces that kept the civilian populations
in check, and they inflicted horror and suffering onto so many people.
They carried out large scale executions of the populations in public to make sure that
people were kept in charge.
Stalin throughout his time in power had a great fear of sabotage and also people rising
up and questioning him and his regime.
But he saw the questioning of the Red Army in soviet occupied lands as dangerous overall
to the war effort and he saw this as a threat to the goal of defeating the Wehrmacht.
The Destruction battalions were involved in massacre of the population and in burning
down settlements and houses.
Many unarmed civilians were burned alive inside of their farms and homes following enactment
of the scorched earth policies, and despite fighting against Crime they were completely
brutal.
The Destruction battalions were even used to maintain law and order in the post war
landscape, and despite being sub-ordinate to the NKVD, they were renamed the People’s
defence
because of the reputation for slaughter and chaos that they got during the Second World
War.
In 2002 they were declared a criminal organisation in Estonia for the implementation of the criminal
policies of Stalin’s regime.
But they were certainly a group that became known for war crimes, execution and causing
terror amongst the civilian populations.
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