When the Soviet Union joined the anti-Hitler coalition conversation with the western allies topics centred on the demand for the creation of the “second front”. This was to relieve pressure on the eastern front. The invasion of the Appenine peninsula in 1943 was not enough. The straighter route to the Third Reich lay through France and it was only after the allies had landed in Normandy in June 1944 that this expectation was met.

Complaints about the lack of a second front were used in soviet propaganda for domestic consumption and the term was widely circulated in the Red Army. In whispered jokes in the trenches and foxholes, the Red Army soldiers spoke of the second front that had appeared somewhat earlier than in 1944. Soldiers called the “second front” the blocking units, the anti-retreat formations in the immediate rear areas and organised by the NKVD, the security police forces, subordinated to the front and army commanders.

Victims of this “second front” are estimated to number a million Red Army soldiers and the most conservative estimates this figure at around 700,000.

Machine guns are mowing them down

One German officer described the Battle of Kursk thus “Not one step back! Waves of attacking Russians pour out from depressions in the terrain. Shoulder to shoulder. Everyone cried out Hurrraaah! Our machine guns mowed them down and mortar fire tore gaping holes in their ranks. You just could not miss! They were knocked over like ninepins, in their hundreds up to the time that their corpses formed a wall between us and the next wave. Follow-on waves stared to make off to the rear. Then someone started to shoot machineguns and poured in fire into the backs of these masses, mowing down their own. It's a vision from Dante’s Inferno.”

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  The attacking Red Army man had no other choice;a bullet from the front or one from behind. Either way he had to advance onto enemy positions. Maybe he could take the position by some miracle. If the first wave failed then there were others. Stalin was once reported to have said “We have lots of people.”

Wags wrote that the reason for these tactics awa the conviction that the Soviets had more people than the Germans ammunition. Be that as it may, during the Great Patriotic War the Red Army lost between 11 and 12 million. The way to clear minefield, by pushing masses of man without weapons was also an unexceptional practice.

The above relation by a Wehrmacht officer served German propaganda purposes. But what was it really like?

Panic mongers and cowards are to be liquidated on the spot!

Blocking units, barrier forces, or anti-retreat units had been organised as far back as the Russian civil war, after the Bolshevik revolution, the 1938 Japanese war, and the Winter War with Finland in 1939-40. A few days after the Third Reich invaded the Soviet Union, this measure was unsurprisingly renewed.

The first few months of war saw Red Army casualties reach 3.5 million. Units that had been surprised surrendered, often without a fight. The high command had to react.

The first so-called destruction detachments (istrieblitenyje otriady) were established at the start of the war and were tasked to stabilise the front and to act against “cowards and traitors”. They were employed by the NKVD and came to be known as blocking units or detachments. The regular army also created similar blocking units at the start of hostilities to combat desertion.

On September 12 1941, Stalin issued Order number 1919, establishing such formations on all the front commands. After describing the situation and condemning “foreign panic-mongering elements”, Stalin ordered “In every division there are to be blocking formations composed of tried and tested soldiers. They have to be stronger than battalion strength (one company per regiment) and subordinated to the divisional commander, equipped with their own heavy transport in the form of trucks, tanks and armoured vehicles.”

We read that these units are to “employ their weapons without compunction, liquidate panic-mongers and to support loyal and combat-ready elements…”

In civilian parlance, a division is composed of between five and over several thousand personnel, a regiment has over a thousand in three battalions, a battalion several hundred and a company around two hundred but usually over a hundred. It seems that Stalin wanted that for every eight or ten soldiers there would be ,one in the blocking unit. If we assume that the retreat from a battlefield is conducted in disorder and that the blocking units are cohesive and partly-armoured, then they could in effect halt a rout.

In Vladimir Daines’ book “ Penal battalions and Red Army blocking units” we can find memoirs of Red Army personnel:

“During one attack we came under fire from six barrelled mortars and some of our unit tied to withdraw and hide in the forest. They were stopped by the blocking unit and shot.”

“Then a sudden mine explosion. The skirmish line disintegrated. There were the cries and screams of those torn apart and curses for our engineers who hadn’t done their job properly. The Germans then opened up and unsurprisingly there were fresh casualties. We couldn’t advance and any move to the rear and we’d get shot by our own side.

Another veteran stated “Fear was necessary to make people advance to their deaths (…) If we ran then they’d catch us. Two or three would be shot and the rest would die in combat. The fear was not for us but for our families.” If they were shou it would be as enemies of the people. At home, the NKVD was at work and would send wives, children, and parents to Siberia as relatives of traitors.

The blocking units shot a few or a few dozen soldiers that they had apprehended and who had retreated in panic form the front line. They arrested a few dozen whom they sent to penal units where the death rate was three times higher than in regular line units. The majority of soldiers, terrified by the execution of their colleagues and the arrest of others went back into combat.

The account of the German officer quoted above exaggerated somewhat for propaganda, as the blocking units did not shoot all who wanted to withdraw. They chose carefully, which was effective They fired over the heads of those soldiers who showed timidity in the assault.

In Daines’ book there are contradictory accounts about these practices and memoirs of veterans that state they saw no blocking units at the front.

Did Stalin issue an order but does this mean these units did not exist?

Daines also gives the million figure losses of this “second front” as well as how it could have been seen to come about in the foxholes of the Red Army man.

The most credible accounts have been described in detail in the book. Stalin Order 227 dated July 28 1942, known in historiography as the “not one step back” order. After a description of the front line situation and how harshly the enemy disciplined his own troops we read “Panic-mongers and cowards should be liquidated on the spot.”

The idiot couldn’t even shoot himself

There is an NKVD soldier who is described in Daines’ work who executes with a smile, those who have been arrested by the blocking unit. But this is an exception as a firing squad was usually formed for the purpose. When deserters were caught further from the front line they were executed where possible in front of their parent formations. Commanders who left their posts and soldiers in the face of the enemy were pursued similarly.

Every army tries to combat desertion and marauders who turned to banditry behind the front lines. Every army too has its military police, even during peacetime. In the example of the Red Army these losses reached colossal proportions- a million killed and fear was one of the biggest motivations for courage in combat. Each soldier felt the pressure of a barrel from the blocking units, even when they weren’t actually present

It’s unsurprising that terror was the hallmark of the Soviets in peace and, so in war could not be any different. In the third week of the German invasion, Lieutenant Yakov Dugashvili was taken prisoner. His father, Josef Stalin, merely said “The idiot couldn’t even shoot himself.”

–Krzysztof Zwoliński

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

–Translated by Jan Darasz