this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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In one of them the first mission for the soviets you get ammo without a rifle and get shot if you go backwards
Damn how did I forget that
...? why?
i guess to prevent desertion from your comrades?
idk, i need more context (or i need to play the game) to understand this more clearly.
It's classic western propaganda about the USSR that every 2 men shared a rifle and that they shot up soldiers who surrendered or retreated, both are fake and don't have any truth to them, I think this video mentions it
huh. weird thing to use as propaganda. where did this originate from?
~~The USSR actually killed deserters, but it was rare and in deseperation~~ (read salad), the rifles thing was explained in the video I think, what happened was the soviet soldiers got put in a place with half the required rifles then later more rifles came and they all had rifles
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
Early in the war, Germany overran many Soviet divisions and their armament stockpiles leaving many troops without ammunition and oftentimes even rifles. This led to many Soviet divisions that survived the initial invasion being woefully under-equipped and significantly weaker then they appeared on paper; which in turn, led to further military disasters, notably around Minsk and Kiev.
However, by the start of the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, these logistical failures had been fixed for months and no longer plagued Soviet front line units. In fact, the Southern front had an overabundance of weapons and ammunition, and a severe lack of manpower due to the fighting around Leningrad and Moscow sucking up all available reserves.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: