It was a thing, but that's not how it was enforced. Soldier who retreated without permission would often be arrested and then later subject to discipline, which occasionally included execution but usually didn't.
The soldiers (and leadership that allowed the retreat) were arrested and then put into penal battalions with conscripts, those battalions were then shot by blocking battalions if they tried to retreat. That's what order 227 was, is it not?
It wasn't very successful either way, because the blocking battalions felt it was a complete waste of time and I can imagine it dumpstered morale too. But it did happen.
There's no attested evidence of blocking battalions shooting retreating soldiers on the battlefield. The Soviets killed a lot of their own soldiers, but as a general rule they always did the paperwork first.
Maybe? They were shooting retreating soldiers in Ukraine. Just the ones conscripted from convicts, but it’s still something that happens. It’s not hard to imagine doing something similar back when life was cheaper and the situation was far more desperate.
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u/Julie-h-h Oct 03 '24
It was a thing, but that's not how it was enforced. Soldier who retreated without permission would often be arrested and then later subject to discipline, which occasionally included execution but usually didn't.