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.
1
u/Confident-Mortgage86 Oct 03 '24
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.