NKVD Political Officer

[oldsoldier173]

Do you or did you read the follow up postings? SARCASIM and frustration over the lack of Motivation of Soviet new player concripts. You did read where I said was unworkable as well as in the same 'fantasy' realm of other 'wishes' of players, along the same 'fantasy' line.


I am a 'student' of WW2, as well as what you call 'The Great Patriotic War', and in such that the 'official' history from the Soviets is at least 'partially' tainted for political reasons of the during, and post war periods. Victory Disease it is called, we won so everything went right and correct right 'Comrade' there was never any bad orders, or cowards, shirkers, bad decesions by 'Uncle Joe' all western and German propaganda, of course the Soviets could of and according to them won WW2 all by themselves.

 

[aaz777]

Order 227 isn't a myth though so it's not 'the same level of true' as your comparisons, go read up on the penal battalions it's horrific.

oh now look at this. THIS is your penal unit. everybody is equipped by PPSH and this unit has KV1 support. Now stop your stereotypes please...

 

[Perun58]

http://darussophile.com/2009/05/victory-day-special-myths-of-eastern-front/

^
I strongly recommend this.

About penal batallions - they were sent to worse parts of the battle (someone had to be send there and it's better to send criminals then regular soldiers).
After they returned their rank was restored and Soviet penal batallions had better weapon equipment then regular German soldier.

Oh and by the way Germans had penal batallions before Soviets.

About order 227 - it is just regular order that prohibited retreats of soldiers. Orders like that were common in EVERY army. Or do you think there was an army that was able to leave the battlefield just like that? Soviets in fact had orders like this AFTER nearly every other army had it.

 

[aaz777]

http://darussophile.com/2009/05/victory-day-special-myths-of-eastern-front/

^
I strongly recommend this.

About penal batallions - they were sent to worse parts of the battle (someone had to be send there and it's better to send criminals then regular soldiers).
After they returned their rank was restored and Soviet penal batallions had better weapon equipment then regular German soldier.

thanks.
Just want to add several words - the soilder was serving maximum 3 months in penal unit if he doesnt get any wound. When he get wound or " pay by blood " - he become again regular soilder, get his medals back and even can get new fo serving in penal unit. The penal batallions/companies were made in Red Army in 1942 because it was needed. Germany had penal units from the beginning of war, but FOR SOME REASON

Spoiler!

popaganda?stereotypes?

they are not as famous as " bloody russian penal batalions with 1 broken rifle without ammo on 3.. no, on 30 soilders and NKVD with maxim mg behind them push on tanks..."

 

[PsychoPigeon]

oh now look at this. THIS is your penal unit. everybody is equipped by PPSH and this unit has KV1 support. Now stop your stereotypes please...

Where did I talk about equipment? I was more interested in their not being allowed to retreat and being sent into very dangerous situations (the link you got that image from also talks about human minefield clearance). Obviously people aren't just allowed to retreat from the battlefield this was already punished brutality so why the need for order 227 if it was already punishable? Order 227 is basically an archaic tactic that enabled mass shooting of anyone on the battlefield and put fear into generals that if they retreated they'd be shot, but did the officers even need it? There are instances where officers would execute men on the spot for refusing to carry out simple tasks. http://youtu.be/jrk2EcLsDjI?t=17m10s . I guess it's similar to Hitler not letting his generals retreat, but did he court martial and execute them en mass for doing so?

There's just such a lack of sources on the subject because of tight soviet security. It's trying to find a good source that isn't part of the 2 extremes, those which have an axe to grind and people who think because the soviets took the full brunt of the national socialist assault that all behavior can be overlooked or isn't a big deal.

http://balagan.info/human-mine-sweepers-during-ww2
http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/rzhev/rzhev1.html
http://ukrainianweek.com/History/33990

The human minefield clearance seems to have also come from General Zhukov
http://ww2db.com/person_bio.php?person_id=27

If we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks exactly as it were not there.
To General Eisenhower, 1945. Quoted in "Russia: The People and the Power" - Page 207 - by Robert G. Kaiser - History - 1984

NKVD commander of Moscow

“We forced them [Red Army troops] to fight to the death. If they resisted or ran away we eliminated them. We shot them. That’s all. They weren’t fighters anymore. It was hard. It was bad. I understand. But what can you do?”

- Vladimir Ogryzko, 1st NKVD Division
http://youtu.be/Q3NuuxpRgzc
http://www.pbs.org/behindcloseddoors/in-depth/stalins-spies.html
​

The more I read about it the less it seems it was just national socialist stories and that commissars really did shoot their own men for cowardice and had no problem doing it for tasks of no importance. There's a lot of soviet apologists that try and play it all down or character assassinate the source but no real evidence that discredits them.
​

 

[JosephBaier]

PsychoPigeon was talking about the units that cleared minefields
lemme pull wiki on this one

Smaller battalions were established out of the infantry units to clear minefields as 'tramplers' - unarmed men who ran through the minefields ("trampled") ahead of regular assault forces to detonate land mines.[9] The worst of all the penal battalion assignments, the tramplers were prepared for their grisly suicide missions by being heavily fortified with vodka rations by their leaders before attacks. Trampler battalions were assembled from the penal infantry units for major attacks and were usually wiped out to the last man,[2] with their mangled bodies reportedly "marking the safe passage corridor of the late-war Red Army through any minefield".[1]
I don't see much KV support here :IS2:
pretty sick way to deal with officers who thought retreating would save soldiers who could fight in a better position/situation someday after.

And give every German a set of power armour and a minigun. Since that's on the same level of true.

I'm myself not a fan of this "10 people 1 rifle and 1 clip vs 1 MG" crap movies often show (or the uber elite hard crack SS superhuman bull****) but saying NKVD officers and their warcrimes are fiction is simply wrong and very close to "biased".

 

[Clowndoe]

I remember the last time this was suggested. I wish I knew who to attribute this quote to:

"It will be an historic day when a game developer implements a class specifically for griefing"
- Wise forumite

PsychoPigeon was talking about the units that cleared minefields
lemme pull wiki on this one

Did you take a look at the references though? What looks like one guys memoirs. The same set of memoirs I see practically everywhere that mentions the subject. I'm still looking for some cross-referencing.

Victory Disease it is called, we won so everything went right and correct right 'Comrade' there was never any bad orders, or cowards, shirkers

And on the other end you have the good ol' "Red Menace". The same way "victory disease" exists to make us question any claims of positive Russian action you have to wonder how much of that feeling is residual Cold War russophobia. Of course, far be it from me to tell anyone where said lines are, I think this is one occasion where we can skip the "maybe it happened, may be it didn't."

 

[Jank]

Wait, aren't you the same guy who was just talking about staying alive the whole round, and how useful that is?

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

Didn't anyone read the part about this being sarcasm and frustration?

 

[Kleist]

Instead of the officer "TK'ing" the immobile players, perhaps he can:

- Threaten and then Turn off all leveling, perks and weapon advancements of the offending players for the duration of the round to help motivate the player. This way they are not sitting back just trying to advance their weapon levels

Can you tell I care nothing for the leveling in the game?

Yeah, I know, just a fantasy...

And remove the zoom! So they have to move their asses when they can

 

[oldsoldier173]

Jank, there are those of us who play aggressive and are not limited in the 'game' standard of "hey diddle, diddle, charge down the middle"..repeat, repeat, repeat. And yes get great scores, win maps, and survive, because we bank on people like you doing what you do.

 

[ro2player]

Moe, Oldsoldier has reason to be frustrated.

Do you or did you read the follow up postings? SARCASIM and frustration over the lack of Motivation of Soviet new player concripts. You did read where I said was unworkable as well as in the same 'fantasy' realm of other 'wishes' of players, along the same 'fantasy' line.

Oldsoldier is frustrated by players who doesn't play. He is right. But his fun idea is bad...

Once again, a frustration that many 'new' players (conscripts) do not MOVE, on bridges on pub servers for example you can count on at least 10-15 still on the Attackers side of the river playing 'sniper' with the remainder attacking D and E.

Oldsoldier seems to be a conscientious squad leader and commander. He has a real awareness of his task and of the task of others. Here he is right. He has reason to be frustrated. He do honor to the game.
But he give a solution who dishonored the game. (even for fun...)

In one part I disagree with him. But in another part I am agree because Oldsoldier do honor to the game.

there are those of us who play aggressive and are not limited in the 'game' standard of "hey diddle, diddle, charge down the middle"..

So your post need to be read as a post who encourage new and veteran players to play agressively ? (play agressively and not ramboing)

 

[Grenator]

Seems like the trampler minefield clearance story was pushed by former soviet Viktor Suvorov in his book 'Inside the Soviet Army', not national socialist, just someone wanting to sell his book and can't produce any witnesses to back him up from what little I could find of testimony, but he's been used all over. The penalty battalions had high casualty rates so they must have been fighting somewhere.

Oooph, I didn't expect it to be this bad. Mate, 'Viktor Suvorov' is a fiction writer, he's as much a historian as the people who think that the Nazis were contacted (pyramids were built) by aliens. And he personally may not be a Nazi, but he certainly regurgitates Nazi propaganda in his works.

All fighting infantry had high casualty rates. Just because penal units were used in battle doesn't mean that they were used in some grotesque and stupid way.

Be very sceptical about all these gory and grotesque claims (I'm responding to the rest of the stuff): there has been so much stuff made up and documents falsified for political reasons.

The NKVD earned their reputation in eastern Europe, they didn't need much help from national socialist propagandists to demonize them. Their brutality is well documented. It's not some bugaboo created by national socialists and from what I can find they were responsible for mopping up deserters.

That organisation may not have been the nicest in existence, but once again: it had NO power over the army and NO direct connection to it. All these stories of NKVD officers doing/killing whatever/whomever they wanted in the army (and in general, they were much better organised than that) is bollocks: certainly not something beyond isolated incidents.

(Note that the 'NKVD commander of Moscow' is actually a commander of an 'NKVD' division, not an army commander (so, what's in the square brackets is probably an invention), and that it's clearly about the Battle of Moscow, when there were no penal units: there was NO real war-time way to punish criminals and uphold morale.

Even if this is a real quote and it's not mangled out of context, this must be put into a proper war context, and certainly not extrapolated to all of Soviet armed forces and to all of the war.)

 

[Grenator]

Do you or did you read the follow up postings? SARCASIM and frustration over the lack of Motivation of Soviet new player concripts. You did read where I said was unworkable as well as in the same 'fantasy' realm of other 'wishes' of players, along the same 'fantasy' line.

Yeah, except that you didn't suggest the same for the Germans: no Gestapo Political Officers to motivate the lazy German conscripts? (Which is particularly ironic, since the German army was way ahead on maintaining the morale through coercion and violence, they had rules laid out and units created even before the war.) Way not to regurgitate the stereotypes.

Claiming 'sarcasm' post-hoc is a good testament of your ignorance.

I am a 'student' of WW2

Apparently a 'D'-student, if you manage to squeeze out pearls like 'NKVD Political Officer'.

Victory Disease it is called, we won so everything went right and correct right 'Comrade' there was never any bad orders, or cowards, shirkers, bad decesions by 'Uncle Joe' all western and German propaganda, of course the Soviets could of and according to them won WW2 all by themselves.

Oh, yeah, so this is a perfect argument to blither out the exact opposite, which — I'm so sorry, is a much bigger load of bollocks.

 

[ro2player]

Grenator,
Oldsoldier was talking about a problem on Bridge with bad troop in soviet. It's a problem of players. (and he is right)

Yeah, except that you didn't suggest the same for the Germans: no Gestapo Political Officers to motivate the lazy German conscripts? (Which is particularly ironic, since the German army was way ahead on maintaining the morale through coercion and violence, they had rules laid out and units created even before the war.) Way not to regurgitate the stereotypes.

Do you think he don't know it ? WHO don't know it ?

He would say the SAME complain about players if Axis attacked on bridge with in the same bad way. He wanted to do a post "fun-joke". He is certainly not a little joker as you seem to think he is. Oldsoldier is a serious guy. I mean : On another posts - he is serious. Please, Grenator : Watch where he is REALLY serious. Not in this post : in the others. Here he is serious.

 

[ro2player]

That organisation may not have been the nicest in existence, but once again: it had NO power over the army and NO direct connection to it.

Why Chuikov took the NKVD under Army control on 14th September 1942 ? Stalingrad modified the relation betwen NKVD and soviet army. NKVD had power on army in the early period of Stalingrad. Army had control on NKVD (relatively) in the middle and late period of Stalingrad. With Stalingrad, Army Commandship was split from control of NKVD.

 

[oldsoldier173]

Really Grenator, you are that shallow, and arrogant? Used a term based on 'popular' culture and you go off deep end with idiotic rhetoric in the face of a frustration comment in yes 'fun'. You did watch that 'Enemy at The Gates Movie' probably the main information source for the average gamer here.


My interest is the Great Patriotic War, and many games therein. Here in RO2, field a Strelkovy in FOW where a Kommisar unit in game can eliminate a friendly unit to get an addition motivation roll, and Bolt Action, I field a Mid War Soviet Strelkovy platoon.


Am familiar with the Soviet way of War from WW2 to the intell briefs we got in the 80's in Germany. Understand the Soviet system. I still have access and readily use the USMA Library for resources for game purposes, have read volumns of Soviet history of the era, the original 'reports' all the way to the politically correct revisions of 46/47, and even a few post de-Stalin era reads.


How do you motivate new players, yes it is frustrating and as I call it as a retired US Army NCO, 'Herding Cats'.

 

[mrsirr]

Wow guys. It was sarcasm, I don't know why people are still discussing it; I mean, discussing it seriously.