Soviet Blocking DetachmentsA.A. Maslov, a Soviet military writer and atrocity apologist has described "blocking detachments" with more questions than answers. He has pro USSR friends in the current US Army and among military historians. The most famous pro-soviet American historian is Colonel David Glantz of the US Army.Heavily armed NKVD blocking detachments were formed to prevent communist soldiers from leaving the battlefield, individually or en masse. Although little has been written about them in Western military-historical literature, German archival records mention their use extensively as one of the more draconian measures used by Soviet commands to prevent unauthorized withdrawals, desertion, or panic among military formations. They were also used to drive penal battalions and regular infantry and tank units into attacks much like wolves herding sheep.Now that the flood gates of Soviet documents from World War Ii have been partially pried open, more about blocking detachments is leaking out. Maybe someday the real truth about the war on the Eastern Front will be told. One thing is sure though, many Marxist publishers and writers in the USA will resist such revelations aws long as they live. Up until now the questions of what sort of procedures the blocking detachments employed , the results of their employment, and other associated issues remain unclear. It is paradoxical that no more or less meaningful or productive instance of the use of blocking military formations has been written about on the basis of deservedly trustworthy documents except by www.Quikmaneuvers.com . This is the case even when the Red Army employed such formations extensively during the course of two large-scale military conflicts -- the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. It is apparant to all that such a situation is associated with the reluctance of Western leftist historians and publishers to reveal the whole truth.Western Marxist attempt to sloww down the avalanch of truth about communist blocking detachments by feigning objectivity and asking hundreds of mind numbing questions (before they will allow exposition of the truth). Following is a paragraph of examples of such chicanery :"Was the employment of blocking detachments and, consequently, the orders of the higher military-political leadership of the Soviet government about the use of such detachments fully justified from the moral-legal point of view both in the present day and in the period of the two former wars? During complex military situations, did only traitors to the Homeland, cowards, panic-mongers, deserters and so forth, alone, always fall under the the influence of these formations? Were the forces which operated in the rear area as blocking detachments supported adequately enough in a material-technical sense so that they could successfully fulfill their combat missions? Finally, to what degree did the institution of the blocking detachment promote the resolution of political-educational missions in the army and increase the level of awareness and discipline among soldiers and officers? "Many American communist historians are replying with their own question with further distractions such as the following: "There are no simple answers to these and many other similar questions in contemporary public consciousness, since the varied nuances of the questions themselves encompass a rather broad and contradictary spectrum. Moreover, usually one of these numerous nuances stands out to the detriment of one sort of public group, and, in this case, that group displays surprising military-political and moral-legal color-blindness regarding its opponent's arguments. "The truth was manifested, in particular, in polemics on the pages of the military-historical press after the publication of the full text of Peoples' Commissar of Defense I. Stalin's Order No. 227 of 28 July 1942. After that publication, blocking detachments were employed in all field Red Army forces with new force and, often, also with unjustified special brutality. Originally, Stalin and his associates embraced the idea of forming blocking detachments soon after the beginning of the war. Stavka of the Supreme High Command Order No. 270, dated 16 August 1941, demanded that leaders and Red Army men "struggle to their final capabilities," and if "such a leader or Red Army unit preferred to surrender rather than organize a rebuff to the enemy, --to destroy them by all of their means [weapons], both ground and air..."Already then, in the initial months of the war, there were commanders, who, seeing such stern measures, found themselves with hardly any means for fulfilling their combat missions, and, while trying to hold on to their occupied defensive positions at any cost, the commanders often gave their subordinates really unfulfillable types of orders, like "Stand to the death!" and "Not a step back!" Indeed, such commands and orders, which were poorly supported and reinforced in a material-technical sense, led to excessive and unjustified losses among the forces and to both notoriously unrealizable combat operations. Therefore the NKVD took over blocking detachments.The following is taken from Soviet Secret Army, www.quikmaneuvers.com : As part of the secret build-up of Soviet forces in the USSR's western regions before the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact was signed, a detached motorized infantry regiment of the NKVD became an integral part of each army. This regiment consisted not of battalions, but of retreat-blocking detachments.NKVD Blocking Detachments were used to force Red Army regular troops, already drunk on vodka and commissar cheer-leading, into the fight. NKVD blocking detachments also killed or intercepted retreating Red Army units.General “Ratso” Ratov, chief of the Soviet Military Mission to Britain, actually declined an offer of British mine-detectors, remarking that "in the Soviet Union we use people." There were "blocking detachments" consisting of NKVD personnel, operating as the appendix of the "special departments" on the level of Divisional HQ. NKVD "blocking detachments" operating in divisional rear areas, were composed of mixed Red Army and NKVD personnel. They were deployed in battalions, mounted on trucks, and sometimes reinforced by squads of armored cars with 20mm cannons.In a memo written, the NKVD head L.P.Berija in November 1941, the 1st Deputy of the Special Department Board, Solomon Milshtein reported on the achieved results for the period of 22.06.1941--10.10.1941, stating that the "special departments" and "blocking detachments" jointly arrested 657,364 Red Army personnel, who failed to report to their units and escaped from the frontline, 49,969 and 407,395 captured accordingly by each special service. Afterwards 25,878 men were detained, while the remaining 632,486 formed into new units and sent to the front, serving in penal formations. The curious NKVD breakdown of the 25,878 detained comes as follows: spies--1505Ø Ø saboteurs--308 traitors--2,621Ø cowards andØ panic-instigators--2,643 deserters--8,772Ø provocateurs--3,987Ø Ø those who deliberately inflicted firearms-wounds in order to escape from the front--1,671 miscellaneous--4,371.ØAt the time the memo was composed (15.11.1941), 10,201 of detained Red Army soldiers and officers were executed, including 3,321 public executions, which were arranged for "morale boosting".SMERSH (from the initials "Death to Spies"), the NKVD's special murder arm was made famous by Ian Fleming in his James Bond thrillers. SMERSH was created in 1942 as an additional guard on Soviet front-line troops. The NKVD placed large heavily-armed formations at the rear of Soviet units to discourage withdrawals and to pick off "stragglers" and "cowards." In a number of instances, NKVD units fought pitched battles with Red Army detachments trying to retreat in the face of superior enemy forces. Stalin continued to purge his armed forces even as the Axis advanced. It is likely that hundreds of thousands of Russians were killed in such actions.Considering how civilians and POWs were treated by the Communists, the Germans felt no obligation to show much consideration for Russian POWs. There was a purpose behind all of the cruelty towards German POWs : “Stalin went out of his way to invite German ill-treatment and later extermination of Russian prisoners-of-war . . . It is quite clear, therefore, that the deaths of over three million Russians in German custody was a piece of deliberate Soviet policy, the aim of which was to cause the liquidation of men regarded automatically as political traitors, whilst directing the anger of the Soviet people against the perpetrators of the crime. . . . It should not be forgotten, either, that Soviet cruelty greatly prolonged the conflict, costing all belligerent nations millions of lives. . . . This evidence of how the Soviets treated their own people, coupled with the harsh treatment they visited on prisoners-of-war, was the major cause of Germany's obstinate determination to fight on to the end, long after it had become clear her cause was doomed. “Chapter 13 of Soviet Secret Army is the only chapter of its kind in the Western World, it is entitled: Soviet Blocking Detachments.