STAND YOUR GROUND
How Stalin’s NKVD blocking detachments prevented retreat by any means necessary
Although the outcome for Moscow was not quite as precarious as the closeness of the German army suggested it to be, the battle between the Germans and Soviets in 1941 was a brutal affair. Ideologically the two sides were staunchly opposed, with the German soldiers killing thousands of ‘Bolshevists’ and ‘partisans’ – of which many were unarmed citizens – in cold blood.
Most Soviet soldiers were fiercely motivated to avenge their fallen comrades and protect their motherland, and the Red Army was a formidable force. But despite this some soldiers, especially those with little or no combat experience, sought to flee. Stalin would simply not allow this and turned to his trusted NKVD officers to ensure the threat of death lay behind his men as well as in front of them.
The NKVD, or ‘People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs’, had been established in 1934. It originally operated as a spying service, but throughout Stalin’s reign it had grown in influence to become the Soviet leader’s brutal enforcement arm. By 1941 the NKVD had established rifle regiments to ensure Stalin’s will was felt on the front lines. Mainly equipped with pistols and rifles, the NKVD ‘blocking detachments’ weren’t intended as frontline combatants. Instead they operated as a second line with the mandate to ensure that no soldier – including officers – retreated without permission.
In the event of such a retreat, the blocking detachments would attempt to stop the men with warnings – sometimes delivered as shots fired above their heads. If this didn’t work then the soldiers were often arrested and detained, but in extreme cases fleeing men were simply shot dead by the NKVD troops.