The recruitment of prisoners by the Wagner Group may seem a surprising fact in the context of the current conflict in Ukraine, but it has been a very old practice in the various clashes that humanity has waged, and in the Second World War it reached its peak until what has been seen recently in battles like that of Bakhmut.
The practice dates back to antiquity, although it was carried out in specific cases such as the units that the Chinese Han dynasty recruited in its wars against the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in Central Asia. It was not until the 19th century that a more systematic use was recorded in conflicts such as the American Civil War, the unification of Italy or the colonial campaigns in Africa.
The arrival of the 20th century seemed to put a stop to the use of these units. In World War I, various countries gave convicts an alternative to enlisting in their armies, but the number of specific units with convicts fell out of favor. The generals did not look favorably on this type of recruit, and only considered it as an emergency solution (in line with what has been seen this past year with Moscow's war needs in Ukraine).
This trend changed in the framework of the rearmament of Germany in the years before the Second World War. On May 21, 1935, Hitler signed the Reich Defense Law, which, among other measures, included the possibility of compulsorily enlisting recruits with ideas contrary to the Nazi regime in the new units. This is how the formations that would be known as Strafbataillone (penal battalions, in German) were born.
These "undisciplined" soldiers were not yet thought of as cannon fodder, but rather sought to subject them to indoctrination through a very severe regime. They acted in support tasks for the main operations, such as building fortifications. When World War II broke out in September 1939, these disciplinary units numbered nine battalions (about nine thousand men) and depended on the Feldgendarmerie, the military police.
With the development of the conflict and the growing need for personnel at the front, the conception of these Strafbataillones evolved. A first change was that they no longer included soldiers who were not very fond of Nazism, but also common criminals who were offered to commute their sentences in exchange for serving in these units. Therefore, Wagner has not invented anything in Ukraine.
The leap would come with the start of hostilities between Germany and the USSR in the summer of 1941. The warlike demands of the colossal confrontation that took place in the East led these units to be assigned to combat missions on the front by both sides. .
This new, more combative role led penal units to spearhead many high-risk missions, such as assaults against fortified positions. Its soldiers—criminals or dissidents—were expendable resources in the eyes of their commanders. To make sure that the troops held their own under enemy fire, the discipline of commanding officers became even more severe.
In the case of the Reich, the alternative to serving in these penal units was internment in concentration camps such as Emslandlager –specialized in housing prisoners of war and soldiers for disciplinary offenses–. Living conditions there could be worse than at the front, as the twenty thousand inmates who died there between 1933 and 1945 make it clear.
Another change that brought the advance of the war was the development of penal units by other levels of the Nazi regime and its armed forces. For example, the 999th Afrika Light Division, which was formed during the Tunis campaign in early 1943, stood out. Again, those convicted of anti-Reich ideas were used. These troops stood out for their little fighting spirit, since surrenders abounded as soon as they ran into allied forces.
After Tunis, members of the 999th Division were sent to Greece to fight the partisans. There were also numerous cases of fraternization with the enemy. Among the members was August Landmesser, the man who became famous for a 1936 photo in which he was the only one not to give the Nazi salute at an event with Hitler. That "no gesture" led him to an adventure through prisons and concentration camps. In February 1944 he was drafted into this unit and it is believed that shortly after he was killed in action in Croatia.
At another extreme would be the 36th SS Grenadier Division, popularly known by the surname of its commanding officer, Oskar Dirlewanger. This unit acted as the Strafbataillon of the Nazi Praetorian Guard. It began by recruiting poachers for their expertise as marksmen, but, starting in 1942 and by order of Hitler, the criminal formations even incorporated murderers and rapists.
The 36th Division specialized in operations against Jews and partisans in Poland and Belarus, where it stood out for its extreme cruelty to the population. In the repression of the Warsaw uprising they reached the highest levels of brutality, with the rape and murder of fifteen Red Cross nurses or the massacre of thousands of civilians in the Wola neighborhood. His atrocities in the city provoked the rejection of General Heinz Guderian, who even protested to Hitler about the unit's methods.
Another SS formation that resorted to convict recruitment was the 500th Parachute Battalion. Hitler ordered its formation after the success of the Mussolini rescue operation, which made him see the advantages of airborne units specialized in acting behind enemy lines. Given the dangerousness of the missions that he would carry out, the recruitment of convicts who wanted to reduce their sentences was accepted.
They debuted in the March 1944 occupation of Hungary, hitherto a satellite of Germany (Hitler ordered his government removed when he discovered it was negotiating a separate peace with the Allies). The real acid test came on March 19, 1944 with Operation Rösselsprung (Horse Movement), an attempt to capture or eliminate Tito, leader of the Yugoslav partisans.
In this action, the 500th Battalion used gliders to reach Tito's barracks in Drvar (present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina). Finding out about the German intentions through his efficient intelligence service, the partisan leader was able to escape and his guerrillas managed to wound or kill 80% of the members of the penal unit. The rest of the war the unit fought in other parts of the Balkans and the Baltic countries and took part in the Battle of the Bulge.
In all, some 50,000 soldiers served in German penal units, according to American historian Walter S. Zapotoczny Jr. For comparison, according to Pentagon estimates, the Wagner Group has deployed around 40,000 inmates in Ukraine. Other members of the Axis used similar formations, such as the Battaglione di Rigore deployed by the Italian Social Republic (the puppet state that emerged after the fall of the Mussolini regime).
Among the allies, the USSR resorted to these units to fight at the front. Shortly after the German invasion began, the Red Army noticed the Strafbataillone and thought about creating its own version to alleviate the situation, with an enemy that was already arriving at the gates of Moscow. The creation of the Soviet penal formations, on July 28, 1942, was included in the famous Order 227 promulgated by Stalin himself.
In addition to including the famous "not one step back" directive, which ordered firing at own soldiers who were retreating, the creation of penal battalions, shtrafbats, was also contemplated for each of the Soviet fronts (formation equivalent to Army Group ). Each of these units was made up of about eight hundred men, recruited from among soldiers who had attempted to desert or who had committed other misdemeanors and crimes.
Although this would not be the only source of recruitment for the shtrafbats, the German advance in the summer of 1942, which would lead to the Battle of Stalingrad, required the USSR to put all its resources on the table. So inmates in the gulags were also used.
Like their German counterparts, all members of these penal battalions (known as shtrafniki) could redeem their sentences if they carried out a heroic (and highly dangerous) action or were seriously wounded in combat – although they risked execution if they were killed. discovered a self-harm. However, those involved in political crimes generally had more trouble certifying merit in battle and tended to remain under suspicion.
Throughout the war, some 422,700 Soviet soldiers served in these units. Other tens of thousands of Gulag prisoners did not fight with weapons in hand, but were assigned to tasks as dangerous as clearing minefields without specialized equipment and training.
British and Americans did not use prisoners in combat formations, despite what the cinema has shown us in films like The Dirty Dozen (1967). Although the author of the novel of the same name on which the feature film was based, Erwin Nathason, always assured that he had been inspired by a unit of inmates for his plot.
Actually, Nathanson either got it wrong, or made a very loose interpretation of a demolition unit of the US 101st Airborne Division. These men were known as the Filthy Thirteen (the dirty thirteen, in English) and they specialized in raids behind enemy lines, such as the one they staged in the Normandy landings by securing the bridges over the Douve River.
Despite the fact that this operation and others that they carried out were suicide missions (with very high rates of deaths and injuries), they were not inmates. They were reputed to be very undisciplined, disregarding many military ordinances such as personal hygiene – hence the unit's nickname. They also became famous for their distinctive Mohawk hairstyles, the brainchild of unit sergeant Jake McNiece, who wanted to honor his Choctaw Native American ancestors.
