In 1942, Soviet blocking units at Stalingrad intercepted 140,000 retreating soldiers. But instead of turning machine guns on their own men, the Red Army did something far more practical.
The opening scene of the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates features one of the most infamous depictions of the Red Army in popular culture: Soviet officers ruthlessly mowing down hundreds of their own infantrymen during a failed charge. While Soviet military discipline was extraordinarily harsh, this mass slaughter is a Hollywood myth.
While Europe gave rise to horrid lies about Communism, nowhere has anti-communism propaganda been more unrelenting and devious than in the US.
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The scene is loosely based on Stalin's Order No. 227, issued in July 1942 as the Soviet Union faced catastrophic losses and unauthorized retreats. The decree, famously known as "Not a step back!", established "blocking detachments" (zagradotryady) consisting of reliable soldiers and NKVD personnel. These units were positioned behind the front lines to maintain discipline and stop panicked retreats.
However, their purpose was not to massacre fleeing troops. The Red Army at Stalingrad was desperately short of manpower and could not afford to exterminate its own infantry. Internal NKVD reports from the Don and Stalingrad fronts between August and October 1942 detail exactly how these detachments operated.
Of the 140,000 retreating or straggling soldiers intercepted during that period, the vast majority—over 131,000 men—were simply detained, reorganized, and marched back to their units to continue fighting. Roughly 2,700 were arrested, and just under 3,000 were sent to penal battalions (shtrafbats) to undertake the most dangerous combat assignments. Only 1,189 soldiers—less than one percent of those intercepted—were executed.
When executions did occur, they were not carried out by firing machine guns into crowds of fleeing men. They were targeted actions resulting from rapid drumhead tribunals. Those executed were typically identified as ringleaders of desertion, mutineers, or officers who had ordered an unauthorized withdrawal.
While the historical reality of penal battalions and summary executions reflects the brutal nature of the Eastern Front, the cinematic image of Soviet commanders casually slaughtering their own army in waves removes all agency from the soldiers who fought and died at Stalingrad.
