Men of War: Condemned Heroes

The real-time strategy game “Penal Battalion” is based on the memoirs of front-line soldiers and other documentary materials. It reveals the history of a separate penal (officer) battalion of the Central, and later Belorussian, Front.

For a long time, it was not customary to talk about them, and they themselves were ordered not to talk about themselves and their actions during the Great Patriotic War. Penal battalions involuntarily became the heroes of many unflattering myths that formed around the order of the People’s Commissar of Defense of the USSR No. 227 of July 27, 1942, also known as Stalin’s order “Not a Step Back.” The ban on official information about penal battalions and companies, as well as about barrier detachments, which operated during the war and for many years after its end, gave rise to a lot of rumors and idle speculation. Often they were based only on the distorted impressions of people who had heard about these units.