Late war Strafbattalion

So finding information about the Strafbattalions online is not that easy. Things that seem to be clear is they did not wear the red triangles of prisoners, although I’m happy to be corrected in this.

One of the reasons for this is the German propaganda machine stayed away from thease units. So where you can find information on the Waffen SS or British regiments, the Strafbattalions seem not well documented.

I’ve chosen to go with Bewährungsbataillon 500as a basis for my force.

This was made up of convicted soilders who had shown bravery or meritorious conduct. The penal battalions were tough though. Suicidal assaults, mine clearence and the like.

If they did not follow orders their sentence was executed, potentially being sent to Labour camps.

A quarter of the force including the officers and NCO’s were in charge of the probationary soilders. From a list building point of view this means I’ll be adding at least one Heer squad when I go to 1000 points. This will allow me to show the difference in equipment through cleaner painting, a more uniform look and a couple of assult rifles.

So why did they do this? Well not only was it a way back to perceived ‘honour’ but also a way of regaining the rights to citizenship. Leading to moral being high.

To simulate this I will be using them as regular troops and not shirkers.

There where of course other famous Stafbattakions. 999 was in Africa and was made up of political prisoners….as you can imagine they were not comited and many deserted. I imagine this looked somewhat like ‘nah mate, we are literally not dying to fight people we agree with.’

Far more infamous was SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger who were made up of some of the worst prisoners to be put in a uniform. Their atrocities do not need repeating here and the fact they were deployed against civilians says a lot about why thease prisoners were given this roll, I certainly won’t be using thease monsters.

So the troops that made up the penal forces of Germany were varied in quality and ideology.

The 500 however seem the best choice to go for a ragtag platoon using whatever resources they can find in the defence of the East as Soviet forces push back.