Atone with Blood!

Beyond Fear. The штрафна рота (penal company)

The book is based on real memories of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Sergey Kozhukharov, and plunges the reader into the harsh reality of Soviet Army penal units.

The bloodiest days of the Great Patriotic War. The commander of a platoon of a separate army penal company, Kolobov, is ordered to force the Vytebet River and then storm Height 200. The German defensive line has encircled Height 200 in two tiers. There are pillboxes with machine guns there, mortar batteries, and light guns. Experienced commanders understand that for a single company this task is impossible, so the penal troops are sent to their deaths. And it happens exactly that way.

Kolobov’s platoon runs into machine-gun nests and lies down in the middle of the field—like on a table. The platoon commander is killed in the first hours of the battle. The platoon is left without control and support…

The cruel truth about the Great Patriotic War. A piercing account of Soviet and German penal battalions—called by both sides “death squads.” They were sent to the most dangerous sectors of the front and assigned tasks from which very few returned. However, while Soviet penal soldiers had a chance to atone with blood and return to ordinary units, the German штрафбатts, nicknamed “the companies of ascension,” had only one way out—death.