En todos los ejércitos existen los Batallones de Castigo, donde envían a los desertores, presos, delincuentes, objetores si es ilegal la objeción...y son a los que envían a desactivar minas, limpiar cosa, recoger y enterrar cadáveres, descubiertas kamikazes...
Nunca he entendido como estos Batallones no se sublevaban....el miedo al poder, y el poder es brutal en tiempos de guerra
en.wikipedia.org
One of the earliest examples of penal military units was recorded in the Chinese annals
Records of the Grand Historian and
Book of Han. During the
Han–Dayuan War, unhappy with the failure of General
Li Guangli in an earlier expedition in 104 BC,
Emperor Wu of Han promised amnesty and rewards to criminals, prisoners and bandits (赦囚徒捍寇盜) and dispatched a 60,000-strong army consisting of "bad boys" (惡少年) to attack the
Greco-Bactrian kingdom of
Dayuan in 102 BC.
[1]
Dedicated penal units were first envisioned during the
Napoleonic era of warfare, as large armies formed of conscripts often suffered from disciplinary problems.
[2] Soldiers who refused to face the enemy were seen as detrimental to the cohesion of the army and as a disgrace to the nation. The formation of penal battalions was seen as a way of disciplining an army and keeping soldiers in line. In addition, many nations conscripted criminals into penal battalions in lieu of imprisoning or executing them during wartime to better utilize national manpower. Such military units were treated with little regard by the regular army and were often placed in compromising situations, such as being used in
forlorn hope assaults.
[2] The French Empire in particular was notable for employing penal military units during the
wars of the coalition, especially during the later years of the conflicts as manpower became limited. The
Régiment pénal de l'Île de Ré, formed in 1811 and composed almost entirely of criminals and other societal undesirables, would see action during the later years of the
Napoleonic Wars.
[3]
The disbandment of conscripted armies and end of large scale warfare ***owing the Napoleonic era led to the decline of the penal battalion system in continental Europe. However, the system continued in overseas colonies, again with the French as the primary employers of penal battalions. The
Battalions of Light Infantry of Africa (
Bats d'Af) was formed by order of
Louis Philippe I in 1832 for the purpose of expanding the
French colonial empire.
[4] The Battalions fought in the
French conquest of Algeria and during the
Crimean War.
[5] The French also employed the
compagnies d'exclus ("companies of the excluded"), military units which were stationed at Aîn-Sefra in Southern Algeria. In contrast to the
Bats d'Af, the
compagnies d'exclus were outright penal units consisting of convicts condemned to five years or more of hard labor and judged unworthy to carry weapons.
[6]
The various
Italian unification conflicts saw the
Redshirts recruiting convicts and revolutionaries from prisons into penal regiments known as
Battaglioni degli imprigionati ("Battalions of the Imprisoned" or "Prisoners Battalion".)
Prior to the early 1900s, the
Portuguese Empire relied largely on military convicts to augment the regular and indigenous troops employed to provide garrisons for its overseas colonies.
During
World War I, the
British Armed Forces were mobilized for military service.
Courts offered defendants the option of enlisting to avoid imprisonment, while young offenders in
borstals and adult prisoners were granted early release for their service. Though government officials publicly claimed criminals were unfit for service, and prisoners were viewed as lacking "the sense of duty that encouraged other men to enlist", the recruitment of prisoners was a military necessity, and prisoners were reportedly sought out for their violent nature and to ease the cost of the prison system in wartime.
[7]
The period of military rearmament preceding
World War II caused renewed interest in the concept of penal military units. In May 1935 the German
Wehrmacht instituted a new policy under German conscription law that stated soldiers who were deemed disruptive to military discipline but were otherwise "worthy of service" would be sent to military penal units. Criminals were also conscripted into penal units in exchange for lighter sentences or as a form of
stay of execution.
[8] These units, referred to as "special departments" or the generic term
Strafbataillon, were overseen by the
German military police. Prior to World War II, there were nine
Strafbataillone within the
Wehrmacht. The primary role of a
Strafbataillon was to provide front line support. As the war progressed, the size of
Strafbataillon companies dramatically increased in size due to changes in German military policy. Under such policies, any soldier who had a death sentence (for retreat) commuted was automatically reassigned to penal units, greatly increasing the number of soldiers available to the
Strafbataillon.
The effectiveness of
Strafbataillone were mixed. The combination of criminals, political prisoners, and undisciplined soldiers that made up a
Strafbataillon often required harsh measures to be imposed for unit cohesion to be maintained.
Strafbataillone were often ordered to undertake high risk missions on the front line, with soldiers being coached to regain their lost honor by fighting.
[9] Certain penal military units, such as the
36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, gained a reputation as being brutal towards civilian populations and prisoners of war, and were employed as
anti-partisan troops due to the antiestéticar they inspired.
[10][11][12] Other units, most notably the
999th Light Afrika Division, suffered from poor jovenlandesale and saw soldiers desert the
Wehrmacht to join resistance groups.
[13]
***owing
Operation Barbarossa and the entry of the
Soviet Union into World War II, the
Red Army began to seriously consider the implementation of penal military units. These efforts resulted in the creation of
Shtrafbat, penal military units composed of sentenced soldiers, political prisoners, and others deemed to be expendable. A large number of Red Army soldiers who retreated without orders during the initial German invasion were reorganized into rudimentary penal units, the precursors to dedicated
Shtrafbat. The
Shtrafbat were greatly increased in number by
Joseph Stalin in July 1942 via
Order No. 227 (Директива Ставки ВГК №227). Order No. 227 was a desperate effort to re-instill discipline after the panicked routs of the first year of combat with Germany. The order—popularized as the "Not one step back!" (Ни шагу назад!,
Ni shagu nazad!) Order—introduced severe punishments, including
summary execution, for unauthorized retreats.
[14][15]
During the
Chinese Civil War, between 1945 and 1949, the
National Revolutionary Army (NRA) was known to have fielded penal battalions. Made up of deserters and those accused of cowardice, these penal battalions were given dangerous tasks such as scouting ahead of the main forces to check for ambushes, crossing rivers and torrents to see whether they were fordable, and traversing unmapped minefields.
[16]
In the
United States, the
United States Armed Forces historically fielded penal units and permitted the enlistment of prisoners. During the
American Civil War, the
Union permitted
Galvanized Yankees,
Confederate prisoners of war who swore allegiance to the Union, into their ranks in penal units from 1862 to around 1866. During World War II, prisoners were permitted to provide to the war effort, and in 1942, it was reported that several prisoners had offered to enlist in the military to fight in the war, with some even receiving training ahead of enlistment, though no penal units are known to have been formed in the U.S. military.
[17]
Well into the 20th century, U.S. courts offered defendants the choice between enlistment and prison, a practice that continued through both world wars and the Korean War until at least the Vietnam War; reportedly, this was how R. Lee Ermey, a U.S. Marine Corps staff sergeant and drill instructor known for his acting role in the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket, enlisted as a 17-year-old delinquent in 1961.[18] However, convicts were not placed in separate penal units, and the practice was entirely up to the judge with the military having the option to reject the defendant.[19][20] Presently, all branches of the U.S. military forbid the acceptance of convicts, both after sentencing and as an alternative to imprisonment (except the U.S. Navy, which does not have specific prohibitions but still strongly discourages it as a protocol),[20] and do not maintain any penal formations, though ex-convicts with felony priors are still permitted with a proper felony waiver.[21][22] In 2021, the Florida Legislature proposed a bill that would formally permit first-time offenders 25-years-old or younger to enlist instead of facing imprisonment, though it did not pass.[19][23]
In the modern day, the practice of fielding penal military units has largely stopped, with most militaries discouraging or outright prohibiting the acceptance of convicts, though some militaries accept ex-convicts provided they fulfill certain requirements, such as having a proper waiver. For example, a U.S. military recruiter told The Daily Beast in 2018 that recruitment candidates can have "one non-violent felony as an adult", and that "some of the best and most capable candidates we get require a waiver".[21] However, though rare, the practice of accepting convicts into armed forces has continued or been made permissible in some jurisdictions and situations. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for instance, the Armed Forces of Ukraine permitted the recruitment of Ukrainian prisoners with prior combat experience,[24] and Russian private military company Wagner Group began hiring Russian inmates to fill their ranks.[25][26][27]