Forgotten War Participants: Prospects for Research into the Detached Storm Officer Battalions

Abstract

The article presents the sources of information available today about detached storm officer battalions, the unique military formations of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. The author analyses the question why this topic is not of interest to the society and professional historians. The article reveals the traumatic character of the subject for memoirists, the difficulty in choosing the proper context (repression or a feat), and the presence of this topic within the scope of amateur military history.

Keywords

• second world war
• great patriotic war
• detached storm officer battalions
• penal units
• historical memory
• historiography
• nkvd filtration camps
• prisoners of war
• repression