[MrBingley]

Recently I've been reading Vasily Grossman's A Writer At War, which is a collection of his journals from the Eastern Front, and the depths of Stalin's brutality are staggering. In the Battle of Stalingrad he forbade that any citizens flee the city since he thought it would motivate the troops, and special battalions were set up behind the front line to shoot any who retreated. In the battle itself Soviet snipers targeted the German water carriers, and so the Germans bribed children with food to fetch water for them, who were promptly shot since any collaboration with the enemy was punished with death.

[pram]

Stalin also sent the NKVD to the Spanish Civil War to mostly root out “trotskyites and anarchists” from the Republican side(!) rather than against the Falange.

This is what disillusioned leftists who saw it first hand (like George Orwell) with the USSR

[DamnYuppie]

I think that was part of his order 227. Which is basically death to anyone who retreats as well as punishment to their family back home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_No._227

[MikeUt]

Odd. None of those details were included in the Enemy at the Gates movie, and it specifically focused on snipers.

[jo6gwb]

Enemy at the gates shows the Russians shooting their own retreating soldiers.

See 2:30 of following clip https://youtu.be/L8fWp-i-BGA

[fithisux]

They were determined to not surrender. This is not brutal. The enemy was killing kids and babies just because. It was a very right decision and should be thanked by all free people for their sacrifice.