Order No. 227: not one step back
1942 · Event
With the south collapsing, Stalin's order is read to every unit in the Red Army: panic-mongers and cowards must be exterminated on the spot; blocking detachments will stand behind wavering divisions; penal battalions for the rest. Brutal and, most veterans later said, necessary — the army that holds Stalingrad is the army of Order 227.
On these timelines: Stalingrad, Russia & the USSR, World War II, Master
More from Stalingrad
- Battle of Stalingrad (1942)
- Surrender at Stalingrad (1943)
- Operation Uranus (1942)
- Rattenkrieg: the fight for the ruins (1942)
- The Luftwaffe burns Stalingrad (1942)
- Winter Storm fails to reach the pocket (1942)
- Case Blue: the drive for the Caucasus (1942)
Around 1942
- Apartheid (1948)
- Decolonisation of Africa (1952)
- Chinese Civil War (resumed) (1945)
- Indian independence and Partition (1947)
- Korean War (1950)
- Manhattan Project (1942)
- World War II (1939)
- Battle of Britain (1940)
- The Holocaust (1941)
- Spanish Civil War (1936)