Strafbattalion: Hitler's Penal Battalions
The WW2 Podcast
Angus Wallace
4.6 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2018
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In episode 57 I talked to Walter Zapotoczny about Ardennes Offensive, chatting with him it told me had had a new book out in 2018 looking at German Penal Battalions. That sounded like a topic right up my street so I got him back to talk with us.
When war broke out in 1939, Hitler created `Strafbattalion' (Penal Battalion) units to deal with incarcerated members of the Wehrmacht as well as `subversives'. His order stated that any first-time convicted soldier could return to his unit after he had served a portion of his sentence in `a special probation corps before the enemy'.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to another World War II podcast. I'm Angus Wallace. In episode 57 I talked to Walter Zappetagini about the Ardennes offensive. |
| 0:10.0 | Chatting with him, he told me about his new book coming out in 2018 looking at German penal battalions. |
| 0:17.2 | That sounded like a great topic and right up my street, so I've got him back to talk with us today. |
| 0:21.6 | But first, just a quick thank you to all the patrons who have |
| 0:24.4 | joined our merry band in the last month. Welcome aboard. If you have a spare dollar and |
| 0:30.4 | enjoy the show why not sign up?reon.com slash W.W2 podcast. Now something for patreon patrons I thought I would make you aware of |
| 0:42.4 | in the top right and corner of the patron page of the Woe |
| 0:46.6 | or two podcast page is an audio RSS link. Now if you paste that into your |
| 0:52.3 | podcast software of choice, all the extras I produce |
| 0:56.5 | will automatically be downloaded for you if you want them to be. You can of course just listen to them in your browser. |
| 1:04.8 | It's if you like more World War II you can become a patron at patreon. |
| 1:09.4 | dot com slash W.W. W. to So let's talk Strath Battalions. |
| 1:15.0 | Welcome back Walter. |
| 1:17.0 | Your book was a bit of an eye opener. |
| 1:18.0 | It wasn't quite what I expected. |
| 1:20.0 | Oh, was all right? |
| 1:21.0 | Well, I came at it from a completely white page. I knew nothing about |
| 1:28.4 | penal battalions. I was quite surprised at how divert. They just weren't what I expected you know I |
| 1:34.7 | sort of had this idea of is it Kelly's Heroes or someone like that one of those |
| 1:40.3 | strange war films you know where they're all sort of is it Kelly's |
| 1:44.7 | heroes where they're all Merrill's Marot no it's not Merritts were all |
| 1:48.4 | several films like that yeah where they're all kind of yeah and it was much more diverse so I mean let's let's start with |
... |
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