They were formed long before the Soviet penal battalions. Stalin borrowed their experience, creating penal units of the Red Army. Officially, the Wehrmacht penal battalions were called “test”; the Germans called them “ascension teams” with their noses, and the penal battalions were “living dead”, because of Hitler’s penal battalions, unlike the Soviet ones, there was only one way out is to the grave. German historians and veterans are still arguing whether to consider Wehrmacht penalty soldiers as “potential anti-fascists” or, on the contrary, they fought at the front “like lions”, being almost “shock units” (it is not clear why then behind them were special officers and reinforced police squads, who had orders to shoot any penalty box evading combat). This book puts a final point in these disputes.