in strategy games you usually have troops at the frontline whose sole purpose is to die fighting to buy you time to execute your plans or to protect stronger troops. is this something that happens in real life / used to happen before, if so what are the logistics of it, do the troops know that they are most likely goona die, etc..
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Around Bakhmut, Ukraine, as we speak, the Wagner Group is using prison inmates to conduct human wave attacks.
They were offered deals where if they fight for…six months, I think…they’ll be pardoned and released. Their chances of dying are fairly high but they decided it beats sitting in jail. We don’t know how many really decided this and how many were coerced.
I don’t have tons more examples, but if it’s happening today you can bet it’s happened plenty of times throughout our history. :/
To an extent, yes. This has traditionally been the role of infantry who were cheap to train and equip and would screen archers, hold the other side’s line in place while they were flanked by mounted troops, man the pikes used to stop the enemy’s mounted troops, etc. and would generally take the highest casualties. The difference between real life and strategy games is that these troops will eventually rout and run away (or surrender) if they’re too outmanned, see too many of their comrades killed, etc., so there would generally not be fully units who would be sent to slaughter.
Yes. An example that’s happening literally right now is in the fight for Bakhmut in Ukraine, with the Ukrainian forces just holding on to a corner of the city with the Russians having been trying to capture it for months and months.
There has been a long-running debate over the virtue of this from Ukraine’s side not based on the value of Bakhmut itself (which isn’t strategically important) but rather in whether their losses are worth the losses being incurred on the Russians during the fight. The argument on favour is keeping on fighting is that the Ukrainians are creating many – estimates assumes suggest as many as 5 – casualties for each Ukrainian casualty. Arguments against are that the quality of the Ukrainian troops being killed are high and that these troops might be better used elsewhere.
Either way, the implication is that trading the lives of your men either for time, land or (in this case) enemy lives is simply a calculation of resources, much like when to use limited artillery shells or aircraft. The *purpose* isn’t for them to die, it’s just recognised that some will, and in some circumstances more will die than in others.
But, of course, this is also a calculation performed outside of war. We know that using cars will result in people dying, we just think this cost is worth the benefit and try to do what we can to reduce the number as much as possible within certain constraints (e.g. reducing the speed limit to 30mph would save lives but also waste loads of time).
The soldiers in question likely will know that their role is to “hold on as long as possible” but in some situations this means “until you die” and in others it means “until we order you to retreat”. They may not know which they’re in until they’re in the thick of it, though.
Yes, this happens in the real world. In World War I, for example, it was a giant war of attrition, and troops that went “over the top” of the trenches into machine gun fire were almost certain to die. In Ukraine today, Russian troops are apparently dying in suicidal charges. Even the expert troops in such situations tend to think of themselves as already dead, otherwise there’s no way they could risk death again and again. One reason young men are recruited as soldiers is that they have a hard time comprehending that they can really die.
Historically, it hasn’t been as common among American troops, who have had the luxury of more artillery and ammunition and placed more value on soldiers’ lives. But it was pretty common in the American Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant, in particular, was accused of waging a war of attrition during the final battles of the war, but at that point many of the Union troops supported him because one way or another they wanted the war to end, even if it meant their death. Better to die for a victory than to die for a stalemate.
Depends on the fighting force.
In the US army. No. Even back to world war 1 and 2. Yes units would be assigned attacks that weren’t meant to be the big breakout, and instead were meant to distract or stall the enemy and keep them spread out.
But these were smaller tactical objectives, not suicide missions. Just meant to be about to keep the pressure on. Not get people killed needlessly.
Now the Russian forces in Ukraine? Yea there are definitely soldiers there who were drafted/conscripted and then sent into battle with little training, and sent out on missions not that likely to succeed.
There is always a certain amount of ‘acceptable casualties”.
The actual figure will vary with how important the objective is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptable_loss#:~:text=An%20acceptable%20loss%2C%20also%20known,is%20considered%20minor%20or%20tolerable.
During WWII, Japanese Kamikaze pilots intentionally flew their planes into Allied ships, killing themselves in the process.
They lifted off with the understanding that they would die. Those that were reluctant were chained to their seat to prevent bailing out.
The Soviet Union employed penal batallions which were tasked with particularly dangerous assaults and accordingly suffered high casualty rates. Contrary to popular belief, the Soviet Union did not employ human wave tactics except in a few isolated instances in which they had little choice.
Nazi Germany had its own penal batallion which was filled with violent and sadistic criminals. This batallion was often tasked with pacifying civilians, often by murdering them, because Wehrmacht and SS units refused to fight alongside them, and would in some instances fire at them.
Nazi Germany and Great Britain constructed human torpedoes. These were not suicide weapons in that the operator was intended to survive, but in practice that rarely occurred.
Russia is currently employing prisoners as unskilled shock troops intended to expose Ukrainian positions. They’re sent toward Ukrainian positions in a poorly coordinated attack in order to draw fire.
Japanese Kamikaze pilots are the only example that I can think of where the combatants death is a certainty.
The french Légion Étrangère is litteraly sent on high risk missions because most of its soldiers are “not yet french”, hence expendable.
In the Napoleonic Wars era there was a thing called a Forlorn Hope, these were the first troops into the breach/over the wall during a siege. Their role was to flush out all of the nasty traps and surprises the defenders had in store. They were all volunteers, and surviving a Forlorn Hope was a guaranteed promotion.
See Russian Army in Ukraine. The purpose of Russian troops is to go in, get slaughtered, and hope some survive.
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