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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Intimidation, fear, religious/patriotic fervor.
Superior officers were armed with swords or pistols not to use on enemies but on their troops who didn’t fight. This supposedly happened with Soviet troops during WWII.
There are stories about Soviet tactics where a squad might only have 1 weapon and they were forced to attack enemies and recover weapons for further attacks. These don’t appear to be true: [https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/soviet-armament-in-wwii.html](https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/soviet-armament-in-wwii.html)
During the Iran-Iraq war, Iran used human wave tactics where poorly armed and trained Iranian troops faced heavy weapons, artillery, and aircraft when attacking Iraqi targets: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ramadan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ramadan)
Also, don’t forget about Japanese Kamikaze pilots who attacked Allied ships: in suicidal attacks [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze)
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