Book
O.G.P.U. Prison
by Sven Hassel
Book 13 in the Legion of the Damned series.
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The 27th Penal Regiment receives orders to capture a Soviet political prison positioned behind the Eastern Front. Sven, Porta, Tiny and their comrades prepare an assault using flamethrowers, artillery and close-quarters tactics, knowing that the objective’s fortifications and guards make a conventional attack unlikely to succeed. The mission quickly becomes a contest of improvisation, brutality and endurance.
The title invokes the O.G.P.U., the Soviet secret-police organisation that preceded the NKVD, although Hassel treats the prison principally as a setting for military adventure rather than a documentary reconstruction. German penal soldiers confront another coercive state institution while remaining trapped inside their own. The parallel sharpens the series’ recurring argument that total war turns prisoners, guards and front-line troops into expendable instruments of political power.
