| abstract
| - The Political Officer is an officer attached to a unit, usually outside the regular chain of command. His job is to ensure that the regular soldiers and officers follow the orders of the government. In essence, this is another method of civilian control of the military. The existence of such a post is usually evident that there is significant mistrust of the military by the government. This could be depicted as the evil military being a threat to the legitimate government, with the political officers as the good guys restraining them (or preventing them from fleeing and surrendering to the enemy). However, the far more common depiction is for the government to be a repressive Evil Empire, and the military to be a less than willing participant in the more repressive actions of the government. In this instance the Political Officer's job it is to keep an eye on other officials and watch for politically incorrect behavior or thought crimes. He might double as a member of the Secret Police or the Culture Police. This type of fictional character is overwhelmingly based on the Real Life example of Political Officers in the Soviet Union. Although it also tends to draw on the SS and the Nazis as well. More often than not they are amalgams of real Political Officers and NKVD (counterintelligence) officers. The actual Soviet Political Officer is also a stock character in fictional portrayals of the Cold War era. He was an officer in the old Soviet military, attached to a unit, but outside its regular chain of command. His job was to ensure that the regular soldiers and officers followed the orders of the Party leadership in Moscow, basically a leash to ensure "civilian" (i.e. Communist party) control of the military. Stereotypically, this character is unconcerned with the difficulties the unit faces in actual combat, and will insist on slavish adherence to orders no matter what the circumstances. In reality, most commissars were capable observers sent as a response to large portions of the Soviet army veritably falling apart early in the war. The famous notion of commissars being empowered to shoot cowards stems from Stalin's orders against any fighting body retreating without specific orders to do so. Commissars were frequently on the receiving end of some of the worst treatment for PO Ws in the war. Since they were the ideological avatars of communism (the very thing Fascists like the Nazis formed to counter) there were explicit standing orders to execute them or torture them for information upon capture rather than adhere to the rules of war. Though neutered in effectiveness by the end of the war, civilian women in Germany were advised to yell 'Commissar' when facing rape by invading Russian soldiers because commissars would arrive and either stop the soldier or (in some cases) execute the offender. Of course this had a lot more to do with preserving the prestige of the Soviet army than altruism, but it helped codify the notion that commissars were given to shooting their own soldiers. Note that this is the Western depiction. In Soviet fiction, the political officers often were stern but just, inspiring and actually caring, and performed major feats of heroism to inspire similar heroics in soldiers, based on the fact that the Political Officers as an institute were abolished in 1943, and had to continue as common line officers. An alternative Soviet depiction from much later years is a lazy useless paper-pusher who never does anything useful and torments other officers with filling countless forms and boring lectures about "political situation". Often wears a Commissar Cap. See also The Inquisitor General.
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