Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen

The Panfilov Division's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen (Russian: Двадцать восемь гвардейцев дивизии Панфилова, romanized: Dvadtsat vosem gvardeytsev divizii Panfilova), commonly referred to simply as Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen, Panfilov's Men (Russian: Панфиловцы, Panfilovtsy), or just the Twenty-Eight, is a group of soldiers from the Red Army's 316th Rifle Division who took part in the 1941–1942 Battle of Moscow during World War II. According to Soviet records of the time, all were killed in action on 16 November 1941 after destroying 18 German tanks and stopping the enemy attack; the Twenty-Eight were collectively endowed with the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

Post-war investigation by Soviet authorities, carried out in 1948 and since declassified, revealed the story to be a fabrication. Neither German nor Soviet operational documents confirmed the claimed German casualties, and the Germans fulfilled their day's objectives well before the end of the day.^[1] After one of the supposedly dead men was arrested on suspicion of collaboration with the enemy and confessed to having "voluntarily" surrendered to German troops and to having later joined a German police force,^[2][3][4] it was discovered that not all twenty-eight were killed — six of the soldiers had survived and were still alive. Another one of the Guardsmen was arrested by the NKVD for allegedly "giving himself up to the enemy" and sent into a penal battalion. The findings were kept secret; the Twenty-Eight Guardsmen remained national heroes.