Throughout World War 2, women played a very important part in the conflict.
In Britain for example, whilst the men were away fighting in the armed forced, women would
work inside of the fields as the Land Army, keeping Britain fed and they would also work
inside of factories making ammunition and other materials for the war effort.
Many women had interesting jobs such as shuttling aircraft from once place to another, and others
also worked as engineers fixing equipment.
But Inside of the Soviet Union women would be allowed to fight for their country, and
Stalin following losing many soldiers as the Germans launched operation Barbarossa would
permit women to serve inside of the Armed Forces.
Some of these would become infamous for their work as snipers, but other women would join
Soviet resistance groups such as the partisans who would take the fight to the Germans who
were occupying their lands.
Women such as Lepa Radic faced a horrific execution if they were found involved in the
Partisans, as the Germans found they’re involved on the battlefield fighting as archaic
and horrific.
Because of this they executed them instantly and many women were slaughtered, and this
was the same for Soviet women soldiers.
Join us today as we look at the brutal executions of the female soviet soldiers of the red army,
and as always to support our channel please make sure to subscribe.
Despite a large proportion of women serving in the army for the Soviet Union, women had
other roles fighting the Germans.
There were a group of women aviators who trained as pilots, and there was no formal limit to
begin with for women to serve in the armed forces at the start of the Second World War,
but women were discouraged and were prevented from taking the fight to their enemies and
bearing arms for the Soviets.
But then as there was a desperate requirement for bodies to fight in the Red Army and other
military elements, the women were then accepted and Stalin accepted the dire situation of
the Second World War as the Red Army were suffering huge losses with the Germans launching
operation Barbarossa.
The Soviet Union was the first country to allow women pilots to fly in combat missions,
and here were whole regiments of women that flew around 30,000 combat sorties, and this
led to many women being awarded the highest military honours.
The 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment was known as The Night Witches, and
these women flew 24,000 combat missions and they bombed Germans from biplanes which were
considered rather old and outdated technology.
But they worked very well, and the Germans learned of them and greatly feared of them.
The women would fly to high altitudes, then switch off their engines and slide to a bombing
altitude where in almost silence with no engine sounds they would drop their payload and cause
chaos.
They were like ghosts, and they would cause a lot of confusion amongst the Germans.
However the action faced on the Eastern front was some of the deadliest and most horrific
of history.
The Soviets took huge losses as the Germans pushed into the Soviet Union and invaded them,
and Stalin had to think how he would replace the men that he had lost in the early actions.
He lost many of his best and most experienced soldiers, and he then drafted women into the
army as he wanted them to take part in the second lines of defence.
Many women were trained in administering medical aid, and they would also nurse in aid stations
and would staff anti aircraft positions.
These were considered safer than seeing women actually on the front line, but the time would
come where they were then pushed towards the front lines.
Hundreds of thousands were involved in the army, and another role for women was as snipers,
and this became one of the best known roles that Soviet women would perform inside of
the armed forces.
Some soviet female snipers had incredible records with their weapons, as Rosa Shanina
would kill 59 Germans with her weapon, and even in the ruins of Stalingrad women would
be involved in sniping enemies.
Female snipers would creep through the ruined city and take up positions and wait for hours
and sometimes days for a time to assassinate and kill when they could.
Between 1941 and 1945, 2,500 female soviet snipers fought the Germans, and around 500
survived the end of the Second World War and they would take out at least 11,000 German
soldiers sometimes even majors and generals.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko was considered the most successful and prolific female sniper in History,
and she was credited with 309 confirmed kills.
However the German Army hated the thought of female soviet soldiers fighting against
them, and they saw it as a backwards policy of communism which they hated.
They saw a women’s place as being in the home and the soviet female soldiers needed
slaughtering in the eyes of the Germans.
The use of women on the battlefield was against the Nazi beliefs, and they were seen as the
lowest of the low, and because of this women who were found in Soviet uniform were subjected
to harrowing torture ordeals but they were also dealt with quickly and were executed.
It wasn’t just the Nazis who thought this, but the German army believed this too.
The commander of the 4th Army when Operation Barbarossa began Gunther von Kluge ordered
that all women who were to be found in Soviet uniform were to be shot straight away.
He said that women fighters were a barbaric and horrific element of Bolshevism and there
was a lot of horror inflicted upon the female soldiers.
Officers and commanders inside of the Wehrmacht would also give out their own instructions
as to how to treat women on the battlefield if they were captured.
They were treated in line with the Soviet Commissars who under Hitler’s commissar
order were executed straight away and the Nazi soldiers would shoot them dead as soon
as they were captured.
These were not given any chance to defend themselves and they were not given trials
or tribunals, but they were then immediately shot by a firing squad, or by an officer who
would tell them to kneel and just shoot them in the head.
It was said that a woman who took up arms against the German army should be not have
been given a choice to live inside of a concentration camp and survive more days or be sent to a
prisoner of war, but they should have their lives taken away.
Many women were not even given a firing squad which was considered to have been a military
style of execution, as some women were strung up and hanged from the nearest tree or in
gallows that were made inside of soviet villages and cities.
They were often left out for a long time also to send a message to others not to fight against
the Germans.
Many of the women who found themselves captured by the Germans were executed together after
they were captured, but there were some who did get sent to concentration camps such as
Ravensbruck, but these were minimal compared to those who were killed.
Women also as mentioned joined the Partisans, and this resistance group was very successful
in carrying out attacks in the form of sabotage and demolitions against the Germans.
The Germans would also treat these women brutally if they were captured.
Lepa Radic a woman mentioned earlier was just a teenager when she was strung up and executed
in front of a large crowd because of her resistance.
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was another teenager who was arrested by the Nazis after a partisan
combat mission, and she was beaten daily following her arrest and was tortured and she gave over
no information.
But she was then dragged to a gallows herself and was executed in front of a huge crowd,
and she said ‘There are 2 million of us, you can’t hang us all,’ as the executioners
placed the noose around her neck.
Another young woman, Zinaida Portnova was 15 when she joined the Partisans and she concealed
weapons and conducted sabotage, but she was also tortured and she did shoot and kill one
of her captors, but she was then driven out to a forest where she was executed by a gunshot
to the head by an SS officer.
The general rule for the German military with regards to the capture of women Soviet soldiers
is that they should be executed quickly by gunshot or by hanging.
This led to many being slaughtered as soon as they were captured, and they were often
subjected to horrific torture also.
The u-turn Stalin made to allow women to fight for his cause against the Germans showed the
desperate situation that the Red Army were in following operation Barbarossa, and there
are many women who’s life was lost fighting on the battlefields of the Eastern Front.
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