One of the most prominent stories of the Second World War was the soviet use of women snipers
during the conflict. Around 2500 female snipers worked during World War 2 to take out many
Germans, and around 500 of them survived the war. They claimed a combined kill count of
around 11,000 German soldiers, but women performed a number of different roles in the Soviet
Red Army. Many were medics but there was an order passed to German officers to carry out
the executions of women found fighting against the German Army during World War 2. This led
to hundreds of women being executed, and before this tortured for information. So join us
today as we look at ‘The Execution Of Soviet Women Soldiers,’ and remember to support,
please make sure to subscribe.
The 1917 Russian Revolution gave Russian women legal equality, and this meant they were given
the right to work as hard as men, and also many women joined the army as the Second World
War erupted, hoping to take the fight to the German army. Now the fact that the Soviets
had women fighting in the war was a great offence to those within Nazi Germany. The
expectations and ideals for women in Nazi Germany were incredibly different to those
within the Soviet Union, Hitler sought for women to be traditional housewives, staying
at home and raising many children, being subservient to their husbands. For the Germans, the women
fighting in the Red Army showed that the communists and Soviets were not just incredibly dangerous,
but also very backwards in their ideals and their plans for society. Because of this,
Women who fought and were captured by the Germans were treated awfully.
The thought to allow women to take up arms was seen as a horrific policy of communism
by the Germans, and this contributed to women being treated terribly as they fell into enemy
hands. They were looked at terribly, being given derogative nicknames and seeing women
in uniform was attributed to evil by the Germans. The strong views of the Germans contributed
to the targeting of Soviet women soldiers who were shown as treacherous and that they
wished to bring harm to the traditional values. It wasn’t just the Nazis who held these
values, the ordinary German military values were also disgusted with the fact women were
taking up arms. Shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union took place, Field Marshal
Gunther von Kluge issued an order that stated that all women in uniform were to be shot
in line with the Nazis ideologies. They believed the female soldiers were true examples of
Bolshevism. This order was later rescinded, but executions of women did take place. This
order was illegal, and many other orders were issued against the women and the Soviet Union.
Many other German Generals issued that women should be shot dead, or hanged from the nearest
tree.
There were around 800,000 women who served in the Soviet Armed forces, which made up
around 5% of the whole military. The number of women rose as the war went on, and many
did perform jobs in the health care sector, caring for soldiers as nurses, doctors, and
medical officials. At first when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 many
women were turned away and denied the right to serve, however due to the heavy losses
sustained by Operation Barbarossa, the attitudes were changed, and many women who wished to
fight were given the right to fight. There was a number of Russian Air crews established,
with female regiments taking part in air battles and combat missions during World War 2. One
group were involved in fighting over Stalingrad, and more regiments were involved in bombing
German targets, with women being handed the controls of the planes. Initially three regiments
were planned to be women exclusive, and many had hundreds of airwomen inside them.
Now the most famous deployment of women inside of the Red Army was the use of snipers. Women
were also used in different infantry roles, but snipers are most remembered. There was
almost 2500 female snipers, and many women gained a notorious reputation as a feared
weapon of war, for example Lyudmila Pavlichenko racked up 309 confirmed kills, a remarkable
achievement. Women weren’t just snipers in the military, many served as normal soldiers
such as machine gunners, and performed other roles such as tank drivers. There were also
many female anti aircraft batteries manned, especially within Stalingrad who also engaged
in combat on the ground against the enemy. Stalin allowed women to join the second lines
of defences manning AA guns and providing medical aid, and through this many joined
the Second World War and gained credibility and respectability.
It was within the Partisans that many women found service, especially on the front lines
and even behind enemy lines taking out communications used by the Germans. Within the Partisans,
women were seen as rather equals, and because of this they saw such service, often taking
up arms as normal soldiers and guerrilla fighters would. There were a number of women executed
who took part in Partisan activities. One of these was Lepa Radic, a young girl who
took part in sabotage operations against the Germans. She was then arrested and tortured
by the Germans before she was offered the chance to give information over, but she refused
and in front of a large crowd she was hanged by German officers. She was placed on a box,
with the noose around her neck, offered one final chance to give over information but
refused and the box was kicked out.
Another partisan, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was just 18 when she was executed by the Germans.
She volunteered to join the Partisans, but she worked behind enemy lines and worked in
territory occupied by the Germans. She was arrested during a combat mission near a village
and was horrifically tortured and humiliated, but refused to give away any names of partisans
and co-conspirators. She was sentenced to death, and during her final words to a crowd
claimed ‘There are 200 million of us, you can’t hang us all,’ before she was hanged.
Zinaida Portnova was another partisan who joined up at just the age of 15, she was visiting
her family when the Germans invaded and was stuck behind the enemy lines. She then worked
to smuggle and hide weapons and distribute propaganda along with carrying out sabotage,
but during a shootout she was captured. She shot one of her captors, and was caught. She
was tortured but then was later driven into a forest and executed, but some also speculate
that she was tortured to death.
Masha Bruskina was a Belarussian volunteer nurse who cared for Soviet forces and helped
them to escape. She worked in a hospital set up to care for wounded Soviet soldiers, and
she helped to smuggle civilian clothing to these men along with false papers. They then
escaped, but Masha was betrayed and was arrested. The authorities decided that a public hanging
would be a good way to deter the local public of conducting this sort of activity, and the
Germans forced her to march through the streets with a harrowing placard that said ‘We are
partisans and shot at German troops’ shaming her. She was then taken to the gates of a
yeast brewery and distillery, and was hanged along with two others with her body being
left out for three days, with the Germans continuously refusing to cut her down.
Tatyana Baramzina was a Soviet snieper who was later awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union
award, the highest medal available in the Soviet Union. She took part in a small assault
force, however was wounded in a battle against German forces and retreated to a rye field
to recover. She defended herself along with other soldiers, opening up on them with her
machine gun, killing a number of soldiers before running out of ammunition. Two German
soldiers entered a dugout where she was, and they shot injured soldiers, before Tatyana
was captured. She was then stabbed and mutilated with bayonets and beaten savagely with a rifle
butt before she was shot in the head with an anti tank grenade.
Kseniya Konstantinova was a medic who also was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.
She was an army volunteer and sent for infantry training but saw action as a medic on the
Easter Front. She was very brave, carrying wounded soldiers, but was badly wounded in
battle. She killed 12 enemy soldiers before she sustained a head injury, but when she
was taken prisoner she refused to give over any information about the Soviet operations
in the area. She was then horrifically tortured and mutilated, before being stabbed and pinned
to the ground with a stake through her body. She was then found and buried with full military
honours.
Yelizaveta Chaikina was a member of the Partisans and she was involved in leading partisan groups.
Her small detachment raided axis strongholds and gathered intelligence from recon missions.
She was then sent to Peno to find out the size of the enemies garrison, but on the way
she was seen and informed on to the enemy. Chaikina was then taken prisoner and was torutred,
before she was taken outside and shot. She was just one of a long line of Partisans who
were executed by the Germans after they were tortured and interrogated. The Partisans were
seen as very dangerous and were feared by the German forces, and they executed many
very quickly.
There were a huge number of female soviet soldiers who were executed during the Second
World War by the Germans. Regardless of whether they were members of the Red Army or Partisans,
the decree and instruction was made to execute the women in uniform virtually on sight. Partisans
were always interrogated to gain more information about the local resistance groups, but their
downfall was always met brutally. Many were hanged, and many were shot but many were also
butchered in horrific savage scenes. These executions were against the rules of war,
and were considered war crimes but after the war very few of those soldiers who executed
these women were brought to justice, and very few faced up to their crimes. Women had an
incredibly important role within the Red Army, and this was something the Nazis could not
accept, as it went completely against their values and ideals, and they saw the use of
women in the military as a sadistic and backwards policy of bolshevism and communism. Ultimately
the policy to allow women to join the military brought a huge number of women to the forefront
of the conflict, and broguht them into the fight against Nazi Germany, along with making
a number of heroes during World War 2.
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