During the Second World War, there were many stories of soldiers and civilians switching
sides and defecting over to their enemies. Some high profile examples of these are William
Joyce, Lord How Haw, who broadcast Nazi propaganda to British listeners, or John Amery who was
a British fascist who collaborated with the Nazis to try and recruit soldiers to the British
Free Corp, a section of the waffen-SS made up of former British prisoners of war. However
one less known story is that of Antonina Makarova, a Soviet woman who defected over to the side
of the Nazis, and collaborated with them carrying out deadly and brutal acts against Soviet
partisans and civilians. She became known as Tonya the Machine Gun Girl, and she became
an executioner for the Nazis despite being Soviet. So join us today as we look at Hitler’s
BRUTAL Soviet Executioner, remember to support our channel please make sure to subscribe.
Antonina Makarova was born into a small village in 1920. Little is known about her early life,
however she was allegedly so shy that she forgot her last name at school. She studied
later in Moscow, but when the Second World War broke out she ended up joining the Red
Army. Women were allowed to serve within the Red Army, initially they were turned away
however some even became soldiers after Stalin changed his rules to make up for the huge
initial losses caused by Operation Barbarossa. Makarova became a volunteer nurse and tended
to the injuries of wounded soldiers brought from the battlefield. Whilst being a nurse,
she also took courses in how to handle weapons including a machine gun which she would later
use to devastating effect.
She did not remain as a nurse for long, as in autumn 1941 around 600,000 Soviet soldiers
were surrounded by the Germans, and Antonina was part of these. She managed to escape the
enemy by wandering for months through forest and villages, and she would shelter with locals
for a short amount of time before then moving. In the summer of 1942, she came across the
village of Lokot which was under German occupation. The region she was inside of was different
to others living under the Nazis. It was being used as an experiment, and a local governance
had been set up by Konstantin Voskoboinik, who then was later replaced by Bronislav Kaminsky.
The Area was established to maintain order, and the region was allowed to create defensive
units, which later became the Russian National Liberation Army.
This was ultimately a group of Soviets who fought under the German command. The units
became known for brutality, and would later barbarically put down the Warsaw Uprising,
massacring large amounts of the population. These soldiers in particular who belonged
to RONA were deemed traitors, and many were happy to conduct Nazi atrocities. Antonina
had to make a decision, she could either try to link up with Partisans who were nearby
in the forest, however she saw that the soviet collaborators were living in luxury compared
to these. She then integrated herself with the group and the germans, and slept with
German soldiers and attended parties. Within a short amount of time, she then became involved
in military matters.
She was hired by the Germans to become a machine gunner, and it was in this role that she became
a feared and brutal executioner. She was given the job to execute Russian POWs and partisans
and also their families including their wives and children. This was a bloody office, but
she seemed okay to carry this out. She was ordered to execute groups of 27, the number
which the local prison could hold. The executions would take place near to a former stud farm,
and Makarova lived in the same building. Often the locals would describe how the gates of
the prison were opened, and a group of prisoners were then led out of the prison, followed
by a cart which held a machine gun, with a young woman, Makarova sat behind on it. She
would then open up the machine gun on the prisoners, executing them in cold blooded
fashion.
She later told investigators, ‘I didn’t know the people I shot, and they didn’t
know me. So I felt no shame for them. For me all those sentenced to death were the same.
Only their number changed. The arrested were lined up facing the pit. One of the men rolled
my machine gun to the execution site. At the command of my superiors, I knelt down and
fired until everyone fell dead.’ It was later said that German and Hungarian generals
would come to watch the specacle, the female executioner slaying her fellow citizens with
the machine gun.
She never missed, but if there was a prisoner who wasn’t killed by her bursts of fire,
she would then go up to them and finish them off with a pistol shot to the head. There
was one occasion where a number of children survived with the bullets flying above their
heads. They played dead, and were later saved by the locals who were forced to bury the
victims, and they were then passed over to the Partisans who promised to hunt down the
female executioner who had massacred their parents. After an execution, Makarova took
off the clothing of the dead and stole their possessions. She became known as Tonya the
Machine Gun Girl for these shootings, using her Maxim machine gun for the job.
She believed these executions were a necessary and normal part of warfare, and sometimes
three group executions were carried out a day. It’s believed that she shot dead 1500
people during her time spent executing for the Germans. For carrying it out, she was
given 30 Reichsmarks and her notorious reputation came before her. In the Summer of 1943, she
was sent to a German hospital for treatment for syphillis, and this saved her from being
captured by the Red Army who later liberated Lokot. They found the graves of those 1500
people executed by Makarova, and with this the hunt was on for the shooter, or shooters.
She was taken to Poland, and was there until 1945 when it was liberated. She claimed she
was a Soviet Nurse and stole a military ticket from a murdered prisoner and she managed to
escape justice working as a nurse in a hospital.
She later met her husband, taking his surname and the couple settled in Lepel and had two
daughters. Post World War 2, she worked at a clothing factory, but she eventually would
be caught. The Soviet military police and the KGB had been looking for Tonya the Machine
Gun Girl since 1943, and they had very few witnesses and pieces of information about
her. No-one knew her name, and the search continued for a long time. In 1973, the KGB
interrogated another collaborator who said he knew about the machine gunner. One of Antonina’s
brother’s even told the KGB how his sister was Antonina Makarova, and was now living
as antenna Ginzburg. A secret KGB operation was planned, and several witnesses confirmed
her as the executioner. She was arrested and taken to Bryansk, and was place in prison.
Whilst here she was noted to have behaved rather calmly, answering all of the questions
clearly. Despite the war ending 30 years previously, the imprisonment of her did cause some media
interest.
She during questioning did not want to talk about her family, and didn’t want to speak
with them. Her husband was told of her true identity, and he then took his daughters and
left. She believed that as decades had passed since her murderous actions that she would
simply be pardoned, or given a few years in prison and then released. However this is
not what happened. The court decided that she should too face up to her crimes with
the ultimate sentence. She was sentenced to death, and despite it not being possible to
highlight the fact she executed 1500 people, it was confirmed she was responsible for at
least 168 of those.
At 6am on the 11th August 1979, Antonina Makarova was brought into an execution courtyard. Facing
her was a firing squad. She was tied to a stake, and then the men readied their weapons,
and shot straight into the infamous female Nazi executioner. She was 59 years old when
she was executed, and it closed a chapter on one of the biggest KGB manhunts ever ordered.
Her execution for some was penance for the cruelty she inflicted, but her own daughter
released a statement on the women she only knew as her mother, and not the executioner.
She said, ‘Pain, Pain Pain, She spoiled the life of four generations You would like
to know whether I would take her back if she returned? I would.
She is my mother after all… I really don’t know how to remember her as if she’s alive
or dead. According to the law, women were not shot, maybe she’s alive somewhere. And
if not, tell me, I’ll finally light a candle for her soul.’ It appears with this that
she was slightly in denial at the fate that met her mother, with her being executed by
firing squad. She was one of only three women executed by the Soviet Union following the
death of Stalin.
So Antonina Makarova or Tonya the Machine Gun Girl was an executioner who despite being
raised in the Soviet Union, and working for the Red Army as a nurse, defected over to
the enemy. With this defection and job she was given to become an executioner, it attracted
a lot of interest where her shooting of prisoners of war would be met with watchful eyes from
generals. Seeing the female soviet mowing down the people with her machine gun attracted
a great degree of intrigue by those around her. She ultimately met her own justice being
executed over 30 years after the Second World War came to an end.
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