In World War 2, The Soviet Red Army allowed women to join the military, especially following
the initial invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. Hitler after initially
taking control of France and Poland wished to expand his empire East and he looked towards
the Balkans and also Russia. The Soviets and the Nazis signed the Molotov Ribbentrop pact,
which was a deal about how the two nations would divide up Poland, but there was also
guarantees of peace between the two. However this did not last long, when Hitler in 1941
rolled his tanks and army into Soviet territory. Because the invasion came at full steam initially,
many soldiers were killed with especially heavy losses on the Soviet side and because
Stalin decided to allow women to join the military, and to take up arms.
However many of these women if captured were dealt with horrifically by the German army.
Many generals sought to execute women soviet soldiers instantly, either shooting them on
sight or to hang them from the nearest tree. Others were executed in barbaric fashion,
but many of these women became heroes after the war. They were awarded the highest order
and honour inside of the Soviet Union for their efforts. One of these women was Yelena
Stempkovskaya, a radio operator who was executed in barbaric fashion, but fought valiantly
during the Second World War. Remember as always to support our channel, please make sure to
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Yelena Stempkovskaya was born in October 1921, and was born into a Belarussian family in
the Minsk region. She was born and raised there, and her life was relatively normal,
before her parents moved to the Syrdarya region of the Uzbek area. Her parents worked inside
a cotton farm, and whilst here she continued to study alongside working with her parents
in the cotton fields in the summer. Yelena was also a member of the Komsomol, the youth
communist league who performed different roles in Soviet society. During the Second World
War, they worked to build infrastructure and maintain it as well as working in agriculture
to gather harvests to feed the nation. Yelena became a young pioneer leader and was seen
as a prominent communist young leader. She dreamed to work onboard a ship and to rise
to the top, but decided to become a teacher to educate young people. She became a history
teacher inside of the Tashkent Pedagogical Institute in 1940, just before the war came
to the Soviet Union.
The Germans invaded the Soviet Union on the 22nd June 1941, and the goal was to smash
communism and Bolshevism, and for the Germans to populate the region with Germans. The plan
was to use to conquered population for slave labour and to help the Axis war effort. With
the lebensraum and living space policy, it led to mass executions and exterminations,
genocide and depopulation and deportations of populations. The operation saw around 3
million members of the Axis forces invade the Western Soviet Union along a 1800 mile
front, and they made use of around 600,000 vehicles, tanks, and also 600,000 horses.
Barbarossa opened up the Eastern Front, and the offensive saw a huge new theatre of the
Second World War created, one that saw some of the most brutal and certainly the deadliest
fighting of the conflict. The area saw a huge number of atrocities and casalties, and the
NAzis were brutal to the people of the Soviet Union.
They starved and executed around 3.3 million soviet prisoners of war, and mass shootings
and gassings saw over a million Soviet Jews killed in the Holocaust. The German forces
smashed through the Soviet defences in the early days of the invasion and caused huge
losses for the Soviets, and following this Joseph Stalin allowed women to take up arms
and to join the Red Army. This saw thousands of women take up fighting roles in the Second
World War, seeing action famously as snipers, tank drivers, and even bomber squadrons in
the skies. Many more joined up as nurses, or in other roles and Yelena Stempkovskaya
joined up after leaving school. She left school to join the army in November 1941, and she
enrolled in a number of different courses, including a local radio operator course.
She graduated from this within a few months, classes usually lasted over a year, but such
was the need to get people to the front lines, the courses were taught must more intensely.
She went straight to the front lines, and was an excelled radio operator, and was noted
for her leadership. She initially saw deployment on the southern front, and took part in the
battle for Volchansk, before she emerged in the city of Kharkov in May 1942.
Yelena saw action in a number of different attacks and offensives, and took part in the
battles for Volchask, Kharkov and other operations. She was initially assigned to work as a radio
operator for a tank unit, to help them to communicate effectively with infantry soldiers.
The tank crews would need to work together with infantry to support attacks and defensive
strategies, without effective communication often tank crews could find themselves rendered
useless and a target. But in this role Stempkovskaya found herself away from the front lines, and
she wanted to get closer to the action and in the thick of it. She was assigned to the
2nd battalion of the 216th Infantry regiment, and she also began to train as an infantry
soldier and in particular a machine gunner. She wrote home at one point, telling her family
of her pride of being involved in the Red Army, fighting for the Soviet Union.
She was incredibly brave however her death and execution was incredibly brutal. When
women were captured by the German Army, they were often treated in horrific fashion, being
abused and mutilated before they were executed in horrific ways.
On the battlefield, German generals wished to execute these women in quick fashion, as
they saw the fact they took up arms as disgusting, and against traditional German values. Hitler
sought to instil roles for women that were very backwards, and women were sacked from
high profile jobs to take up domestic roles as mothers with the sole intents of maintaining
home and having as many children as possible for the German Reich. The fact the Soviet’s
allowed women to fight caused a huge degree of controversy for the Germans, hence why
they wanted them dead as soon as they were captured.
During one operation the German Army had launched an attack that isolated her battalion command
post where she was based, and they were cut off from the rest of the regiment. Because
of this Yelena Stempkovskaya worked tirelessly to restore communications and she held out
as long as she could. During the intense fighting, she worked to transmit messages to the regimental
command as long as she could, trying to hold out the command post too. She managed to do
this for a while, however she eventually became overwhelmed by the German forces. The germans
stormed the command post, and broke in and during a short firefight she shot dead many
of the German soldiers who breached. She tried to fight off as many as she could and initially
did well, however there were too many of them, and she was then captured.
The Germans saw her as very dangerous and Yelena Stempkovskaya was then tortured for
information in a horrific manner. Torture was used to get as much info as possible,
and the German soldiers wanted her to reveal whatever she knew about Red Army missions
and objectives. But Yelena refused to hand over any information, and during her torture
she was mutilated awfully by the Germans, and her hands were both cut off by the enemy.
Despite being in immense pain, and losing two hands, she still continued to refuse to
give over anything.
This showed her strength and refusal to conform to the enemies demands, however the Nazis
then decided she was a lost cause. If she did not give away any information even when
she lost two hands, it was clear she wouldn’t give anything over. Because of this, she was
then taken out of her cell, and was dragged along the ground and then shot in the head.
As the Red Army took the German territory she was held, her remains were later found
where she was interred in a mass grave by the Red Army. However, the bravery of Yelena
Stempkovskaya was well know within the soldiers, and later during the war she was awarded the
prestigious Order of the Red Banner, despite being nominated for the more prestigious Order
of Lenin. However after the Second World War she was awarded this, along with the Hero
of the Soviet Union award, the most prestigious title.
Yelena Stempkovskaya was a brave young lady who wished to fight for the Soviets during
the most brutal fighting of World War 2. She was just 20 when she was executed by the Germans,
but her torture in attempts to extract information was incredibly savage. She was a very good
radio operator and showed a great degree of courage, however she died at the hands of
the Germans who viewed her as incredibly dangerous.
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