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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