Why Captured Female Soldiers Were Shot JJ

During the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of women served in or alongside the armed forces of different nations. Some worked as nurses, drivers, radio operators, and even in artillery battalions, and others served even closer to the fighting. Inside the Soviet Union, women became pilots, snipers, machine gunners, scouts, and also medics.

But the reality of World War II was often terrifying for women soldiers if they found themselves captured by their enemies. Female combatants were sometimes shot after their capture, particularly on the Eastern Front. Some were shot because they were considered partisans or spies, and others were killed because they were considered high value targets such as snipers.

But the German army ruthlessly put female soldiers to the sword because it went against their beliefs that women shouldn’t be anywhere near the fighting and they saw this as a backward policy of their enemies which needed eradicating quickly. But why else were female soldiers shot. The fighting on the Eastern Front was particularly brutal.

When Germany launched Operation Barbarasa on the 22nd of June 1941, the conflict opened up the Eastern Front, but it also descended into a complete war of annihilation. It was the Nazis versus the Communists, and things became darkly destructive very quickly. It was a battle to see who was deemed racially superior. And because of this, the Soviet prisoners who found themselves captured by their enemies had a very high mortality rate.

Around 5.7 million Red Army personnel fell into German hands during World War II and around three million died inside German captivity. Starvation, exposure, disease, shootings, and deliberate mistreatment all led to this. But female Soviet personnel, if they were captured, often faced this fate.

But that’s if they even managed to get off the battlefield in the first place. The Soviets did deploy around 800,000 women inside their armed forces during World War II, and many served in support positions, but they also served in direct combat against German troops. They were, as mentioned, taking up arms and firing at the Germans, as well as conducting behind the scenes partisan warfare behind enemy lines.

One Soviet female sniper, for example, Ludma Pavlichenko, even racked up a kill count of 309 enemies with her rifle. German soldiers encountered armed women in circumstances that they never even imagined. The Nazi ideology deemed female competence. So a backwards policy of the whole ideology they wanted to stamp out.

The armed Soviet women was for them a sign that the Bolevixs or communists had overturned the natural social order. And with this many highranking German officers ordered Soviet female troops to be shot upon their immediate capture. For the Germans, these women should have been wives and mothers at home. But if a German was taken out by a female soldier, then imagine what message that would send to the German people back home.

The Germans said they were the master race. And if their elite troops were taken out by an enemy female combatant, this would have challenged the whole point of Nazi politics. Officers inside of the German army handed out instructions to their frontline troops as to how to deal with female soldiers if they came into their captivity.

They were to be dealt with in accordance with what was known as Hitler’s commisar order. This stated that Soviet commisars and political soldiers would be executed and shot on site without trial. The soldiers were encouraged to shoot the women there and then without any trial or chance for them to defend themselves. The Germans were told to exterminate them as if they were pretty much vermin.

Most of them were taken to concealed areas where they knelt down and were then shot in the head by a German soldier and his pistol. The women were not given a large scale firing squad execution as this was deemed to be just a waste of bullets and just one single soldier would put one bullet into them, a fatal bullet.

Many of these women never made it to prison of war camps or concentration camps. Some even found themselves hanged in public for taking up arms against their German occupiers, being strung up from a tree in front of large crowds. These women were often also accused of being partisans. As mentioned, individual commanders did pass their own instructions to their men.

The commander of the fourth army when operation Barbarosa began, Gunga von Kluga stated to his soldiers that I quote, “All women who were found in Soviet army uniform were to be shot straight away.” The threat of partisans for the Germans who were occupying lands that they knew were hostile and dangerous was very much there.

Partisans were guerillas who carried out less formal types of warfare such as sabotage and demolition jobs. Teenage girls were encouraged to pick up arms and fight against the Germans, but if captured, they were dealt with roughly. Zorya Cosmo Demians Skaya was 18 years old when she was captured by the Germans and she was part of a combat group in the Soviet Union who were carrying out a mission.

Upon her capture, she was beaten brutally and was tortured for information, but she refused to give anything up. She did try to escape and even shot a guard. However, after being recaptured, she was stripped, beaten further, and was given 200 lashes and her body was even burned. On the way to her execution, she was even forced to wear a board around her neck that said house burnout.

Now, Zorya was not shot, but was executed on the gallows, but she did defiantly stand up to her enemies and was considered a heroine of the Soviet cause, but this just shows you how brutal the Germans could be to their captured female enemies. They were very dangerous foes, though, as mentioned.

Specifically, the Soviets used female snipers on mass, and they were said to have been incredibly deadly when crawling through ruins of towns and cities. These women were incredibly patient, and they were celebrated in Soviet propaganda. A sniper of any gender could be dangerous, but upon capture, because they were said to have been so skilled with their weapon and deadly as a sharpshooter, they often faced immense threat when in the hands of their enemies.

Soldiers had watched their comrades and friends, even commanding officers, being killed by an unseen marksman, and they would seek immediate revenge once the sniper was captured. To shoot one of these women quickly was seen as a necessity by the Germans. They were, let’s face it, a Soviet, a combatant, a woman carrying a weapon, and a very skilled enemy who was too dangerous to have alive or let free.

Specifically though, regarding female snipers, roughly 2 and a half thousand of them fought against the Germans, and around 500 did survive the war. They collectively took out though 11,000 enemies, including some high-ranking officers and even generals. The women were also deadly in other ways.

There was the iconic 46th to man guards night bomber aviation regiment who became known as the night witches for very good reason. These women aviators flew 24,000 missions and by using biplanes which were well well old, they attacked German positions, dropping payloads of explosives onto their enemies. They would fly at very high altitudes, then disengage and switch off their engines and just glide to the bombing range and altitude in silence.

Then they drop their payload, causing huge devastation and death before re-emerging and re-engaging the engine and flying off. There were other groups of female flyers, too, such as the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment, who had three female regiments that flew over 4,000 sorties. The 125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment, were also commanded by a female officer, and they dropped around 1,000 tons of bombs onto Axis soldiers.

These female flyers often risk the ultimate death if they were captured. Let’s say they were shot down and somehow survived the landing. Well, the Germans, if they captured a woman inside of the plane, would take absolutely no prisoners. One thing to mention, though, is that the rules of war did not permit their execution. Being a woman didn’t remove a soldier’s entitlement to humane treatment after they surrendered.

Once an enemy comeant had genuinely surrendered and was no longer engaged in fighting, simply shooting that prisoner was not allowed under the rules of war. Even if a prisoner had taken out German soldiers, captured female soldiers were allowed the same levels of protection and often they were executed immediately. But also not every captured female soldier was executed.

There was no official universal practice under which every German soldier automatically shot every captured female Red Army prisoner. Women were also taken prisoner and did survive German captivity. Some were sent through prisoner of war camps into prisons, concentration camps, or forced labor systems. Treatment varied considerably according to the location, date, their captive, and their perceived military role.

So to finish, female soldiers during World War II were shot for a number of reasons. A German unit might have suffered heavy casualties, and it could act out of revenge. In the eyes of the Germans, women on the battlefield was also subversion of the social order and in their eyes needed dealing with and also these women were considered incredibly dangerous.

But sadly still today, there will be many female soldiers who lie in makeshift graves having become victims of the Germans ruthless way of dealing with them instantly upon their capture. Thanks for watching. If you found this video interesting, maybe click subscribe. Once again, thank you so much for giving it your time to watch one of these videos.