On a cold morning in the occupied village, the soldiers placed the young woman on a wooden box and slipped the noose around her neck. They gave her one last chance to talk, to give up the names of her comrades, to buy her life with information. Lepa Radić refused. The box was kicked from under her feet, and the seventeen-year-old partisan was hanged before a crowd the Germans had forced to watch.

Her body was left there as a warning. It was one execution among hundreds carried out against Soviet women who fought the German army, and it was far from the most brutal. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had granted women legal equality, including the right to work as hard as men. When the Second World War broke out, thousands of women joined the army hoping to fight the Germans.

But the very existence of Soviet women in combat was an insult to Nazi Germany. The expectations and ideals for women under Hitler could not have been more different from those in the Soviet Union. Hitler wanted women to be traditional housewives who stayed home, raised many children, and obeyed their husbands. For the Germans, women fighting in the Red Army proved that Soviet communists were not merely dangerous, but backward in their values and their vision for society.

The idea of allowing women to bear arms was viewed as an appalling communist policy, and it contributed directly to the mistreatment of women the moment they fell into enemy hands. They were regarded with contempt, called degrading names, and their presence in uniform was attributed to evil. German propaganda portrayed Soviet servicewomen as traitors who wanted to destroy traditional values. These views were not confined to the Nazi leadership.

Ordinary German soldiers were disgusted by the fact that women were fighting against them. Shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge issued an order to shoot all women wearing military uniform, in line with Nazi ideology. The Germans believed these servicewomen were living proof of Bolshevism’s corruption. The order was later rescinded, but by then many women had already been executed.

It was illegal under the laws of war, and it was followed by many other orders against women across the Soviet Union. Numerous German generals ordered that women be shot or hanged from the nearest tree. Some 800,000 women served in the Soviet armed forces, roughly five percent of the entire army. Their numbers grew as the war dragged on.

Many worked in health care, caring for soldiers as nurses, doctors, and medical officers. At first, when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, large numbers of women were rejected and denied the right to serve. But the catastrophic losses of Operation Barbarossa changed attitudes. Women who wanted to fight were given that right.

Whole Russian air crews were formed, with women’s regiments taking part in aerial combat and combat missions during the war. One group fought in the skies over Stalingrad; others bombed German targets, with women piloting the aircraft. Three regiments were originally planned as exclusively female, and several contained hundreds of women pilots. The most famous use of women within the Red Army was as snipers, though they also served in various infantry roles.

The roughly 2,500 female snipers gained a fearsome reputation as an instrument of war. Lyudmila Pavlichenko alone recorded 309 confirmed kills, an extraordinary achievement. But women were not just snipers. Many served as ordinary soldiers, operating machine guns, and others took on roles such as tank drivers.

There were also anti-aircraft batteries run by women, especially at Stalingrad, where they took part in ground fighting against the enemy. Stalin allowed women to join the second line of defense, operating anti-aircraft guns and providing medical assistance. Through this service they gained credibility and respect. Partisan units offered another field of service for many women, especially at the front lines and even behind enemy lines, disrupting German communications.

Within the partisan ranks, women were regarded as equals. They took part in operations, often carrying weapons like regular soldiers and guerrilla fighters. A number of women who took part in partisan activities were executed, and they were treated horribly by the enemy. One of them was Lepa Radić, the young girl who had carried out sabotage operations against the Germans and, after capture and torture, refused to give information.

Before a large crowd, the German officers hanged her from the box that was kicked out from under her. Another partisan was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was just eighteen when the Germans executed her. She had volunteered for the partisans and worked behind enemy lines in German-occupied territory. She was arrested during a combat mission near a village and subjected to horrific torture and humiliation, but she refused to reveal the names of her fellow partisans.

After being sentenced to death, her last words to the crowd were: “We are 200 million. You cannot hang us all. ” Then she was executed. Zinaida Portnova joined the resistance at the age of fifteen.

She had been visiting her family when the Germans invaded the region, and she found herself trapped behind enemy lines. She smuggled and hid weapons, distributed leaflets, and carried out sabotage operations until she was captured during an exchange of fire. She shot one of her captors, but was seized. After being tortured, she was taken to a forest and executed, though some accounts suggest she was tortured to death rather than shot in the head.

Masha Bruskina was a Belarusian nurse who volunteered to care for Soviet troops and helped them escape. She worked in a hospital dedicated to wounded Soviet soldiers, helping them flee in civilian clothes with forged documents. The escape succeeded, but Masha was eventually betrayed and arrested. The authorities decided that a public execution would be a good way to deter the local population from similar activities.

The Germans forced her to walk through the streets carrying a painful sign that read: “We are partisans and we shot at German troops. ” She was taken to the gates of a distillery and hanged with two others. Her body was left hanging for three days, as the Germans refused to take it down. Tatyana Baramzina was a Soviet sniper who was later awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest honor available in the country.

She took part in an assault force and was wounded in battle against German troops, retreating into a barley field to recover. She defended herself alongside other soldiers, firing a machine gun at the enemy and killing several before her ammunition ran out. Two German soldiers entered the trench where she lay and shot the wounded soldiers before taking her prisoner. She was then stabbed, mutilated with bayonets, beaten savagely with rifle butts, and finally killed by a shot from an anti-tank round to her head.

Kseniya Konstantinova was a medic who also received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. She volunteered for the army, received infantry training, and saw combat as a medic on the Eastern Front. Just before her capture, she killed twelve enemy soldiers before being hit in the head. When she fell into enemy hands, she refused to give any information about Soviet operations in the area.

She was then subjected to appalling torture and mutilation before being stabbed and pinned to the ground with a stake driven through her body. She was found in this state, and buried with full military honors. Yelizaveta Chaikina was a partisan who helped lead their groups. Her small detachment raided Axis strongholds and gathered intelligence from reconnaissance missions.

She was sent to Peno to assess the size of enemy garrisons, but she was spotted on the way and betrayed by an informer. Chaikina was captured, tortured, and then taken outside and shot. She was just one in a long line of partisans executed by the Germans after torture and interrogation. The Germans regarded partisans as a highly dangerous group they feared, so they executed many of them with extreme speed.

The number of Soviet servicewomen executed by the Germans during the Second World War was enormous. Whether they belonged to the Red Army or the partisans, the orders in Ukraine were to execute women in uniform as soon as they were seen. Partisans were always interrogated for information about local resistance groups, but their end was always brutal. Many were hanged and many were shot, but others were killed with terrible violence in scenes of horror.

These executions violated the rules of war and constituted war crimes. Yet after the conflict, only a very small number of the soldiers who had carried out these killings were brought to justice. Very few ever faced their crimes. The women had played an essential role within the Red Army, something the Nazis could not accept because it ran completely against their values and principles.

They saw the inclusion of women in the military as a sadistic and backward policy of Bolshevism and communism. In the end, the policy of allowing women to join the army brought a vast number of them to the forefront of the struggle, fighting against Nazi Germany, and made many of them heroes of the Second World War.