When the German Army launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, its invasion of the Soviet Union presented a situation unlike anything it had faced in Poland, France, or the Low Countries: female combatants among the enemy ranks.
The war on the Eastern Front was an ideological conflict, with German National Socialism on one side and Soviet Communism on the other. Both sides despised each other far more instinctively than the German, British, and French forces ever did in the West.
Soviet civilians were actively dehumanized and regarded as "subhumans" by Nazi propaganda, a mindset that produced immense brutality and suffering as the Germans advanced eastward.
What genuinely disgusted the Germans, beyond clear racial and political hatred, was the fact that the Red Army used women in combat. This directly contradicted Nazi Party views on the acceptable roles and place of women in society.
The Germans would later conscript hundreds of thousands of women during the war to free more men for combat units. But with few notable exceptions, these women served as nurses, clerks, drivers, searchlight operators, and in other non-combat posts. The Germans did not consider the front lines a suitable place for women.
The Soviet Union, by contrast, viewed men and women as fundamentally equal, and certainly equal enough for women to bear arms and fight alongside men in defense of the motherland.
Beyond serving in the same female military roles found in the German, British, and American armies, Soviet servicewomen also manned anti-aircraft batteries. Some women served as fighter and bomber pilots, including a bomber squadron the Germans derisively nicknamed the "Night Witches." There were also, famously, female snipers, many of whom earned a fearsome reputation and recorded large numbers of kills.
In total, around one million Soviet women served during the Second World War. Nearly 200,000 of them received decorations, and 89 were awarded the Soviet Union's highest honor for courage and distinguished service, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Allowing women to bear arms was utterly unacceptable in the traditional German mindset, and it produced an extremely hostile reaction when Soviet servicewomen fell into captivity, as happened in large numbers during the first months of the campaign in Russia.
The Germans had a degrading name for female Red Army soldiers. They called them "Flintenweiber," which translates roughly as "gun whores." Rather than women in military uniform, the German Army saw them as a symbol of the degeneracy of Communism and as the face of evil.
Hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops, most of them men but including some female personnel, continued to fight behind German lines because of the fast-moving, fluid battlefield conditions of 1941 and 1942.
The Germans held firm views toward what they called partisans. These were hunted down and killed ruthlessly. Soviet servicewomen were also targeted for killing, with the Germans portraying them as depraved individuals ready to commit unspeakable atrocities against German soldiers.
This was not only the view of the Nazis but of the regular German Army, which felt insulted that women had entered the male domain of warfare.
The only group of Soviet women the Germans largely left alone were Red Army nurses, who were usually exempted because of their non-combatant status.
On June 29, 1941, only seven days after the German invasion, Field Marshal Günter von Kluge, commander of the Fourth Army, ordered: "Women in military uniform are to be shot." This was a harsh order that was later rescinded, but individual German commanders continued to issue such illegal orders for dealing with Soviet servicewomen.
In October 1941, Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau, commander of the German Sixth Army, issued specific instructions for the treatment of captured female partisans, servicewomen, and Soviet military commissars, the political officers. All of them were to be shot. Female soldiers were to be executed immediately upon capture.
Lower down the chain of command, General Ernst Hammer, commander of the 75th Infantry Division, issued a similar illegal order stating: "Women wearing Russian uniform are to be shot immediately as a general rule."
Also in October 1941, the commander of the 4th Panzer Division wrote: "The cunning and cruel partisans, as well as the depraved 'Flintenweiber,' do not belong in prisoner-of-war camps, but are to be hanged on the nearest tree."
German units complied with higher orders and killed Soviet servicewomen on the spot from the beginning of the invasion, following von Kluge's illegal order of June 27. The following month, the 122nd Infantry Division submitted a report as an example showing that it had executed 30 Soviet servicewomen captured by one of its units.
These same German units took male Soviet soldiers prisoner, apart from fighters and political commissars, although prisoners of war were treated brutally in open-air camps, starved, and systematically mistreated. German soldiers were even seen throwing food scraps to starving Soviet prisoners for amusement. All of this was carried out by the regular German Army.
The numbers are stark. Six million Soviet citizens fell into German captivity during the war, and three million of them died in captivity.
Not every Soviet servicewoman was executed immediately. Many suffered horrific sexual assaults before being killed. Others were captured and handed over to the SS, since the army had no facilities to hold women.
These unfortunate women often ended up in Ravensbrück, the largest German women's concentration camp, or the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Around 18,000 Soviet female prisoners were held at Ravensbrück at one time or another.
Large numbers of Soviet servicewomen committed suicide when faced with the imminent danger of capture, while the Germans executed thousands of them.