Women in the Soviet Army in World War II? Let Me Count the Ways
Recently a fascinating story about a real life woman warrior appeared in the Wall Street Journal. To summarize the story: Ukranian-born Olha Tverdokhlibova fought against the Germans in World War Two. She was a skilled markswoman, served as a scout behind German lines, fought her way to Berlin with the Red Army, and was highly decorated for her service, When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, she called the Ukrainian recruiting office and offered her sharpshooting skills. To quote the WSJ article: The recruiter sounded enthusiastic, Ms. Tverdokhlibova recalled, until she revealed her age: 98.” It’s worth tracking down the article if you want more details about her story, and about her response to the Russian invasion.*
Lyudmilla Pavlichenko was one of the most successful snipers in World War II, with 309 confirmed kills. (Almost 50 percent more than the acclaimed Audie Murphy.)
Tverdokhlibova was one of 800,000 women who served as soldiers in the Red Army in the Second World War. Most, like enlisted women in the United States or Britain, worked in support positions, but several hundred thousand fought at the front as snipers, machine gunners, tank crews, antiaircraft personnel,** and three regiments of female bombers, fighter pilots, and airplane mechanics. Between 100,000 and 150,000 Soviet women were decorated for bravery during the war. Ninety-one women were awarded the Gold Star Hero of the Soviet Union, their nation’s highest military honor. *** More than half of them received the honor posthumously.
* James Marson. “Red Army Veteran Turns Against Putin.” May 10, 2022. P. A7. The WSJ has a serious paywall, so this link will only help if you have a subscription, or access to one: https://www.wsj.com/articles/she-was-a-soldier-in-the-red-army-now-shes-a-torch-bearer-for-ukraine-11652119269 (It’s worth clicking the link even without a subscription, just to see her picture.) My personal access to the paper comes through the My Own True Love Clipping Service, a very efficient operation that delivers articles of interest to my place at the dining room table.
**One German pilot testified to the effectiveness of women in Russian antiaircraft units: “I would rather fly ten times over the skies of Tobruk [over all male British ack-ack] than to pass once through [Russia where] the fire of Russian flak [was] sent up by female gunners.”
***In a breathtakingly explicit act of erasing women from history, after the war the Soviet government instructed its squadrons of female fighter pilots not to speak of their wartime experiences.
In search of “Heinrich the Fowler”
This morning, while working through Sigrid Schultz’s articles from 1936, I stumbled on a creepy story. There are, of course plenty of creepy stories from Berlin in 1936, but this was creepy in a different way.
The article opened this way:
“A mystical ceremony in honor of the 1000th anniversary of the death of King Henry, founder of the Germany monarchy, was held today in the 1000 year old crypt of the Dom of Quedlinburg by the most militant fighters for the purely Nazi creed and Weltanschauung [world outlook].*
“They gloried Field Reichfuehrer Hitler as the reincarnation of King Henry who ‘united the Germans and refused to accept anointment by the Christian church.’ Their speeches sounded like so many appeals to the Fuehrer to assume the royal purple prepared for him by Henry.”
Schultz went on to describe thousands of Nazis gathered in the hall of the medieval abbey, which had been decorated to look like the “a royal hall of a German king”, where they received a history lesson about the reign of King Henry from Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the dreaded SS. According to Himmler, Henry pulled together the remnants of a Germanic empire that had been damaged by Christianity, created a disciplined army from what were formerly “rough youths”, and conquered neighboring countries. Not surprisingly, Himmler’s Henry sounded a lot like Hitler. **
The whole thing felt to me like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie. And it made me wonder about King Henry. ( For some reason, I didn’t trust Himmler as a historian. Go figure.) So off I went to see what I could find.
It turns out that Henrich I (c. 876 – July 2 936) was important.***
Charlemagne’s empire had crumbled into political chaos after his death in 814 thanks in large part to the Frankish custom of dividing kingdoms between their sons. As a result, his descendents fought for control over smaller and smaller kingdoms. Heinrich, also known as Heinrich the Fowler,**** reversed the process, melding the warring duchies of Germany into an uneasy confederation.
Heinrich was still trying to bring order to political chaos when he faced a new enemy: the formidable Magyars of Hungary invaded and repeatedly laid waste to Saxony. In 926, He got lucky. His army captured a Magyar prince. With the prince as a bargaining chip, Heinrich was able to make a deal: he would return his captive and pay tribute to the Magyars for nine years, during which time the Magyars would not raid German lands.
I don’t know what the Magyars thought Heinrich would do with that nine-year respite, but he put the time to good use. He built fortified towns along the frontier. He revived an old Saxon tradition of a peasant militia—the agrarii milities. And he modernized the Saxon army, creating a formidable cavalry that he led against the Slavic tribes on his borders. At the end of the nine years, Heinrich refused to pay additional tribute. When the Magyars resumed their raids, he routed them in a decisive victory on March 15, 933.
With the Magyar threat at an end, Heinrich continued to expand and consolidate his territory. Perhaps the most important political decision he made was adopting the then unusual principle of primogeniture. As a result, his oldest son, Otto, inherited the entire kingdom, which became the foundation for the Holy Roman Empire.
*The gloss is from the newspaper article. I would have assumed that most modern Marginalia know the term. And if they don’t, it would be easier for them to look it up than it would have been for the typical Chicago Tribune reader in 1936.
**I must admit, I am curious about Schultz’s sources for the story. Was one of her secret sources from the Nazi party in the crowd? Or did Himmler invite the foreign press to attend? Issue a press release?
*** It also turned out that he had crossed my path before in Paul Collin’s The Birth of the West —a book jam-packed with historical figures I was unfamiliar with and did not subsequently remember. This is why I seldom weed my non-fiction shelves. I never know when I will need to remind myself of something.
****According to popular stories, he was mending his bird nets, or alternately setting bird traps, when he learned that he had been elected King of Franconia It is an appealing story, but Collins rightly wonders why he wasn’t at the conclave where he was elected.
Going Viral, 1930’s Style
These days I spend a fair amount of time reading memoirs of people who were in Berlin at the same time as Sigrid Schultz, particularly memoirs written by her fellow journalists. They give me a slightly different perspective on what it was like in Berlin. They often share nuts and bolts of working with German press officers and censors, in the Weimar Republic as well as under the Nazis. Occasionally, Sigrid appears on their pages in a cameo role. (That always makes my day.)
And now and then one of them tells a good story that I can’t wait to share:
On July 16 1931, Louis Lochner, the head of the Associated Press Berlin bureau attended a stag luncheon* hosted by Ambassador Frederic Sackett. In the course of conversation, Ambassador Sackett mentioned that he frequently had conversations with President Hoover via transatlantic phone call—a rarity at the time. The purpose of the calls was to discuss business related to Germany’s economic situation and America’s response to the same, included the general moratorium on Germany’s war debt which Hoover had just announced. Then Sackett casually added that he and the president often spoke in American slang to confuse anyone eavesdropping in the line. Journalism gold!**
As soon as he could reasonably excuse himself, Lochner headed to a phone booth, dictated a “short crisp story” to his office and instructed them to relay the story to New York.
Wire services like the Associated Press held an unusual position in the world of foreign correspondents. They provided news coverage for papers that could not afford their own correspondents. Even major papers relied on the wire services for “spot news”: small news stories that were of immediate interest and updates on important stories. As a result, a human interest story like the one Lochner cabled that day was potentially read by millions of readers.
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- President Hoover
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- Ambassador Sackler
And read it was. Not only did readers enjoy it, but editors and columnists across the country had fun inventing what the president and ambassador might have said. Here’s a sample from a column by Frank Sullivan that ran in The New Yorker on July 25, titled “You tell ‘em, Mr. Ambassador.”
“The Ambassador: So he says: ‘No sir, I wouldn’t give the Heinies one thin dime.’
The President: Nertz! What did you and he do then—phht?
The Ambassador: No, but we darn near did. I didn’t wan to tip my mitt to him so I just tried a little bluff. I says to him: ‘O. K., if you don’t want to play ball, then roll your hoop. Take your playtoys and beat it. Come on, bum, ooskrat. Twenty-three skiddo! Scram! Pick out a nice spot and go lay an egg there.’
The President: Boy, was that giving him the Bronx cheer! Did it work?
The Ambassador: Did it work, Mr. President! I’ll say! He came off his high horse in a split second. ‘All right,’ he says, ‘you win. You outfumbled me. I’ll pay the taxi. What do the pretzel-benders want? How much time?’ So I says: ‘Never mind, we’ll take care of that. You just put your John Hancock on this space here.’
The president: Clever, clever you, Mr. Ambassador.
The Ambassador: It’s the army game, Mr. President. Never give a sucker and even break’.”
(As far as I’m concerned, the funniest part is the two men addressing each other as Mr. President and Mr. Ambassador.)
According to Lochner, Ambassador Sackett thought the whole thing was a hoot. ( Not Lochner’s exact words, but I like to keep in the spirit of the thing.)
*No idea why it was a stag luncheon. Now and then some of “the boys” tried to keep Sigrid out of an event, but there was no sign of that in Lochner’s account. Possibly the ambassador’s wife simply wanting a day off from hostessing and turned her husband loose to entertain on his own. In the diplomatic protocol of the day, that would have meant no women were invited. Not even a female “newspaperman”.
**Historian’s gold, too, for that matter. If I were writing a different book I’d be hoarding that detail.