German killed female soldiers on the spot during WWII

More than 800,000 female soldiers were deployed by the Soviet armed forces on the Eastern Front in World War II. The German soldiers fighting against them were shocked and full of hatred towards the women who were waging war. The Nazi war ideology expected women to be in the home, not on the battlefield.

Soviet female soldiers were even the subject of German soldiers’ pejorative slang term for female soldiers armed with guns: Flintenweiber. As opposed to male prisoners of war, female soldiers lost all of their rights as prisoners very quickly. Many female soldiers were shot, even hanged, by their German prisoners of war. Others were sent to concentration camps, such as Ravensbrück.

In August 1942, near Stalingrad, the German 16th Panzer Division received heavy fire from an anti-aircraft gun position. After a long and bloody battle the position was finally destroyed by German tanks. When the German soldiers finally reached the position of destruction they found a group of young Soviet women who had run the whole battery of guns. They had fired their guns until they had no more ammunition left.

Many German soldiers wrote of the female Soviet troops in their home town letters with a mixture of amazement and horror. The female Soviet troops fought with an extreme determination, because for them surrendering meant death. All reports from the front about female Soviet troops thus show extreme hostility by the German forces against female enemies.