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The Hardcore Women of World War II Knew How to Take Care of Business

Khalid Elhassan October 19, 2020 32 min

World War II - Night Witches — Night Witches in front of a Po-2. Flite Test

26. One of the Red Army’s Deadliest Women

Red Army sniper Roza Shanina, left. Rare Historical Photos

Roza Shanina was assigned to a sniper platoon in the spring of 1944, and by early April, she had killed her first German. That first dead Nazi unnerved her, but before long, she was knocking off Germans with as much detachment as if they had been tin cans on a fence. During a five-day stretch, Roza shot dead 13 Germans while under near-constant artillery and machinegun fire. For that feat of bravery under fire, she was decorated with the Order of Glory.

By the summer of 1944, as her body count climbed, Roza Shanina became a national heroine, with her photo featured on the front pages of Soviet newspapers. By the end of August, 1944, she had killed 42 Nazis. She was killed in East Prussia in January of 1945, while trying to shield a wounded comrade with her body. By then, she had been credited with 59 confirmed kills.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.