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The Night Witches and Other Warrior Women of World War II

Khalid Elhassan December 8, 2019 31 min

Lyudmila Pavlichenko - World War II — WWII Red Army snipers. Pintrest

20. Direct Action

The Oversteegen sisters started off small, distributing leaflets and illegal newspapers, and offering assistance to fugitives from the Nazis. However, things changed in the aftermath of the brutal Nazi crackdown in 1941, in retaliation for the massive Dutch workers’ strike to protest the deportation of Jews.

That German brutality further radicalized the Oversteegen girls. So Truus and her sister decided to join an armed partisan fighter cell that engaged in direct action against the Nazis.

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.