I watched this historical documentary titled The
Heroine of the Red Army. The documentary focuses on the crucial role women
played during World War II within the Soviet Union’s army. Major countries,
such as France, England, Germany and the United States involved in this deadly
conflict only used women as support in the back, or as nurses. In fact, in
those countries women participated to the war effort from home by supplying war
equipment to their respective armies in combat. However, there were few women
in those countries who did fight alongside men to stop the advancement of the
Germany armies.
The Soviet Union used
the help of women on both the home front and in combat. The red army suffered heavy
of loss of men at the hands of the German armies; therefore any help was
welcomed by Stalin to boost his ranks. Most of the Soviet women who decided to
enlist in the red army did it for their country and also because of the loss of
their relatives or lovers. The first heroine mentioned in the documentary is a
nurse who died at the battle of Stalingrad in 1941 while fighting. According to
the documentary, Soviet Union nurses were trained to use firearms in case they
needed to defend themselves. The second heroine is a sniper; she was part of
the female sniper unit of the Soviet Union army. This unit proved to be deadly
for the enemy, for example one of the women from this unit apparently killed
309 Germans in a year (1940-1941). The last regiment of heroines presented in
the documentary is female pilots, who were feared by German soldiers. The
German pilots even named them “witches” because of the damage they inflicted in
German ranks.
However, these
respectable women did not get the recognition they deserved at the end of the
war. Other Soviet women who did not take part in combat considered these women
as prostitutes for the Soviet army during the war. Men did not want to marry
them because they felt that these women lost all their female traits. The
government, under which they served, informed them at the end of the war that
they were going to be treated just like the way they were before the war. The
government did not even award them right away for their brave service; these
valiant women had to wait until the 1980’s to be recognized and awarded for
their courageous duty for the country. Gorbachev awarded them medals for the
ones who were still alive at the time. This documentary illustrates the
injustice of a patriarchal society toward women, who sometimes did everything
to protect that same unjust society.
I will certainly take a look at this documentary. Thanks Bemba for sharing! I don't know if it covers this but the female pilots were also given the older models of planes to carry out the bombing. In addition to this, on many occasions the female pilots were required to hand drop the bombs since their aircraft lacked the capabilities. An additional note: Stalin was actually building on an already existent population of female pilots. Czar Nicholas II actually had an airborne squadron of female pilots during World War I.
ReplyDeleteYou also make mention of the female snipers. I encourage you to take a look at this article (http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/02/eleanor-roosevelt-and-the-soviet-sniper/).
Sorry for all of the random information but you posted something that I enjoy studying and considered pursuing further education in this subject matter.
This is cool. Thanks for sharing, Bemba! At the reenactment I went to earlier this month, there were actually a couple of women there portraying Russian female soldiers. Some were nurses, but a couple were snipers covered with all sorts of camouflage.
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