The Woman Who Killed 309 Nazis — Lyudmila Pavlichenko

how did ludmilla pavlachinko become the highest scoring female sniper in history why was she

adored by the allies and even the white house as a war hero what did her enemies think of her hello

i'm colin heaton former soldier marine corps scout sniper history professor historian and book author

and we'll answer these questions and other issues on this segment of forgotten history

when germany invaded the soviet union the germans faced a shocked unprepared red army

their best and brightest military leadership had been killed in stalin's purges or sent to siberian

gulags one major soviet city after another fell and two million soviet soldiers became

prisoners of war within the first five months and the like number had been killed

ludmila pavlachenko was born on july 12th 1916 in bellatzerka ukraine and was a student

at the university of kev majoring in history when she decided to enlist

due to her good looks at small stature she was not taken seriously and rebuffed despite her expert

marksmanship certificate required through training during the german romanian attacks in ukraine

she was taken to a location and the officer in charge pointed out enemies about 500 yards away

wanting her to show she was as skilled with a rifle as she made out a red army unit

held an impromptu trial at a hill they were defending

and handed her a rifle she shot two romanians with open sights within a minute of each other

and impressed the officer who has hined her to the 25th rifle division

within the first three months of operating in odessa she had 200 confirmed kills and

had mastered camouflage concealment and stalking the trademarks of a good sniper

her skills were needed elsewhere and she was relocated to sevastopol as field marshal eric

von manstein's 11th army group was closing the ring around the crimea during this time

after she reached her score of 100 kills she married her fellow sniper alexei kincinko

due to the germans placing their own well-trained snipers to target soviet officers pavlichenko

began stalking the german snipers 36 are her kills were in sniper versus sniper duels and knowing

the terrain and using various styles of homemade camouflage which we snipers called ghillie suits

she was never observed like her fellow snipers vasily zaitsev and nikolai iljin who served at

stalingrad german intelligence learned who she was they even made radio broadcasts offering

her money rank and favored treatment if she defected as tens of thousands of ukrainians

already had lurmilla pavlichinko was wounded four times by shrapnel and once by a machine gun bullet

but she never wavered and after each wounding and recovery she returned and continued doing her job

the last injury saw her wounded in the face nearly losing an eye following a german mortar attack

called in on her position after she made her final kill of the war stalin personally had her

evacuated by submarine to keep her out of german hands by the time of her wounding she had recorded

a total of 309 kills but the unofficial count is as high as 400 and remember 36 of those were

german snipers in her second month recovering from her last wounds in the hospital she was

visited by an nkvd officer with a personal note from joseph stalin she was to go to the united

states of america and meet president franklin d roosevelt and the first lady in the white house

in 1942 she arrived to great fanfare and following a paparazzi review joined first lady

eleanor roosevelt on a cross-country propaganda tour the united states government presented her