Photograph of Female Soviet POWs Marching to an Unknown Camp

The featured photograph is a rare look at Soviet women soldiers taken into captivity by German forces. These Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) are pictured as they marched to an unknown camp in German-occupied Soviet territory sometime in 1941.¹

World War II brought new opportunities for women to serve in the military forces of several countries.² Millions of women served in the armed forces of both Allied and Axis nations. Most of these women served as auxiliaries, working in medical roles, communications, or administrative positions. But only Soviet women were given the opportunity to serve in active combat roles on the frontlines.³

Thousands of Soviet women volunteered to serve in the armed forces within 24 hours of the German-led attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.⁴ By the end of June, hundreds of thousands of women had volunteered.⁵ Many women quickly proved themselves on the frontlines, but recruiting stations still turned away the majority of the women who volunteered for combat in 1941.⁶ It was not until early 1942 that Soviet authorities officially began to recruit women into the armed forces.⁷

Communist ideology promoted the principle of equality between men and women. A generation of young people in the Soviet Union had been raised to believe that everyone must prepare to fight in a coming war to defend the Soviet state from its capitalist and fascist enemies.⁸ In 1932, Soviet authorities had begun making integrated military training obligatory for young men and women. When Axis forces attacked in 1941, many young Soviet women felt that they had the same duty to fight as Soviet men.⁹

Women with combat roles in the Soviet military typically were highly skilled in the weapons of modern warfare—many of the women selected for combat were trained as pilots, machine-gunners, or snipers. Women also served as junior officers commanding units of all female soldiers as well as mixed units of men and women. Roughly 34 million men and women served in the different branches of the Soviet military during the years of World War II. Of the roughly 900,000 women who served, more than 120,000 held combat roles. These figures do not include the thousands of women who fought as Soviet partisans.¹⁰

German forces took few Soviet women soldiers prisoner—they summarily executed most captured Soviet women soldiers instead.¹¹ Nazi ideas about the proper roles of women taught that any woman actively fighting against German forces must be depraved or deranged—and the Nazis took their presence on the frontlines as proof that Soviet culture was corrupt and “degenerate.” Within the German army, Soviet women combatants were referred to as “degenerate women,” “Russian witches,” and “Bolshevik beasts.”¹² German soldiers were directed to “always shoot women who serve in the Red Army.”¹³

At least a dozen Soviet women POWs are shown marching directly toward the camera in this photograph. There are several male soldiers marching behind them, but it seems as if the photographer was focused on the women in the front of the column of prisoners. Although the identity of the photographer is unknown, it is likely that this image was taken for use as Nazi propaganda about the “degenerate women” of the Red Army. Several of the women are wearing full uniforms and appear to be marching in step with one another. Others wear scarves. Some look directly into the camera. What might their clothing, their body language, or their facial expressions tell us about their experiences as soldiers and POWs?

The hats and coats worn by the POWs indicate that the photograph was likely taken sometime in autumn or winter 1941.

See the related Experiencing History item, Oral History with Charity Adams Earley.

To learn more about Soviet women on the frontlines in World War II, see Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Random House, 2017).

To learn more, see Roger D. Markwick and Euridice Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 33.

Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 10.

There was no official policy regarding women in combat roles in the Soviet Union at the time, and Soviet authorities left decisions about whether or not to accept female volunteers up to the individual male officers in charge of recruiting stations and military units. To learn more, see Krylova, 28.

To learn more about Soviet women volunteering for military service, see Roger D. Markwick and Euridice Charon Cardona, "'Not Women's Business': Volunteers," Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012): 32–55.

Although Soviet authorities officially promoted ideas of gender equality, women who participated in the war were often viewed suspiciously or treated with varying degrees of sexist discrimination. To learn more, see Brandon M. Schechter, "'Girls’ and ‘Women': Love, Sex, Duty, and Sexual Harassment in the Ranks of the Red Army 1941–1945,” The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet States 17 (2016).

To learn more, see Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 51.

To learn more about women fighting as Soviet partisans, see Roger D. Markwick and Euridice Charon Cardona, "Behind Enemy Lines: Partisans," in Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012): 117–148.

Those Soviet women soldiers who were captured by German forces were often tortured or sexually assaulted. Relatively few Soviet women soldiers—and even fewer Soviet women POWs—published memoirs about these experiences during the war. For a rare personal account of a Soviet woman POW’s experiences in German captivity, see Anna Timofeeva-Egorova, Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front, 1942-45, edited by Sergey Anisimov and translated by Vladimir Kroupaik (Helion & Company Limited, 2010).

To learn more about the German military’s attitudes toward and treatment of captured Soviet women soldiers, see Roger D. Markwick and Euridice Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 153-4; and 241-3; and Anna Timofeeva-Egorova, Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front, 1942-45, edited by Sergey Anisimov and translated by Vladimir Kroupaik (Helion & Company Limited, 2010), 169-80.

Relatively few Soviet women soldiers are known to have been taken prisoner by German forces during World War II. Some women who were captured serving in the Red Army as medical personnel are known to have been imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp system. To learn more, see Roger D. Markwick and Euridice Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 241.

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