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34Women atwaL Paft l: ln theWorkforceWomen atWar, Part ll: ln Uniform

Working women played a vital partin the war effort, just as they had inthe First World War, but in far greaternumbers. Further, the Soviet Union,Great Britain, France, Germany, Japanand the US each had unique political,institutional and cultural challengesthat determined how women wereaccepted in uniform during World War ll.by BlaineTaylor & Joel Kindrick

44Tanks in the New Guinea Campaign

[.lth"wemployed in formations containing as fewas four tanks and never moTe than eight,turned the tide of several key battles. Theirdecisiveness was proven not only in thebattles in which they were employed, butin those in which they weren't. The jungleisland of New Guinea, home to some ofthe Second World War's most ferociousbattles, attested to armor's value undereven the most adverse of circumstances.by RobertYoung

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The Strategy &Tacticsof World War ll

[}EPA'lTNfiEluTS32Design Comerby Joseph Miranda

58Game PreviewPacific Battles: Shanghai

61Obs Post. Behind the Lines

Japanese Atrocities in Nankingby Alexander G. Lovelace

o Historical PerspectiveOmaha Beach lmponderablesby Raymond E. Bell, Jr.

o Beneath the SeasUnrestricted Air &Submarine WarJareby Ken Brown

76Media Reviews

fi FEATUREs5Rampage:Building & Breaking theWestWall

On 7 March 1936, Hitler sent threebattalions into the Rhineland to see ifit would elicit a reaction from France.French troops rushed to their positionsin the Maginot Line, but they didnothing to overturn Hitler's bluff. Heimmediately ordered the army toprepare a western border defenseline that would be ready before heimplemented his plans for conquestin Central and Eastern Europe.bV J.E. & H.W. Kaufmannwith John Walker

18Stalingrad Cauldron:Operations Uranus & Ring

ln the early hours of 19 November1942,1he weeks of preparationwere over and the Red Armycounteroffensive around Stalingradbegan with an 80-minute barrage intothe positions of Romanian Third Army.The barrage began to the sound oftrumpets and, as soon as it lifted, over200 tanks of Frfth Tank Army and theinfantry of Twenty-First Army attackedby David March

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Arnerican interrogators questioning some recently captured nTenTbers oftlrc Ltritwafib'sfenuile atuiliary early itt 1945'

Women atWar' PartII:In lJniform Bv Joe, Kindric,<

he Soviet Union, GreatBritain, France, GermanY,

lapan and the US each had

unique political, institutional and

cultural challenges that determinedhow women were accePted in uniformdr.ringWorldWar II. Each of those

countries' governments made deci-

sions about placing women in hann's

way. Among them, the Soviet Union

did the most in terms of assimilatingwomen into the rnilitary and combatroles within it, and the US did the least.

Since the start of World War I the

Russians had been through h,vo revolu-tions, a civil war, and series of politicalpurges and executions lasting untilthe beginning ofWorld War II' It was

in that way already a society exposed

to war and mass violence. Though the

USSR didn't have in place a Plan forthe large-scale military mobilizationof womenwhen the Germans invaded

on 22 June 1941, tens ofthousandsof females immediately volunteered.Byrvar's end a million Soviet fernaleshad participated, halfofthem in lolesthat took them to the combat front.

As in other combatanr countries,

Soviet rvomen were also involved in

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Tltis Tthoto, stt14tosed.Iy showing aSouiet infantrywoman lqte in theuar, ntay be arecentfake.

auxiliary services such as signals, traf-fic control, medical, kitchen, clericaland administrative work. Unlike othercountries, however, Soviet women wereoften directly involved in combat. Forexample, the air force started three all-female combat regiments fully staffedin that way with pilots, mechanics,bomb loaders and other personnel.

Even though most women in theSoviet military weren't combatants,theywere all trained to use weapons,and those who did use them did soeffectively. A platoon of 50 femalesnipers was in Third Shock Ar"my,led by Nina Lobkovskaia, and theunit was credited with 3,112 kills.L1'udmila Pavlichenko was the mostfamous female sniper, with 309 kills.

Women also served as scouts,machinegunners and sappers.In some cases women were evenplaced in command over men,as was the situation with KlavdiaKonovalova, who found herself madecommander of a gun crew consistingof two women and four men.

Great Britain, like the Soviets,had partially included women in theFirstWorldWar, but had only gottenas far as home-country factory jobsand an arxiliary corps that served asnurses and ambulance drivers. Britishconceptions of the inappropriatenessof females in combat changed onlyslightlyin the SecondWorldWar. Inpreparation for that new warJ Britainhad lormed the Auxiliarv Telritorial

Aboutamillionsouietuomen,500,000Britishwomen (includittgeueenElizabethlt),200,000Anrcricanuomen, and tens ofthousands from otherAlliett nations serued in unifornt. (usNA.)

Service (ATS) in 1938 as a femaleauxiliaryto the military. In 1941 thosewomen were elevated to full militarystatus-meaning they received militarypay but only at two-thirds of therates men of equal rank received.

The commander of Britain'santi-aircraft (AA) defenses, Gen. SirFrederick Pile, seeing the need forand enthusiasm of female recruits,convinced the government todeploy women within AA units inEngland. Prime Minister WinstonChurchill supported the program

and stated any general who could,in effect, provide the country with40,000 additional "flghting men'had accomplished a great feat.

On 25 April 1941 regulations werepassed that allowed women to enterthe AA. Because male soldiers weregenerally perceived as being wary ofserving with females, it was decidedmixed-sex units would be set uponlywith completely new recruitsfrom both sides of that divide. Theassumption was, men r'r,ho hadn'tyet been in the service wouldn't

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already have preconditioned nega-tive ideas about female soldiers.

What separated British from Sovietwomen was the fact the former weleforbidden by a RoyalWarrant frompersonally using weapons in combat.Women could set ranges and bearingdials; they could load weapons, andthey could adjust the fuses on theshells. They could do eve4thingexcept actually pull the trigger to firethe weapon. Only men were allowedlo fire at other human beings.

The mens acceptance of the wom-en was mlred. Surveys showed that,as had been anticipated, new malerecruits without prior military experi-ence accepted the females more easilythan those men with traditional mili-tary experience already behind them.

The French military providedyet a different story, in that its warwas effectively over almost before it .

began. The resistance movement thatsprouted throughout the country then\ Red..lnttt, MP in Berlin shortly ajterv-E Day.

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came to contain women (Resistantes)in everyrole imaginable. Though Gen.de Gaulle didn't favor lhe mass partici-pation of women in the military he didauthorize the formation of a women'scorps among Free French forces in1940 that was modeled after Britain'sATS. \Atren partisan warfare took placewithin occupied France, women wereaccepted in all roles including combat.

On the Axis side, Hitler believedwomen should stay home and raiseloyal children. Even so, as the war pro-gressed and the available manpowerdiminished, German women werecalled on to join auxiliary units to workin such roles as nurses, clerks, accoun-tants, interpreters and administrativeassistants. Soon the Germans, likethe British, also allowed theirwomento join the AA. Also as in Britain,German women weren't allowed toactually fire the guns they serviced.

Within Germany's armed forces,however, their oum male soldiersbecame so used to encounteringfemale Soviet soldiers the term"Gewehr Frau" (gun woman) becamea common expression on the easternfront. Surveys showed that muchof the public, including the malesoldiers, didn't want to employGerman gunwomen. Hitler issuedan order in November 1944 thatprohibited women from being trainedto use personalweapons, even as

the remaining manpower was beingmobilized into the home guard militia(Uolksturm) in order to undertake thefinal desperate defense ofthe Reichagainst the encroaching Allies. Thesituation eventually did become sodesperate Hitler reverse dhis dictat.

Even the tradition-bound Iapanesewerent above placing their femalesinto combat roles when necessitycalled for it. \A/hen the fighting reachedOkinawa, the "Lilly Brigade," anall-female infantry unit, foughtthere. The Japanese also draftedhigh school girls and boys into thatisland's militia, where many foughtto the death. No doubt, had the warnot endedwhen it did, manymorefemale combatants would've beenencountered when the flghtingprogressed to the home islands.

The Americans did the least interms of assimilating women intothe armed forces. As it was, ArmyChief of StaffGen. George C. Marshalldecided to conduct an experimentto see if a mixed-gender unit could

The RedArmy's np-scoring female sniper Lyudmila Mykhailivna Paulichenko,

WORLD at WAR 40 j FEB MAF 201 5

Russian femalc partisan fi.ghters late in 1941.

Sonte personnel o.f the USSR'I all-female 47th Fighter Regiment.

perform as well as an all-male forma-tion. For the project, women wererecruited from among those who hadalready volunteered for the Women'sAu-xiliary Army Corps (W\AC). Theexperiment lasted four months, andthe result was a report that concludedmixed-gender units could performas efflciently as all-male units.

A plan to recruit and train morewomen was proposed, but Marshall

felt he had to view the idea througha political lens. He knew if womenstarted to be drafted alongside men,a large contingent of congress-manwould be against it. If thathurdle were overcome, along withthe general public's distaste for theidea, he believed the male recruitswould react unfavorably, which couldcause an even bigger problem.

With those unknornns in mind,Marshall's staff advised he simply ter-minate the project without comment,which he did. American militarywom-en thereafter were only used in nursingand clerical positions. Had Germany orJapan started bombing the continentalUS, women would've likely been calledup for AA duty. Because that threat wasnever more than minimal, however,the men already in the AA units weremore than enough to handle it. &

SOURCES

Carnpbell, D'Ann. "lvornen in (bmbatr l he \Vorld WarII Expcicnce in the I Initcd States, Great Britain,Germirrr-1., and the Soviel UDion." The Journnl oIMilira4t Histoty 5 t- , no. 2 (19931: 306.

Dc Groot, Gerard J. "'T T,ove thc scent of Corditc in Yourllair': Gender Dlnarnics in ML{ed Atti-Aircralltsattcries During the SccondWorld War." 7 heHis I o ri cal Association, no. 265 11 997) : 7 4.

Perrnington, Rcinir.,4 Titne to KiLl: Tlte Soldier's Erperience(tw.tr in theWest 1939 -/945. llandorn Hotlse, 1997.

Rossiter, Margaret L. Women iD the ResistttLtce. Praeger,r 985.

Slockdale, N'lelissa K. "'N{y Death for the Nlotherland IsFlappiness': Women, Pirtriotisnt, and Soldiering inRrlssian's Great War. I91 4-l 91 t-." Amet ican HistoricalRcuitt', t to. I 0q, ('U04): B I.

Wcitz, N4arliare( Collins. Sisters lr, tfte Resistalrce: How

wonetrFotLght to l;ree Frailce, 1940 l9'15. JohnWilev& Sons. I 995.

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WORLD at WAF 40 FEB IVIAR 2015