Tens of thousands of male convicts have been freed to fight in Ukraine. It is not clear if a small contingent of female volunteers released from a prison portends wider use of female soldiers.

Russia released a group of women from a prison in late May to join the fighting in Ukraine, according to two former inmates who maintain contact with those still there, potentially signaling a new phase in the Kremlin’s use of criminals in its war effort.

    • @tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      15•5 months ago

      I don’t think that the Reich ever did. I’m not sure that anyone other than the Soviet Union used women in a front-line combat role in WW2.

      kagis

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_World_War_II

      Apparently Germany did have women’s auxiliaries, and some of those operated flak weapons against bombing raids, and there were some nurses near the front lines, albeit not in a combat role directly.

      From a quick skim of that article, it sounds like the only time that women in states other than the Soviet Union were in combat is if they were serving in some sort of auxiliary unit (e.g. nurses) that were near the front lines, serving in an anti-aircraft role, as kind of a last-ditch move when a country was being overrun (e.g. Poland) and women’s auxiliaries assigned to secondary defenses wound up in combat. I remember that we (the US) had female pilots, but those were doing cargo runs rather than using weapons.