Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 184 - Lyudmila Pavlichenko

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

The story of the deadliest woman in military history Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Lady Death: The Memoir of Stalin's Sniper - Lyudmila Pavlichenko https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/lady-death-red-army-lyudmila-pavlichenko https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/eleanor-roosevelt-and-the-soviet-sniper-23585278/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. gun fell by your gun 300 nazis fell by your gun fell by your gun and welcome to yet another lovely episode of the lions led by donkeys i am jo, and with me still is Liam. Hello, Liam. Fuck you, man. Back to back, baby. A little hint behind the scenes here of how we do things on the DonkCast. The Donk. The DonkCast. Generally, I have like three or four weeks of episodes recorded.

That was not one of those times. That was not one of those times. It got away from me, the research and school and everything, and life happens. So we've locked ourselves in this digital room to record for two hours in a stretch today, which isn't terrible. It's really, from my experience,

after like three hours is when you start getting a little delirious. We did, one time on Well, There's Your Problem, back-to-back three- back three hour episodes oh no way yeah we did beau paul which is uh putting it mildly a real downer and then we did the college bonus episode i forget which one came first which one came second by the end you can hear the delirium i i think the longest recording session that we've ever done is during our kamara rouge series we recorded for three hours in one sitting and then

two hours uh to finish the series that's the saddest i think i've ever made nick i'm gonna have to break that record at some point thank you um now we're gonna talk about someone uh who's a hero today we're not talking about a bad person well bad if you're a nazi but if you're not say i don't care yeah you get what you get if you were to like name a person who might be one of the most deadly snipers to ever walk the earth who would you picture in your head chris kyle of course yeah pretty much like we're both american um and without chris kyle i would pick that finn from the finno-russian war uh yeah i mean you'd be right but like normally the american-centric mind isn't jumped to chris kyle who killed around 160 people um it's not entirely known or maybe someone who's less of a terrible

human being like carlos the whiteathcock, who killed maybe 93. Both of these people have been held up in military legend for a long time. At the same time here in the U.S., shitty dudes have been arguing whether or not women should be allowed to have these jobs in the U.S. military or special forces. Whether they earn a fancy hat or a fancy tab to go on their uniform. whether they earn a fancy hat or a fancy tab to go on their uniform. And they insist that standards are being lowered and our fighting capacity is being lowered because women do job. And they'll just bleed all over the sniper rifle, Joe. I really wish that I could express this opinion enough. Obviously, we're not in favor of war on this show but we are in

favor of you know equality uh and mining history for laughs yeah if someone wants to do a job and they can meet the standards they should be better than me yeah i mean exactly and you know there is a certain level of toxic masculinity to it when it's like you wound these little men by allowing women into their special boys club. And that's pretty much what it boils down to. It's no serious complaints. Exactly. These complaints should be rejected out of hands. And now that the argument is legally done, like legally, there's no argument to be had there anymore.

It's gone. It's over, at least in the US. Legally, there's no argument to be had there anymore. It's gone. It's over. At least in the US. Though you can't say much for decrepit culture that is built upon misogyny and discrimination that will continue until the sun finally burns out. Now, that is why I've chosen today

to talk about one of the deadliest people to ever walk the earth. She killed over 300 people and making them one of the most effective snipers to ever exist. Now, numbers are flimsy on some people, so it's hard to say who exactly is. Probably Simeon Haya of Finland. We're talking about Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who is without a doubt, one of the most dangerous people to ever walk the earth while armed with a rifle. people to ever walk the earth while armed with a rifle. And she started her life as a young Ukrainian woman born in 1916 in a small village outside of Kiev. She was born just before the

heat death of the Russian Empire. And her father worked in a factory in St. Petersburg and pretty much had to leave her family without a father so he could send money back home. And her mom was a school teacher, which didn't pay much shit, which is unfortunately something that continues to this day. They do hate teachers. Yeah. They hate teachers. Yeah, yeah.

Now, she was apparently a handful as a child, constantly getting into trouble in the classroom, and by her own account was a bit of a tomboy. And would get in fistfights with the boys whenever they challenged her that she couldn't do something simply because she was a girl. Bless up, dude. That's awesome. Yeah. She also learned how to shoot.

Now, in the Soviet Union, there was a lot of youth organizations and youth activities. One of them was called the Volunteer Society for Cooperation with the Army, Aviation and Navy, which the Russian acronym was. I love this.

They love names, man. That sounds stupid. Just everyone is like 30 words long. Soviet naming conventions are some of my favorite. The acronym in Russian was DUSAF, billing itself as a paramilitary sports organization. Oh, so the Boy Scouts, but with actual guns. Yeah, pretty much. an actual part of the government like because the boy scouts i guess are a non-profit now the sports that were taught were directly representative within the red army like

you weren't learning basketball here you were learning shooting horse riding driving flying and things of that nature which is incredible when when you think about teaching children how to fly. Yeah. Let's push them out for a while. Like, all right, good luck to you. Quite like the baby birds of learning how to fly planes. Now, unlike the military, you could join as early as 14. And while technically this was a voluntary thing,

in reality, it really wasn't. For instance, signing up for after-school activities by your parents, that's voluntary. But this is as if you were parents with the government. And I don't mean that as a big brother comparison by any means. I just mean that there was another youth organization called the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League. Solid name. Which generally speaking, you had

to be a member in good order and payment because you did have to pay dues in order to attend forms of higher education if you wanted to go to the good schools. Now, in order to be a member of that organization, you also had to be a member of DUSAF. So, like, wink, wink,

it's voluntary. Sure. You kind of point out, it's kind of like a much cooler version of the Boy Scouts. I was a Boy Scout for all of, like, wink, wink, it's solitary. Sure. You kind of point out, it's kind of like a much cooler version of the Boy Scouts. I was a Boy Scout for all of like, I don't know, three months. And if I got to shoot stuff and like ride horses, I probably would have stayed. Yeah. That's fair.

Now, at first, Ludmia did not give a single solitary fuck about any of this. She spent way too much time in her own words being unruly in class and not paying attention, getting in fights, things of that nature. She didn't give a shit about shooting. That was until her neighbor, a young

boy, bragged about how he was the best shot in class. And when she said that she could beat him in shooting because she beats him in everything else, he laughed at her because shooting was not a girl's place to be. According to this boy, girls shouldn't be using guns. The crazy thing was they found his severed head in a box the next morning.

I got this new shirt made out of my enemy's skin. Feel the fabric. It's real Russian. Now, at this point, she started paying attention in class out of spite. At this point, she started paying attention in class out of spite. She balanced this with like with after school practice and regular school, as well as picking up a job at the local munitions factory as a metal grinder at the ripe age of 14. Oh, bless. This 14 year old has more work ethic than I've had in my entire life. Hell yeah, buddy.

I hear that. Fueled by spite and what seems like absolutely no sleep whatsoever, she won the Vroshirloff sharpshooter title as well as a marksman certificate certifying her to be a fucking sniper. This is while she's still in school. Okay, so school age.

Alright, I can work with that. This is between the ages of 14 and 15. Jesus Christ. We know between the ages of 14 and 15. Jesus Christ. We know this because at 16, she got married. At 16, she married a local doctor. And as gross as this sounds, and it is, it was pretty normal for the time. And there's no law against it.

So shout out for the teenage factory worker for bagging herself a doctor, I guess. Yeah. Now, they soon had a son who they named Rostislav. Rules off to tell you, call him Ross. But they divorced pretty soon after. Now, there's some argument as to why exactly

this happened. As you can imagine, there's a lot of facts that, let's say, slip through the cracks when it comes to the real lived life of a hero of the Soviet Union. I can't believe the Soviet Union would do this. Yeah, her biography is pretty sanitized. For instance, one of the main sources I've used for this was her own biography called Lady Death. Heck of a name, goddamn.

Yeah, it's solid. And it's not a great source of history for instance when talking about the beginning of world war ii and the maps that are in it it completely omits the soviets splitting poland with the nazis yeah i'm not surprised yeah also like it's not a book i actually believe was written by her uh to be straight up like i think it was written by a pr agent uh of some kind and then translated molotov ruby trump pact is real whether you want it to be or not man yeah uh and like to be fair she may have not even known about it in real life but like this book was definitely not written by her she may have been consulted on it

uh but that's probably it now from what i can find in other sources uh because her own biography does not mention this the doctor was an abusive asshole oh terrific of course i mean any dude who's comfortable having sex as a grown adult with a 16 year old and being abusive i guess that's shocking to me yeah yeah exactly don't fuck kids man the nature of the relationship was abusive somehow this comes up a lot on the show and i i implore you again to not fuck literal children yeah it would be great if people could stop doing that now it seems like he was abusive but also he wanted her to effectively stay bare barefoot and pregnant and stay in the home right uh which she was absolutely not about uh she would

not be a like a housewife who would pump kids out. Does not see her style now. No. Like nothing in her life made it seem like this was the kind of lifestyle she'd be comfortable with. So she dumped his ass, took the kid with her, and moved back in with her parents for a short time. Nice.

Now, during this time in her life, fresh from a marriage and trying to figure out what exactly she wanted to do next, she worked her day jobs at the factory while finishing school at a nearby night school, while also doing household chores for her parents and nearby neighbors. Wow. Yeah, she stays busy. After a few years in 1937, she enrolled in Kiev University and studied history, eventually wanting to become a teacher. She's like, I don't know, a way cooler version of me.

Yeah. Joe, every version of you is a way cooler version of you. That's true. Yep. Not that I can relate, of course. He's a cool guy. Literally, I am the worst version of me that could exist. I feel that.

Ever since her little shit of a shooting school classmate had teased her she always made sure to always compete against the guys that she's in school with to be the best at everything she could possibly be because even though equality was on the books and the soviet equality was not the reality she was still judged harshly for simply being a woman right for instance while she was at the nearby shooting school where she practiced three times a week for three hours a day, she also joined the track team as a sprinter and a pole vaulter, and she was one of the best ones there as well. That's too many things, though, man. Yeah.

Are we addressing that that's too many things? I think she just wants to not be at home. They're pregnant. Understandable. The club was all men other than herself, and it was made to prepare people specifically for the military. There was no, like, sport shooting in this anymore. They're teaching them how to actually be snipers,

how to use camouflage, things of that nature. Right. A dedicated 20 hours a week to political classes and 14 hours a week to parade ground drill practices, which are very important for a future sniper. Never know when you're going to need them. You never know when you're going to have to stand around and look pretty.

There's also 20 hours of hand-to-hand fighting, which she did end up using. Now, her instructor for school is a guy she simply knows as Popatov, but she praises him, of course, for treating her the same as men, which eventually her being in the class did attract more women.

And he always made sure to treat them all the same. Now, the men in the class did not. This is something that's very, very common throughout her entire career. Unfortunately, in both the USSR and later on the US, which we'll talk about.

Now, this school, like I said, taught them how to be snipers, not to be sharpshooters. Yeah. Can you clarify the difference? Now, they were no longer just shooting at the range. They were learning how to stalk targets. They were learning how to hide. They're learning how to cover the sounds of their gun. This was legitimately a student to sniper pipeline. And honestly, sounds way cooler than my undergrad program for history. Like Michigan State needs to step its ass up. Now, if you notice the date, you know what's coming. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa on June 22nd 1941

and now Ludmia was 24 years old she had graduated with great grades and she had just taken a job as a research assistant at the Odessa Public Library where she was researching her PhD what an idiot going for your PhD I know what a fucking who would do that sucker

absolute sucker now when the invasion started they put out a conscription call for all men born between 1905 and 1918 now she had been born 1916 and she figured this should apply to her as well in in the concepts of soviet equality right so she dropped everything she was doing and reported to the conscription office. There was, however, a slight problem, as you can imagine. Is it institutionalized sexism? That's right! Oh, I got it. What do I wed?

Thank you. Thank you. Now, she showed up to the recruitment office, and like I said, there was equality on the books, but not equality in real life. This went through school placement, through work placement, and the military. Because as a lot of people read into Soviet military history during World War II, it immediately comes to the fact that they were one of the only nations to allow women in frontline combat.

Right. And that is true. However, the women that did get there had to really want to get there. Right. And that is true. However, the women that did get there had to really want to get there. Right. I have to point out legally, this is not the case. According to Soviet military law, men and women were the exact same. That is the law. However, that did not mean there were extra legal methods in use to talk women out of exercising those rights. One thing they would do is make women pass extensive medical checkups, something most men

would just skip. This is assuming they pass a quick once over by the recruiter's eyes. Now, in a few famous cases, not even those were barriers for service. Famously, there was a fighter pilot that had no legs. One of the best fighter

pilots in the Soviet Union. Yeah, we'll talk about him at some point. Now, in other cases, they would drag a woman's application for frontline service, whether it be as a sniper or infantry or tank crewman, whatever, through layers upon layers of red tape until they finally just gave up.

Now, most of the time, what would happen is while these women were trying to go do frontline service and they were just constantly hampered by bullshit, the whole time recruiters were like, you could just become a nurse. You could just go work for the medical corps. And eventually they would just give up and become a nurse. Yeah. Now, a famous instance of this is Maureen Raskova,

who was a woman so famous in the USSR by the time the war started, she was called Russian Amelia Earhart. Not because she disappeared, for the good reasons. She was the first woman navigator in the entire Soviet Union and was an instructor at the Air Academy of the Air Force for men and women. She set long-distance records for various different kinds of planes and still found her request to become a fighter or bomber pilot during the war rejected. That's stupid. Yeah, this was

until she called in a little personal favor from a connection that she had with a guy named Joseph Stalin, who eventually approved it himself. That will do it. Yep. That'll cut right through the red tape of military bureaucracy now of course she would end up commanding the legendary night witches which of course we will talk about at some point my friend did an audio play about the night witches

yeah they're incredible yeah they're fucking sick dude with just like ratty ass bombers too yeah like made of plywood uh now, that is, like I said, someone who was famous throughout the entire USSR had to pull connections with Joseph fucking Stalin to get frontline duty. So Ludmilla, who is a nobody,

ran into those problems too. She repeatedly tried to enlist as a sniper, which remember, she literally had certifications saying she was certified sniper. She had it on paper. She showed her multiple awards for marksmanship to anybody who would pay her enough attention. Instead, they just kept pressuring her to be a nurse, despite the fact she had no medical training at all. And all of her training was how to shoot things with a gun. Right.

Now, she said in her book, she chalks this up to the fact that she showed up to the recruitment office dressed up because the men had done the same thing the men would dress up in their best clothes to present themselves for military service so she did the same thing which included like wearing a dress getting her hair done and wearing makeup right This was like considered shocking, I guess, to the recruiters. But again, this is a cop out.

She won every award she could win for possible for shooting at this point. Right. They have literal evidence. It was just misogyny.

That's what it was. It always is, Joe. Now, at this point, she finally got a recruiter that would take time out of their day to talk

to her but they looked up in the local registry where it said that she had been married and because they hadn't officially got a divorce oh come on dude he said that he wouldn't let her unless that the written permission of her husband who they had not spoken to in three years

eventually she was able to wear them down into a verbal agreement, and she said, trust me, he'll have no objection whatsoever because I don't even know where he lives anymore. Also, I have this convenient severed head in a box.

I have these pile of sniper certificates, but let me get a permission slip from my husband. This seemed to finally be good enough, and she was shoved into a train with hundreds of others and sent off to the 25th Chepayev rifle division. Now she notes that she was given a brand new uniform, uh, which fit,

uh, and, but boots that were two sizes too big forcing her. Uh, and we've talked about foot wraps before on this show, right? So, uh,

this forced her to actually wear her boots barefoot and shove all of her foot wraps at the toe of her boot to cover up the spacing problem because her boots were so big. Now, for people who maybe missed us talking about the foot wraps, the thing is, so the Soviet military, and this also branches into the Russian Federation military

all the way up until the 2000s, did not issue you socks. They issued a foot wrap, which was essentially a rag that you wrapped around your feet in a very specific way that had been in use since about the dawn of professional armies in Europe. One of the jokes that I've seen from Soviet conscripts for people that question if you were conscripted was you took off your shoes and showed how scarred up your feet were from the foot wraps. That is what they call gnar gnar. Now, as soon as she got to her platoon, they tried to shove her off into the medical unit because, of course, right? Right. This erupted into an argument that she eventually won and then found out something very shitty she would not be going out to the front immediately in fact her entire unit would not be going out to the field immediately despite her

endless pleading because they didn't have any guns to issue her now we talked about the shortage of weapons in the beginning of this war before and the Red Army and how, in reality, it did not just send conscripts running into battle without guns like you saw an enemy at the gates. That's not something that occurred on a widespread basis very few times. Instead, they held huge masses of soldiers in reserves and waited for supplies to come in either from the factories or more likely the massive american lens lease program because and i cannot express this enough how how many supplies or how much supplies that the united states shipped into the soviet uh union it was a fuckload yep now since she didn't have a gun yet uh she did what a lot of people had to do during this time and she stuck a literal ditch digging duty while stationed in

Bessarabia. Oh, damn. At this point, they armed these poor bastards who didn't have a gun with a hand grenade, which she was instructed to like, if while digging,

uh, you know, the, the Germans showed up, she needed to throw the grenade and run. Um, should the time arise. So that's slightly better than waiting for the person next to you to die

and grab the rifle, right? I guess. I mean, low bar, I suppose. However, the Axis forces would eventually break through and overwhelm them, leading to Lumiya's unit beginning their retreat slowly towards Edessa before she was ever issued a gun.

By the second half of July, she finally did found a rifle and it did end up playing very much like the scene from Enemy at the Gates. While they were marching, they came under artillery fire, which killed a guy next to her

and she grabbed his rifle when he dropped it. So, yeah. Now, she did take part in her first bit of combat very shortly thereafter when a German-Romanian allied unit attacked and she

fended them off, though she doesn't really write much about what she felt about it. It was more of like the blindly shooting into the distance type situation. Now, eventually she found herself in the city of Odessa as German and Romanian units closed in around her for a siege, though the town had prepared, digging massive amounts of fortifications, reinforcing many of them along the way. Now, strangely enough, in her own biography, she doesn't actually write much about her own individual actions,

but she writes from other people, about other people's actions and from other people's accounts. What? Yeah, it's really weird. It's like every time the book swings that you think to talk about her own actions because this is a book called lady death written supposedly by a literal hero of the soviet by the lady yes yeah about how she became known as lady death like you you would

expect her to write at length about all these things but like every time this happens she instead launched into a story about a different person weird which very much leads me to believe that she did not write this okay yeah i see what you're saying it's a very purposeful attempt to not make this about her despite the fact it's a biography right and to glorify the soviet war effort or whatever yeah right to glorify the the the group rather than the individual, which I understand. Sure. But we do know from other people's accounts that this is where she got her first two kills for sure,

dropping two German scouts within seconds of one another. After this, she hunted through the countryside for a few weeks, killing on average more than 10 people per day. Fuck. Yeah. Just like roving? Yeah, she would set up with other snipers and set up in like teams. She never worked alone.

Snipers never work alone. Right. And they would shoot a couple people and relocate, shoot a couple people and relocate, shoot a couple people and just do that constantly over and over and over again. All day. This is also where she got wounded for the first time with a mortar blowing up in her face and nearly killed her don't want that unfortunately she has something of a history with head injuries throughout her life hey yeah now she was parked in a hospital for a few weeks uh

and what she called quote quote, severe shell shock. But what was almost certainly a really bad concussion because she doesn't remember the immediate aftermath of the mortar landing next door. So she was knocked unconscious for a pretty long period of time. Right. This is what's known in the business as traumatic brain injury. I'll get you, folks. Yeah.

No such thing as a dinger they as they would say back in football practice after this she was sent back to odessa which had since then had just been blown to hell from the the constant fighting since she had been gone she also found out that she'd promoted she had been promoted to corporal which uh is about the same time at this point it's thought of she already killed 100 people oh shit dude yeah for her right i mean 10 people per day it wouldn't take very long to rack those numbers up um now this promotion also came with a punishment in my opinion she would now have to teach people how to be snipers not just any snipers not just like people like her who had come out of like the Red Army program, but random naval personnel. Why?

Around 100 seamen from Sevastopol had volunteered to serve on the front lines in Odessa despite never firing a gun or even getting a change of uniform. She noted they are still wearing what she called, quote, black bell-bottom pants and blue and white shirts her first lesson was to talk them into wearing helmets and boots because they were the Russian naval uniform didn't have boots it had like dress shoes right now on their

first night out after her training unit as a group mind you this isn't just her they killed nearly a hundred men god damn this has to do with like obviously the skill of As a group, mind you, this isn't just her. They killed nearly 100 men. God damn. This has to do with, obviously, the skill of this unit, but also just the brutality of the Eastern Front. 100 people being killed in a day, drop in a bucket. It's hard to understand the scope of the killing on the Eastern Front.

Other than a lot of it. Other than it's an apocalyptic amount of death um like even without the western front even without the pacific theater even without the african theater the eastern front of world war ii would have been uh on its own in a vacuum one of the most deadly conflicts in human history uh and it's like it's hard to like we're eventually gonna do uh we have a serious plan for kursk in the future just the battle of kursk and you're welcome that was my idea the amount of death and destruction in this one campaign is otherworldly

honestly um like when we start covering things like uh stalingrad and other and other stuff like like it like i said it's it's hard to contemplate the amount of of people machines and and just brutality so like yes a hundred people being killed by a single unit a day is crazy to think about with like our modern and western uh ideas and stuff but like we're talking thousands hundreds like we're done every day basically yeah exactly it's it's really hard to understand but also the next day she killed 10 people herself good for her man you go girl it's like shooting nazis in a barrel over here uh now leaving the camp in the early hours of the morning returning only at night she'd head out to advanced positions

close to the enemy and lie motionless for hours waiting for an opportunity to shoot now just so you understand what i mean by for hours sometimes she would wait unmoving for 15 hours without doing i could not do that that right there excuse me yeah 100 i wouldn't be able to do that either and another point and she did catch a really big shiny piece of shrapnel directly to her forehead. Sounds like a theme here. Yeah. That is one of three head injuries that she would have for her very short service life. Yeah.

Now, eventually and unfortunately, it wouldn't matter how many Nazis she would kill or Romanians for that matter, who are also Nazis, because they outnumbered the Soviets in the area five to one, leading to them slowly but surely losing Odessa and her unit being evacuated to Sevastopol. Now, by the time Ludmilla had left the Odessa front, she had killed at least 187 men in just two and a half months. This means in two and a half months of service, this woman is more deadly than any American sniper who's ever lived. And then she was promoted to senior sergeant.

So that's cool for her troubles for murdering over a company of Germans on her own. She got two promotions. Yeah. Now, it was at this point in Sevastastopol she truly hit her stride and she took on another job counter sniping or hunting other snipers for sport now as we were talking about her it goes without saying she never lost one of her duels with nazi snipers she as far as she knew was hunted by 36 different nazi snipers and she killed all of them jesus fuck dude i hate to keep coming back to enemy gates because that movie's terrible but that movie really does

make like counter sniping seem a lot more exciting oh i assume it's just laying in the dirt motionless hoping you see glint basically yes now effectively what this came down to is that the snipers would kind of know where each other are. Sure. They would know where each other's hiding spots are. They would know the positions that they would prefer. Like favor, yeah. They would stalk out these areas. And you would know that the sniper is around there, but you don't want to shoot because it'd give your position away. And then the sniper would immediately shoot you. So it would be a staring

contest where you would just lay there unmoving waiting for the other person to blink and when they did, you shot them. At one point, she waited in a single spot for three days before her target finally moved and she killed them. That's too much time, man.

Just three days. You can't eat. You can't drink. Shit and piss on yourself. Because if you move, you die. I already do, Joe. Just laying in a fighting position that is just an absolute mess. Because you move even a hair.

You breathe wrong. You're dead. Right. She won all of those. And 36-0, baby. Phr oh baby phrase i believe is cuckoo bananas now there could have been a chance where she was stalked by more snipers that simply never actually saw her and then she also never saw that's also possible but yeah 36 came none went home now ludmia got the sevastopol in October of 1941.

And by the May of the next year, the War Council of the Southern Red Army noted that she had killed 257 enemy, of which she, of course, said, quote, I'll get more and then got promoted again. Now to Lieutenant for her. There's unfortunately one part of her story that's become quite popular I pretty much have to disprove. And that is, during this time in Sevastopol, she started dating and married a fellow sniper, Alexei Kitsenko, a fellow Ukrainian. Unfortunately, Alexei would then die shortly after the marriage. And as the story goes, she was so heartbroken and lovelorn, she never again remarried. She was so heartbroken and lovelorn, she never again remarried. There is a chance this probably never happened. The reason for this is Ludmia herself never mentions him by name in the book at all. Even if this was written by some kind of political minder, PR person with her consulting, it would make no sense for this to be left out.

Because this looks good for the ussr right like they're warriors married and then she was driven by the death of her lover to kill even more nazis but it's never brought up he's never mentioned my name in the book it's never noted that she married anyone other than the doctor in her own biography. So which does not look good. No, it almost certainly didn't happen. We do know she did get married again in 1945 to a guy named Constantine shit layoff, which is the literal only fact I can find about him.

And then he died a little bit after that as well. But she half his severed head to bag tail. No, it seemed that they were just like how they they led a pretty rough life after the war that's a shame yeah uh but like yeah the the story about alexei kitsenko probably

did not happen uh i won't say didn't right all signs point to no sorry folks the sniper love affair is a cool story though and like honestly that is what went out back in the day uh when we did the uh All signs point to no. Sorry, folks. The sniper love affair is a cool story, though. And like, honestly, that is what went out back in the day when we did the Enemy at the Gates bonus episode.

It was where they got the idea to include the love triangle. Right. Which, of course, Vasily Zaitsev that never happened with him either. So, you know, it is the movie with the greatest sex scene of any movie. I refuse to acknowledge its sex scene ever again.

Now, by this point, Ludmilla was a legend and not just within the Red Army, but a Nazi legend as well. In her book, she notes, quote, By that time, even the Germans knew of me. They attempted to bribe her, blurring messages over the loudspeaker that said quote ludmia pavlichenko come over to us we will give you plenty of chocolate and make you a german officer after we shot your friends you know yeah yeah and which like absolutely this had just been like she'd walk into a firing squad. Right. After her legend grew further, their messages of promises of chocolate and I assume foot rubs would turn to threats. They had heard that her famous 309 kills at this point because, of course, the Soviets used her for propaganda because she'd killed so many people. Of course, to be fair, the Nazis keep dropping dead. Yeah.

And they knew when she was out hunting, like they had like if you look at pictures from say stalin bloody foot rubs next to her kills like what foot raps she didn't um fight in stalingrad but like they're aware of who snipers are like every every sniper um who's existed gets their nickname given to them by their enemy, right? Like, Simeon Ohio was the White Death, and he was nicknamed that by the Soviets. The White Feather in Vietnam was nicknamed White Feather by the North Vietnamese because he wore a white feather in his helmet. Things like that. So, like, they get their nicknames because people know. And admittedly, there's a lot of

psychological terror to this as well like famously during the iraq war the u.s fell for a bit of propaganda called juba the baghdad sniper and there's a famous video that was cut about it juba didn't exist uh there was no single juba in fact there's like a thought to be a squad of people all operating under the same name because there's a psychological factor that like oh fuck juba's out hunting today when in reality it's like 12 odd dudes right like people

know that these things but like that nickname worked we know it's juba like it's not like fucking steve and his nine friends but at this point she was famous for her 309 kills. So the German loudspeaker screamed out, quote, if we catch you, we

will tear you to 309 pieces and scatter them to the winds. Yeah, they were going to do that anyway. What does she care? Now she thought this is fucking awesome because she said, quote, they even knew my score. That's rad as hell right right by the next month she got wounded again again clipped in the head um again helmet girl it they counterintuitive to sniping unfortunately she would cover herself and like there's a bit more visible yeah yeah now like

the others this was anything too terribly serious. But she had now been wounded four times, three of which had included explosions going directly into her face. So the Soviet leadership began to get a little worried that the next one might fucking kill her, which would be really bad for morale. Right. She was worth entirely too much, both practically and propaganda wise. Let her brain get turned into mush and pulled her off the front lines. Because remember, besides the fact turning into a newspaper front page story, she's a great sniper instructor. By keeping her alive, you can make thousands of snipers. Why the fuck would you waste her?

So while she recovered from her wounds, she trained snipers. So while she recovered from her wounds, she trained snipers. But when she fully recovered, she was pretty shocked to find out that she was invited to meet Papa Stalin himself. Now, her and her. It was like a like a minder, I guess someone to like go with her met Stalin. And she described him as, quote, swarthy. Oh, and quote, not as tall as he appeared in paintings. described him as quote swarthy and quote not as tall as he appeared in paintings

take that now I'm laughing hysterically here only because one of course like of course the paintings would make him look much better but also too because Francis Horton who's often on this show calls me swarthy for being your median

um and like there's you know the most famous pictures of stalin were touched up like you know the the picture that famously shows them as koba the revolutionary agent and like he was very self-conscious about smallpox scars on his face. That's right. So they were always edited out. But yeah, she was surprised by all of that. As I imagine anybody in an era before mass pictures of people were pretty shocked meeting a larger than life character, right? Now, Stalin informed her that she would be going to the United States to spread the word of the Soviet struggle and war because remember, the US isn't involved yet. Right.

Soviet struggle and war because remember the U S isn't involved yet. Right. And they want the U S to open a second front of the war to take pressure off the Eastern front. Right. This is for the obvious reasons that she was a very well-known sniper, but it was also noted in her file that she studied English in school. However, she actually didn't speak English at all.

Uh, she'd forgotten all of it. Uh, you don't use it you lose it man yeah uh so she would have to take a translator throughout the entire time but that didn't stop her now she traveled to the u.s and she was treated as something of an oddity by the press um now this is the u.s in the 40s uh so they're very unsure how to treat a woman who was a soldier not to mention one who was being trotted out as killing literally hundreds of people right uh i mean we've seen

the u.s media react badly to to anybody who has killed hundreds of people um framing them in ways the to fluff them up and things like that. Um, like we, we, we've seen all sorts of stuff like that. So like a woman showing up in the 1940s being touted as killing 309 Nazis. Damn, did that right? Exactly.

She also became the first Soviet citizen to be welcomed into the white house. Um, she met with the Roosevelt's obviously FDR being president at the time and became incredibly close and fast friends and very unlikely friends with Eleanor Roosevelt.

They were literally lifetime friends after this. Wow. Yeah. Now this is the whole point of her journey at this point. Go meet the roosevelts shake some hands and fuck off back to russia right right but at dinner with eleanor roosevelt she was asked if she would like to accompany eleanor on a tour across the country which the soviets hadn't planned on but ludmia immediately agreed because this sounded like one that sounds fun but also this

seems like it'd be a much better use of her clout right right now just to remind you four months before she was killing literally hundreds of people on the battlefields of sevastopol and as soon as she hit the press junket she was being asked the most embarrassing fucking questions on earth i'm sure she was she was asked if uh if russian women wore makeup at the front line and things like that we'll go into some more of the gross ones later on and she handled these questions with a lot of tact and probably a lot of help from her translator slash political officer at first she said quote there's no rule against it but who would have time to think of their shiny nose while a battle is going on?

I kind of appreciate the idea of applying makeup under fire, too. Yeah, cover me as you're like putting rouge on. Do you think, sir, do you think I look pretty? Since this is the 1940s, all of the makeup is just lead. Yeah. Well, you're going to get an idiot one way or the other. Got to get that mercury in there.

Uh, brushed all over your lip. Uh, now in New York, she was greeted by mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. You did it. No, you did it right.

Is that right? Yes, you did it. Hell yeah. Eat shit, New York. I got one right for the first time ever on this show. Uh,

and a representative of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union, the CIO, who presented her as one paper reported as quote, a full-length raccoon coat of beautifully blended skins which would be resplendent in an opera setting.

Okay. Thanks, guys. Thanks for the raccoon jacket. I will not wear this ever. Just wear it back in Russia. thanks guys thanks for the raccoon jacket uh i will not wear this ever um just wear that back in russia just walking in to meet stalin in your full length raccoon fur jacket

oh i'm so warm i could lie anywhere for 15 hours the new york times dubbed her quote the girl sniper and other newspapers observed that she quote wore no lip rouge or makeup of any kind and quote there isn't much style to her olive green uniform you know the one with all of her awards on it yeah that's because it's okay now as the translator began to read these things to her she got more and more angry at the gathered american press

and the final breaking point was when they fat shamed her oh boy a reporter seemed to criticize the long length of her uniform skirt implying that it made her look fat speaking of severhead to the bag in boston is about to make this 310, motherfucker. In Boston, another reporter observed that Pavlichenko, quote, attacked her five course New England breakfast yesterday. American food, she thinks,

is okay. Now, despite this being an all around dick move, it caused her to stop playing the press's bullshit. And Yahoo encouraged her to snap at the press. Eleanor Roosevelt. nice Roosevelt nice yeah she's like tell those motherfuckers to eat shit when a Times reporter brought up her uniform

she snapped at him saying quote I wear my uniform with honor it has the order of Lenin on it it's covered with the blood and battle it's plain to see that with American women what is important is what they wear their silk underwear under their uniforms, what the uniform stands for,

they have yet to learn. You tell them. You tell them, girl. Now, this is kind of the point where she figured out she could say whatever the fuck she wanted. She's a war hero. Yeah. She's the Order of Lenin. The first lady is like, yeah, get him.

For an American woman, Eleanor Roosevelt is quite the feminist of Lenin. The first lady is like, yeah, get him. So his foreign American woman, Eleanor Roosevelt, is quite the feminist at the time. So she's like, yeah, get a motherfucker. Tell the motherfucker because she can't say this stuff. She's the first lady. There's a certain civility she has to observe. So like, which is wrong, mind you. But like, she knows she can encourage this this ukrainian woman to scream at everybody uh so she did now she went wherever she wanted including bars and union halls just kind of rad

uh and and went into stories about the front and how bad everything was as much as she was allowed to now all of this was to tell them like how badly they needed the US's help to jump in right yeah the other front right right which of course came the old timey questions of how it felt to kill someone like someone asked like what do you feel when you kill someone now there's recoil yeah there's a famous saying that she like

that is attributed to her that's like I've never killed a human I've only ever killed fascists which does does not unfortunately make it into her book. So I think that might be kind of tacked on afterwards. It's still Matt. It's still fucking metal as shit though. Awesome though.

Yeah. But what she did say is said, the only feeling that I have is great satisfaction as a hunter that feels, uh, who has killed a beast or prey. Uh-huh. And, uh,

which is, she told another reporter, quote, every German who remains alive will kill women, children, and old folks. Dead Germans are harmless. Therefore,

if I kill a German, I'm saving lives. Yes. Nope. By the time her and Eleanor had gotten to Chicago, she went from blowing off shitty questions to straight up trolling American men, which I have to say, I went from blowing off shitty questions to straight up trolling American men, which I have to say

I cherish. Roasting them with such classics like quote, gentlemen, I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don't you think, gentlemen, you've been hiding behind my back too long?

Oh. We're doing stuff. she also points out that how in the red army there were no racial or gender segregation openly mocked racist american jim crow policies which is kind of incredible when you remember that the first lady is standing right next to her also she's wrong about the first part but still the second part is right now um despite all of this she was like trolling people she was greeted by cheering crowds of men and women everywhere she went um like she did a cross america roast and like women were like shaking her hand and hugging her and the men were enthralled by her unfortunately a def cam comedy like war jam doesn't always work out because they would have to wait another two years for the

second american second front to open up right but you know she did what she could also there's the woody guthrie song that he wrote about her you know all of these things which will definitely be the intro to this fucking episode um now when she got back to the ussr she was promoted to major given another order of lenin and finally bestowed upon the title of the hero of the soviet union now the government would never allow her to return to combat uh no how many times she requested, which was constantly. So she wrote out the rest of the war training snipers and the fine art of turning human

skulls into canoes. Now, when the war ended, she left service, as most people did, and she finally went back to school, defending her dissertation at Kiev University, attaining her PhD, and going on to work as a historian in libraries.

So, hell yeah. Now, in 1957, 15 years after Eleanor Roosevelt accompanied Lumiere across the U.S., the now former First Lady was touring Moscow. Now, because we're unfortunately balls deep in the Cold War at this period,

a Soviet minder restricted Roosevelt's agenda, and they constantly refused her request to go hang out with Ludmilla. Oh, big move. She kept asking and asking, and eventually Ludmilla, you know, hero of the Soviet Union, was like, yo, I want to hang out with her. So the political minors are like, fine, fuck it. You can go hang out with her. so the the political minors are like fine fuck it you can go hang out with her now in front of minders the two were very very cool and detached and professional uh because you know things were hairy politically for both of them if they got to if they if they let things known too close but they had a chance to ditch away sneaking into ludmia's kitchen to drink tea and share gossip and stories from the 15 years

they had missed oh yeah they were truly very close friends it's kind of incredible yeah now um unfortunately uh ludmia's life after is pretty rough uh like most people who have murdered over 300 human beings she She suffered pretty intense PTSD. Now, PTSD is now largely alienating and untreated in a lot of places. But back then it was downright. Hadn't slapped. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's downright not accepted to exist. A mental incapacity or illness was considered a not something you wanted to be thought of in any place uh let alone it be the soviet union united states like there's a one stop shot for you and that's the fucking asylum and no treatment right um so she treated it like a lot of veterans treat it and that was with alcohol. So she created a pretty, pretty mean case of alcoholism, which contributed to her death at the age of 58 in 1974. Yeah.

She died of a stroke. But most people think that she's also suffering from a pretty severe case of cirrhosis at that point, which would definitely contribute. But yeah, that is the story of Ludmilla Pavlichenko, the deadliest woman to ever live and troll her way across the united states calling american men bitches good for her man

yeah honestly i wanted to do this story for a really long time um and i decided it had been too long because we talked about someone who was legitimately cool and not funny to laugh at, out of pure evil. Uh, like, you know, Baron Ungern was, but that is the story of Lumia Pavlichenko. I hope that the people who do not listen to this podcast by now,

uh, that being the people who I, I wrote this episode to, to make fun of, see this, hear this and realize they're giant, whiny man, children that need to shut the fuck up. Um, please. Cause now would be good. Yeah. You're not, you're not, you're that need to shut the fuck up. Please.

Now would be good. Yeah, you're not suited to shine her fucking boots. Which are two sizes too big. 300 plus kills will do that to you. Now, Liam, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. So I've been told

by my handlers. Yeah, my political handlers are telling me we do in fact answer questions from the Legion. Now, if you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, donate to the show at any level. DM, PM or email or Patreon message

us. Now, today's episode, we're going to have to tread lightly or today's question. We're going to have to tread kind of lightly kind of lightly hypothetically if you were to challenge anybody to a charity fight that's completely consensual and not assault uh who would it be and why jokes that was uh well there's your problem joke uh a charity fight uh i don't know man i think i think the obvious answer is like some politician i hate sure i don't think that's quite right because i hate them in a way that just beating them up wouldn't really like because i know they live at the end of it right yeah yeah we're definitely not doing a uh charity charity gladiatorial event right right so that's that's kind of my problem is they have to live at the

end of this yeah that is a problem uh so i'm gonna say the podcast does not condone the murder of politicians no we don't hey dave this uh let's see here i would probably like a joe rogan or someone like that or some like right wing podcast host like i would love to fight ben shapiro although i think i would beat the shit out of him because i assume i'm like a foot and a half taller than he is i personally would not want to challenge joe rogan to a charity fight because he would beat the fucking shit out of me he's a big dude he's a black belt bjj and a taekwondo world champion. I actually didn't know that. I try not to know anything about Joe Rogan.

He's as dumb as he is. His MMA knowledge is not fake. Mine would absolutely have to be Steven Crowder. And this is something I'm legitimately serious about. I would donate $10,000 to

charity. And i'm not pulling this out of my ass i would do it if steven crowder would go three rounds with me in a charity fight i'd watch that to a charity of his choice and i am 100 serious um anyway liam that is our episode everybody thank you for joining us liam you had no choice i locked locked you in this room. I don't know why you always say Liam, thanks for joining us. I have a say in this. This is an at-will employer. Please don't.

I am recording this under duress. I am recording this under duress. I have Ludmilla Pavlichenko waiting outside your door. You can get out of argument with the Ukrainian Orthodox priest across the street. We might be able to find common ground.'re both both orthodox we're good um you know until next time um don't be a fucking misogynist prick also don't be a nazi also uh ben shapiro jew on jill you and me buddy later bye everybody