The countries participating in the Second World War made every effort to win. Many women volunteered for the military or did traditional male work at home, in factories and at the front. Women worked in factories and in government organizations, were active members of resistance groups and auxiliary units. Relatively few women fought directly on the front lines, but many fell victim to bombing and military incursions. By the end of the war, more than 2 million women worked in the military industry, hundreds of thousands voluntarily went to the front as nurses or enlisted in the army. In the USSR alone, about 800 thousand women served in military units on an equal basis with men. In this photo essay, photographs are presented that tell about what women had to endure and endure, who took an active part in the hostilities of World War II.
The symbol of the defense of Sevastopol was the Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who killed 309 German soldiers. Pavlichenko is considered the most successful female sniper in history. (AP Photo)
Film director Leni Riefenstahl looks into the lens of a large video camera during preparations for filming the Imperial Party Congress in Germany in 1934. The film "Triumph of Will" will be edited from the footage, which will later become the best propaganda film in history. (LOC)
Japanese women search for possible defects in casings at a factory in Japan, September 30, 1941. (AP Photo)
Members of the Women's Army Corps pose in Camp Shanks, New York, before leaving the New York port on February 2, 1945. The first contingent of African American women in the military went to war overseas. From left to right squatting: Private Rose Stone, Private Virginia Blake, and Private 1st Class Marie B. Gillisspie. Row 2: Private Genevieve Marshall, 5th Grade Technician Fanny L. Talbert, and Corporal Kelly K. Smith. Row 3: Private Gladys Schuster Carter, Technician 4th Class Evelina K. Martin, and Private 1st Class Theodora Palmer. (AP Photo)
Workers inspect a partially inflated barrage balloon in New Bedford, Massachusetts, May 11, 1943. All parts of the balloon must be sealed by the appropriate staff, the head of the department, as well as the chief inspector, who gives the final approval. (AP Photo)
American nurses wearing gas masks exercise at Fort Jay, Governors Island, New York, November 27, 1941. In the background, skyscrapers of New York can be seen through a cloud of smoke. (AP Photo)
Three Soviet partisans during World War II, USSR. (LOC)
Auxiliary Territorial Service female soldiers in warm winter clothing search for German bombers near London on January 19, 1943. (AP Photo)
German pilot, Captain Hannah Reitsch, shakes hands with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler after receiving the Iron Cross II Degree award at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, April 1941. Reitsch was honored with this award for her achievements in the development of air weapons during the Second World War. Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering stands in the background in the center, and Lieutenant General Karl Bodenschatz in the background to the right.(AP Photo)
Female art students whip up World War II propaganda posters in Port Washington, New York on July 8, 1942. The original drawings are hanging on the wall in the background. (AP Photo / Marty Zimmerman)
SS soldiers hold a group of young women fighters of the Jewish resistance under arrest during the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto following the uprising of the Jewish population in April and May 1943. (AP Photo)
More and more women are joining the ranks of the Luftwaffe as part of a general conscription campaign. They replace the men who were transferred to the army to fight the advancing Allied forces. Pictured: Women train with men from the Luftwaffe, Germany, December 7, 1944. (AP Photo)
Selected female pilots from the Women's Auxiliary Air Force are trained to serve in the police force. Photo: A female Air Force soldier demonstrates self-defense techniques, January 15, 1942. (AP Photo)
The first female guerrilla force was formed in the Philippines. In the photo: residents of the Philippines, who were training in a local women's unit, practice gun shooting in Manila, November 8, 1941. (AP Photo)
The Italian Maquis were virtually unknown to the outside world, although they had fought the fascist regime since 1927. They fought for freedom in the most dangerous conditions. Their enemies were the Germans and the Italian fascists, and the battlefield was the mountain peaks covered with permafrost on the border between France and Italy. Pictured: A school teacher fights shoulder to shoulder with her husband over the Little Saint Bernard mountain pass in Italy, January 4, 1945. (AP Photo)
Defense Corps women form a Victoria sign with jets of water from crossed fire hoses during a demonstration of their skills in Gloucester, Massachusetts, November 14, 1941. (AP Photo)
A nurse bandages the hand of a Chinese soldier during a battle at the front near the Salween River in Yunnan province, June 22, 1943. Another soldier came on crutches to receive first aid. (AP Photo) #
Workers polish the transparent noses of A-20J bombers at the Douglas Aircraft plant in Long Beach, California, October 1942. (AP Photo / Office of War Information)
American film actress Veronica Lake demonstrates what can happen to female workers who wear long hair while working at a machine in a factory in the United States, November 9, 1943. (AP Photo)
Anti-aircraft gunners from the female British Army (Auxiliary Territorial Service) flee to position after an alarm in London on May 20, 1941. AP Photo)
Women from the German anti-aircraft forces speak on field phones during the Second World War. (LOC)
Young Soviet tractor drivers from Kyrgyzstan have successfully replaced their friends, brothers and fathers who went to the front. In the photo: a tractor driver harvests sugar beet, August 26, 1942. (AP Photo)
77-year-old Mrs. Paul Titus, an aerial observer for Bucks County, Pennsylvania, holds a gun and inspects her site, December 20, 1941. Mrs Titus recruited the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. “I can hold a weapon in my hands any time I need it,” she said. (AP Photo)
Polish women in steel helmets and military uniforms march through the streets of Warsaw, preparing to defend the capital as the Germans launched an offensive on Poland, September 16, 1939. (AP Photo)
Nurses clean up the ward of St. Peter in Stepney, East London, April 19, 1941. During a large-scale air raid on London, German bombs hit four hospitals, among other buildings. (AP Photo)
Life magazine photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White in flying gear stands beside the Allied Flying Fortress aircraft during her business trip in February 1943. (AP Photo)
German soldiers lead Polish women to the execution site in the forest, 1941. (LOC)
Northwestern University students undergo training in the courtyard of their university in Evanston, Illinois, January 11, 1942. Left to right: 18-year-old Jeanne Paul from Oak Park, Illinois, 18-year-old Virginia Paisley and 19-year-old Maria Walsh from Lakewood, Ohio, 20-year-old Sara Robinson from Jonesboro, Arkansas, 17-year-old Elizabeth Cooper from Chicago and 17-year-old Harriet Ginsberg. (AP Photo)
Nurses wear gas masks - one of many beginner training sessions - at a hospital while awaiting departure for their permanent deployment in Wales on May 26, 1944. (AP Photo)
Film actress Ida Lupino, a lieutenant in the Women's Ambulance and Defense Corps, sits outside a telephone switchboard in Brentwood, California on January 3, 1942. In an emergency, she can contact all ambulance posts in the city. The switchboard is in her house, from where she can see all of Los Angeles. (AP Photo)
The first contingent of American nurses sent to the Allied forward base in New Guinea strides towards the camp with their belongings, November 12, 1942. The first four girls from right to left: Edith Whittaker of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Ruth Boucher of Worcester, Ohio, Helen Lawson of Athens, Tennessee, and Juanita Hamilton of Hendersonville, North Carolina. (AP Photo)
Nearly all members of the US House of Representatives listen to Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the wife of the Chinese Generalissimo, who asks her to make every effort to stop the Japanese advance, in Washington, D. C., February 18, 1943. (AP Photo / William J. Smith)
Nurses disembarking from landing craft walk along a beach in Normandy, France on July 4, 1944. They head to a field hospital to treat wounded Allied soldiers. (AP Photo)
A French man and woman shoot confiscated German weapons during the battle of French troops and civilians with German invaders in the rear in Paris in August 1944, shortly before the surrender of the German army and the liberation of Paris. (AP Photo)
A man and a woman take weapons from a wounded German soldier during a street skirmish in the rear, shortly before the Allied forces entered Paris, 1944. (AP Photo)
Elizabeth "Lilo" Gloeden appeared in court on charges of involvement in the July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler's life. Elizabeth, like her mother and husband, was convicted of hiding a participant in the July 20 Plot to assassinate Hitler. All three were beheaded on November 30, 1944. Their execution was widely publicized and served as a warning to those who were about to enter into a conspiracy against the German ruling party. (LOC)
Romanian civilians, men and women, dig anti-tank ditches in the border zone, preparing to repel a Soviet advance. (AP Photo)
Miss Jean Pitcatey, a nurse from the New Zealand medical unit based in Libya, donned goggles to protect her eyes from the sand, June 18, 1942. (AP Photo)
62nd Army on the streets of Odessa in April 1944. A large detachment of Soviet soldiers, including two women, are marching down the street. (LOC)
A girl from the resistance movement participates in an operation to locate German snipers who are still hiding in Paris, France, on August 29, 1944. Two days earlier, this girl had shot and killed two German soldiers. (AP Photo)
French patriots cut the hair of collaborator Grande Guillotte from Normandy, France, July 10, 1944. The man on the right watches the woman's suffering with pleasure. (AP Photo)
More than 40 thousand women and children suffering from typhus, hunger and dysentery were freed by the British from concentration camps. Photo: women and children sit in a barrack in the camp "Bergen-Belsen", Germany, April 1945. (AP Photo)
SS women who followed their male counterparts in brutality at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Bergen, Germany, April 21, 1945. (AP Photo / British Official Photo)
A Soviet woman, busy cleaning a field on which shells have recently fallen, shows her fist to German prisoners of war, who are being led by Soviet escorts, Ukrainian SSR, February 14, 1944. (AP Photo)
Susie Bane poses with her 1943 portrait in Austin, Texas on June 19, 2009. During World War II, Bane served in the Women's Pilot Service of the United States Air Force. On March 10, 2010, more than 200 living members of the Women's Pilot Service of the United States Air Force were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. (AP Photo / Austin American Statesman, Ralph Barrera)
