Antonina Makarova was a female soldier in the Soviet Union during World War II, whose life was full of betrayal, guilt and remorse, and once fought for her life to join the German army, becoming their executioner, killing 1,500 of her compatriots.
After World War II, the Soviets spent 30 years trying to arrest her and finally bring her to justice, and Makarova's story has been hailed as the darkest page in the history of Soviet warfare. So, what's the story?
Antonina Makarova
Antonina Makarova, also known as Antonina Pavnova, has such a statement? As will be discussed below, it also has a lot to do with why the Soviet Union has not been able to find her for 30 years.
Born in 1921, Makarova was an ordinary country girl, smart and beautiful since she was a child, with curly blond hair and blue eyes.
She excelled in school, excelled in math and foreign languages, and dreamed of becoming a doctor when she grew up and contributing to the health and happiness of mankind, but unfortunately all this came to naught with the arrival of World War II.
In 1939, the German invasion of Poland triggered World War II, and after the attack on Britain failed, the German army aimed its guns at the Soviet Union.
After signing the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact with Germany in 1939 and dividing its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe with Germany in 1940, Stalin believed that Germany would not easily start a war against the Soviet Union without defeating Britain.
Based on this, the Soviet Union did not pay attention to the German military threat, did not strengthen the defense against the German army, and even ignored the warnings of the intelligence agencies and the allies. Stalin was soon slapped in the face by reality, and in 1941 Germany suddenly launched a full-scale attack on the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union, completely caught off guard by a sudden German attack and was unable to organize effective resistance in the short term, led to huge losses for the Soviet army in the initial period of the war.
In addition, Germany's "blitzkrieg" tactics were very powerful, and mobile units such as tanks, aircraft, and motorized infantry quickly broke through the Soviet defense line, causing confusion and collapse of the Soviet army.
Although the Soviet Union was the largest country in the world in terms of land area at that time, there were many domestic economic and political problems in the early stage of the war, so that it could not resist the high-speed mobile operations of the German army, and the Soviet army was constantly scattered, surrounded and annihilated under the "blitzkrieg".
To get back to the point, when the Soviet-German war broke out, Antonina Makarova was studying at a medical school in Moscow at Xi time, and had to join the battlefield due to the needs of the war.
Germany occupied most of the Soviet Union in a short period of time, and Antonina Makarova was arrested while fleeing and imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Later, many of her comrades-in-arms starved to death in the quarantine area, leaving only Makarova alive.
Fortunately, her beauty and foreign language skills were favored by a German officer, and then she was taken away to become a mistress, enjoying some better treatment, but also losing her dignity and conscience.
Step by step blackened
Initially, Antonina Makarova did not forget her identity, always looking for an opportunity to escape, and secretly collected some intelligence about the German army, hoping to pass it on to the Soviet resistance.
At a German drinking party, she met a Soviet spy who gave Makarova a radio station and put her in touch with the Soviet underground, which she did not expect to be a trap.
It turned out that the so-called Soviet spies were actually undercover agents of the German army, whose purpose was to trap the Soviet resistance.
He deliberately gave Antonina Makarova a faulty radio station, the signal was quickly tracked by the Germans, the officer's lover was shot, and Makarova was brutalized.
The Germans originally wanted to kill her directly, but accidentally discovered Antonina Makarova's special ability, not only German, but also Russian, Polish, Ukrainian and other languages, if you change her appearance, she is a natural spy.
The Germans decided to use this woman and make Makarova their secret weapon on a special mission aimed at eliminating the Soviet partisans and underground organizations.
Antonina Makarova had no choice but to take orders from the Germans, otherwise she would have been killed.
In the days that followed, Makarova successively assumed the alias Maria, Natasha, Sophia, etc., betrayed a large number of Soviet soldiers, and sometimes even pointed butcher knives at innocent civilians.
Later, Makarova's work was much simpler, according to her recollections: shooting 1 person in a cell with a machine gun in the morning, going to a German club in the evening to drink and dance, and then spending the night with a German officer or policeman.
According to relevant statistics, Makarova's hands were stained with the blood of 1,500 compatriots during the Soviet-German war, and a story about the service of Soviet executioners for the German army slowly spread, and at this time even if Makarova wanted to turn back, there was no chance.
In 1943, when the Germans were at the end of their power, the Soviet Union began to counterattack Berlin, and Antonina Makarova's crimes also attracted the attention of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet counterintelligence agencies began to hunt her down, but the woman could not be found until the invasion of Berlin.
At the end of the war, the Soviet Union began to liquidate the Nazi accomplices, and Makarova was undoubtedly the best among them, but the Soviet Union only knew that her name was "Makarova", and the rest of the information was unknown, and there were no clues in the investigation of nearly 200 people named Makarova throughout the country.
However, the USSR did not give up and kept Makarova's information all the time. Until 1976, a person in the Soviet Union was going abroad on a business trip, and when filling in the family information, he registered "sister Antonina Makarova", but the rest of the family was Pavnova.
This incident quickly attracted the attention of the KGB of the Soviet Union, and they investigated according to this clue, and found that Antonina Makarova's real name should be Antonina Pavnova, but when she was in school, she was written as "Makarova" by her teacher.
Although the difference between the two words is not big, trying to find this person in the Soviet Union, which has a population of hundreds of millions, is tantamount to looking for a needle in a haystack. Little by little, the KGB investigated and finally found out the truth behind the scenes.
I just want to live
One day in 1978, as quiet as usual in a small town in Belarus, a KGB vehicle parked in front of the home of Victor Ginsburg, a veteran, and took his 57-year-old wife (hereafter Ginsburg) away without saying a word.
Mrs. Ginsburg in the interrogation room also said that the police had made a mistake, but the KGB replied firmly, "You are the Nazi "executioner", we have been looking for you for more than 30 years, Antonina Makarova ......"
Seeing that the matter was revealed, Mrs. Ginsburg chose to remain silent, undoubtedly acknowledging the matter. It turned out that during the Soviet search for traitors, Makarova used her abilities, coupled with the relevant disguise, to enter a hospital and meet Viktor Ginsburg, a young Soviet officer who was being treated.
During the long period of treatment, Ginsburg fell in love with this beautiful female nurse and eventually entered the palace of marriage. Afterwards, they returned to live together in Ginsburg's hometown of Lip, Belarus, and multiple covers allowed Makarova to escape the KGB.
Ginsburg was very sad when he found out about this, but he couldn't do anything, after all, his wife was indeed a traitor to the country. After being arrested, Makarova appeared very calm, saying that she only killed to live, and hoped that the judge would give a lenient sentence.
The cycle of cause and effect was reincarnated, and on August 11, 1978, Antonina was executed, and the matter finally ended. What do you think differently about this?