224-Lady Death
Futility Closet
Greg Ross
4.8 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2018
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lyudmila Pavlichenko was training for a career as a history teacher when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. She suspended her studies to enlist as a sniper in the Red Army, where she discovered a remarkable talent for shooting enemy soldiers. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll trace the career of "Lady Death," the deadliest female sniper in history.
We'll also learn where in the world futility.closet.podcast is and puzzle over Air Force One.
Intro:
Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes creates a host of puzzles in the philosophy of art.
German architect Herman Sörgel wanted to dam the Congo to create two African seas.
Sources for our feature on Lyudmila Pavlichenko:
Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin's Sniper, 2018.
Roger Reese, "Soviet Women at War," Military History 28:1 (May 2011), 44-53,5.
Drew Lindsay, "Why Not Send Women to War?" MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 25:3 (Spring 2013), 50-55, 58-61.
Karl E. Friedl, "Biases of the Incumbents: What If We Were Integrating Men Into a Women's Army?" Military Review 96:2 (March/April 2016), 69-75.
Jonathan W. Jordan, "Master of the Long Rifle," MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 18:4 (Summer 2006), 49-53.
D'Ann Campbell, "Women in Combat: The World War II Experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union," Journal of Military History 57:2 (April 1993), 301-323.
E.M. Tenney, "Mrs. Roosevelt, the Russian Sniper, and Me," American Heritage 43:2 (April 1992), 28.
John Kass, "This Soldier's Skill Had Nothing to Do With Gender," Chicago Tribune, Jan. 25, 2013.
Peter Sheridan, "Meet Lady Death: The Deadliest Female Sniper That Ever Lived," Express, Feb. 5, 2018.
Marea Donnelly, "'Lady Death' Sniper Made 309 Kills After Young Comrade Shot," Daily Telegraph, July 12, 2016, 23.
Gilbert King, "Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper," Smithsonian.com, Feb. 21, 2013.
Alex Lockie, "Meet the World's Deadliest Female Sniper Who Terrorized Hitler's Nazi Army," Independent, March 18, 2018.
"Soviet Girl Sniper Learned to Shoot as University Co-Ed," [Washington, D.C.] Evening Star, August 28, 1942, 2-X.
"Africa a Prelude, Maisky Declares," New York Times, Nov. 15, 1942.
"Rifle Match Proposed," New York Times, Sept. 3, 1942.
Public Radio International, "The Life and Myths of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Soviet Russia's Deadliest Sniper," PRI's The World, March 9, 2018.
"Sharp-Shooting Women Best Soviet Snipers," USA Today Magazine, 135:2739 (December 2006), 3-4.
Listener mail:
Wikipedia, "Maidenhead Locator System" (accessed Nov. 3, 2018).
Wikipedia, "Contesting" (accessed Nov. 4, 2018).
"An Evaluation of Location Encoding Systems," GitHub (accessed Nov. 9, 2018).
This week's lateral thinking puzzle was devised by Greg. Here's a corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle).
You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss.
Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website.
Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.
If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. |
| 0:14.0 | Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from Brillo puzzles to a flooded Africa. |
| 0:20.7 | This is episode 224. I'm Greg Ross. |
| 0:23.4 | And I'm Sharon Ross. The Yudmila Pavlachenko was training for a career as a history teacher |
| 0:28.7 | when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. She suspended her studies to enlist as a sniper |
| 0:34.6 | in the Red Army, where she discovered a remarkable talent for shooting |
| 0:38.1 | enemy soldiers. In today's show, we'll trace the career of Lady Death, the deadliest female |
| 0:43.8 | sniper in history. We'll also learn where in the world futility closet podcast is, and puzzle over |
| 0:51.0 | Air Force One. |
| 1:01.8 | Yudmila Padlitschenko was born in 1916 in Bilit Zerkva in the Russian Empire, |
| 1:05.8 | what's now Ukraine. Her father was a factory worker and her mother was a teacher. |
| 1:10.7 | She described herself as a tomboy who was unruly in the classroom and competitive athletically. |
| 1:13.6 | She said she wouldn't allow herself to be outdone by boys in anything. |
| 1:17.7 | When she was 14 years old, the family moved to Kiev, and she worked as a metal grinder in a munitions factory. While she was there, a coworker convinced her to come to a shooting range, |
| 1:22.1 | and that changed her life. She found she had natural aptitude, hand-eye coordination, muscle steadiness, good eyesight, and patience. |
| 1:29.2 | After four shots at a target, her instructor said, for a beginner, that is simply amazing. |
| 1:33.0 | It's clear you have ability. |
| 1:34.8 | She joined a shooting club that held sessions once a week and learned ballistics and the history of firearms. |
| 1:39.6 | She wrote later, in their own way, firearms are beautiful. |
| 1:42.2 | They are pleasant to pick up and convenient to use. |
| 1:44.7 | They earned the love of the people who took them into wars of unbelievable ferocity. |
| 1:49.0 | In 1937, she enrolled in Kiev University to study history, and there she competed as a sprinter |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Greg Ross, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Greg Ross and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.