Lady Death Had 309 Kills Before Age 26

[00:00:00]Did you know the deadliest female sniper in history was asked about her lipstick while she was still covered in war? Her name was Lyudmila Pavlichenko. By the time she was 25 [music] years old, she had 309 confirmed kills on the Eastern Front. Soviet soldiers called her Lady Death. German soldiers left notes in the dirt warning each other [music] about her. Then in 1942, the Soviet Union sent her to America on a propaganda tour. She sat in front of journalists who had never seen a battlefield [music] and they asked her about her hair, about whether her uniform was flattering, about whether she wore makeup while she was shooting. She did not hide what she thought of those questions. Standing before a crowd in Chicago, >> [music] >> she told them directly that she found it strange they were so interested in her appearance. She had already protected her country's honor at 309 kills, she said. Wasn't that enough? The room went quiet. She was a war hero. She was a propaganda tool. And she was visibly exhausted by being treated as neither.