127 million people. The number of men who fought as soldiers in World War II is incredibly high when you count all the countries involved. With so many individuals, there were also some soldiers who accomplished completely unimaginable things and were more dangerous and feared than entire companies.
They were so notorious that to this day they are mostly still known by nicknames. Names like exterminator Matt Jack or Lady Death. And we’re about to present their stories to you. And we begin directly with a man who went down in history as the White Death, Simo Haye.
The White Death: Simo Häyhä
The Finn was only in action for just under 100 days in the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940, and yet within this short time he managed to become the most feared enemy of the Soviet Union. Simo Herayer, as a sniper at the time, developed a tactic with which he could make himself virtually invisible in the snowy winter landscape. Hey buried himself in the snow, dressed in white fir clothing, and then endured temperatures as low as -40° C for hours until enemies approached.
He also stuffed snow into his mouth so that his breath couldn’t be seen rising. Unlike normal snipers, the Finn completely dispensed with a telescopic sight on his rifle and instead used only a simple open sight, i.e., iron sights, to aim, so that he did not have to raise his head when aiming at the enemy or reflections on the telescopic sight glass could reveal his position.
The excellent marksman then took out Soviet soldiers one after another without them even being able to recognize where the shots were coming from. In total, Simo Her has been confirmed to have single-handedly eliminated at least 505 enemy soldiers in just three and a half months. However, estimates suggest that the White Death may have killed up to 800 opponents in this short time.
In fact, Simo He was so feared that the Soviets eventually requested entire artillery strikes targeting only the presumed position of this single soldier. Towards the end of the war, Hey was indeed hit directly in the face by an enemy explosive projectile, which tore off half of his left jaw, but he survived and then led a peaceful life as a dog breeder until 2002.
When asked in interviews what he felt when he took the lives of hundreds of people, the Finn simply replied coldly:
“With the recoil.”
Mad Jack: John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill
While Simo Hey was so dangerous because of his ice-cold tactics and calmness, John Malcolm Thorp Fleming Churchill was the complete opposite. The British officer was feared by his enemies for his absolutely crazy unpredictability and his nickname Mad Jack.
So, he definitely didn’t get Mad Jack for no reason. In fact, the Briton went to war with a medieval longbow, a Scottish broadsword and a bagpipe. Yes, you heard right. While in World War II, machine guns, tanks and bombers were fighting around him, Matt Jack took out his enemies more like William Wallace from the film Braveheart.
For example, during a dangerous landing in Italy, he was the first to jump out of the landing craft, played a Scottish war hymn on his bagpipes, then threw a grenade and finally drew his sword to charge at the enemy. He not only killed numerous opponents, but also single-handedly captured huge groups of enemy soldiers time and time again.
In 1943, the man simply went to a German camp in Salerno, Italy, at night with only one other comrade, armed only with his sword. There he surprised a sentry and, with the blade at his throat, forced him to summon his comrades one by one from the darkness. The Germans followed the familiar voice of their guard and surrendered immediately upon seeing the tall British officer with the sword.
And so, on that night, Matt Jack captured an unbelievable 42 heavily armed soldiers.
The One-Man Army: Audie Murphy
The next soldier on our list became the most decorated soldier in all of US history in January 1945 with a more than violent action. His actions are more reminiscent of the actions in action films like Rambo, even though the American was visually the complete opposite of the famous action film character.
Audi Murphy was only 1.66 m tall and weighed just under 50 kg, so slight that he was initially laughed at and rejected by the Marines and the paratroopers. After several unsuccessful applications, Audi Murphy was finally accepted into the US Army in 1943 at the age of 20, but he quickly proved that you don’t have to be a big, muscular fighter to become one of the most dangerous soldiers of World War II.
In just two years, he single-handedly eliminated over 240 enemy soldiers, captured countless others, and destroyed half a dozen tanks. The act that would turn him into a legend took place in January 1945 in a snow-covered forest in France. Murphy’s unit had dwindled to just 19 combat-ready men when suddenly a vastly superior force of German infantry, accompanied by six tanks, rolled out of the forest towards them.
Murphy then ordered his men to retreat, while he himself remained completely alone. The only thing left for him was a burning M10 tank that had been abandoned by its crew. Since the vehicle was full of ammunition and fuel, it was basically a ticking time bomb. But Murphy simply climbed onto the open, concealed side of the burning tank, grabbed the heavy 0.50 caliber machine gun and opened fire.
In fact, he managed to single-handedly stop an entire German company. While he gradually killed 50 German soldiers, he was also simultaneously using a field telephone to coordinate attacks with his own artillery. Although he was hit in the leg, he fought on relentlessly until he ran out of ammunition.
After the war, Murphy also became a Hollywood star and played himself in the war film To Hell and Back, among other things. Until his death in a plane crash in 1971, Audi Murphy suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of his life and, out of paranoia, slept with a loaded pistol under his head.
Lady Death: Lyudmila Pavlichenko
Next up is Ludmila Pavlenkenko, who, under the name Lady Death, became the deadliest sharpshooter in the Soviet Union during World War II. And this despite the fact that this position was not intended for women at the time.
When the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Ludmilia Pavlchenko was actually studying history at the university in Kyiv. Because nurses were needed at the front, the army initially wanted to assign them all to one unit. However, Ludmila Pavlchenko vehemently refused to become a nurse and instead asked to try her hand at being a sniper.
Because she had a lot of experience with rifles as a member of a shooting club, she was actually sent to the front as a sniper. Within less than a year, the Russian woman eliminated an incredible 309 opponents in various missions, earning her the name Lady Death.
She proved herself to be an absolute master in so-called counter-sniping, i.e., sniper duels. Pavlchenko would often lie completely motionless in the mud for days, without eating or moving, just waiting for the enemy sniper to make the first mistake.
In such duels alone, she claimed the lives of at least 36 elite German snipers. After the war, the Russian woman completed her history studies and then worked as a historian until her death in 1974. Her fame also made her the first Soviet citizen to be received by a US president at the White House.
The Exterminator: Heinrich Schulz
From the legendary female sniper, we now switch to the stark opposite: a German who, through his incredible close combat skills, became one of the most dangerous soldiers of the Second World War.
On the German side at that time, there were highly specialized stormtroopers whose task it was to eliminate heavily fortified enemy bunkers that the normal infantry could not overcome. One of them was Private Heinrich Schulz.
Schulz was a flamethrower gunner. This means he was not equipped with conventional weapons, but instead only carried a flamethrower. More specifically, he searched for deeply buried positions underground where enemies were entrenched, and then he systematically began to smoke them out.
That’s also how he got his nickname, the exterminator. During his missions, he carried not only the flamethrower but also heavy, highly explosive tanks of flame oil and propellant gas on his back. Any enemy hit could have turned him into a human fireball.
Since the flamethrowers at that time only had a range of about 25 m, Schulz had to crawl directly towards the enemy earth bunkers in the thickest hail of bullets. Upon arriving on Bort, he then fired his flame beam through the enemy’s gunfire, instantly eliminating all the enemies hiding in the bunkers.
In fact, a jet of flame entering a closed space under high pressure consumes all the available oxygen in the room in fractions of a second. It creates a vacuum and extremely toxic carbon monoxide. Because the enemies were so terrified of the fearless exterminator, they often fled as soon as they saw him from afar.
And that’s despite the fact that they actually had much better chances than him over the long term. Even though Heinrich Schulz was only a simple private, he was eventually awarded the Knight’s Cross for his actions, the highest award for bravery in the Wehrmacht.
The Undead: Léo Major
Finally, we come to Leo Major. The Franco-Canadian sniper, who became known as the Undead, was one of the most dangerous soldiers of the Second World War, because he almost single-handedly liberated the city of Zwolle in the Netherlands in April 1945.
At that time, he crept into the German-occupied city at night and pretended to have a huge Canadian superiority by throwing grenades and shooting wildly. Because the German soldiers thought they were virtually surrounded, Leo Major was able to capture dozens of them until the rest of the garrison fled.
That the Franco Canadian managed to achieve this at the end of the war was only because he never gave up, no matter how bad his situation was. In fact, Leo Major repeatedly suffered injuries that would have immediately put any other soldier in a wheelchair and sent them home.
It all began a year earlier, when a phosphorus grenade exploded right next to his face during a firefight with an SS patrol. Leo Major lost his left eye in the process. When the doctors wanted to send him home, however, he refused and said coldly:
“As a sniper, I only need one eye.”
And so he continued fighting with an eye patch. In February 1945, he drove his vehicle over an anti-tank mine. Major flew through the air, breaking his back in three places and shattering both ankles. Doctors told him again that the war was now over for him.
However, Leo Major escaped from the hospital as soon as he was able to walk again and immediately returned to the front. Despite all the serious injuries, the undead man carried on like a zombie, and without his tireless efforts, Zwolle would probably never have been liberated so bloodlessly.
