Although women have never always been welcomed onto the battlefield, the saga of 10 female soldiers shows they have repeatedly left their mark on wars worldwide. While some, like the legendary Molly Pitcher, are celebrated, others earned notoriety for fighting on the side of the “bad guys.”
10 Female Soldiers Who Served the Bad Guys
10. Mildred Gillars
Though she never reached the fame of Iva Toguri or the other women called Tokyo Rose, Mildred Gillars carved a niche as a German‑backed broadcaster, earning the Allied moniker Axis Sally. An Ohio native, she crossed the Atlantic before the war and scraped by in Germany until the conflict erupted, when a romance with the station’s manager nudged her onto the airwaves spewing vitriolic propaganda for the Nazis.
Her broadcasts delighted in mocking soldiers by alleging infidelities of their sweethearts and by graphic recounting of injuries and deaths suffered by servicemen. Captured and repatriated in 1946, she faced a treason trial, spent twelve years behind bars, was released, and slipped into poverty before dying in 1988.
9. Antonia Ford
The daughter of a prominent Fairfax merchant, Antonia Ford moonlighted as a Confederate spy, eavesdropping on Union officers she hosted at Fairfax Station. The intelligence she gathered—troop strengths, locations, and movements—was funneled to J.E.B. Stuart and John S. Mosby, earning her a personal letter from Stuart that named her his aide‑de‑camp.
That very letter betrayed her when a Union counter‑spy uncovered it, leading to her arrest by Major Joseph Willard. After a second capture, she secured release by swearing an oath of loyalty to the Union, married Willard, and lived out her days with three children before passing away.
8. Ann Bates
Before the Revolution, Ann Bates ran a school and a shop in Philadelphia, content with colonial rule. When the war ignited, she slipped into Sir Henry Clinton’s Loyalist spy network in 1778, using her knowledge of arms to masquerade as a peddler and gather details from American forces, which she relayed to British commanders.
Although “on suspicion” she was eventually detained by the Americans, she was released, later upset about a search that stole her silver shoe buckles. Bates kept feeding Clinton’s men intel—most notably about Rhode Island troop movements that forced an American retreat—until 1780. After the war she settled in England, receiving a modest pension for her service.
7. Malinda Blalock
Born in North Carolina, Malinda Blalock first fought for the Confederacy by disguising herself as a man named “Sam” Blalock. Fearing her husband’s conscription, she orchestrated his enlistment with the intent to desert, while she herself cut her hair and joined the same regiment under a false identity.
When a bullet struck her shoulder, a surgeon discovered her true sex. Whether she confessed or the surgeon reported her remains debated, but the couple persisted in deserting. After her husband feigned smallpox from poison sumac and was discharged, the pair finally crossed into Union territory, where they served until the war’s end.
6. Rose Greenhow
Rose Greenhow leveraged her reputation as a Washington hostess to infiltrate Union social circles, feeding the Confederacy with detailed reports on capital defenses and troop movements. Her intelligence proved pivotal during the First Battle of Bull Run, where the Confederates routed Union forces.
Detective Allan Pinkerton soon placed her under house arrest and later in Old Capitol Prison, yet she kept slipping messages out—once hiding a note inside a woman’s hair bun. Declared too risky, she was exiled, sent to Europe to broadcast anti‑Union propaganda. In 1864, a Union gunboat attack forced her boat ashore; she fled in a rowboat but drowned when the gold she’d earned for a book weighed it down.
5. Carla Costa
A 17‑year‑old German operative, Carla Costa operated in wartime Italy, quietly observing Allied troop concentrations. Her unremarkable appearance let her pass as an ordinary Italian girl displaced by the conflict, and she rose to become one of Germany’s most effective spies in the peninsula, even earning a private audience with Benito Mussolini, who praised her potential to win the war.
Her downfall came when partner Mario Martinelli, captured and coerced, betrayed her. Costa denied ever meeting him and refused to cooperate, but Allied forces used a secret‑ink handkerchief that revealed her identity when heated. Martinelli was executed; Costa received a 20‑year sentence, later shortened when Italy released her after the war.
4. Yoshiko Kawashima
Born a Manchu princess in China, Yoshiko Kawashima was given at age eight to a Japanese friend of her father, Naniwa Kawashima, as a diplomatic token. After a failed arranged marriage to a Mongol prince, she lived a bohemian life in Tokyo, later traveling widely before meeting Japanese General Takayoshi Tanaka in Shanghai, who recruited her for espionage.
Operating under the codename “Eastern Jewel,” she incited a citywide disturbance in Shanghai to provide Japan an excuse for invasion, and later staged fake assassination plots to persuade former Qing emperor Puyi to lead the puppet state of Manchukuo. Captured in November 1945 by Chinese forces, she was held for three years before being executed as a traitor.
3. Hanna Reitsch
Unlike the other women on this roster, Hanna Reitsch never spied or fought as a soldier; she served Nazi Germany as an elite test pilot. Initially aspiring to medicine, she learned to fly gliders, shattering endurance and altitude records for women, before moving on to powered aircraft.
Joining the Luftwaffe in 1937, she became one of only six women to pilot an aircraft during World War II, earning the Iron Cross (Second Class) for experiments against barrage balloons over London and later the Iron Cross (First Class) after a crash‑landing of a Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet. She survived a five‑month hospital stay, toured globally for air shows, and was one of the few to visit Hitler’s bunker in his final days, even facing accusations of smuggling him out by plane.
2. Loreta Janeta Velazquez
A Cuban born, Loreta Janeta Velazquez was sent as a child to her aunt’s home in New Orleans, where she completed her English schooling. Fascinated by Joan of Arc and female soldiers, she was electrified when the American Civil War erupted, immediately mastering masculine mannerisms and purchasing a custom‑made girdle to conceal her shape.
After her husband’s accidental death, she enlisted as “Harry T. Buford,” fighting in battles such as the First Battle of Bull Run. She later claimed to have been uncovered twice and eventually became a Confederate spy. Though scholars dispute some of her memoirs, the minutiae she recorded—weather, officer names—suggest she truly experienced the combat.
1. Violette Morris
Renowned in France for her prowess behind the wheel, Violette Morris also excelled in swimming, boxing, football, running, and weightlifting. She served the Red Cross as an ambulance driver amid the ferocious fighting at Verdun. Known simply as “la Morris” after a standout performance at the Paris Olympics, she was barred from the 1928 Games because officials disapproved of her homosexual lifestyle, prompting her to turn to auto racing—a career that led to a double mastectomy so her breasts wouldn’t hinder her driving.
Just before the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Adolf Hitler learned of her plight and invited her as a personal guest. Upon returning to Paris, she became a Gestapo informant and torturer, earning the Resistance’s nickname “the hyena of the Gestapo.” London’s forces eventually dispatched commandos, and she met her end behind the wheel of her car.