At 20, Rosa Shanina was a kindergarten teacher who sang romantic folk songs and worried about unrequited love. She was also known to the international press as the unseen terror of East Prussia, a lethal World War II sniper with 59 confirmed kills who defied direct orders to stay on the deadly front lines.

This episode traces the arc of a young woman forged by grief and unbreakable independence, from a teenager walking 200 kilometers across the freezing taiga to a platoon commander writing to Stalin himself. Through a strictly forbidden coded diary, we glimpse the lonely, traumatized human being behind the headlines, and the tragic philosophy that drove her to die for others.

• The brutal endurance of her childhood and the loss of three brothers that pushed her toward the front
• Why Soviet doctrine believed women were unique ...