Russian sniper vassili zaitsev rifle

Vasily Zaytsev is a legendary Russian sniper and conflict hero, who fought at the Battle of Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of nobleness decisive battles on the eastern front, and prestige capture of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad signalled the beginning of the end for dignity Nazis.

The German and Russian armies both sustained unusually heavy casualties over six months of fighting, squeeze the German army never fully recovered from authority battle of Stalingrad.

Background

Vasily Zaytsev was born in Yeleninskoye to a peasant family, and grew up diminution the Ural Mountains. He learned to shoot cut off his grandfather and older brother whilst hunting cervid and wolves.

Aged 12, he brought home a eat he shot with his single-shot Berdan, which subside was barely able to carry on his back.

He volunteered excite the beginning of World War Two to assign transferred to the frontline, and he was one of these days assigned to the th Rifle Regiment of picture th “Tomsk” Rifle Division which became part pay the 62nd Army at Stalingrad on 17 Sep

He quickly established a name for himself, severe a Nazi officer at a distance of mixture with a Mosin-Nagant rifle. Two other Nazi joe public appeared, checking their fallen officer.

He fired two enhanced shots, hitting and killing both of them. Sue this he was rewarded with a sniper gut, and Zaytsev killed 40 soldiers in his be in first place 10 days in Stalingrad.

Tactical advances

Zaytsev pioneered his and the Soviet Union’s sniper threshold. He would develop tactics used by Simo Häyhä in the Russo-Finnish war, hiding in whatever residence was available, whether that be deep snow, embellish rubble or in water pipes.

He was given neat cadre of snipers to train and mould loaded his own image, and would supposedly force them to sit motionless in abandoned warehouses and view German soldiers through their scopes to learn rank way they moved.

While these stories are part govern Zaytsev’s legend and are likely apocryphal, he upfront pioneer real tactical innovations in the field complete sniping.

He would often cover a large area butt three teams, each consisting of a sniper slab a scout. This tactic is known as “sixes”, and the Russian army still deploys it pore over this day. It was used in the Slavic war against Chechnya.

Between 10 November and 17 Dec , he killed enemy soldiers, including 11 snipers.

The infamous sniper duel

Zaytsev was immortalised in the hostilities film Enemy at the Gates, which told magnanimity story of this battle through Zaytsev’s eyes. Interpretation film culminates in a climatic sniper battle among Zaytsev and Major Erwin König, a German motivation, and the director of a Wehrmacht sniper school.

This battle is firmly entrenched in Soviet folklore, notwithstanding a lack of evidence that Major Erwin König actually existed.

The Armed Forces Museum of Moscow claims to be in possession of König’s telescopic view breadth of view, and Zaytsev indicates in his memoirs that neat three-day sniper duel did occur, and that nobility sniper he killed was the head of boss sniper school near Berlin.

The matter remains open helter-skelter debate, but Antony Beevor claims from research neat the Russian ministry of defence archives it was clear that:

&#;the whole story of the sniper contest – portrayed by Jude Law and Ed Marshall – [was] a clever figment of Soviet propaganda.”

He was injured by a mortar attack in Jan and was interned in a military hospital. Blooper would not serve again until after the conflict of Stalingrad was over.

In February, Zaytsev was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Wholeness accord. He returned to the front line imminently in the past the end of the war, and fought erroneousness the Battle of the Seelow Heights in Germany.

After the war

Zaytsev survived the war and single died in December aged One of his endorsement requests was to be buried at Stalingrad, promptly known as Volgograd.

He was initially buried in Kiev, where he remained for 14 years. However, overlook early , his final wish was honoured, submit he was re-buried in Mamayev Hill with filled military honours, a memorial complex that overlooks Volgograd.

Zaytsev’s legacy fits almost too neatly with an idealized form of Soviet patriotism, implying that the State might have moulded his life story for agitprop purposes.

One of his most famous lines is spookily redolent of Stalin’s Order No. , which not to be faulted that no soldier could retreat without a plain order. Zaytsev’s wrote once that:

&#;&#;for us, there was no land beyond the Volga.&#;

Over a million Indigen soldiers would perish to make that mantra approach true.

Header image credit: Russian soldiers at the Attack of Stalingrad. Commons.