Vassili Zaitsev : myth or true hero ?

[DavidFrankenberg]

Hi,

i never knew if the famous sniper of Stalingrad was true or a counterfeit story ?
Has he ever existed ? Was he a real sniper ? Did he do the many things he is known for ?
Did he killed the best german sniper especially sent to kill him in Stalingrad ?
What is the part of truth and myth ?

[MAMC]

A good question!........

[Dann Falk]

Greetings,

Zaitsev was a real Red Army Sniper at Stalingrad. He was a good sniper. He survived the war. He killed many Germans soldiers including enemy snipers.
But, the story about him killing an expert German sniper sent to kill him was total propaganda. The story was created to boost Soviet morale in the front lines and in the factories.

[GregSingh]

Here is his Hero of the Soviet Union award letter from 18th Dec 1942.
Unfortunately part of the document is not available for some reason.

It's a source of all those info you can find all over the internet, that from 10th Oct to 17th Dec 1942 he killed 225 German soldiers and officers, while being a sniper in 1047 RR of 284 RD of 62 Army

Зайцев, Василий Григорьевич

[GregSingh]

Daily reports from regiments to divisional HQ are available online. I cheched around 10 of them with random dates and he was not mentioned in any of these, but some others snipers were... Perhaps I was unlucky...

[Art]

Did he killed the best german sniper especially sent to kill him in Stalingrad ?

This part of the story is a legend.

[Jan-Hendrik]

from 10th Oct to 17th Dec 1942 he killed 225 German soldiers

Which seems , at last to myself, largely exaggerated. Even the best german snipers did not have so much 'success' within a timeframe of a year...

Looks rather like the hundreds to destroyed Tigers at Kursk...

Jan-Hendrik

. Perhaps I was unlucky...

I think someting else!

[Waleed Y. Majeed]

By no means a fictional person.
If he did what he did is a different matter,
I don't know.
Here he is in his senior years.
https://youtu.be/692xwcADYdw

David, a simple google search and you'll
find tons of pictures etc. of him.

w

[Art]

from 10th Oct to 17th Dec 1942 he killed 225 German soldiers

Which seems , at last to myself, largely exaggerated. Even the best german snipers did not have so much 'success' within a timeframe of a year...

Not the world's largest claim. See, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4

[DavidFrankenberg]

Did he killed the best german sniper especially sent to kill him in Stalingrad ?

This part of the story is a legend.

What about that ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3QsBUoX2aQ
German soldier Vincenz Griesemer's testimony. He was a german soldier, but in which division, regiment ?

By no means a fictional person.
If he did what he did is a different matter,
I don't know.
Here he is in his senior years.
https://youtu.be/692xwcADYdw

David, a simple google search and you'll
find tons of pictures etc. of him.

w

Yes, i know, but... you know we never know !
Thanks for the video.

[Reigo2]

If one assumes that a sniper (no matter which army) was a honest person then still the question remains how often the reportedly killed enemy was actually wounded or mistakenly reported as hit. I believe that like in air war there was overclaim (honest or dishonest). However if air war claims can be often verified the sniper claims are very often impossible to verify.

[randwick]

.
German unit report the Soviet snipers as a real problems , soldiers memoirs are quite vocal of them being deadly

[DavidFrankenberg]

.
German unit report the Soviet snipers as a real problems , soldiers memoirs are quite vocal of them being deadly

As is saying a german soldier in this video https://youtu.be/g3QsBUoX2aQ?t=97

[Knouterer]

I'm sure enemy snipers were a problem for the Germans, but it seems unlikely that in the middle of a great battle they could identify one particular sniper as particularly deadly. Even if they did, it would be a local problem, to be solved at local, i.e. battalion or regimental, level, by countersnipers or an artillery or mortar concentration on his (suspected) position.

It seems highly unlikely that the staff of 6th Army, facing hundreds of thousands of Russians, would have time to worry about one indivdual sniper, much less to call for a specialist to come all the way from Germany to deal with him.

On top of that: snipers depend for their survival on camouflage, stealth and unpredictability. The history of sniping records many instances of snipers who got killed because they returned to a hide they had used before.

So how do these two adversaries find each other again and again, in the middle of a raging battle? It just doesn't make sense.

[randwick]

.
I'm not so sure , rumors ,prisoners , the M.o. would indicate some identity , paranoia is a survival instinct and hard bitten soldiers have it to an extreme level
during the second Iraqi war there were rumors of a top Iraqi sniper ,supposedly an Olympic champion making the Marines nervous