Discussion Topic: Enemy At The Gates

[SeekHer]

DSCAV - do you by any chance use any of the weapons of the former U. (United or Unified?) Soviet Socialistic Republic--Mosin-Nagant, Makarov, SKS or Kalashnikov?

A Historian studying WWII 500 years from now, if they go mainly by the casualty counts, will mostly likely assume the war to have been a titanic struggle between the USSR and Germany, with the other countries playing relatively minor roles.

Comparatively speaking it would seem to be... from an excellent review in Wiki total deaths estimate vary from 60 to 78 million...]
Country.......Military.........Civilian........Jewish
Russia............10,700,000.....14,154,000.....1,000,000

Germany..........5,533,000.......2,800,000.......160,000
Italy..................301,400..........145,100..........8,000

Britain................382,700...........67,100.....
U.S.A.................416,800............1,700.....
Canada................45,300.............none.....

When you read the full article and you see that certain deaths may be small in numbers but what percentage of the population does it represent...I.E.
Lithuania in 1939 had a population of 2,575,000...zero were killed military but 212,000 civilian casualties and an additional 141,000 Jewish deaths for a total of 353,000 and that represents 13.71% of the total population of the country but 98+% of the Jewish population
..Only Poland (16.7%) had a higher percentage of deaths and followed by Latvia (11.38%) and then Greece (11.17%)...Russia (14.18%) and Germany (10.1%) and USA (.32%) and UK (.94%)...

[Greg]

I liked it. I'm pretty able to willingly suspend my disbelief and to self-filter for propaganda.

My propaganda filters are very, very good. That's not an issue for me, as it may be for other people with weaker filters who need to avoid propaganda as a defense.

I enjoyed it. There's something nice about killing the bad guys and saving your people from gas chambers - it was a wash on slave labor camps, but life's far from perfect. I know I have no trouble rooting for bad guys, when they do good. And then I got to thinking.... a dangerous pastime, I know.

There's a larger angle to this. One of our strengths is that we're capable of empathy, we're capable of mentally putting outselves in other people's shoes. Potentially, it means we always have the ability to understand our adversaries better than they understand us. And it also gives us access to lots of good stories. (Quick example, who here read "Zoey's Tale" and didn't get shivers rooting for the otherwise quite nasty and unappealing Obin?)

Plus there was Rachel's butt.

Yeah that always helps.

[MiddleAgedKen]

I find any Soviet hero to be a captivating story. What would inspire a man to do such things to protect such a heinous system which abuses him? Maybe the inspiration comes from protecting his friends and home, or maybe the Nazi's were simply worse in comparison...

Za rodina!

They weren't fighting to protect a goes-without-sayingly heinous system, they were fighting for the Motherland, and -- to the extent that military training systems have common elements that transcend place and time -- for their buddies in the outfit.

I didn't see the movie, but I enjoyed the book upon which it was based.

[D5CAV]

DSCAV - do you by any chance use any of the weapons of the former U. (United or Unified?) Soviet Socialistic Republic--Mosin-Nagant, Makarov, SKS or Kalashnikov?

Yes. a semi-auto copy of a PKM. I'd own a real one if our own marxist leaders would allow, but we have long gone from being citizens to being slaves. I also own a Valmet and a Galil which are copies of the Kalishnikov design.

IMHO, the PKM ranks among the top three GPMG designs:
1. German MG42 and it's variants the MG1 and MG3 (still the best IMHO)
2. Belgian MAG58 and it's US variant the M240 (heaviest of the three but never jams)
3. Soviet PKM (I might give it a higher ranking if I could play with a real one and see how it stacks up in reliability to the MAG58)

The closest the Soviets got to a capitalist, free market system was in their weapons procurement and design. They had multiple "design bureaus" which would compete on contracts for aircraft, tanks, and firearms. Frankly, they seemed to have a more competition in their defense contracts than the US government. Of course, the Supreme Soviet under the old USSR had more turnover than the US Senate, and changed members about on par with the US House of Representatives.

So much for a representative Republic.

[D5CAV]

Major Konig was real just not killed by Vassili and they did send a top rated sniper to take him out...

Yes, there was Sniper Training Schools back in Germany/Austria/Bavaria as well as mobile ones at the front...Wilna had a five month course, Mittenwald had a 10 week course but for Gebirgsjäger (Mountain troops) and at the base near Judenberg...By 1943 all the training centres had "marksmen" courses for the better shots as well as ones behind the lines in Russia to get the basics and then if they survived, were sent to Germany to get further training...

These books might be of interest:
Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger by Albrecht Wacker

SNIPER ACE: From the Eastern Front to Siberia by Bruno Sutkus

NOTES OF A RUSSIAN SNIPER by Vassili Zaitsev (Back ordered)
(Just ordered the last two from Casemate Publishers great election of military books)

For the effect of Russian sniper's on the German soldier the account by Captain William Lubbeck called AT LENINGRAD’S GATES: The Combat Memoirs of a Soldier with Army Group North is excellent...

For the effect of German snipers on the American soldiers A FOOT SOLDIER FOR PATTON: The Story of a "Red Diamond" Infantryman with the U.S. Third Army by Michael Bilder with James G. Bilder is worth reading

Grandfather’s Tale: The Tale of the German Sniper by Timothy Erenberger
Although fictional, but is based on the factual memoirs of a number of Wehrmacht soldiers and snipers…It’s also well written, good character development, well described battle scenes and the technical stuff is correct—what more can you ask for!

You know who trained Wahlberg for his role? Dr. Ignatius Piazza's Front Sight Firearms Training Institute and the trainer was Joe LeBleu author of Longrifle: A Sniper's Story in Iraq and Afghanistan

The Germans, who are fastidious record keepers, have no record of a Maj. Erwin Konig.

Citing a ghostwritten Soviet autobiography of Vasily Zaitsev for evidence of his record is like citing Josef Goebbels for a history of the Jewish people.

Thanks for the info on who trained Mark Wahlberg. He has done better in other films, so I will forgive him given the poor advice he must have gotten. My opinion of Dr. Piazza is unchanged, as it would be hard for it to get lower. I have no knowlege of Mr. LeBleu, but if he works for Dr. Piazza ... well, a man is judged by the company he keeps.

Yes. Stalingrad was notorious for the toll taken by snipers on both sides. I'm sure there are many interesting stories to be told about that time. Communist propaganda (or Nazi propaganda for that matter), just doesn't make interesting drama.

[SeekHer]

The Germans, who are fastidious record keepers, have no record of a Maj. Erwin Konig.
Citing a ghostwritten Soviet autobiography of Vasily Zaitsev for evidence of his record is like citing Josef Goebbels for a history of the Jewish people.

I was addressing more the fact that there was a major in charge of one (or more) of the sniper schools that the Germans had, I don't know of Zossen, but the ones I mentioned and Berlin, Munich and some of the larger cities had them at the nearby training centres...The name was garbled at best during the various interviews and press releases but a counter sniper, call it a duel, did happen, according to Vassili and also the Germans just the name and rank is unconfirmed but the outcome wasn't!

According to Wiki:

Erwin König, aka Heinz Thorvald (died c. 1942) was a highly-skilled Wehrmacht sniper who was said to be allegedly killed by the legendary Red Army sniper Vasily Zaytsev during the Battle for Stalingrad.
Zaytsev claims the duel took place over a period of three days in the ruins of Stalingrad. In his own memoirs, Zaytsev refers to him as being a German sniper named Herr Koning (Koning is Dutch for King, cognate to König in German), identified as the head of a sniper school in Berlin, by documents taken from his dead body. This is unconfirmed as German Heer personnel records make no mention of any German sniper called König or Koning.

According to SniperCentral.com List of WW2 Snipers:

Name ......Service ......Kills
Simo Hayha Finland 542
Ivan Sidorenko 500
Nikolay Yakovlevich Ilyin 496
Kulbertinov 487
V. N. Pchelintsev 456
Mikhail Budenkov 437
Fyodor Matveevich Okhlopkov 429
Fyodor Djachenko 425
Vasilij Ivanovich Golosov 422
Afanasy Gordienko 417
Stepan Petrenko 412
Sulo Kolkka W.W. II Finland 400+
Erwin Konig W.W. II Germany 400
Vasili Zaitsev 400
Semen D. Nomokonov 367
Abdukhani Idrisov
Philipp Yakovlevich Rubaho 346
Matthäus Hetzenauer Germany 345
Victor Ivanovich Medvedev 331
E. Nicolaev 324
Heinz Thorvald Germany 300
All are russian except as noted
Both names are listed so who knows...

I really liked this comment fromEverything2:

In German records, there are no traces of either König nor Thorwald - not to say this information was removed to save face.
It is unclear which statements are fact in this situation, or if the duel was simply a propaganda scam fabricated by the Soviets, or if Königs name simply served as an embodiment of the German adversary in the Soviet propaganda.
It is certainly a topic open to discussion and debate.

[Weetabix]

In German records, there are no traces of either König nor Thorwald - not to say this information was removed to save face.

Didn't they also keep lots of highly incriminating records? Hard to imagine they'd destroy information that they didn't think anyone else would be privy to, to save face.

[Ben S]

In German records, there are no traces of either König nor Thorwald - not to say this information was removed to save face.

Didn't they also keep lots of highly incriminating records? Hard to imagine they'd destroy information that they didn't think anyone else would be privy to, to save face.

They also destroyed many incriminating records. As allied troops would approach concentration camps, the Nazis would burn the records when they could.

[Scott Free]

An article on the remarkable Lt. Hayha

Little was the operative word. Häyhä stood just 5 ft 3 in (1.6 m) tall, which was one basis for his choice of weapon, an M/28 or M28/30 Soviet Mosin-Nagant rifle that suited his small frame. He also rejected a scoped rifle in favour of basic iron sights for other reasons: it meant he presented less of target as he could keep his head lower; it negated the risk of his position being exposed by sun glare in a telescopic lens; and lastly open sights were not prone to fogging up or breaking which was a concern in the snow and ice of the Winter War. Häyhä was a professional.

Of course an iron-sighted rifle also made aiming more difficult, but with 505 confirmed kills as a sniper – the other 200 he shot using a sub-machine gun – Häyhä clearly had a keen eye. Another tactic this greatest of gunmen used to conceal his own position from the enemy was to compact the snow before him so that his shot would not disturb the snow, and in true commando fashion he also kept his mouth was full of snow so that his breath did not give him away.

I like a sniper that uses iron sights.

[Highspeed]

During WW2 Russian snipers were sent to the UK for propaganda tours and to exchange information.
They were assessed by our snipers as being poor marksmen, and had some unbelievable claims - like several hundred one-shot kills.
Presumably they were 'assigned' their score and told that it was just a white lie needed in order to boost morale and terrify the Germans.