The shots of Soviet snipers could stop the attacks of entire fascist companies. German well-aimed shooters were sent to fight them, whose fate in most cases turned out to be unenviable. We will tell about their duels …
Front-line training
Dmitry Kusturov's book Sergeant Without Missing describes how Soviet more experienced shooters carefully - on an informal level - taught newcomers the secrets of marksmanship. Of course, both in the USSR and in Germany (after 1942), the theoretical and practical training of snipers was taken seriously.
However, according to the hero of this documentary story, Fedor Okhlopkov, practical experience was incomparably more important than studying at a sniper school. The Red Army soldier Okhlopkov, first of all, explained how important it is to know your rifle and yourself. He tirelessly "… repeated that when you pull the trigger, you move the gun, willingly or unwillingly, to the right, and the shooter must know how far away he gets from this shift."
In general, the skill of snipers in the war consisted of many little things that will not be discussed in the "training", but without which it is impossible to win a duel. That is why the military friendship that reigned among Soviet shooters undoubtedly played a major role in the victory of our snipers in confrontations with the German shooting aces.
Promotional video:
50 Reichmarks
In the Wehrmacht, on the contrary, the spirit of individualism and self-importance prevailed to a large extent. It was considered shameful and even harmful to the ideology of the superiority of the Aryan nation over the "barbarian people" to ask a comrade why the Russians shoot with a metche.
At the same time, German riflemen in letters home complained about the assistants assigned to them. Like, without money, they formally referred to orders for the preparation of sniper positions. There were even prices - 50 Reichmarks, which had to be paid to "everything was done as it should."
Sniper Nikolai Ilyin once read the following entry in the diary of a killed German sniper: “The corporal … pretended to understand nothing about my scheme. Then I gave him fifty marks and immediately became quick-witted. Ilyin told the writer Naumov about this. Thus, the spirit of German practicality, when you have to pay for everything, was indestructible even in war.
The Germans were afraid of duels
In general, it is extremely difficult to find descriptions of sniper duels in German memoirs of marksmen. For example, a certain Knight of the Iron Cross, Alpine shooter Josef Ollerberg, who was responsible for 257 killed Soviet soldiers, admitted that the Russians had an advantage precisely due to the team spirit, while the Nazis in most cases had to "work alone."
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko - sniper 25th.
Chapaevskaya rifle division. The hero of the USSR. Destroyed 309 fascists. 36 Hitlerite snipers entered a duel with Pavlichenko at different times. They all lost.
Therefore, the Germans avoided duels, preferring powerful shelling to suppress our riflemen. Josef Ollerberg justified the advantages of Russian snipers by the fact that the Red Army men were provided with the best sniper rifles in the world, which all German shooters dreamed of getting.
By the way, this memoirist admitted that he wrote his memoirs under an assumed name, since he had committed crimes against the civilian population. At the same time, the editors ensured that everything else in the book of the Alpine shooter was true.
Savvy is the second weapon of a sniper
Soviet marksmen have always treated German snipers as professionals. Therefore, we carefully prepared for duels, trying to win through ingenuity.
Recalling one such "meeting" Fyodor Okhlopkov wrote that "the real enemy is a fascist sniper, whom he has been waiting for for the fourth day." The fact is that the German sniper school taught, among other things, how to leave the position. As a rule, short and quick zigzag dashes were performed for this.
It was believed that from a distance of 200-300 meters it is almost impossible to hit such a target. Our snipers called this tactic "rabbit-style" and repeatedly denied this statement. But the hidden German sniper, who for days did not give out his position, and in fact, represented a mortal danger.
Fyodor Matveyevich Okhlopkov - sniper of the 234th rifle regiment, Hero of the Soviet Union. He destroyed 429 Nazi soldiers and officers from a sniper rifle.
In order to find him, Okhlopkov and his partner Ganshin made a real walking scarecrow in a camouflage coat with a hat.
“… When the scarecrow, set in motion by Ganshin with the help of a rope along a stretched wire, began to“walk, bending over,”he (a German sniper) leaned out almost half his head. Fyodor here, having said to himself "who do you want to take the gun," pulled the trigger. The fascist threw up his hand unnaturally and threw himself down.
A unique duel is also called the fight of Akhat Akhmetyanov, about which they wrote the article "Duel of Snipers" in "Krasnaya Zvezda" No. 305 dated December 26, 1943. Akhmetyanov with a well-aimed shot detonated an 82-mm mortar mine, which he had previously buried next to a possible position of a German sniper.
Patience is the third weapon of Russian snipers
Hollywood even directed the film Enemy at the Gates about a sniper fight, in which Jude Law played our shooter. We are talking, of course, about the battle of Vasily Zaitsev from the South Urals and the head of the Berlin school of snipers, Major Koenings, in Stalingrad.
A scene from the film Enemy at the Gates.
The confrontation lasted four days, during which the duelists tested each other's patience. The German European shooting champion was the first to lose his nerve when he mechanically shot into the helmet raised by his partner Zaitsev, and then looked out of cover to make sure of his victory.
For this negligence, the fascist was killed by an accurate shot from a Red Army soldier. The fact that patience and endurance was the third weapon of Soviet snipers was recalled by all our famous riflemen: Surkov, Nikolaev, Sidorenko, Kulbertinov and others.