Koenig, Erwin

In the autobiography of Sniper Notes, Vasily Zaitsev writes about the head of the Berlin school of snipers sent to Stalingrad to destroy Zaitsev. The book describes in detail a sniper duel between two opponents. According to Zaitsev, on one of the days of the confrontation, he calculated the location of Koenig hiding behind an iron sheet surrounded by broken bricks in a neutral strip between Soviet and German positions. With his friend Kulikov, Zaitsev prepared the bait for the German sniper. Kulikov made a “blind shot”, after which they began to wait until the sun ceased to shine in the face so that the brilliance of the optics did not give out a position. After the sun left the Soviet soldiers in the shade, Kulikov raised his helmet, followed by a shot. The German, thinking that he hit the target, rose a little, and Zaitsev shot him with a shot ^[1] .

The historian Frank Ellis, in his book The Cauldron of Stalingrad, questions the existence of a sniper Erwin Koenig. Firstly, there are no sources confirming its existence, and also at the end of 1942 - the beginning of 1943 there was simply no sniper school in Berlin . Secondly, Ellis notes that not a single Soviet source has an exact date for a sniper duel, although Zaitsev usually gives specific dates of events in his memoirs. Ellis also finds a disagreement in the position of Koenig: if the sun shone in his face in the evening, then he should have turned his face to the west, where there were German, not Soviet positions. He also doubts that an experienced sniper could make such a mistake by substituting the glass of an optical sight under the sun's rays. Meanwhile, Ellis does not deny that on that day Zaitsev could have destroyed any other German sniper, but casts doubt on his exclusivity ^[2] .

The sniper duel between Zaitsev and Koenig became the central storyline in the 2001 feature film Enemy at the Gates , Jude Law played the role of Vasily Zaitsev, and Ed Harris played his opponent.