2023-12-28 16:15:19
During World War II, Stalingrad meant a lot to Germans and Russians. For some, the soldiers of Adolf Hitler, winning meant ending the heart of the enemy resistance and the city that bore the name of the Supreme Comrade. For others, the men of the Red Army, being defeated was synonymous with ending up in the firing squad by order of Joseph Stalin. Thus, in the little more than 100 kilometers long and 10 wide that this city had, more than three and a half million soldiers fought. Most of them, in the case of the Russians, were poor unfortunates who barely knew how to hold a rifle and who had been brought to the area on trains from all over the USSR.
However, among them all, and even above the most veteran troops, were Stalin’s silent assassins: the fearsome snipers of the Red Army. Men with excellent aim who, trained to camouflage themselves among the ruins of the buildings and the white snow that fell on the region, caused real fear among the Germans. “In half-destroyed buildings throughout the city, hidden snipers […] they could maintain precise and debilitating fire against almost anyone who moved almost anywhere. Actions against snipers became part of the Stalingrad myth, since discovering them was costly and difficult,” explains the historian. Andrew Roberts in his work ‘The Storm in War’.
Soviet snipers, who usually acted in tandem or in small groups, earned a fearsome legend. And not only because they could destroy the servants of the Germans’ heavy machine guns – the well-known MG-42, capable of destroying an entire Russian unit thanks to their between 1,200 and 1,800 shots per minute – but because they had no mercy even with the enemies, nor with the supposed traitors to Russia. «When the Germans convinced starving Russian children to refill their water canteens in the Volga in exchange for a piece of bread [para evitar a los tiradores rusos]the snipers of the Red Army killed those traitors to the Motherland when they returned from the river,” adds the expert in his work.
But among them there was one who stood out above the rest: Vasili Záitsev, remembered for the film ‘Enemy at the Gates’ and for having destroyed a long list of enemy soldiers thanks to the teachings that his father and grandfather gave him during the childhood.
The deadliest sniper is born
The Russian steppe saw the birth of Vasili Grigorievich Zaitsev, one of the most prominent snipers of the USSR, on March 23, 1915. The region in which he came into the world was the town of Yeléninskoye, in the Ural Mountains, an area located in the south-east of the country whose extreme cold weathered this Soviet since his childhood. The last link in a long family of hunters, they did not have to spend many winters until our protagonist began to be instructed in the art of shooting and camouflage by his grandfather, Andrey Alexeievich. However, the age at which he fired his first shot is a total unknown, since he does not report it in his memoirs. In them he limits himself to pointing out that his childhood ended when they put a bow in his hands. “Shoot with firm aim and look your prey in the eyes, you are no longer a child,” his mentor told him at the time.
From that moment on, whether using arrows or shotgun cartridges, little ‘Vasia’ began to train in the art of “making himself invisible” (as he himself claimed) to stalk and kill his prey. His small stature and small wingspan helped him to this end and he soon became a true master of the hunt. «Let’s say we want to take a look at a goat, to do so, we have to camouflage ourselves in such a way that the animal looks at us as if we were a bush or a blade of hay. You have to remain still, without breathing or blinking. If what we want is to get close to a rabbit’s hole, we will have to crawl in the direction of the wind, so that not a single strand of grass creaks under our weight,” explains Zaitsev himself.
In the following years, Vasili learned the rules of any good hunter, tricks that he later put into practice when he became a sniper. Although, in those cases, he’s killing fascists instead of deer. At just ten years old, he acquired the ability to interpret animal tracks like someone reading a book and managed to build hiding places so well camouflaged that they went unnoticed even by his grandfather.
He learned so quickly that, when he was only twelve years old, Andréi gave him his first hunting shotgun. «I stood at attention and he slung it over my shoulder. “I was so short that the butt of the shotgun touched the ground, but at least I was no longer a child,” adds Zaitsev. That was also the day his father gave him advice he would never forget in Stalingrad: “Use every bullet wisely, Vasili. Learn to shoot and never miss.
In addition to learning to shoot like a true expert, Vasili gradually cut his teeth in the Ural Mountains to such an extent that, at the age of 13 and 14, he used to spend several nights outside his house stalking prey. On one occasion, for example, he slept outdoors for two nights to kill a wolf that, after falling into one of his traps, had fled. All this, with the only help of his shotgun, his dogs and a bonfire that prevented the beasts from finishing him off after the arrival of darkness. When he returned home with the body of his victim on his shoulders, his relatives not only did not congratulate him on the capture, but they did not even turn their heads. For them, that was something normal.
All of this helped him become a sniper master. And don’t think that he is an empty phrase. After being recruited and demonstrating his skills during the Battle of Stalingrad, his officers entrusted him with the mission of training a group of expert marksmen capable of sowing panic among enemy soldiers. His story as a soldier, between the waters of reality and exaggerated fiction, also ended with an epic duel to the death against a German officer that earned him a multitude of medals after World War II. Today, however, we review his teachings through some of his most famous phrases. Maxims that he left blank in his diary, ‘Memoirs of a sniper in Stalingrad‘, the bestseller that catapulted him to fame inside and outside the domains of Joseph Stalin.
1
“Shoot with steady aim and look your prey in the eyes” (his grandfather told him when he was little).
2
«Use each bullet conscientiously. Learn to shoot and never miss »(her father told it to him during his childhood, later he transmitted it to his students).
3
«Let’s say we want to take a look at a goat, to do so, we have to camouflage ourselves in such a way that the animal looks at us as if we were a bush or a blade of hay. “You have to remain motionless, without breathing or blinking.” (hunter’s teaching that he applied on the battlefield).
4
«Shooting on a soldier who is building a trench is like playing billiards. You always have to think about what the next play will be. If you shoot now, while his back is turned, he and the shovel will fall into the pit. But if you wait and hit him when he is facing you, the shovel will stay up, on this side of the embankment. “This way, when his partner goes to pick her up, you can take him down too.”
5
“Generally, Nazi snipers take positions within their own defensive lines, while ours are stationed at the edge of the front line.”
6
“Through experience I learned two essential things: observe carefully and have temperance.”
7
“If we waste bullets on whiting the big fish will never show their heads.” It was one of his most notable maxims. Zaitsev taught his students that they should not kill the common soldiers, but wait for the higher-ranking officers.
8
«When you shoot you know if he has shaved, you can see the expression on his face, he hums. And while your man rubs his forehead or tilts his head to put his helmet on, you look for the best spot for the bullet to impact; “He has no idea that he has only a few seconds left to live.”
They are not all that he gave, but they are the most notable.
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