The invasion of Russia was Hitler's biggest mistake in World War II, which led to the defeat of his predatory army. Hitler and Napoleon failed to take into account two important factors that changed the course of the war: the harsh Russian winters and the Russians themselves. Russia plunged into a war, where even village teachers fought. Many of them were women who fought not in open combat, but as snipers, who chalked up many Nazi soldiers and officers to their account, while demonstrating incredible skill with a sniper rifle. Many of them became famous heroes of Russia, earning accolades and military distinctions. Below are the ten most dangerous Russian female snipers in military history.

Tanya Baramzina

Tatyana Nikolaevna Baramzina was a kindergarten teacher before becoming a sniper in the 70th Infantry Division of the 33rd Army. Tanya fought on the Belorussian front and was parachuted behind enemy lines to carry out a secret mission. Before that, she already had 16 German soldiers on her account, and during this assignment she killed another 20 Nazis. She was eventually caught, tortured and executed. Tanya was posthumously awarded the Order of Golden Star”, and she was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on March 24, 1945.

Nadezhda Kolesnikova

Nadezhda Kolesnikova was a volunteer sniper who served on the Volkhov Eastern Front in 1943. She is credited with the destruction of 19 enemy soldiers. Like Kolesnikova, only 800,000 female soldiers fought in the Red Army as snipers, tank gunners, privates, machine gunners, and even pilots. Not many participants in the hostilities survived: out of 2,000 volunteers, only 500 could remain alive. For her service, Kolesnikova was awarded a medal for courage after the war.

Tanya Chernova

Not many people know this name, but Tanya became the prototype of a female sniper with the same name in the movie "Enemy at the Gates" (her role was played by Rachel Weisz). Tanya was a Russian-American who came to Belarus to fetch her grandparents, but they had already been killed by the Germans. Then she becomes a Red Army sniper, joining the Hares sniper group, formed by the famous Vasily Zaitsev, who is also featured in the film mentioned above. He is played by Jude Law. Tanya killed 24 enemy soldiers before being wounded in the stomach by a mine. After that, she was sent to Tashkent, where she recovered from her wound for a long time. Fortunately, Tanya survived the war.

Ziba Ganieva

Ziba Ganiyeva was one of the most charismatic figures in the Red Army, having been a Russian celebrity and Azerbaijani film actress in the pre-war era. Ganieva fought in the 3rd Moscow Communist Rifle Division of the Soviet Army. She was a brave woman who went behind the front lines as many as 16 times and killed 21 German soldiers. She took an active part in the battle for Moscow and was seriously wounded. Her injuries prevented her from returning to action after 11 months in the hospital. Ganiyeva was awarded the military orders of the Red Banner and the Red Star.

Rosa Shanina

Roza Shanina, who was called the "Invisible Horror of East Prussia", began to fight when she was not even 20 years old. She was born in the Russian village of Yedma on April 3, 1924. She wrote to Stalin twice to be allowed to serve in a battalion or reconnaissance company. She became the first female sniper to be awarded the Order of Glory and participated in the famous battle for Vilnius. Rosa Shanina had 59 confirmed destroyed soldiers on her account, but she did not live to see the end of the war. While trying to save a wounded Russian officer, she was seriously wounded by a shell fragment in the chest and died on the same day, January 27, 1945.

Lyuba Makarova

Guards Sergeant Lyuba Makarova was one of the 500 lucky ones who survived the war. Fighting in the 3rd Shock Army, she was known for her active service on the 2nd Baltic Front and the Kalinin Front. Makarova chalked up 84 enemy soldiers and returned to her native Perm as a military hero. For her services to the country, Makarova was awarded the Order of Glory 2nd and 3rd degree.

Claudia Kalugina

Klavdia Kalugina was one of the youngest soldiers and snipers in the Red Army. She started fighting when she was only 17 years old. She began her military career working at an ammunition factory, but she soon enrolled in a sniper school and was subsequently sent to the 3rd Belorussian Front. Kalugina fought in Poland and then participated in the Battle of Leningrad, helping to defend the city from the Germans. She was a very accurate sniper and chalked up as many as 257 enemy soldiers. Kalugina remained in Leningrad until the end of the war.

Nina Lobkovskaya

Nina Lobkovskaya joined the Red Army after the death of her father in the war in 1942. Nina fought in the 3rd shock army, where she rose to the rank of lieutenant. She survived the war and even participated in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. She commanded a whole company of 100 female snipers there. Nina had 89 destroyed enemy soldiers on her account.

Nina Pavlovna Petrova

Nina Pavlovna Petrova is also known as "Mother Nina" and could very well be the oldest female World War II sniper. She was born in 1893, and by the beginning of the war she was already 48 years old. After she entered the sniper school, Nina was assigned to the 21st Guards Rifle Division, where she actively performed her sniper duties. Petrova chalked up 122 enemy soldiers. She survived the war but died in a tragic car accident just a week after the end of the war at the age of 53.

Ludmila Pavlichenko

Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who was born in Ukraine in 1916, was the most famous Russian female sniper, nicknamed "Lady Death". Before the war, Pavlichenko was a university student and an amateur shooter. After graduating from the sniper school at the age of 24, she was sent to the 25th Chapaev Rifle Division of the Red Army. Pavlichenko was probably the most successful female sniper in military history. She fought in Sevastopol and Odessa. She had 309 confirmed enemy soldiers killed, including 29 enemy snipers. Pavlichenko survived the war, after she was discharged from active duty due to her injuries. She was awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, and her face was even depicted on a postage stamp.

Before starting a story about the legendary snipers of World War II, let's briefly dwell on the very concept of "sniper" and the essence of the mysterious profession of a sniper, the history of its occurrence. For without this, much in the story will remain a mystery with seven seals. Skeptics will say: - well, what is mysterious here? Sniper is a good shooter. And they will be right. But only the word "snipe" (from the English snipe) has nothing to do with shooting. This is the name of the swamp snipe - a small harmless bird with an unpredictable flight path. And only a skilled shooter can hit her in flight. Therefore, snipe hunters were nicknamed "snipers".

The use of long-barreled hunting rifles in battles for accurate shooting was recorded during civil war in England (1642-1648). The most famous example was the assassination of Lord Brooke, the commander of the parliamentary army, in 1643. A soldier on duty on the roof of the cathedral fired at the lord when he inadvertently leaned out of cover. And hit the left eye. Such a shot, fired from a distance of 150 yards (137 m), was considered outstanding at a typical range of aimed fire of about 80 yards (73 m).

The war of the British army with the American colonists, among whom were many hunters, exposed the vulnerability of regular troops to skilled marksmen who hit targets at a distance twice the effective fire of muskets. This turned combat units, in between battles and during movements, into a target for hunting. Convoys, individual detachments suffered unforeseen losses; there was no protection from the fire, the enemy who had taken cover; the enemy remained inaccessible, and in most cases simply invisible. Since that time, snipers have been considered a separate military specialty.

By the beginning of the 19th century, riflemen were able to hit enemy manpower at a distance of 1200 yards (1097 m), which was an incredible achievement, but not fully realized by the military command. AT Crimean War lone British from long-range fittings with custom-made sights killed Russian soldiers and officers at a distance of 700 or more yards. A little later, special sniper units appeared, which showed that a small group of skillful shooters scattered over the area could withstand parts of the enemy's regular army. Already at that time, the British had a rule: - "From one match three do not light up," which was relevant before the advent of night sights and thermal imagers. The first English soldier lit a cigarette - the sniper noticed them. The second Englishman lit a cigarette - the sniper took the lead. And already the third one received an accurate shot from the shooter.

Increasing the distance of the shot revealed a significant problem for snipers: it was extremely difficult to combine the figure of a person and the front sight of a gun: for the shooter, the front sight was larger in size than an enemy soldier. At the same time, the quality indicators of rifles already made it possible to conduct aimed fire at a distance of up to 1800 m. And only during the First World War, when the use of snipers at the front became widespread, did the first optical sights appear, and almost simultaneously in the armies of Russia, Germany, Britain and Austria Hungary. As a rule, three to five times optics were used.

The First World War was the heyday of sniper shooting, which was determined by positional, trench warfare, thousands of kilometers of front. Huge losses from sniper fire also required significant organizational changes in the rules of warfare. The troops massively switched to khaki uniforms, and the uniform of junior officers lost their pronounced insignia. There was also a ban on performing a military greeting in combat conditions.

In the German troops, by the end of the first year of the war, there were about 20 thousand snipers. Each company had 6 full-time shooters. German snipers, in the first period of the positional war, on the entire front, disabled the British, several hundred people a day, which within a month gave a loss figure equal in number to an entire division. Any appearance of a British soldier outside the trenches guaranteed instant death. Even wearing wristwatches was a great danger, as the light they reflected immediately attracted the attention of German snipers. Any object or part of the body that remained outside the shelter for three seconds caused the fire of the Germans. The degree of German superiority in this area was so obvious that, according to eyewitnesses, some German snipers, feeling their absolute impunity, amused themselves by shooting at all kinds of objects. Therefore, infantrymen traditionally did not like snipers and, upon detection, they killed them on the spot. Since then, an unwritten tradition has gone - do not take snipers prisoner.

The British quickly responded to the threat by setting up their own sniper school and, in the end, completely suppressed the enemy shooters. Canadian, Australian and South African hunters began to teach in British sniper schools, who taught not only shooting, but also the ability to remain unnoticed by the hunted object: disguise, hide from the enemy and patiently guard targets. They began to use camouflage suits made of light green matter and tufts of grass. English snipers worked out the technique of using "sculptures" - dummies of local objects, inside of which arrows were placed. Invisible to enemy observers, they carried out visual reconnaissance of enemy forward positions, revealed the location of fire weapons and destroyed the most important targets. The British believed that having a good rifle and shooting accurately from it was far from the only difference between a sniper. They believed, not without reason, that observation brought to a high degree of perfection, "a sense of the terrain", insight, excellent eyesight and hearing, calmness, personal courage, perseverance and patience are no less important than a well-aimed shot. An impressionable or nervous person can never become a good sniper.

Another axiom of sniping was established during the First World War - the best remedy for a sniper is another sniper. It was during the war years that sniper duels first took place.

The best sniper in those years was recognized as the Canadian Indian hunter Francis Peghmagabow, with 378 confirmed victories. Since then, the criterion of sniper skill is the number of victories.

Thus, on the fronts of the First World War, the basic principles and specific sniping techniques were determined, which were the basis for today's training and functioning of snipers.

In the interwar period, during the war in Spain, a direction unusual for snipers appeared - the fight against aircraft. In the divisions of the Republican army, sniper detachments were created to fight Franco aircraft, primarily bombers, who took advantage of the Republicans' lack of anti-aircraft artillery and bombed from low altitudes. It cannot be said that such use of snipers was effective, but 13 aircraft were still shot down. Yes, and during the Second World War, cases of successful firing at aircraft were recorded on the fronts. However, these were only cases.

Having learned the history of the emergence of sniping, consider the essence of the profession of a sniper. In the modern sense, a sniper is a specially trained soldier (an independent combat unit), who is fluent in the art of marksmanship, camouflage and observation; hits the target, as a rule, from the first shot. The task of the sniper is to defeat the command and liaison staff, the secret of the enemy, the destruction of important emerging, moving, open and camouflaged single targets (enemy snipers, officers, etc.). Sometimes a sniper is called well-aimed shooters in other branches of the military (forces) (artillery, aviation).

In the process of "work" of snipers, a certain specificity of activity has developed, which led to the classification military profession. Allocate a sniper-saboteur and an infantry sniper.

A sniper-saboteur (familiar from computer games, cinema and literature) operates alone or with a partner (carrying out fire cover and target designation), often far from the bulk of the troops, in the rear or on enemy territory. Its tasks include: covert incapacitation of important targets (officers, sentinels, valuable equipment), disruption of an enemy attack, sniper terror (inducing panic on ordinary personnel, obstruction of observation, moral suppression). In order not to betray his position, the shooter often shoots under the cover of background noise (weather events, third-party shots, explosions, etc.). Destruction range - from 500 meters and above. The saboteur sniper's weapon is a high-precision rifle with a telescopic sight, sometimes with a silencer, usually with a bolt action. Position masking plays a big role, so it is done with great care. Materials at hand (branches, bushes, earth, dirt, debris, etc.), a special camouflage suit, or ready-made shelters (bunkers, trenches, buildings, etc.) can be used as a disguise.

An infantry sniper operates as part of a rifle unit, sometimes paired with a machine gunner or a pair of submachine gunners (cover group). Tasks - increasing the infantry combat radius, destroying important targets (machine gunners, other snipers, grenade launchers, signalmen). As a rule, does not have time to select a target; shoots at everyone in sight. The battle distance rarely exceeds 400 m. A self-loading rifle with an optical sight is used as a weapon. Extremely mobile, often changes position. As a rule, it has the same means of disguise as the rest of the soldiers. Often, ordinary soldiers without special training, who could shoot accurately, became field snipers.

The sniper is armed with a special sniper rifle with an optical sight and other special devices that facilitate aiming. A sniper rifle is a bolt-action rifle, self-loading, repeating or single-shot, designed for increased accuracy. The sniper rifle has gone through several historical stages in its development. At first, rifles were selected from a batch of conventional weapons, choosing the ones that gave the most accurate fight. Later, sniper rifles began to be made on the basis of serial army models, making minor changes to the design in order to increase shooting accuracy. The very first sniper rifles were slightly larger than regular rifles and were designed for long range shooting. Only at the beginning of the First World War, specially adapted sniper rifles began to play an important role in hostilities. Germany provided hunting rifles with telescopic sights to smash British signal lamps and periscopes. During World War II, sniper rifles were standard battle rifles equipped with a 2x or 3x telescopic sight and stocks for shooting prone or from cover. One of the main tasks of the 7.62-mm army sniper rifle is to defeat small targets at ranges up to 600 m and large targets up to 800 m. At a range of 1000-1200 m, a sniper can conduct harassing fire, limiting the movement of the enemy, preventing mine clearance, etc. .d. Under favorable circumstances, long-range sniping was possible, especially in the case of a telescopic sight with 6x and higher magnification.

Special ammunition for snipers was produced only in Germany, and in sufficient quantities. In other countries, snipers, as a rule, selected cartridges from one batch, and, having shot them, determined for themselves the tactical and technical capabilities of their rifle with such ammunition. German snipers sometimes used sighting cartridges or tracer bullets to determine distance, less often to fix a hit. However, such operations were carried out only if the sniper was completely safe.

Snipers of all warring armies used special camouflage clothing, practical and comfortable. Depending on the season, clothing had to be both warm and waterproof. The most comfortable camouflage for a sniper is shaggy. The face and hands were often painted, the rifle was camouflaged for the season. There were no insignia or any symbols on the snipers' clothes. The sniper knew that he had no chance of surviving if captured if he was identified precisely as a sniper. And so, having hidden the optical sight, he could still impersonate an ordinary infantryman.

In a mobile war, snipers tried not to burden themselves with equipment. The necessary equipment for snipers was binoculars, since the view through the optical sight had a narrow sector, and its prolonged use led to rapid eye fatigue. The greater the magnification of the device, the more confident the sniper felt. If available and possible, telescopes and periscopes, stereo tubes were used. At distracting, false positions, mechanically remote-controlled rifles could be installed.

For "work" the sniper chose a comfortable, protected and invisible position, and more than one, because after one or three shots, the place had to be changed. The position should provide for the possibility of observation, the place of firing and a safe escape route. Whenever possible, snipers always tried to set up positions on high ground, as more convenient for observation and shooting. The arrangement of positions under the walls of buildings that covered the position from the rear was avoided, since such structures always attracted the attention of enemy artillerymen for sighting. The same risky places were individual buildings that could provoke enemy mortar or machine gun fire "just in case." Good hiding places for snipers were destroyed buildings, where you can easily and discreetly change position. Groves or fields with tall vegetation are even better. It is easy to hide here, and the monotonous landscape tires the eyes of the observer. Hedges, bocage are ideal for snipers - it is convenient to conduct aimed fire from here and it is easy to change positions. Snipers always avoided crossroads, since they are periodically fired from guns and mortars for prevention. The favorite position of snipers is wrecked armored vehicles with emergency hatches in the bottom.

The best friend of a sniper is a shadow, it hides the outline, optics do not shine in it. Usually snipers take up their positions before sunrise and stay there until sunset. Sometimes, if the path to their own position was blocked by the enemy, they could remain two or three days in this position without support. On dark nights, snipers did not work, on moonlit nights - only a few with good optics. Despite the existing methods of sniping during the wind, most snipers did not work in strong winds, as well as in heavy precipitation.

Camouflage is the key to a sniper's life. The main principle of disguise is that the observer's eye should not stop at it. Garbage is best suited for this, and snipers often arrange their positions in landfills.

An important place in the "work" of the sniper was occupied by baits. A great way to get a target into the kill zone is with a weapon. The sniper tries to shoot the enemy soldier so that his machine gun remains on the parapet. Sooner or later, someone will try to take it away and get shot too. Often, at the request of a sniper, scouts during a night sortie leave a damaged pistol, a shiny watch, a cigarette case or other bait in his field of activity. Whoever crawls after her will become a sniper's client. A sniper tries only to immobilize a soldier in an open area. And he will wait until they come to his aid. Then he will shoot the assistants and finish off the wounded. If a sniper fires at a group, then the first shot will be at the one coming from behind so that the others do not see that he has fallen. While his colleagues figure out what's what, the sniper will shoot two or three more.

For anti-sniper combat, dummies equipped in military uniform were often used, the higher the quality of the mannequin and the control system for its movement, the higher the chances of catching someone else's, experienced shooter. For novice snipers, a helmet or cap raised on a stick above the parapet was enough. In special cases, specially trained snipers used entire systems of covert surveillance through stereo tubes and remote control fire with them.

These are just a few of the tactics and methods of sniping. And the sniper must also be able to: correctly aim and hold his breath when shooting, master the technique of pulling the trigger, be able to shoot at moving and air targets, determine the range using the binocular or periscope reticle, calculate corrections for atmospheric pressure and wind, be able to draw up a fire card and conduct counter-sniper duel, be able to act during the enemy’s artillery preparation, correctly disrupt the enemy’s attack with sniper fire, correctly, act during the defense and when breaking through the enemy’s defense. A sniper must be able to act alone, in pairs and as part of a sniper group, be able to interview witnesses during an attack by an enemy sniper, be able to detect him, timely see the appearance of an enemy counter-sniper group and be able to work in such groups himself. And many many others. And this is what the military profession of a sniper consists of: knowledge, skills and, of course, the talent of a hunter, a hunter for people.

With the end of the First World War, most countries neglected the experience of sniper shooting received at such a high price. In the British Army, the number of sniper sections in battalions was reduced to eight people. In 1921, optical sights were removed from the SMLE No. 3 sniper rifles that were in storage and put on open sale. The US Army did not have a formal sniper training program, only the Marine Corps had a small number of snipers. France and Italy did not have trained snipers, and Weimer Germany was forbidden to have snipers by international treaties. But in the Soviet Union, shooting training, called the sniper movement, gained the widest scope following the instructions of the Party and the Government "... to hit the hydra of world imperialism not in the eyebrow, but in the eye."

We will consider the use and development of sniping during the Second World War using the example of the largest participating countries.

The Second World War became that period in the history of mankind when people performed the most incredible feats and showed all their hidden talents. Naturally, those fighters whose abilities could be used in military operations were most valued. The Soviet command especially singled out snipers, who, using their skills, could destroy up to a thousand enemy soldiers with well-aimed shots during their service. Lists of the best snipers of World War II, with names and an indication of the number of enemies hit, often flicker in different versions on the Internet. In our article, we gathered those who brought victory closer with all their might, despite the difficulties of front-line life and serious injuries. So, who are they - the best snipers of World War II? And where did they come from, later transforming into an elite caste of fighters?

Shooting training in the USSR

Historians of many countries of the world unanimously declare that during the Second World War, fighters from the USSR proved to be the best snipers. Moreover, they surpassed the enemy and allied soldiers not only in terms of training, but also in the number of shooters. Germany was able to get a little closer to this level only at the end of the war - in 1944. Interestingly, to train their fighters, German officers used manuals written for Soviet snipers. Where did such a number of well-aimed shooters come from in the pre-war period in our country?

Since 1932, shooting training has been carried out with Soviet citizens. During this period of time, the country's leadership established the honorary title "Voroshilovsky shooter", confirmed by a special badge. They were divided into two degrees, the second was considered the most honorary. To obtain it, it was necessary to pass a series of difficult tests that were beyond the power of ordinary shooters. Every boy, and what to hide, and the girls too, dreamed of showing off the badge of the "Voroshilovsky shooter". For this, they spent a lot of time in shooting clubs, working hard.

In the thirty-fourth year of the last century, demonstration competitions were held between our and American shooters. The unexpected result for the US was their loss. The Soviet riflemen snatched the victory by a huge margin, which spoke of their excellent preparation.

Shooting training work was carried out for seven years and was suspended with the outbreak of the first hostilities. However, by this time the "Voroshilovsky shooter" badge was proudly worn by more than nine million civilians of both sexes.

Sniper caste

Now it's no secret to anyone that snipers belong to a special caste of fighters who are carefully protected and transferred from one area of ​​the military conflict to another in order to demoralize the enemy. In addition to the psychological impact on the enemy, these arrows are distinguished by real destructive power and have very impressive "death" lists. For example, the best snipers of World War II from the USSR had long lists of five to seven hundred killed. This takes into account only confirmed deaths, but in reality their number could exceed one thousand soldiers per shooter.

What makes snipers so special? First of all, it is worth saying that these people by their nature are really special. After all, they have the ability to stay motionless for a long time, tracking down the enemy, the utmost concentration of attention, calmness, patience, the ability to make quick decisions and unique accuracy. As it turned out, the required set of qualities and skills was fully possessed by young hunters who spent their entire childhood in the taiga, tracking down the beast. It was they who became the first snipers who fought with conventional rifles, showing simply stunning results.

Later, on the basis of these shooters, a whole unit was formed, which turned into the elite of the Soviet army. It is known that during the war years, sniper meetings were held more than once, designed to increase their effectiveness as a result of the exchange of experience.

At the moment, some foreign historians are trying to challenge the results of Soviet soldiers listed in the list of the best snipers of World War II. But it is quite difficult to do this, because each target is documented. In addition, most experts are sure that the number of real successful shots exceeds the number indicated in the award lists by two or even three times. After all, not every hit target in the heat of battle could be confirmed. Do not forget the fact that many documents take into account the result of a particular sniper only at the time of submission to the award. In the future, his exploits may not have been fully tracked.

Modern historians claim that the top ten snipers of World War II were able to destroy more than four thousand enemy soldiers. There were also women among the excellent shooters, we will talk about them in one of the following sections of our article. After all, these brave ladies skillfully bypassed their colleagues from Germany in their results. So who are they - these people, called the best snipers of World War II?

Of course, the list of Soviet snipers includes far from ten people. According to the archives, their number may be more than one hundred skilled shooters. However, we decided to bring to your attention information about the ten best Soviet snipers of World War II, the results of which still seem fantastic:

• Mikhail Surkov.
• Vasily Kvachantiradze.
• Ivan Sidorenko.
• Nikolai Ilyin.
• Ivan Kulbertinov.
• Vladimir Pchelintsev.
• Peter Goncharov.
• Mikhail Budenkov.
• Vasily Zaitsev.
• Fedor Okhlopkov.

Each of these unique people devoted to a separate section of the article.

Mikhail Surkov

This shooter was drafted into the army from the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where he spent his whole life in the taiga, hunting the beast with his father. With the onset of the war, he picked up a rifle and went to the front to do what he did best - hunt and kill. Thanks to life skills, Mikhail Surkov managed to destroy more than seven hundred Nazis. Among them were ordinary soldiers and officers, which undoubtedly allowed the shooter to be included in the list of the best snipers of World War II.

However, the talented fighter was not presented for the award, since most of his victories could not be documented. Historians attribute this fact to the fact that Surkov liked to rush into the epicenter of the battle. Therefore, in the future it turned out to be quite problematic to determine from whose well-aimed shot this or that enemy soldier fell. Mikhail's brother-soldiers confidently said that he had destroyed more than one thousand fascists. Other people were especially struck by Surkov's ability to remain invisible for long hours, tracking down his enemy.

Vasily Kvachantiradze

This young man went through the whole war from beginning to end. Vasily fought in the rank of foreman and returned home with a large track record of awards. On account of Kvachantiradze - more than half a thousand German fighters. For his accuracy, which ranked him among the best snipers of World War II, by the end of the war he was awarded the title of Hero of the USSR.

Ivan Sidorenko

This fighter is considered one of the most unique Soviet shooters. Indeed, before the war, Sidorenko planned to become a professional artist and had great prospects in this area. But the war ordered in its own way and the young man was sent to military school, after which he went to the front in the rank of officer.

Immediately, the newly minted commander was entrusted with a mortar company, where he showed his sniper talents. During the war years, Sidorenko destroyed five hundred German soldiers, but he himself was seriously wounded three times. After each time, he returned to the front, but in the end, the consequences of the injuries turned out to be very difficult for the body. This did not allow Sidorenko to graduate from the military academy, but before leaving for the reserve he received the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Nikolai Ilyin

Many historians believe that it is Ilyin who is the best Russian sniper of World War II. He is considered not only a unique shooter, but also a talented organizer of the sniper movement. He gathered young soldiers, trained them, forming from them a real backbone of shooters on the Stalingrad front.

It was Nikolai who had the honor to fight with the rifle of the Hero of the USSR Andrukhaev. With it, he destroyed about four hundred enemies, and in total, in three years of hostilities, he managed to kill almost five hundred fascists. In the fall of 1943, he fell in battle, receiving the posthumous title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Ivan Kulbertinov

Naturally, most of the snipers in civilian life were hunters. But Ivan Kulbertinov belonged to hereditary reindeer herders, which was rare among soldiers. Yakut by nationality, he was considered a professional in shooting and, according to his results, outperformed the best snipers of the Wehrmacht of World War II.

Ivan got to the front two years after the outbreak of hostilities and almost immediately opened his death account. He went through the entire war to the end and almost five hundred fascist soldiers were on his list. Interestingly, the unique shooter never received the title of Hero of the USSR, which was awarded to almost all snipers. Historians claim that he was twice nominated for an award, but for unknown reasons, the title never found its hero. After the end of the war, he was presented with a nominal rifle.

Vladimir Pchelintsev

This man had a difficult and interesting fate. It can be said that he was one of the few people who could be called professional snipers. Even before the forty-first year, he studied shooting and even achieved the high rank of master of sports. Pchelintsev had a unique accuracy, which allowed him to destroy four hundred and fifty-six fascists.

Surprisingly, a year after the start of the war, he was delegated to the United States along with Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who was later named the best female sniper of World War II. They spoke at the International Student Congress about how boldly the Soviet youth is fighting for the freedom of their country and urged other states not to surrender under the onslaught of the fascist infection. Interestingly, the shooters were honored to spend the night within the walls of the White House.

Petr Goncharov

Not always fighters immediately understood their calling. For example, Peter did not even suspect that fate had prepared for him a special fate. Goncharov went to war as part of the militia, then he was accepted into the army as a baker. After some time, he became a convoy, which he planned to serve further. However, as a result of a surprise attack by the Nazis, he managed to prove himself as a professional sniper. In the midst of the unfolding battle, Peter raised someone else's rifle and began to accurately destroy the enemy. He even managed to knock out with one shot german tank. This decided the fate of Goncharov.

A year after the start of the war, he received his own sniper rifle, with which he fought for another two years. During this time, he killed four hundred and forty-one enemy soldiers. For this, Goncharov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and twenty days after this solemn event, the sniper fell in battle, not letting go of his rifle.

Mikhail Budenkov

This sniper went through the entire war from the very beginning and met the victory in East Prussia. In the spring of 1945, Budenkov received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for four hundred and thirty-seven hit targets.

However, in the first years of service, Mikhail did not even think of becoming a sniper. Before the war, he worked as a tractor driver and ship mechanic, and at the front he led a mortar crew. His marksmanship attracted the attention of his superiors, and he was soon transferred to the snipers.

Vasily Zaitsev

This sniper is considered a true legend of the war. A hunter in peacetime, he knew everything about shooting firsthand, so from the first days of his service he became a sniper. Historians claim that in just one Battle of Stalingrad, more than two hundred enemies fell from his well-aimed shots. Among them were eleven German snipers.

There is a well-known story about how the Nazis, tired of the elusiveness of Zaitsev, sent to destroy his best sniper in Germany of the Second World War - the head of the secret school of shooters Erwin Koenig. Vasily's brother-soldiers said that a real duel was fought between the snipers. It lasted almost three days and ended with the victory of the Soviet shooter.

Fedor Okhlopkov

This man was spoken of with admiration during the war years. He was a real Yakut hunter and tracker, for whom there were no impossible tasks. It is believed that he managed to kill more than one thousand enemies, but most of his victories were difficult to document. Interestingly, over the years of service in the army, he used as a weapon not only a rifle, but also a machine gun. In this way, he destroyed the soldiers, aircraft and tanks of the enemy.

The best Finnish sniper of World War II

"White Death" - this is the nickname given to the shooter from Finland, who destroyed more than seven hundred Red Army soldiers. Simo Häyhä worked on a farm in 1939 and did not even think that he would become the most productive sniper in his country.

After a military conflict arose between Finland and the USSR in November 1939, units of the Red Army invaded the territory of a foreign state. However, the fighters did not expect that the locals would put up such tough resistance to the Soviet soldiers.

Simo Hyayuha, who fought in the thick of things, especially distinguished himself. Every day he destroyed sixty or seventy enemy soldiers. This forced the Soviet command to launch a hunt for this well-aimed shooter. However, he continued to remain elusive and sowed death, hiding in the most inappropriate, as it seemed to the officers, places.

Later, historians wrote that Simo was helped by his small stature. The man barely reached one and a half meters, so he quite successfully hid almost in full view of the enemy. He also never used an optical rifle, because it often glared in the sun and gave out an arrow. In addition, the Finn was well versed in the features of the local terrain, which gave him the opportunity to take the best places to observe the enemy.

At the end of the Hundred Days War, Simo was wounded in the face. The bullet passed right through and completely smashed the facial bone. In the hospital, his jaw was restored, after which he lived safely to almost a hundred years.

Of course, war does not have a feminine face. However, Soviet girls made their invaluable contribution to the victory over fascism, fighting on different sectors of the front. It is known that among them there were about one thousand snipers. Together they were able to destroy twelve thousand German soldiers and officers. Surprisingly, the results of many of them are much higher than those who were called the best German snipers of World War II.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko is considered the most productive shooter among women. This amazing beauty signed up as a volunteer immediately after the declaration of war with Germany. In two years of hostilities, she was able to eliminate three hundred and nine fascists, including thirty-six enemy snipers. For this feat she was awarded the title of Hero of the USSR, the last two years of the war she did not take part in the battles.

Olga Vasilyeva was also often called the best female sniper of World War II. On account of this fragile girl, one hundred and forty-eight fascists, but in the forty-third year, no one believed that she could become a real sniper, who would be afraid of the enemy. The girl left a notch on the butt of her rifle after each well-aimed shot. By the end of the war, he was completely covered in marks.

Genya Peretyatko was deservedly ranked among the best female snipers of World War II. Almost nothing was known about this girl for a long time, but she destroyed one hundred and forty-eight enemies with well-aimed and accurate shots of her rifle.

Even before the start of the war, Genya was seriously engaged in shooting, she was her real passion. In parallel, the girl was fond of music. It is amazing that she skillfully combined both activities until the war intervened in her life. Peretyatko immediately volunteered for the front, and thanks to her abilities she was quickly transferred to snipers. After the end of the war, the girl moved to the United States, where she lived for the rest of her life.

German snipers

The results of the German shooters have always been much more modest than those of the Soviet soldiers. But among them were unique snipers who glorified their country. Many legends circulated during the war years about Matthias Hetzenauer. He fought for only one year as a sniper, having managed to destroy three hundred and forty-five Red Army soldiers. For Germany, this was simply a phenomenal result that no one managed to surpass.

Josef Allerberger was considered one of the best German snipers of World War II. He was able to confirm the elimination of two hundred and fifty-seven targets. His colleagues considered young man a born sniper, who possessed not only accuracy and endurance, but also a certain psychology that allows him to intuitively choose the right battle tactics.

Everything mysterious breeds legends. The art of a combat sniper borders on mysticism. The effect of his work is terrible, and the ability to appear in the most unexpected place and disappear without a trace after a shot seems supernatural.

"Sniper" is an English word formed by an abbreviation of the phrase "snipe shooter", that is, "snipe shooter". The snipe is a small bird and flies along an unpredictable trajectory, so not every hunter could get into it. The word itself appeared in the eighteenth century - for example, in the letters of British soldiers from India. Then, at the beginning of the First World War, the "sniper" moves from newspaper publications to the official lexicon of the military and gets its current, narrow and deadly meaning.

In those days, none of the countries provided for the massive use of snipers in hostilities, much less organized special training - sniper shooting remained the lot of gifted loners. Snipers became a truly mass phenomenon only during the Second World War. Virtually all participating countries had soldiers trained in the use of a rifle with a telescopic sight and camouflage in the army. Even against the general background of huge losses in that war, the “combat score” of snipers looks impressive. After all, the number of people killed by one sniper can be in the hundreds.

It is interesting: on average, 18,000 - 25,000 bullets were spent per killed enemy soldier in World War II. For snipers, this figure is 1.3-1.8 bullets.

"White death"

The tactics of sniper work developed by the Finns in the winter turned out to be so successful that both Russians and Germans subsequently used it. And even now there is practically nothing to add to it.

A. Potapov, "The Art of the Sniper"

Perhaps it was the Finns who became the pioneers in the successful use of sniper tactics during the winter campaign of 1939. Perfectly prepared and trained Finnish cuckoo snipers taught Soviet army a cruel lesson that there are no forbidden tricks in war. Good knowledge of the terrain, adaptability to natural conditions, pre-prepared shelters and retreat routes allowed the "cuckoos" to successfully carry out combat missions and quietly retreat to new positions, disappearing without a trace in the snowy forests.

We have already told you about the most famous of all the "cuckoos" - Simo Heihe Nicknamed "White Death". But speaking of snipers, it is difficult not to mention him again. The number of "confirmed killings" in this case valued at five hundred or more. They were made in just 100 days. According to some estimates, none of the snipers of the Second World War achieved greater performance.

If you try to imagine a fighter who destroys a hundred enemy soldiers a day, the imagination obediently draws a powerful figure with an aviation six-barreled machine gun from Hollywood films. So, reality barely reaches the shoulder of an imaginary figure with the top of its head: the growth of the "White Death" was only a little more than one and a half meters. And instead of a heavy and uncomfortable "minigun", he preferred to use the Finnish shortened version of the Mosin-Nagant rifle, and abandoning the optical sight. A glare from the sun on the lens of the optics could give it away, as it betrayed the position of Soviet snipers, which Hayha himself did not hesitate to use.

However, it is worth noting that the Soviet troops themselves were a very tempting target. As one of the Finnish soldiers said: "I like to fight the Russians, they go on the attack in full growth." The tactics of a massive offensive, the "human wave", turned into huge losses for the Soviet Union in that war.

On March 6, 1940, luck nevertheless turned away from the Finnish sniper - he received a bullet in the head. According to the recollections of colleagues, his face was disfigured beyond recognition, he fell into a coma for several days. Simo Hayha regained consciousness on March 11, just the day the war ended, and, despite being seriously wounded, lived for another 63 years, dying in 2002.

Another name sometimes found in articles about Winter War snipers is Sulo Kolkka. His "confirmed kills" count is said to reach four hundred in one hundred and five days. However, his name does not appear in the archives of the Finnish army and is not mentioned in the press of that time, as there are no photographs of him either.

Sulo Kolkka was the name of a military journalist who wrote about the successes of the cuckoos. If we compare what is attributed to Kolkka the sniper with what Kolkka the journalist wrote about Simo Heich, then much will coincide. It is likely that foreign journalists who reprinted Finnish articles confused the name of the sniper and the journalist, giving rise to another myth about that war.

Mosin 91/30

The rifle, developed in 1891 by the captain of the Russian army S.I. Mosin, can be considered a symbol of an entire era. With minor modifications, it existed in service with the army. Russian Empire, and after the Soviet army until the very end of World War II.

The rifle was adapted to fire three-line cartridges. Three lines in the old system of measures were 7.62 millimeters. This is where the name "trilinear" comes from.

Initially, there were three versions of this weapon: infantry (main) with a long barrel and bayonet, dragoon (cavalry) with a shortened barrel, and Cossack, which differed from the cavalry in the absence of a bayonet.

In the twenties of the last century, the first Russian sample of a sniper rifle was designed on the basis of the Mosin rifle. In those same years, it was decided to leave only one of the three variants of the "three-ruler" in service - the dragoon one.

And finally, in 1930, the last pre-war modernization of the rifle takes place - the bayonet mount is changed to reduce its loosening, which greatly worsened the accuracy of previous models. In addition, rifle scopes are now calibrated in meters instead of arshins. It is the modification of the thirtieth year, or the “91/30 Mosin rifle” that becomes the main weapon of the Soviet army.

The sniper modification of the "three-ruler" was distinguished by the fact that it had mounts for an optical sight. Now, with the proliferation of self-loading repeating rifles, this phrase may seem banal, but in fact it was a very significant difference. The Mosin rifle was loaded using a clip of five rounds, which was inserted vertically from above. If a sight was attached to the rifle, it became impossible to load the clip, which means that one cartridge had to be loaded.

Despite all its shortcomings, the Mosin rifle was exactly the weapon that was needed in the early years of the war. A simple and cheap to manufacture design made it possible to quickly establish mass production of "three-rulers". In addition, according to ballistic data, this rifle did not lag behind, or even surpassed its German "enemy", the Mauser 98 sniper rifle.

The self-loading rifle of the Tokarev system (SVT) was adopted by the Soviet army in 1938. In the fortieth year, its lightweight modification, designated "SVT-40", entered the army.

A ten-round magazine and automatic reloading increased the weapon's rate of fire and its overall firepower. The use of cartridges from the Mosin rifle allowed the SVT to be equipped with clips from the “three-ruler”, for which special guides were provided in the receiver cover.

In the sniper version, the mounting bracket for the optical sight is located so as not to interfere with loading the rifle with clips. In addition, a hole was made in the bracket, allowing the use of an open rifle sight with an optical one installed.

Attitude towards "Svetka" - as the SVT soldiers called it - was rather ambiguous. The rifle was criticized for having a smaller range and accuracy compared to the Mosin rifle. For excessive sensitivity to pollution and frost. For low reliability, finally.

But in the hands of a good fighter - for example, Lyudmila Pavlichenko - the sniper version of the SVT showed its best side. The problem was not so much in the rifle itself, but in how it was used and how well it was serviced.

"Main Hare" and others

The art of sniping is a daring skill of the patient, the art of waiting for the right moment and using it instantly. The sniper tracks the target like a hunter in the hunt, and orchestrates the course of events to make that target appear and expose itself to the shot.

A. Potapov, "The Art of the Sniper"

Almost sixty-four years have passed since the end of World War II. It seems to be a short period of time for the history of mankind, but the events of those days have already acquired a huge number of legends, propaganda slogans, contradictory and frankly false information. One of the parties sought to use the successes at the front to inspire their soldiers, while the other tried to hide them so as not to undermine the notorious "fighting spirit". Therefore, now it is already difficult to say something for sure, if the matter concerns not general issues, but the destinies and actions of specific people.

Especially here the Soviet and German sources “differ”, information from which is sometimes mutually exclusive.

One of the best examples is the history Vasily Grigorievich Zaitsev, sniper of the 1047th Infantry Regiment of the 284th Infantry Division of the 62nd Army of the Stalingrad Front.

Zaitsev was born in 1915 in the village of Elininsk, Agapovsky district, Chelyabinsk region. Since 1937 he served in the Pacific Fleet. The war found him in the position of head of the financial unit in Preobrazhenye Bay. In September 1942, after five reports about being transferred to the front, Vasily finally got into the army. In the period from November 10 to December 17, 1942, in the battles for Stalingrad, Zaitsev destroyed 225 enemy soldiers and officers. He did not receive special training - like most Soviet snipers of that time. The necessary skills were already acquired on the spot, in battle.

It is interesting: in addition to sniper activities, Zaitsev was also involved in the training of snipers. On both sides of the front, his pupils were simply called “hare”.

The case was especially famous when Major Koenig, the head of the Berlin school of snipers, flew to Stalingrad to counter Soviet snipers in Stalingrad. Its main task was to destroy the "main hare". As Zaitsev writes in his memoirs, they could only judge the appearance of the German "super sniper" by the results of his activities - the killed soldiers, most often "hare" snipers. It was not possible to determine its location in any way - the German fired several shots and disappeared without a trace. In the end, Zaitsev was able to roughly determine the sector of the front on which the enemy sniper was at the moment.

The "games" continued for two days, when Zaitsev's assistant, Nikolai Kulikov, tried to attract the attention of the German so that he would give away his location with a shot. On the third day, the enemy sniper could not stand it - he knocked down his helmet, which Kulikov carefully lifted on a stick from the trench, and, apparently considering that he had defeated the Soviet shooter, looked out from behind the shelter. Here he was found by the bullet of the "main hare".

It is interesting: this sniper duel became the basis of the plot for the film "Enemy at the Gates".

This version of events is described in the memoirs of V.G. Zaitsev “There was no land for us beyond the Volga”. From there it is also reprinted by other Russian-language sources. But even in them you can find many inconsistencies: the major is called Koenig, then Koenigs, then they write that “under the guise of Major Koenig there was a conspiratorial SS Standartenführer Torvald” ... And this despite the fact that on the corpse of a “super sniper” were found his papers! In addition, Koenig-Thorwald is sometimes called the “head of the Wehrmacht sniper school”, then the sniper school - but already the SS. Either a European champion, or an Olympic champion in bullet shooting ...

The last statement is easily verified: the champion of neither Europe, nor even the Olympic Games, by the name of Erwin Koenig or Heinz Thorwald, did not exist in reality. Just as there was no Berlin school of snipers, the head of which he could be.

Vasily Zaitsev. Stalingrad, October 1942.

What remains as a result? And as a result - a beautiful heroic story about a three-day confrontation between two master snipers. Could this have happened? Not only could, but certainly took place more than once and not in one Stalingrad. But Major Koenig, most likely, did not exist. Unless, of course, the Germans bothered to remove mention of him from all possible documents - lists of personnel, lists of awardees, and the like.

And the sniper Vasily Zaitsev really existed, but his main merit was not in the number of German soldiers killed and not in the victory over the mythical "super sniper". The main thing that Zaitsev did was to train thirty "rabbits", many of whom later became instructor snipers. As a result, a whole sniper school was created! And until the second half of the war, specialized training of snipers in the USSR was not conducted. It was only in 1942 that three-month courses began to work, the duration of which was increased to six months, but even this was not enough. Snipers were predominantly those who grew up in families where the main occupation was hunting. It was the hunters, accustomed to reading tracks and tracking down the beast, who could determine the location of the target by the slightest changes in the situation - crushed grass, broken tree branches.

One of these hereditary hunters was the foreman of the 4th Infantry Division of the 12th Army Mikhail Ilyich Surkov. According to Soviet sources, over seven hundred people were killed on his account. If this figure is correct, then he is without a doubt the most productive of the Soviet snipers.

There is some doubt that Sergeant Major Surkov was not awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, unlike other snipers with much more modest results. It is possible that the figure "700" appeared in wartime newspapers from the words of Surkov himself, and it may take into account both enemies killed with a machine gun and unconfirmed hits.

Another story about a hunter who became one of the best snipers of the Soviet army in World War II is associated with the name of a sergeant of the 234th Infantry Regiment of the 179th Infantry Division of the 43rd Army of the 1st Baltic Front Fyodor Matveyevich Okhlopkov.

The future Hero of the Soviet Union was born in the village of Krest-Khaldzhay in Yakutia. He received only primary education and worked on a collective farm. At the age of thirty-three, he went to the front along with his cousin Vasily. For two weeks, while those drafted into the army traveled from Yakutsk to Moscow, the Okhlopkov brothers studied the device of a machine gun and then, already at the front, made up a machine gun crew.

In one of the battles, Vasily Okhlopkov was killed. Fedor swore to avenge his brother, which they did not fail to report in a political report to the command. So the name of Okhlopkov was first mentioned in military documents.

Shortly thereafter, Fedor Okhlopkov was sent to sniper courses, and in October he returned to the front in a new capacity, changing his machine gun to a rifle with an optical sight.

It is interesting: they say that the Yakut snipers always tried to shoot the enemy in the head, explaining this by saying that "the game must be hit between the eyes."

During his service, until 1944, he brought the number of killed enemies to 429. He was wounded twelve times and twice shell-shocked. With light wounds, he preferred to be treated with folk methods - herbs and tree resin - just not to leave the front. However, a penetrating wound to the chest, which he received in the battles for Vitebsk, could not be cured without hospitalization, and after him Fedor Matveyevich left the combat units.

The female face of war

During the war, time was compressed. Cruel necessity sharpened the susceptibility and forced the human organism to work on the verge of the impossible. What took years in peacetime, took months and weeks in war.

A. Potapov, "The Art of the Sniper"

On September 1, 1939, the law "On universal military duty" was adopted. From that moment on, military service in the USSR became an honorable duty of every citizen, regardless of gender. Article 13 stated that the people's commissariats of defense and the Navy were given the right to register and recruit women for service in the army and navy, as well as recruit them for training fees. Thus began in the Soviet Union something that neither the opponents in that war nor the allies could understand. A German or an Englishman simply did not fit in his head that a woman could go to the front line, that she could be a pilot, an anti-aircraft gunner or a sniper.

And yet - among the Soviet snipers were more than a thousand women. During the war, they were credited with more than 12,000 killed Germans.

The most successful of them was Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko, sniper of the 25th Chapaev Rifle Division. She was in the army from the very first days of the war, the beginning of which found her in Odessa. In the battles in Moldova, the defense of Odessa and Sevastopol, she brought the personal account of those killed to 309. Of these three hundred German soldiers and officers, thirty-six are enemy snipers.

In June 1942, Lyudmila was wounded and was recalled from the front line. After treatment, she wanted to return, but for her there was already a completely different task: Sergeant Pavlichenko went to the United States. The Soviet delegation was personally received by President Roosevelt.

Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko, the most successful female sniper in history.

It is interesting: at a press conference, American journalists bombarded Lyudmila Mikhailovna with questions: does she use powder, blush and nail polish? Does it curl hair? Why is she wearing a uniform that makes her so fat? Pavlichenko's answer was short: "Do you know that we have a war there?"

After returning, Lyudmila no longer got to the front: she was left as an instructor at the Shot sniper school.

When the war ended, a student of the historical faculty of the Kyiv state university named after T.G. Shevchenko Lyudmila Pavlichenko was finally able to finish her thesis, which the war prevented her from writing in 1941.

Natalia Kovshova and Maria Polivanova before the war, they worked together in one of the research institutes in Moscow. Together we went to sniper courses, together we went to the front. Completely different in character - modest Maria and active in public affairs Natalya - friends made a good sniper pair. By August 1942, their "total account" was approaching three hundred killed enemies.

On August 14, the battalion, which was given a platoon of snipers, which included Natalya and Maria, repelled attacks by German infantry near the village of Sutoki in the Novgorod region. In total, they withstood fifteen attacks. There was already not enough ammunition, the platoon commander was killed, and Natalya took his place, stopping the soldiers who were already ready to retreat. They held out to the end, to the last bullet, until only two remained alive - Kovshova and Polivanova. The girls approached, firing back, until they converged back to back.

When they had only two grenades left, the girls made up their minds. The explosion claimed the lives of not only two Soviet snipers, but also those Germans who were already hoping to take them prisoner.

Natalya Kovshova.

Maria Polivanova.

Lidia Semyonovna Gudovantseva, a graduate of the central Podolsk school of sniper training, reached almost Berlin. Only a wound in a duel with a German sniper could stop her, which she later describes as follows:

“In the morning a German appeared and went to the trees. But why no sniper rifle, no weapons at all? Thoughts worked: so, I think, he equipped a place for himself on a tree, goes to his own for the night, and in the morning returns and snaps our fighters. I decided not to rush, to watch. He really climbed the tree, but strangely, not a single shot was fired. And in the evening, already at dusk, he got down and went home. Some kind of mystery.

For three days I kept a close watch. Everything went on as scheduled. On the fourth day, tired, and my nerves, I feel they are not the same, I decide: “Today I will take it off.” As soon as Fritz appeared, I took him at gunpoint and was about to fire a shot. There was a dull click, and I felt a taste of blood in my mouth, and blood began to drip onto the butt of the rifle. She pressed her chin against the collar of her overcoat to somehow stop the bleeding. And in my head a disturbing thought: “Is it really the end ?!” But she drove her away, mobilized her will: "I must take revenge on him, and then you can die." Frozen at the sight. Sometimes I felt like I was about to lose consciousness. Where the strength came from, I don't know.

The second half of the day has come. A little more, and twilight. I began to be overcome with anxiety. Suddenly, to the left of the tree, where that fascist climbed for three days in a row, a German jumped from one of the trees, and he had a sniper rifle in his hands. Here, it turns out, where he was! He leaned against a tree and looked in my direction. This is where I pulled the trigger. I see a Nazi settle down on a tree trunk.

Thus ended my mortal duel with victory. She lay until dark, at times in a kind of oblivion. A scout crawled up to me and helped me get to my own.

Another story, told by Lydia Semenova in 1998, became the basis for one of the questions at the Brain Ring games in Kyiv. The question sounded like this: “While observing the enemy’s defenses, snipers Lidia Gudovantseva and Alexander Kuzmina noticed a structure, the upper part of which was made up of Christmas trees tied on top. The next morning, noticing a German heading there, Kuzmina ran up to this building and burst in there with the words: “Hyundai hoch!” The German officer who was there did not resist and was safely delivered to the location of our troops. Attention, the question is: what kind of structure was this?

The answer is simple: it was a toilet. And the German officer could not use his pistol for a completely understandable reason ...

Scharfschutzen

The sniper is a long knife in the heart of the enemy; too long and too cruel to ignore.

A. Potapov, "The Art of the Sniper"

If you think about it, it is quite understandable why there is an order of magnitude or even two less information about German snipers of World War II than about Soviet ones. Still, “Nazi sniper” is a label that few survivors of the war would like to wear after being defeated in it.

German sniper. Pay attention to the location of the sight.

Another German shooter, but with a normally located optics.

And yet, even considering this moment, the situation remains rather strange. Historians on both sides claim that the sniper movement in their armies arose after they faced mass attacks from enemy snipers.

The German version looks like this: in their plans, the command german army relied primarily on tank strikes and rapid advance deep into enemy territory. In this situation, the sniper simply had no place in the army - he was already considered a "remnant of the trench battles of the First World War." And only in the winter of the forty-first year, after it became clear that “ lightning war” failed and the German units were increasingly forced to switch from attacks to defense, and snipers began to appear on the positions of the Soviet troops, the command “remembered” the need for training and their “super-sharp shooters”.

There is only one question to this version: where did those German snipers come from that Vasily Zaitsev, Lyudmila Pavlichenko and other Soviet soldiers had to face at the beginning of the war?

In fact, it is safe to say that German snipers have been on the eastern front from the very beginning. Yes, their use was not as massive as that of the Finns in the Winter War or later in the Soviet troops. Nevertheless, even a sniper armed with a Mauser rifle with a 1.5-fold scope is capable of performing combat missions of suppressing (especially psychological) enemy troops. But in history, for some reason that is not always clear, neither their names, nor even the number of "confirmed murders" committed by them, have been preserved.

What we know for certain is the three snipers who were awarded knight's crosses, and all three received this award already in 1945.

The first was Friedrich Payne, awarded in February of that year, after he brought his combat score to two hundred. The war ended for him with three wounds and captivity.

Second to receive the Knight's Cross Matthias Hetzenauer, perhaps the most productive German sniper of World War II, with the exception of the semi-mythical Major Koenig. The number of “confirmed kills” on his account is 345. Awarded in April 1945 for “repeatedly performing his tasks under artillery fire or during enemy attacks,” Matthias was captured in May and was imprisoned in the USSR for five years.

Josef "Sepp" Ollerberg. Photo with an autograph for memory.

The best sniper in Germany, Matthias Hetzenauer.

And finally, the third of the snipers who received the knight's cross - Joseph Ollerberg. Documents about his nomination for the award have not been preserved, but at that time it was not so unusual. Of all the former Wehrmacht snipers, Ollerberg is perhaps the most talkative. According to him, in the war he was at first a machine gunner, but after being wounded in the hospital, out of boredom, he decided to experiment with a captured Soviet rifle. The experiments were so successful that Josef, after he shot twenty-seven people, was sent to a sniper school. So the machine gunner became a sniper.

German snipers achieved much greater success on the second European front in Normandy. The British and American military had little to oppose to the well-trained shooters of the Wehrmacht. The German scharfschutzen knew the area well, camouflaged their positions and staged a real "sniper terror".

The hedgerows became a favorite hiding place for the Germans. Snipers dug in near them, mined the approaches, set traps in the bushes. Mortar and artillery strikes on the intended position remained the best method of dealing with them.

It is interesting: to the question: “How do you distinguish officers if they wear ordinary field uniforms without insignia and are armed with rifles, like ordinary soldiers?” - the captured German sniper replied: "We shoot at people with a mustache." Indeed, in the British Army, only officers and senior sergeants traditionally wore mustaches.

A common sniper tactic is to take a shot, rarely two, and change position to avoid enemy return fire. But in Normandy, the British and Americans also encountered a completely different phenomenon - German snipers fired continuously without even trying to move. Naturally, in the end they were destroyed, but before that, such a “suicide” had time to inflict serious damage.

Mauser Kar. 98k

In 1898, the German army adopted a new rifle developed by the Mauser Brothers arms company. This weapon had to undergo more than one modification and survive in the army until the very end of World War II.

The most massive of its variants was the Karabiner 98 kurz - a short carbine released in 1935, then adopted by the Wehrmacht. It was he who became the most common weapon of the German army, contrary to the opinion that it was provided with automatic weapons.

The K98 store contained five 7.92 Mauser cartridges and was loaded using a clip inserted vertically from above. Starting with the K98a modification, the bolt handle was bent down to provide greater convenience when reloading the carbine.

The K98 sniper modifications produced were originally equipped with a one and a half times optical sight - it was assumed that a small increase should be enough to complete combat missions. In addition, the design was designed for the sniper to simultaneously observe both the target and the environment. To do this, the sight was located at a sufficiently large distance from the shooter's eye. The experience of using such rifles showed the fallacy of this decision, so later versions were already equipped with four or six times optics.

Self-loading rifles appeared in the German army only in 1941. These were the developments of Mauser and Carl Walther Waffenfabrik, designated "G41". Both of them were not very successful - unreliable, too heavy, too sensitive to pollution.

Walter's rifle was later modified. The G41 gas exhaust system was replaced by borrowing a solution from SVT-40. The rifle has got a detachable magazine with a capacity of ten rounds. The changes were considered so significant that the name of the weapon was changed - now it was called the "43rd year rifle", Gewehr 43. In the forty-fourth year it was renamed again - it became the K43 carbine. The design, however, was not affected by this renaming.

The production of this rifle - including modifications with a telescopic sight - continued until the end of the war. Often the G43s had the simplest finishes, and their outer surface was roughly machined.

After the end of the war, a small number of carbines were used by the Czechoslovak army as sniper weapons.

Snipers of the second front

A sniper is not just a shooter with a sniper rifle. This is a super-sharp long-range shooter.

A. Potapov, "The Art of the Sniper"

It so happened that the Americans did not have such a Winter War as the USSR, and they did not have to face such fierce resistance from skilled snipers as the Soviet troops in Finland. And, although their command as a whole understood the tasks that the “super-sharp shooter” should perform, too little attention was paid to special training. The main and sufficient quality of a sniper was the ability to shoot well. The experience of encountering Japanese snipers on the Pacific front did not change much: the Japanese mainly chose positions in the crowns of trees, from where it was easy to knock them out.

Only after the landing in Normandy, the American troops were able to fully feel what real “sniper terror” is. They had to quickly master the tactics of counteracting the accurate fire of the Germans. To learn, like the Soviet army did in Finland, not to move even in seemingly safe places at full height, to pay more attention to observing possible shelters of enemy snipers, to organize your own sniper squads.

English sniper in position.

And here, as on the eastern front, hunters and trackers moved into the forefront - among the Americans they were Indians. Sergeant Sergeant John Fulcher, a Sioux Indian, wrote that “half the guys in the sniper squad were Indians, including two Sioux from the Black Hills. I have heard others call us savages. And when they said, “We went for scalps again,” they said it with admiration, and we perceived these words that way.”

It is interesting: Fulcher and his Indians did indeed scalp dead Germans from time to time, leaving them in plain sight as a warning to others. Some time later they learned that the Germans had decided to kill captured snipers or Indians on the spot.

But nevertheless, in the American troops, snipers were mainly used to cover their positions, when sniper detachments did not move away from the main forces, providing fire superiority. The main task was to suppress the machine-gun and mortar crews of the enemy, as well as his snipers. The destruction of soldiers and even officers of the enemy army was a secondary task.

The situation was better with the training of snipers in the British army. English snipers were taught to choose and mask their firing position correctly. For camouflage, both improvised material was used - branches, bricks - and specially made mobile sniper posts, for the creation of which engineers and artists were specially involved.

But when the English shooters were finally able to test their skills, the war was already drawing to a close. Therefore, there are no British in the lists of the best snipers of the Second World War ...

Game incarnation

In almost any game that uses firearms, there is a place for sniper rifles in one form or another. The specialty of a sniper is quite popular in online action movies. But the vast majority of game snipers are fictional characters in fictional circumstances.

Relatively "lucky" here only duel Vasily Zaitsev with the German "super sniper". Following the release of Enemy at the Gates, this episode Battle of Stalingrad received worldwide fame, sufficient for some of its details to "leak" into computer games.

First task in the game Commandos 3: Destination Berlin is that the player in Stalingrad needs to destroy the German sniper.

In Game Call of Duty 2 the task, which takes place in Stalingrad, includes a moment from the film - luring an enemy sniper with an empty helmet.

AT Call of Duty: World at War the player will have to help Sergeant Reznov destroy the German General Amsel in Stalingrad. In the course of the task, you need to endure a duel with a German sniper hiding in the house.

After the start Great Patriotic War hundreds of thousands of women went to the front. Most of them became nurses, cooks, and more than 2000 - snipers. Soviet Union was almost the only country that attracted women to perform combat missions. Today I would like to recall the shooters who were considered the best during the war years.

Rosa Shanina

Rosa Shanina was born in 1924 in the village of Yedma, Vologda province (today the Arkhangelsk region). After 7 classes of training, the girl decided to enter a pedagogical school in Arkhangelsk. The mother was against it, but the daughter's stubbornness was not to be taken from childhood. Buses did not go past the village then, so the 14-year-old girl walked 200 km through the taiga before reaching the nearest station.

Rosa entered the school, but before the war, when education became paid, the girl was forced to go to work in Kindergarten educator. Fortunately, then the employees of the institution were given housing. Rose continued to study at the evening department and successfully completed the 1941/42 academic year.

Even at the beginning of the war, Roza Shanina applied to the draft board and asked to volunteer for the front, but the 17-year-old girl was refused. In 1942 the situation changed. Then the active training of women snipers began in the Soviet Union. It was believed that they are more cunning, patient, cold-blooded, and the fingers pull the trigger more smoothly. At first, Rosa Shanina was taught to shoot at the Central Women's Sniper Training School. The girl graduated with honors and, having refused the position of instructor, went to the front.

Three days after arriving at the location of the 338th Infantry Division, 20-year-old Roza Shanina fired the first shot. In her diary, the girl described the sensations: “... her legs weakened, she slipped into the trench, not remembering herself: “I killed a man, a man ...” Alarmed friends, running up to me, reassured me: “Well, you killed the fascist!” Seven months later, the sniper girl wrote that she was already killing enemies in cold blood, and now this is the whole meaning of her life.

Among other snipers, Roza Shanina stood out for her ability to make doublets - two consecutive shots that hit moving targets.

Shanina's platoon was ordered to move in the second line, behind the infantry detachments. However, the girl constantly rushed to the front line to "beat the enemy." The rose was strictly cut off, because in the infantry it could be replaced by any soldier, and in a sniper ambush - by no one.

Rosa Shanina took part in the Vilnius and Insterburg-Koenigsberg operations. In European newspapers, she was nicknamed "the invisible horror of East Prussia." Rose became the first woman awarded with an order Glory.

On January 17, 1945, Roza Shanina wrote in her diary that she could soon die, because only 6 of their 78 fighters remained in their battalion. Because of the incessant fire, she could not get out of the self-propelled gun. On January 27, the unit commander was wounded. In an attempt to cover him, Rose was hit in the chest by a shell fragment. The brave girl died the next day. The nurse said that before her death, Rosa regretted that she had not had time to do more.

Ludmila Pavlichenko

The Western press gave the nickname to another Soviet female sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko. She was called "Lady Death". Lyudmila Mikhailovna remained famous in world history as the most successful female sniper. On account of her 309 killed soldiers and officers of the enemy.

From the very first days of the war, Lyudmila went to the front as a volunteer. The girl refused to be a nurse and demanded to be enrolled as a sniper. Then Lyudmila was given a rifle in her hands and ordered to shoot two prisoners. She got the job done.

Pavlichenko took part in the defense of Sevastopol, Odessa, in battles in Moldova. After a female sniper was seriously wounded, she was sent to the Caucasus. When Lyudmila recovered, she flew as part of the Soviet delegation to the United States and Canada. Lyudmila Pavlichenko spent several days at the White House at the invitation of Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Soviet sniper made many speeches at numerous congresses, but her speech in Chicago was most memorable. Lyudmila said: “Gentlemen, I am twenty-five years old. At the front, I have already managed to destroy three hundred and nine fascist invaders. Don't you gentlemen think you've been hiding behind my back for too long?" In the first seconds, everyone froze, and then a flurry of approving applause erupted.

On October 25, 1943, female sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Nina Petrova

Nina Petrova is the oldest sniper among women. She was 48 years old when the Great Patriotic War began, but age did not affect her accuracy in any way. A woman in her youth was engaged in bullet shooting. At the sniper school, she worked as an instructor. In 1936, Nina Pavlovna released 102 Voroshilov riflemen, which testifies to her highest professionalism.

Behind Nina Petrova 122 killed enemies during the war and the training of snipers. The woman did not live to see the end of the war for only a few days: she died in a car accident.

Claudia Kalugina

Claudia Kalugin was named one of the most productive snipers. She got into the ranks of the Red Army as a 17-year-old girl. On account of Claudia 257 destroyed soldiers and officers.

After the war, Claudia shared her memories of how at first she did not hit the target at the sniper school. They threatened to leave her in the rear if she did not learn to shoot accurately. And not to go to the front line was considered a real shame. For the first time, being in a blizzard in a trench covered with snow, the girl got scared. But then she overcame herself and began to make well-aimed shots one after another. The hardest thing was to drag a rifle along with her, because the growth of thin Claudia was only 157 cm. But the sniper girl overcame all adversity, and over time she was spoken of as the most accurate shooter.

female snipers

This photo of female snipers is also called "775 kills in one shot", because in total they destroyed exactly that many enemy soldiers.

During the Great Patriotic War, not only female snipers terrified the enemy. , because the radars did not detect them, the noise of the engines was practically inaudible, and the girls dropped the bombs with such precision that the enemy was doomed.