Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "The EPIC Sniper Battle Of Stalingrad - Vasily Zaitsev vs Erwin Konig" video.

  1. Exactly. In my mind, this calls into question everything else we allegedly know about Zaitsev. He certainly existed, and I think that it's likely that he was a successful sniper in Stalingrad. The problem is that the whole centerpiece of his legend is pure fiction from the minds of Soviet propagandists. In fact, I think the legends of all these Soviet war heroes should be taken with, at minimum, a massive grain of salt. The Soviets weren't exactly known for being sticklers to the truth. Oh, and Enemy at the Gates sucked. They took the legend, which is admittedly a good story, regardless of how demonstrably false it may be, and then Hollywoodized it with a bunch of love triangles and crap that makes it entirely uninteresting. I disliked it when I saw it in theaters, then I recently gave it another chance, and hated it.
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  2. Erwin Koenig was nothing more than a creation of Soviet propaganda. Pure fiction, no German records make any reference to his existence, and nobody at any German sniper school had heard of him or anyone fitting his description. Vasiliy Zaitsev existed, and was probably a badass sniper, but with all the bullshit propaganda that the Soviets liked tossing around about their war heroes, real or not, we don't really know what he actually did and what Pravda just claimed he did. Truth was anathema in the Soviet Union.
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