Sanwei New Knowledge No. 171
In this issue:
The Soviet sniper killed 400 enemies
The strongest opponent is fictional?
Mosin-Nagant Walks through Yang in a hundred steps
— Read the article in conjunction with this episode —
01 Soviet sniper Vasily
In this issue, I'm going to tell you about a sharpshooter, Vasily Chaichev. At first glance, this name may seem very unfamiliar to everyone, but if I mention a movie, "Soldiers In the City", many friends may immediately think of the Soviet sniper starring JudeLoh, that is, Vasily Chatchev.
Stills from "Soldiers In the City"
Chaitchev became famous in the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, and can even be said to be a god in World War I. In just one month, he snipeed 225 German and Axis officers and soldiers. According to Soviet statistics, he alone killed more than 400 enemy troops during the entire Battle of Stalingrad.
You have to know that snipers are not easy to shoot, casual attack, they often snipe high-value targets, to put it bluntly, enemy officers or individual soldiers in important positions, such as scouts, gunners, signal soldiers or enemy snipers and so on.
And once the sniper fires, it is often likely to expose its position, and it is easy to attract the blow of the other side. Therefore, the sniper is not only good at marksmanship and accurate, but more importantly, he can hide and protect himself, which requires a very clever mind and keen judgment. The film "Soldiers In the City" is about the duel between Soviet and German snipers, and makes a particularly comprehensive and in-depth display of the sniper, a special class. Chaitchev is a typical excellent sniper, and his story tells everyone that what is more important than marksmanship is actually tactics, which are tactics that fight with opponents in sniper operations, haunt hauntings, and constantly change positions.
02 World War II canonization of the gods won the Venus
Vasily Chaichiv was born in a rural village at the foot of the Ural Mountains in central Soviet Union, and his grandfather was a hunter, so he followed his grandfather into the mountains from an early age, and it is said that at the age of 12 he was able to shoot wild wolves alone. Growing up, he joined the army, where he first served in the Soviet Pacific Fleet, stationed in Vladivostok. At the beginning of World War II, the German army advanced rapidly through the Barbarossa Plan, the situation in the Soviet Union was very tight, And Tchaichev took the initiative to go to the front, which joined the army unit, and only then did he have a sharpshooter who later became famous in history.
Vasily Tchaichoff
It was his outstanding performance at the Battle of Stalingrad that Tchaichev won the Hero of the USSR The Gold Star Medal, the highest level of honor bestowed by the USSR on the individual, a great pride. Who else has received this medal? To give a few examples, there was Yuri Gagarin, the world's first astronaut, Comrade Stalin, and of course, marshal Zhukov, who was awarded the Order of venus four times. There was another man, Comrade Brezhnev, who also had four gold star medals, but this comrade was a special case, because he basically did not go to the front himself, so the gold content of his medal, you know. After all, people give the nickname "Su Zhangdi", not in vain.
Shivasili Tchaichev
Therefore, being able to get the Gold Star Medal fully explains The military merits of Chaichev. In fact, his exploits not only consisted in sniping hundreds of enemy officers and soldiers, but more importantly, he constantly snipped the enemy troops, which greatly encouraged the Soviet army and civilians who were in trouble during the Battle of Stalingrad and the determination of everyone to resolutely resist the German invasion.
03 Bloody Battlefield Boost momentum
In fact, the beginning of the film "Soldiers Under the City" shows a very cruel situation in the early days of the Battle of Stalingrad - the German army relied on air superiority, large-scale bombing has flattened the entire city, and the german ground troops' infantry and artillery coordination ensured rapid advance and quickly occupied Stalingrad. But the city was too important to the Soviet Union, the significance was very special, whether it was strategic or political, so the Soviet army could not give up, but could only continue to fill in the troops, so that the reinforcements braved bombing and artillery fire to cross the Volga River, so as to enter the city of Stalingrad to fight with the German army, and struggled to support. At the beginning of the battle, the Soviet Union did fight extremely badly, and there is a statistic that a Soviet soldier sent to the Stalingrad front at that time survived for less than 24 hours on average, and the average survival time of Soviet officers was only 3 days. This was a bloody battlefield that was completely unimaginable, so the Soviet military and civilians were once relatively depressed in the passive situation at the beginning of the campaign.
But everyone knows that street fighting is very unfavorable to the attacking side. The defenders are in good hands at all times, mobilizing the whole people and all the people are soldiers. So after the Battle of Stalingrad entered the street battle, the situation gradually changed. Here, the Soviet army has emerged a lot of heroes, which greatly boosted the morale of the army, such as Bapolov who led a platoon to hold a building for two months, such as Chaichev as we say today.
In fact, street fighting is a very suitable scene for sniper combat, and this movie also shows Vasily Chaichev's sniper tactics and wisdom to the extreme, and the degree of restoration in many aspects is very high. But after all, it is a movie, not a historical documentary, and there will still be a lot of artistic rendering and processing in it, and this movie is the same.
04 The strongest opponent Check no such person
In fact, when it comes to the authenticity and reduction of the film "Soldiers In the City", the biggest bug or challenge is actually in the villain, that is, the German sniper master Major Koenig. The duel between the two top masters in the movie is very exciting, but at present, from the historical scholars' research, the identity of this German Major Koenig is in doubt, and the Soviet and German accounts about this person are completely at odds.
At present, the main information that clearly mentions this German sniper is the Soviet side, including reports at the time, including Tchaichev's own memoirs, etc. In the memoirs, Tchaichev himself said that he finally killed the other party after several days of fighting with the German sniper master, and found identity documents from the body. Later, some literary works also adopted This statement of Tchaichev, including the film "Soldiers In the City", which also revolves around this thread.
But the Attitude of the German Side towards the Koenig Major was always "no one to check out", and no major sniper named Koenig was killed in Stalingrad.
Stills from "Soldiers In the City", German sniper Kony
Therefore, such a big villain in the movie, there is no conclusive and recognized information to prove that he really exists. In other literary works, Koenig's rank is written as colonel, and although it is said in this film that he is Major and major, he reported to General Paulus, the supreme commander of the German army at the Battle of Stalingrad. Some historians have questioned that as a sniper, his rank and reporting level are too high, which is difficult to convince. Speaking of Paulus, by the way, at the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, he was besieged in the city with a large army of tens of thousands of German troops, and finally surrendered to the Soviets out of ammunition.
So that's the truth about the film, the biggest question, is from the villain Number One Major Koenig, the authenticity of his identity. Historians now agree that this German major is probably an "imaginary enemy" created by the Soviet Union at that time to boost the morale of the army, which is also particularly easy to understand.
In addition, there are some details in this movie that are worth scrutinizing. For example, Soviet soldiers were forced by their commanders to make a suicidal charge against the German army, and once they retreated, they would face machine gun fire from their own compatriots, which was too exaggerated. At that time, the Soviet Union did have the famous "Order No. 227", which was simply a sentence - "no step back". But there is no cruelty enough to shoot at the retreating comrades on the battlefield, after all, manpower is very precious to start a battle, and it is impossible to kill yourself so easily. At that time, it was mainly in the Soviet Army that this called "Inspector Corps" was established, and it was seen that retreating and timid soldiers would be taken away by the "Overseer Team", and it would take a series of investigations and even a trial to organize them into "Punishment Battalions", and then it was likely to be sent to carry out high-risk tasks in battle, so that there was a greater risk, in fact, in this way to make deserters or cowardly soldiers pay the price on the battlefield. And it is never possible to use machine guns to surprise one's own people in a large-scale battle, which is indeed a bit too "Hollywood".
05 Sharpshooter and Mosin-Nagant
Returning to Chaichev's own experience, he excelled on the battlefield and after winning honors, he also began to become a sniper instructor and train more sharpshooters. After World War II, he lived mainly in Kiev, Ukraine, until his death on December 15, 1991, exactly 30 years ago. Less than two weeks before the final collapse of the Soviet Union, the old hero of World War II, Chaitchev, eventually died on Soviet soil wearing a Gold Star medal.
In fact, in addition to Chaichev, many excellent snipers emerged during World War II, especially in the Soviet Union, which seems to be particularly rich in sniper heroes. For example, throughout World War II, Sidorenko killed more enemies than Chaichev, and his total effective sniper killed more than 500 people; such as pavlychenko, a famous female sniper of the Soviet Army. Of course, there was also the famous Finnish sharpshooter Seymour Heich, who was a small man of only 160 cm in height, but during the Soviet-Finnish War in the early days of World War II, the Soviet Union suffered greatly. He had sniped more than 500 Soviet targets in just three months, and was known to the Soviets as the "White Death" and was one of the most efficient snipers in military history. And The most divine thing about Haihe is that his sniper rifle does not use a scope, but directly aims at the crosshair on the barrel, which is much more difficult than the scope.
Finnish sharpshooter Seymour Heich
In addition, when it comes to World War II snipers today, it is necessary to mention the famous Soviet-made Mosin-Nagant rifle. Including Chaichev, as well as just mentioned that these sharpshooters are practically used mosin-nagant sniper rifles or derivatives of it. Many students who love to play first-person shooting games, play mobile games, should be familiar with this rifle. The reason why it is called Mosin-Nagant is because the two designers are called Mosin and Nagant respectively. In fact, this rifle is a product of the end of the 19th century, which was first put into production in 1891. The latter constantly upgrades and changes are widely used. For example, in Soldiers In the City, Chaichev uses the 91/30 Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle equipped with a PU scope. This rifle is a 7.62mm caliber, the maximum range can exceed 1500 meters, the stability is also particularly good, so it has been introduced or imitated by many countries, and even in recent years, militias or warlords in some countries are still using this rifle.
Finally, when it comes to snipers, in fact, our army has also seen many outstanding snipers. Like Zhang Taofang, a famous sniper hero of our volunteer army in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, he killed more than 200 enemies in a month. This is an outstanding representative of our army's "cold guns and cold guns" tactics in the late Korean battlefield. Director Zhang Yimou just happens to have a movie about Zhang Taofang that will be released soon, and I personally look forward to it. In addition, the rifle used by Zhang Taofang, the M1944 carbine, is actually a derivative of Mosin-Nagant.
It was sharpshooters like Vasily Tchaichev, combined with this legendary Mosin-Nagant rifle, that made the sniper saga.