Erwin König
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Erwin König (died c. 1942) (also known as Heinz Thorvald) was an apparently apocryphal German Major, propagated by the Soviets as the best World War II enemy sniper, with more than 400 kills. While Soviet sources pitted him against Vasily Grigoryevich Zaytsev in their propaganda of the time, neither the name Erwin König nor Heinz Thorvald have been found in any German records, and it is possible that he never actually existed.[citation needed]
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[edit] Zaytsev's writings
After the war, Zaytsev's writings referred to the sniper he actually encountered during the Battle of Stalingrad as Heinz Thorvald, which was reportedly the name within the documents found on his body.
[edit] Problems with the Soviet claims
Some of the facts that cast doubt upon the Soviet claims are:
- At the end of the war, Germany's best documented sniper was a 21-year-old Gefreiter named Matthäus Hetzenauer, with a total of 345 confirmed kills, compared to König's supposed 400-plus confirmed kills.
- Soviet propaganda was rife with fictitious stories to boost morale during a time when the war was so uncertain. The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point for the German offensive into Russia.
[edit] Fictional representations
A fictionalized account in the movie Enemy at the Gates portrays König, played by Ed Harris, as the head of the Wehrmacht Sniper School. He is sent to Stalingrad to take on the increasingly aggressive Soviet sniper division. In this, he is at first highly successful. He is depicted as a ruthless, somewhat aristocratic Bavarian nobleman, pitted against Vasily Zaytsev, the top Russian sniper and propaganda darling. In the film, König is killed at the Stalingrad train yard after Zaytsev fires a Mosin-Nagant (7.62x54R) bullet through the German's left eye.
The name Heinz Thorvald was arrogated by author David L. Robbins in his 1999 novel War of the Rats, although he argues that Thorvald was an SS colonel (Standartenführer), and was originally an instructor at the Wehrmacht underground headquarters in Zossen. However, no records of the SS ever being in Stalingrad have been found, and no active sniper was ever given a rank so high, as snipers were expected to serve on the battlefield, not to lead.
[edit] External links
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