In 2001, a war-themed film directed and shot by the famous French director Jean-Jacques Arnaud was released in China, and the plot of the film was ups and downs, and won unanimous praise around the world.
The film mainly briefly describes the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, under the rapid advance of the German mechanized troops, the Soviet Red Army had to engage in street battles with the German army in the city of Stalingrad.
Soviet ace sniperVasilyDuring this time, he battled his wits with the enemy's ace sniper, and finally defeated him with the help of his friend Commissar Dennis.
The movie is based on a true story, the real Battle of Stalingrad is far bloodier than the movie, and the protagonist Vasily is indeed a person.
WhileThe real Vasily was also far more exciting than in the movies, killing more than 400 enemies, including 30 snipers, throughout the war.
Today we will talk about the legendary life of the famous Soviet sniper Vasily.
Vasily, full nameVasily Zaitsev。On March 23, 1915, he was born in a small town called Jeleninsye in the Ura Mountains.
Because of the deep mountains, the family has basically lived by hunting for generations, and Vasily's grandfather is a famous local hunter, and his marksmanship is always accurate, and almost every time he goes hunting, he can return with a full load.
As his grandfather grew old and no longer physically fit to be a hunter, he decided to pass on the experience he had accumulated over his life to his grandson Vasily.
The cold Ula Mountains are covered with snow most of the time, and there is no shortage of wild wolves, wild dogs, rabbits and other wild animals in the mountain forests.
It was at this time that Vasily became attached to the gun. The first days were not smooth for him, under the ice and snow, at a young age, he couldn't even hold a gun steadily.
The wild animals in the mountains are also extremely vigilant, and the slightest wind and grass will plunge into the depths of the mountain forest. On the first hunt, Vasily returned empty-handed, but he was not discouraged by this, but became interested in the shotgun in his hand.
At the same time, I was patiently encouraged by my grandfather:
"You have to learn to be one with nature, not to be too impatient, and to be patient, so that you can become a qualified hunter. ”
Finally, one evening, after an hour of waiting, a wild wolf who had gone out to look for food appeared in his field of vision, Vasily shot decisively, and the wolf fell to the ground, which was Vasily's first prey.
Since then, he has fallen in love with hunting, and he never cares how much prey he can get in a day, he just loves the process. As he hunted more and more, he gradually figured out his own unique hunting method.
His marksmanship, camouflage skills are getting better and better, and he can even lie on his stomach in the snow for up to 3 hours in the cold winter in order to wait for a prey to show up.
In addition to hunting, Vasily also received enough education, initially as an accountant for a small business, but because of his love of guns from an early age, he joined the army in 1937.
Before leaving, Grandpa gave him a shotgun that he had used for many years and told him;
"In the days to come, we have to do righteous things with guns. ”
I thought that the army would be his second place to practice guns, but things did not go as he wished, and he was assigned to the very distant Vladivostok region to work as a logistics worker in the Soviet Pacific Fleet.
Although the job was very comfortable, there was no hard training, and it was only necessary to write and calculate on paper with a pen every day, but this was not what Vasily wanted.
This made Vasily very distressed, this place is a poor and remote place, and civilian work has no chance of touching a gun. Although he was reluctant in every way, the soldier took obedience as his duty, and he did this job for more than 4 years.
In 1941, the German army tore up the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and carried out a massive campaign"Barbarossa" planThe Germans, guided by the theory of "blitzkrieg", were caught off guard by the Soviet Union, and the Germans quickly approached the Volga.
Everywhere the German army went, it was even better than the Japanese army that invaded China, and after this news reached the Far East, it aroused the indignation of a number of patriotic youths.
Vasily's frenzied invasion of the Germans, like many young men in the Far East, applied to go to the front to fight. Due to the urgency of the situation at that time, the Soviet army suffered heavy losses on the front and urgently needed to replenish the troops, and the request of Vasily and others was quickly granted.
Vasily was thrilled to find his dream rifle, but when he reached the front, he was stunned by what he saw.
Due to the extremely fierce attack of the German army at that time, by the time Vasily and others arrived at the front line, the German army had already entered the city of Stalingrad, which was full of crumbling ruins, and German bombers were hovering in the sky from time to time, dropping aerial bombs from time to time.
Through the binoculars, it can be seen that the Germans have already set up defensive positions on the opposite bank, and they are ready to fight, and the front of the positions is covered with stumps and broken arms, and it is clear that the Soviets have launched countless attacks on the German positions before their arrival.
Vasily was quickly incorporated into the USSR1047th Infantry RegimentBefore boarding the ferry boat to cross the river, a political commissar organized the distribution of **, and an old Soviet-made Mosin Nagant rifle was stuffed into his arms, and he was very lucky compared to his other comrades, many of whom only received a grenade or a sapper shovel.
Although he got the rifle he wanted, it didn't make him happy in the slightest, because it was most likely the last time he touched the gun.
The ferryboat increased its speed and drove towards the Germans on the opposite bank, and the bombers in the air dropped bombs on the helpless ferryboat as if they had seen fat.
As they continued to approach the German firing range, all kinds of machine guns and artillery on the opposite bank immediately moved towards the river**, and the ferries of the 1047th Infantry Regiment were immediately overturned several ships.
The planes constantly strafed into the water, and the Soviets struggled helplessly in the water. Although Vasily was lucky, his ship managed to get ashore, but under the enemy's firepower, they could not move an inch.
The German machine guns constantly sprayed tongues of fire, suppressing the Soviet troops, and the barrels were burned red, and Vasily was constantly shuttling between bunkers while the Germans were changing the barrels. Because he was a hunter, he knew how to disguise himself, and at the same time, the large forces of the Soviet army continued to rush to the position, and the Germans ignored this flank killer for a while.
Vasily found the right moment and successively solved the firing points on the German positions, which made a great contribution to the Soviet offensive. Soon he had finished the 10 rounds of ammunition that the troops had just given him, and he began to search for the bullets on his fallen comrades.
In the end, the Germans could not resist the Soviet tactics of crowds, and had to abandon their positions on the river bank and retreat into the city. In this battle, Vasily killed more than 20 enemies with an extremely high hit rate, and these enemies were either machine gun shooters or officers.
After this war, Vasily's fame became famous, and the Soviet Political Department, in order to boost the morale of the army, hyped up Vasily's performance, which made him an idol of the whole army.
Due to the insistence of the Soviet soldiers, the Germans were never able to completely occupy Stalingrad and were dragged into endless street fighting, which turned the whole city into a meat grinder, and both sides paid a huge amount of **.
According to Soviet statistics after the war, the average life span of each soldier in the Battle of Stalingrad was one day, and in many cases, 20 people died in a small battle for the staircase.
At this time,The Soviet high command realized that this tactic was too big at the moment. So a new operational concept came to mind. Select experienced veterans, form a small team, break it into pieces, and use the ruins and walls of the city as cover to sneak up on the enemy in the open.
Vasily, who was accurate in shooting, was of course chosen and became a sniper, and his ** was also turned into a high-powered scopeMosin Nagant sniper rifle.
The snipers of the Soviet army inflicted a huge ** on the Germans, because their own armored forces did not have much advantage in the city. Vasily alone killed more than 300 enemies in the Battle of Stalingrad.
Vasily's opponent in the movie "Soldiers in the City" is actually an apocryphal character, mainly because in Vasily's memoirs, he once fought against the principal of a German sniper school.
This incident has not been officially confirmed, and at that time the German army did not establish any sniper schools, and no information about Konings could be found.
But what is certain is that in order to deal with the sniper tactics of the Soviet army, the German army also formed its own sniper team, which are also veterans with accurate archery skills and superb camouflage skills.
However, they were no match for Vasily, and more than 30 snipers were killed by him during the battle. To have such a high record, in addition to his own camouflage skills, it is also related to his character.
His hunting career as a teenager honed Vasily's good patience, and during combat, Vasily would often stare in one direction for more than 10 hours in order to ambush a sniper behind a bunker.
Many times he would also observe the rank of the enemy and choose whether to snipe the target, and he would not easily reveal his position because of an ordinary German private.
Finally, after paying the price of 1 million dead on both sides, the Battle of Stalingrad finally ended with the defeat of the German army, which also meant the complete failure of the German army's operation on the Eastern Front, after this battle, the balance of victory began to gradually tilt in favor of the anti-fascist camp, and the Soviet army began to continuously organize its troops**.
In the Battle of Stalingrad, due to Vasily's outstanding performance, he not only became a hero in the hearts of the Soviet people, but also taught his comrades a lot of sniper experience.
In 1943, during the war, Vasily was unfortunately injured in the eye by a landmine and had to go to the rear to recuperate.
After that, although Vasily also briefly returned to the battlefield, the Soviet army obviously did not want to let this baby pimple in any danger, because after all, he had become a national idol of the Soviet Union, and if there was any more accident, the Soviet army would not only lose an experienced veteran, but also affect the morale of the people of the whole country to fight against fascism.
Therefore, after careful consideration, the Soviet Union decided to establish a sniper training school with Vasily as the core, with Vasily as the principal, and some veterans who were wounded in combat and could not return to the battlefield as instructors.
Because the war is not over, the army also needs a large number of snipers like Vasily. In the course of teaching, Vasily shared all his experiences with the students without revealing it.
He did not feel arrogant because he was a combat hero, Vasily was extremely patient with the cadets, and he often even demonstrated tactical moves to the cadets himself.
From the theory of operations to the maintenance of a certain part of the sniper rifle, Vasily personally demonstrated it to the trainees, which made many young trainees respect him immensely.
Some students even said:
"Captain Vasily was sent by God to save the USSR. ”
During his teaching period, he also wrote a book about his experience in sniper warfare, and even after the war, the sniper courses of the Soviet military academy were still based on Vasily's writings.
Throughout World War II, the sniper training school presided over by Vasily trained thousands of snipers for the front, and they killed tens of thousands of enemy soldiers in the Soviet-German war.
According to statistics, during World War II, it took an average of 20,000 rounds of ammunition to kill a soldier, but the average Soviet sniper killed an enemy, which only required 15 rounds.
In the later Battle of Berlin, the two sides again reached a stalemate in street fighting, in which the cadets from the Vasily Sniper Training School dealt a heavy blow to the recalcitrant German SS.
For Vasily's outstanding contribution to the war, the USSR awarded him the Order of Honor and the title "Hero of the Soviet Union", and later he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In 1945, the invincible Germany surrendered, and after the war, Vasily was awarded the highest rank of major general. However, with the end of the war, Vasily knew that his mission had been accomplished, and he chose to get to know Jiagui and return to the field.
This hero, who fought bravely in his youth and trained a large number of talents for the Soviet Union, did not covet fame, and after leaving the army, he remained in Kyiv and ran a textile factory.
Under his careful management, the textile factory grew in size, and he went from a hero of the war years to a successful businessman.
In his later years, he wrote numerous books about the war and wrote his own memoirs, for which he won numerous awards, the most famous of which is the Order of Lenin.
After the war, he visited Berlin, where he met his comrades-in-arms, who gave him an elaborate sniper rifle with the inscription: "To the Hero of the Soviet Union Vasily killed 300 fascists in the Battle of Stalingrad". The gun remains in the museum in Volgograd to this day.
He was lucky, eleven days before the fall of the red giant of the USSR, Vasily died at the age of 76. Fortunately, he did not see with his own eyes the disintegration of the motherland he had once desperately defended under the West's strategy of "peaceful evolution".
After his death, he followed his will and buried him thereVolgograd(i.e., the outskirts of Stalingrad), he will always guard the city.
On January 31, 2006, Vasily's body was moved to Mamayev Hill with ceremonial ceremony, and his coffin was buried next to the monument to the Battle of Stalingrad with the inscription: ".There is no room for us to retreat。"This was the commissar of the Soviet army in the Stalingrad theater of operations at that timeKhrushchevA famous quote.
In fact, in the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union, there were many heroes like Vasily, who stood up when the motherland was in danger, and it was precisely because of their efforts that the motherland was saved from disaster.
In fact, why not in China?When those heroes went to war, they were teenagers, and as Khrushchev said, "we have no room to retreat." "Because behind them are the people.
In the entire World War II, the Soviet Union defeated Germany, the leader of the fascist camp, with 46 million people, ranking first in the world in terms of the number of casualties.
In recent years, as European and American film and television works continue to occupy the film market, especially the release of World War II-themed films one after another, this has made many people mistakenly believe that the United States is the country that made the greatest contribution to World War II.
The United States has also touted its own contribution in recent years, and all I can say about this move is, "I have never seen such a brazen person."
First of all, in the early stage of World War II, the United States carried out a large number of ** with German and Japanese fascist countries, most of which were strategic materials such as oil, rubber, and steel.
Secondly, after entering the war, he was also hesitant to land in Europe, until Stalin said: "I want to plant the red flag in the English Channel." This is the instigation and organization of France, Britain, Canada and many other countries to come to Normandy landing.
Prior to this, the Soviet Union had already paid a great price, exhausted most of the main forces of the German army, and was advancing towards Germany proper. In the Asian theater, it was also China that helped hold back a large number of Japanese troops.
Therefore, for this period of history, we must not put the cart before the horse, forever commemorate the heroes who really sacrificed their lives for it, and strictly guard against the cultural erosion of Western countries.