On February 27, 1943, the Soviet counterattack failed, and all the counterattacking troops retreated to the east bank, on the west bank of the Volga River, only a small number of Soviet troops were still resisting in the ruins of the city of Stalingrad, and the ground positions in the city had been fully occupied by the Germans. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

On March 5, 1943, the last Soviet troops in the ruins of the city were annihilated and Stalingrad was occupied.

The Soviet observation post on the east bank found that during these ten days, Stalingrad had been completely occupied by the Germans, but there was still sparse gunfire, and at night, a boat was sent from the east bank to pick up people from a section of the river without German troops between the broken ice that had been blown up by the shells.

It's already March, and the cold weather has passed, and the ice that the shells have blasted has not frozen immediately. This was a measure of the German army to prevent the Soviet army from counterattacking, and it was also a measure of the Soviet army to prevent the German army from continuing the offensive.

No one was received for several nights, until the night of March 5, when the ship stopped on the ice shore and, as a few days before, was ready to wait, when the snow on the shore moved, and a man shouted softly in Russian: "Is it the Soviet troops?" ”

Humane on board: "Yes." Are you a sniper team? ”

Bai Xue stood up alone, bent over, walked over slowly, and said, "Yes." I'm Vasily, and I'm left alone. Let's go back to the East Coast. ”

A few people had just walked a few steps, when suddenly, Vasily suddenly fell down and gestured to several other people to lie down.

Everyone hurriedly lay down.

At this time, two gunshots rang out, one fired at the opposite side and one shot fired by Vasily. One of the fighters behind Vasily was shot.

Everyone knew that there were German snipers on the opposite side. Seeing that Vasily was still lying there and not moving, he knew that the German sniper was not dead.

To be sure, the German sniper on the opposite side also knew through this shot: Vasily had been found.

The two snipers begin to confront each other.

The duel of the masters begins. Several people's hearts were pinched at once, and they all felt a huge pressure, an invisible pressure that permeated the air.

At night, the wind blows on the ice on the river, and snow particles fly on the ice. From time to time, flares and searchlights from the shore illuminate the ice and the slopes again and again.

Neither Vasily nor the German snipers on the opposite side moved. The others didn't move. The soldier who had been shot bandaged it, trembling at first, and soon he didn't move.

Everyone knows that he was injured and lost blood, coupled with the severe cold, the temperature dropped sharply, and he was already dead. These days, there are too many people dying like this around me.

Vasily's vision was okay, he could see a lot of things on the bank slope. He had already seen clearly that the enemy was in a crater on the bank slope. Behind the protruding ice blocks on the surface of the river, the other party is condescending, and their own side is at a low place, so it is very disadvantageous to fight back and protect their comrades.

Thanks to the drift ice on the river in early winter, the drift ice is crowded and collided, and after freezing, these protruding ice cubes are formed, life-saving ice cubes.

The warrior who had just died was beside Vasily. Vasily shrunk down, grabbed the corpse with his hands, and slowly pressed the corpse's head closer to the top of the ice. One of the people next to him understood what Vasily meant, made a gesture and began to push the corpse.

Vasily retracted his hand and held his gun in both hands, which protruded from the gap between the two pieces of ice and aimed it at the crater high on the opposite side.

At this time, there was a tom in the distance, and a flare was lifted into the air, and soon, this part of the river was illuminated. The white hat on the corpse's hat fell off, and the red star on the cotton hat was revealed.

The German snipers on the opposite side were unmoved. At this point, the flare floated by.

Vasily's gun retracted, he left his hat in place, bareheaded, little by little to move to the corpse.

Another long standoff.

Finally, a flare hit. The riverside is clear. Vasily was behind the corpse, and his gun came out of the corpse's shoulder.

At this time, the opposite side flashed and fired.

Vasily also shot.

Vasily behind the corpse was fine, the hat that had just been left in place was knocked away.

Something rolled on the side of the crater on the other side, and it was a person. German snipers died.

The river wind blew the snow, and Vasily's snot flowed: "Ahhhh ”

Everyone pulled Vasily onto the boat, which slowly left the riverbank. Vasily was now carried into the cabin, where hot tea was served, and a doctor was bandaging the wound on his leg.

A man stepped forward and said, "Vasily, we have come to pick you up several times, where have you been these days?" ”

"We were in the ruins of the tractor factory, and later we went into the sewers," Vasily said. In the past few days of sniping activities, my comrades-in-arms have been sacrificed one after another, and by yesterday, we were the only group left. We've noticed you coming to shore in this area at night these days, so you've come through the sewers. Unfortunately, I was wounded, and my comrade-in-arms, who had gone looking for something to eat a few hours earlier, was killed by the Germans. ”

As he spoke, Vasily burst into tears. He took the bottle and took a long sip to hide his gaffe. He was a typical figure, and the commissar Khrushchev told him to maintain the image of a hero.

A humane: "Vasily, how many Germans have you killed these days?" ”

Vasily pointed to his trouser pocket.

There were three small notebooks inside, which were opened to reveal detailed records of each sniper attack by the three teams. Soon, the numbers came out, one group sniped twenty-three, another nineteen, and Vasily's group sniped thirty-two.

Everyone was overjoyed and said: "Political Commissar Khrushchev cares about you very much, and if your results are so good, he will definitely reward you." ”

Vasily said: "I must fight back." Vasily understood that these people had come specifically to find him, had come at the risk of death, and that one of his comrades had already died. He was impressed.

Vasily was a hunter, grew up in the Ural Mountains, he was a hunter, he was like a god of marksmanship, he joined the Navy in 1937, and later volunteered to join the Army, assigned to the 62nd Regiment of the 284th Infantry Division of the Soviet Army, 1047th Regiment, participated in the Battle of Stalingrad. The large number of German soldiers killed in the Battle of Stalingrad was set by Khrushchev as a model to boost the morale of the Soviet army.

Later, this sniper tactic was popularized, and several sniper teams were dispatched in all directions, killing hundreds or thousands of Germans in the ruins, which greatly dealt a blow to the German army, because the sentries were shot, officers, and signal soldiers, which had a huge impact on the combat strength of the German army.

During these months, he killed 242 German soldiers, including more than a dozen German snipers. Some people say that he killed as many as 400 people, and more than 200 are recorded.

Vasily is a legend of World War II.

In the beginning, he only used a rifle to snipe, and he sniped German officers many times, and gradually became known. His best performance was to kill a German soldier from a distance of 800 meters with an ordinary rifle. Later, several German soldiers who came out to check on were also killed by him one by one. His surname Zaitsev has the same origin as Hare, and later he established a sniper training school in his city, and the cadets trained were called Little Bunny.

Of course, there are also many people who doubt his sniping achievements, not only about the number of German soldiers he sniped, but also about his military exploits, saying that he is a model and an exaggerated hero. The German sniper instructor who made him famous did not exist, and so on, but all this suspicion did not affect his role in the Stalingrad War.

Objectively speaking, Westerners hate Stalingrad because they hate Stalin, and of course they hate Vasily, who became famous in this campaign. In order to boost morale, the Soviet army carried out propaganda on a sniper, which was reasonable.

It was Khrushchev, the commander of the Battle of Stalingrad, who set this example.

It's a pity that this role model, this benchmark, this hero, had to withdraw from Stalingrad.

The confrontation between Soviet and German troops along the Volga River took shape in the area of Stalingrad.

The fall of Stalingrad was a great blow to the determination of the Soviets to resist. On the contrary, the morale of the German army was encouraged, and the warmer weather and higher temperatures were conducive to the activities of the German army. The snow on the ground had not yet melted and did not affect the transportation of German troops. Under the influence of several favorable factors, the intensity of the German offensive increased.

March 15, 1943, Leningrad.

The Germans broke through the defensive line on the southern side of Leningrad and occupied a dozen blocks. 150,000 German and 100,000 Finnish troops won an unexpected victory.

Hitler praised the German troops besieging Leningrad, and he had already withdrawn the besieged forces from Leningrad to solve the problem of insufficient military strength on the central and southern fronts. Now they broke through the Leningrad line in this situation and began street fighting. This was a great surprise to Hitler.

The entire propaganda machine of the German army was at full speed, propagating the victories of Stalingrad and Leningrad.

The development of the war situation was quickly confirmed by the Soviet side.

The world was in an uproar.

China was quick to get the news. The trail was also informed. Compared with the history books, the battle situation released by the Soviet side, except that the Soviet army suffered fewer casualties, the German army suffered more casualties.

The biggest difference is that Stalingrad fell. The fall of Stalingrad would lead to the complete fall of the oil fields in the southern part of the Soviet Union into Hitler's hands, and the problem of the German army's lack of oil would be alleviated or even fundamentally solved.

The oil fields were the last hope of the Soviet Union. With the loss of Stalingrad, the situation in the Soviet Union was even worse. The momentum of the Japanese offensive in the east had just eased, and something happened again in the west.

The Politburo of the Soviet Union decided that because the offensive momentum of the Japanese army on the Eastern Front was completely contained, a part of the defense of the Japanese army would be transferred to the southwestern front to keep the oil fields.

Only then did the members of the Politburo realize that Stalin's decision was correct, and that it was possible to give up a large area of land that had already been lost and to keep the Soviet Union. If the Japanese on the Eastern Front took the opportunity to attack westward, then the USSR would have perished.

The entire anti-fascist battlefield was gloomy and bleak.

But why didn't the Japanese seize this perfect opportunity to attack?

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1. The number of German soldiers killed by Vasily is a mystery. In the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, 225 Wehrmacht soldiers and officers from other Axis powers were killed between November 10 and December 17, including 11 enemy snipers. By 10 November, Vasily had killed 32 Axis soldiers with his traditional Mosin-Nagant rifle; Between October 1942 and January 1943, Vasily killed a total of about 242 enemy soldiers. However, the true number may be higher, some believe that it can even be as high as about 400. Because this number is recorded and testified by eyewitnesses. Other times, he himself killed in battle is not counted here.

2. The Soviet sniper who killed the most enemies in World War II was Michael Ilyich Sukov, who was part of the 4th Infantry Division, with a lead of 702 people. The second place was Vasily Kovaqiangradze of the 259th Infantry Regiment with 534 people, and the third place was Ivan Sidolenko of the 1122nd Infantry Regiment with 500 people. In fact, during the stalemate stage, a large number of snipers emerged in the Soviet army, and 49 Soviet snipers ranked ahead of Zaitsev.

3, Soviet Red Army propaganda said that he killed the headmaster of the German sniper school, Colonel Konnick. According to some research, Konick, the director of the German sniper school, did not exist at all.

4. Vasily's autobiography "Sniper's Notes" mentions that the opponent he actually encountered in the Battle of Stalingrad should be "Heinz. Torvart", Vasily learned on the basis of identification documents found on the bodies of the slain.