Erwin König

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Erwin König and Heinz Thorvald are names of an apocryphal Wehrmacht sniper allegedly killed by the Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev. König is depicted in fictional accounts as a ruthless Bavarian aristocrat pitted against Zaytsev. In the fictionalised account of these events in the film Enemy at the Gates, he is killed at the Stalingrad train yard by Zaytsev.

American author David L. Robbins used the name of Heinz Thorvald in his 1999 novel War of the Rats. This story portrays Thorvald (König) as an SS-Standartenführer who was originally an instructor at the Wehrmacht underground headquarters in Zossen. However, aside from a few staff officers, no SS-division fought in Stalingrad and no active sniper had such a high rank. German snipers were not employed in units but were deployed as Jägers. The Red Army, conversely, deployed snipers in large units up to battalion strength. Zaytsev was a Junior Lieutenant (мла́дший лейтена́нт) and eventually Captain (капита́н) of a Russian sniper-unit.(Photo shows German sniper using the Mauser 98k rifle with Russian PE scope mounted. This set-up was unusual but local German Waffenmeisters of Infantry Bns, did mount captured Russian optics to the standard German 98k)

There is great debate over whether the legendary WWII German sniper that was sent to Stalingrad to dispatch of Vasily Zaytzev was König, Thorvald, or even whether he existed at all. In fact in the actual Soviet war-records, it originally showed up as a Maj. Erwin König, which was in fact a very basic and plain German name at the time. In Vasily Zaytsev's war-memoirs, he later refers to him as Heinz Thorvald, which was yet another popular German name in that time period. Thorvald seems to be the name that is used more now, and its confusing as to which it was, and if they were the same person, or one was a mistake, or whether the German Super-Sniper was fabricated by the Soviet press to represent the German Army, or German snipers as a "whole", and that the story was just a means of providing morale for the Soviet troops. The two names are on official Soviet war-records, but there is no record of either name in the German record books.

The story of the Soviet discovery of König's arrival came from a German soldier who had been interrogated by the Soviet forces (as stated in Zaytsev's memiors). Also Zaytsev claims in his memior to have found the enemy sniper in a run-down industrial area, finding him under a sheet of scrap metal by the glint of his enemy's rifle scope. He then claims to have taken the scope as a souvenir.

References

v t e Battle of Stalingrad Airfields Axis order of battle Red Army order of battle Bombing of Stalingrad in World War II German commanders German units Operations Nazi Germany Donnerschlag Winter Storm Soviet Union Little Saturn Ring Saturn Uranus Formations Army groups and Fronts Nazi Germany B Centre Don Soviet Union Don Southwestern Stalingrad Voronezh Armies Nazi Germany 4th Panzer 6th Hungary 2nd Italy 8th Romania 3rd 4th Soviet Union 1st Guards 2nd Guards 3rd Guards 21st 51st 62nd 64th 65th Corps Nazi Germany XIV Panzer XL Panzer XLVIII Panzer IV VIII XI LI 8th Air Soviet Union 1st Tank 4th Tank 13th Tank 16th Tank 24th Tank 26th Tank 4th Mechanised 13th Mechanised 3rd Guards Cavalry 4th Cavalry 8th Cavalry Divisions Nazi Germany 6th Panzer 14th Panzer 16th Panzer 17th Panzer 22nd Panzer, 24th Panzer 3rd Motorised Infantry 29th Motorised Infantry 60th Motorised Infantry 5th Infantry 44th Infantry 71st Infantry 76th Infantry 79th Infantry 94th Infantry 100th Infantry 113th Infantry 295th Infantry 297th Infantry 305th Infantry 371st Infantry 376th Infantry 384th Infantry 389th Infantry Soviet Union 13th Guards Rifle 15th Guards Rifle 33rd Guards Rifle 35th Guards Rifle 36th Guards Rifle 37th Guards Rifle 39th Guards Rifle 38th Rifle 45th Rifle 62nd Rifle 64th Rifle 91st Rifle 93rd Rifle 95th Rifle 112th Rifle 138th Rifle 157th Rifle 169th Rifle 173rd Rifle 181st Rifle 193rd Rifle 196th Rifle 204th Rifle 214th Rifle 221st Rifle 248th Rifle 284th Rifle 302nd Rifle 308th Rifle 422nd Rifle 685th Rifle 414th Anti-Tank 149th Artillery 60th Cavalry 81st Cavalry Notable participants Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler Alexander Edler von Daniels Hermann Göring Wilhelm Hoffman Hermann Hoth Hans-Valentin Hube Erwin König Erich von Manstein Friedrich Paulus Wolfram von Richthofen Arthur Schmidt Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach Karl Strecker Croatia Viktor Pavičić Italy Italo Gariboldi Hungary Gusztáv Vitéz Jány Romania Constantin Constantinescu-Claps Petre Dumitrescu Mihail Lascăr Soviet Union Joseph Stalin Azi Aslanov Vasily Badanov Vasily Chuikov Nikolay Dyatlenko Sasha Fillipov Peter Gitelman Vasily Grossman Nikita Khrushchev Dmitry Lelyushenko Rodion Malinovsky Yakov Pavlov Alexander Rodimtsev Konstantin Rokossovsky Alexander Shcherbakov Semyon Timoshenko Aleksandr Vasilevsky Nikolay Voronov Erich Weinert Andrei Yeremenko Vasily Zaytsev Georgy Zhukov Locations Barmaley Fountain Barrikady works Grain silo Gumrak Kalach Mamayev Kurgan Pavlov's House Pitomnik Airfield Red October Steel Factory River Don River Volga Tatsinskaya Airfield Tsaritsa gorge Volgograd Tractor Factory In memoriam The Motherland Calls Stalingrad Madonna Sword of Stalingrad Battle of Stalingrad in popular culture See also: Battle of the Caucasus Battle of Kursk Battle of Nikolayevka Case Blue Operation Barbarossa Second Battle of Kharkov Third Battle of Kharkov Volgograd

v t e World War II snipers Canada Joseph Gregory Harold Marshall Finland Simo Häyhä Sulo Kolkka Germany Sepp Allerberger Matthäus Hetzenauer Erwin König / Heinz Thorvald (apocryphal) Friedrich Pein Bruno Sutkus Helmut Wirnsberger Soviet Union Fyodor Okhlopkov Ivan Sidorenko Vasily Zaytsev Tanya Baramzina Nina Lobkovskaya Lyudmila Pavlichenko Roza Shanina Ziba Ganiyeva Mikhail Ilyich Surkov Czechoslovakia Marie Ljalková See also World War I snipers Vietnam War snipers

Persondata
Name	Koenig, Erwin
Alternative names	Thorvald, Heinz
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death	1942
Place of death	http://www.snipercentral.com/konig.htm