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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Notes of a Sniper by Vassili Zaitsev, For Us There Was No Land Beyond the Volga,
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This review is from: Notes of a Sniper (Hardcover)
outstanding account by one of the leading snipers of the Red Army.Much more intersting than the movie Enemy at the Gates, which heavily distorts the history, and infinitely better than David Robbins crappy p.o.s. attempt. Zaitsev is good writer who was there during the biggest battle of all time and he gives a blow by blow account of the dirt, the blood, the grime, the smells, when he first arrived he was a unit messenger and he only got the sniper assignment 4 or 5 weeks into the battle. Although he had high scores on the shooting range no one thought to make him a sniper until they saw him shoot a Nazi machine gunner and the Nazi's two loaders, at a range of 600 yards, using a gun with standard sights. Zaitsev reports that he had never seen a rifle with telescopic sights until he was in Stalingrad and he had no idea how to use a sniper rifle. He was a self taught marksman with only a few days of instruction from a graduate of the Moscow Army Sniper School. When his superiors saw his success they ordered him to create a sniper detachment in Stalingrad, and Zaitsev recruited his marksmen on the spot.
Zaitsev was blinded by a mortar shell and was hospitalized in Stalingrad when the battle ended. He heard the captive German army from his hospital bed as they marched by, jeered by the victorious Russian soldiers. Of the various accounts of Stalingrad I have read, this one gave me the closest feel for the battle from the perspective of a Red Army foot soldier. To find that Zaitsev was a real person, and not a fiction invented by the Red Army propagandists, made for a riveting read.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is an absolute must read....... 10 stars,
By
This review is from: Notes of a Sniper (Hardcover)
If you saw Enemy at the Gates and enjoyed it then you must read this book. What the movie showed was not all true. This book is outstanding and really tells the story of Vassili Zaitsev, and the type of person and heroe he is. Its wonderful that we can now get this information from the former Soviet Union and learn more about WWII from another perspective.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing first person account,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Notes of a Sniper (Hardcover)
This is an amazing first person account by one of the most famous heroes of WWII. If you want to learn about the Battle of Stalingrad, skip Enemy at the Gates and read Stalingrad by Antony Beevor, then read this book. Since many consider the battle of Stalingrad as the turning point of the war, then this makes Vasily Zaitsev one of the main players in that turning point. Along with General Chuikov. These two, among others, innovated a strategy for urban warfare that is taught and applied to this day. To me, the author does not come across as a braggart, which someone of his ability could have certainly exhibited. Rather it is a sober and clear account of a "war within a war," the battle fought by snipers, in the most fierce and deadly military battle in history. It is also a testament to toughness, extreme patience, and the will to never give up no matter how bleak things may appear. An excellent read for anyone interested in the "Great Patriotic War" as Stalin called it. Sources out of Russia had been suppressed for so long that it is very interesting to re-evaluate the Great Patriotic War from sources other than German ones.
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