Customer Reviews

Notes of a Sniper

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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.

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.

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.

An interesting read that was full of the horrors and deprivations of war, particularly those suffered by snipers.
It reads as a collection of "notes" rather than a novel and is obviously influenced by the politics of the time.

I came across this book after puchasing a 91/30 mosin nagant, the same rifle used by the author. After some web searching I found this book, and found an web site about the book. You could veiw a chaper in the book, and listen to the audio of the first chapter. I can't wait until it's all available. The audio was a window into a time and way of life most of us can't understand.

The actual account of what happened at Stalingrad, not that damned Hollywood version. Zaitsev would roll over in his grave had he known that his name is used in Enemy at the Gates.

Even tough the movie "Enemy at the gates" has elements and incidents not found in the book, I feel the movie failed bringing out the true horror these snipers lived trough during the battle of Stalingrad. The horror and situations described in the book are so unbelivable that I suspects it is not possible to picture in a movie and make it seem trouthfull. If this book is documentary correct I am full of awh for these people living and fighting under such conditions. They where trouly another species of humans than whats walking the earth today.