Erwin Konig

Major **Erwin König** was a Heer officer and a German aristocrat from Bavaria. He was a professional sniper and the director of the Wehrmacht sniper school in Zossen.

König was immediately deployed at Stalingrad due to the high amount of German officers killed by Russian snipers. His main target was the Soviet sniper hero, Vassili Zaitsev, as killing him would crush the Russian morale.

As soon as he arrived, König started looking for his opponent in the towns ruins, and attempted set a trap for him. The two snipers' first conflict took place at the department store where König was hiding in a pile of clothing. He successfully lured Vassili's sniper squad into the building. While they were inside, König killed the soviet sniper Anton who was covering them from outside. Vasili realized it was a trap after finding one of König's cigarettes. Soon after, the Luftwaffe bombed the area, causing the soviet sniper Ludmilla to panic and get killed by König. Vasili and his fellow sniper Volodya managed to escape with their lives.

Later, Vassili, Volodya, and König's former student Nicolia Kulikov cut the telephone lines, and killed the repair men who were sent to fix them. König's soldiers captured Volodya, who refused to tell which building he was hiding in. König had Volodya wear a German uniform, and sent him as a German repair man. This caused the unwitting Vassili to kill him, and reveal his hiding place. König attempted to kill them when they were leaving, but only killed Kulikov with a very skilled shot.

Later, König was visited by a 12-year old Soviet boy Sasha Filippov who worked as a shoe cleaner. The two befriended each other and Sasha offered him to spy on Russians and especially Vasili. König gave him chocolate and obligingly revealed his next plans to the boy, not knowing Sasha is actually a double-agent for Vasili.

Thanks to Sasha's information, König waited on Vasili in the tractor factory. He hid himself a German corpse above the place where his rival was in the open, but Vasili and his partner Sergei expected this and used the pipeline instead. König heard them crawling, and hanged his position hiding behind the louver with a broken slat. When the unaware Vasili and Sergei climbed out, König started shooting, injuring Sergei and trapping Vasili who had to hide behind an old oil drum, unable to move without getting himself shot, while his rifle was out of reach. At first, he attempted to retrieve it with a pocket knife attached to a string, only for König to shoot the string in half. Later, König saw Vasili's reflection in large pieces of glass round him and noticed he is talking to someone König couldn't see. Suddenly, Tanya jumped from behind the pipe and temporarily blinded König with the reflection of the sun caused by a piece of broken glass, only for Vasili to grab his rifle and shoots König's hand.

König then found a new sniper's nest in a chemical factory. He got some left yellow dust on his boots that was noticed by Sasha who immediately told Vasili. However, Vasili's attempt ended up unsuccessfully, as he fell asleep hidden among the dead bodies, causing the vulnerable König to walk right past him. König tried searching for Vasili, and managed to find him while he was still asleep, but a Corpse Robber robbed Vasili, and caused König to lose sight of which Russian body was Vasili's. The corpse robber had also taken Vasili's sniper log and because of this, the great Soviet sniper was declared dead. With Vasili dead, the Germans planned to send König home and general Paulus asked for König's dog tags to avoid the Russians from profiting from his potential death. König also have him his son's War Merit Cross, who died in the first days of the battle of Stalingrad.

Despite evidences of Vasili's death, König didn't believe his opponent was dead. To confirm Sasha's loyalty, König told the boy to wait near the train station and asked him to stay home. As he expected, Vasili and Tanya appeared at the station looking for him, and now had proof that Sasha was a Soviet spy. He caught the boy and led him to the station, explaining to him that they were now enemies. Although he respected Sasha's choice to support Soviets, he hanged the boy from a high pole for spying.

Waiting for his opponent, König found a place to hide in a hole under several pieces of corrugated iron, where he could watch the area and shoot without being seen. Vasili came and hid in one of the buildings. Commissar Danilov, feeling guilty about his jealousy for Vasili, stood up in the open, provoking König into shooting him and thus revealing his position. After a while when nothing seemed to happen, König concluded that he really got Vasili, and left his hiding place to look for the body. As he was walking across the station, he suddenly realized he had fallen into a trap. Seeing there was no way to survive, he slowly turned to Vasili who was waiting next to a train wagon, and took his hat off. Vasili then shot König straight through his right eye, (the same way Vasili was trained to kill wolves) and took his gun, leaving it next to Danilov's body.

## Contents

* 1 Awards
* 2 Trivia
* 3 Notes
* 4 Gallery

## Awards

* Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
* Iron Cross 1st Class with 1939 Clasp
* Iron Cross 2nd Class with 1939 Clasp
* Wound Badge (Black)

## Trivia

* According to many sources, Erwin König is "an an apocryphal Wehrmacht sniper allegedly killed by the Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev during the Battle of Stalingrad." However, König was not the sniper's real name. There are other names attributed to the sniper including **Heinz Thorwald**.
* Several victims of König are based on real-life people: Ludmila on a Soviet sniper named Lyudmila Pavlichenko (who however survived the war), Nicolai Kulikov on the sniper of the same name (who also survived and was a good friend of Zaitsev), and Sasha on 17-year-old spy for Red Army named Sasha Filippov (who was actually executed by Germans after discovering).
* It is unknown how König was able to communicate with Volodya and Sasha. There is no proof he could speak Russian and vice-versa, since both sides speak English in the original movie, completely ignoring accents or language barriers.

## Notes

* He is seen wearing the Non-combatants version of the Honour Cross, with is contradicted by the fact that he is wearing a WW1 Iron Cross 2nd Class, showing that he was a combatant during the Great War.