Erwin König
Erwin König is a name of an apocryphal German "Wehrmacht" sniper allegedly killed by the Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev during the Battle of Stalingrad. The alleged duel between Zaytsev and König took place over a period of three days in the ruins of Stalingrad. König is mentioned both in Zaytsev's memoirs "Notes of a Sniper" (a "Major Konings", potentially SS) and William Craig's 1973 non-fiction book "". In a post-war visit to Berlin, Zaytsev was allegedly confronted by a woman who told him that she was König's daughter, with Soviet authorities quickly evacuating Zaytsev  to avoid any confrontation. He was portrayed by Ed Harris in the 2001 film "Enemy at the Gates". Factuality. Zaytsev's personal account is the only source for the story. No other historical documentation exists and no secondary source for the events in question exists. None of the Germans mentioned by Zaytsev including König, König's daughter, or the German prisoner of war who Zaytsev says identified König have ever been identified in other records. 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 memoirs). Also Zaytsev claims in his memoir to have found the enemy sniper in a run-down industrial area, locating 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. In his memoirs, Zaytsev refers to him as being a German sniper named Herr Koning (""Koning"" is Dutch for King, cognate to König in German), identified as the head of a sniper school in Berlin, by documents taken from his dead body. This is unconfirmed as German "Heer" personnel records  make no mention of any German sniper called König or Koning. It was also stated by Zaytsev that the existence of König came from an unidentified German prisoner. In popular culture. A fictionalized account of the duel in the film "Enemy at the Gates" portrays Erwin König—played by Ed Harris—as the head of the "Wehrmacht" Sniper School. He is sent to Stalingrad to take on the increasingly aggressive Soviet snipers. Initially he is successful, killing four of Zaytsev's partners, but eventually he is outwitted by the Russian, portrayed by Jude Law. Erwin König also appears in "War  of the Rats", a 1999 novel by David L. Robbins, in which he is depicted as an SS Colonel named Heinz Thorvald. Ramón Rosanas wrote a comic about the conflict between Zaytsev and König.