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Erwin König and Heinz Thorvald are names of an apocryphal Wehrmacht sniper allegedly killed by the Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev during the Battle of Stalingrad. König is mentioned both in Zaytsev's memoirs ''Notes of a Sniper'' and William Craig's 1973 non-fiction book ''Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad''. ==Historical authenticity== Zaytsev's personal account is the only source for the story. No other historical documentation exists and no second 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. Zaytsev said that the duel took place over a period of three days in the ruins of Stalingrad.〔V. Zaitsev:''Notes of a Russian Sniper''〕 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, 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. In his own 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. At the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow there is a rifle scope that supposedly belonged to a Wehrmacht sniper called Erwin König.〔(Image of purported telescopic sight at the Moscow Armed Forces Museum ) 〕 In a post-war visit to Berlin, Zaytsev was allegedly confronted by a woman who told him she was König's daughter, with Soviet authorities quickly evacuating Zaytsev to avoid any confrontation.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Vassili Zaitsev (Russian) )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Erwin König」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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