Historical Accuracy
Historian Antony Beevor suggests in his book, Stalingrad, that, while Zaitsev was a real person, the story of his duel (dramatised in the film) with König is fictional. Although William Craig's book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad includes a "sniper's duel" between Zaitsev and König, the sequence of events in the film is fictional. Zaitsev, in an interview claims to have engaged in a sniper duel over a number of days. Zaitsev states that after killing the German sniper, and on collecting his tags, he found that he had killed the head of the Berlin Sniper School.
Read more about this topic: Enemy At The Gates
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