WWII Wehrmacht Sniper Team #1

Description

Major General Paul Klatt's 3rd Mountain Division on the Eastern Front during the 1944 Hungarian reoccupation provides an illustrative example of German sniping effectiveness when they made Soviet officers and NCOs pay a particularly heavy toll as they were picked off by the crack sharpshooters. Snipers such as Leopold Meirer, who would have 180 kills to his credit before being killed in Slovakia, and Josef Roth, who would be credited with 200 kills, made life hell for the Russian soldier who carelessly stuck his neck or anything else out. Another sharpshooter, 19-year-old Matthaus Hewtzenauer, would end the war with 347 confirmed kills, the highest in the German army.* The Germans developed many force specific sniper training centers (i.e., Waffen-SS, Army etc.) during WWII and were the first combatant nation to use specially trained snipers. Snipers identify targets by their appearance and behavior. Snipers shoot people who are in high-rank uniforms, who talk to radiomen, who sit as passengers in a car, who have military servants, or who talk and move their position more frequently. Sniper rear-guard, a German lesson learned from WWII Germans used four to six snipers to cover unit withdrawals as snipers could remain undetected with one or two shots while in comparison machine guns or other heavy weaponry would be immediately detected. The Germans also employed the use of dummy positions and look-a-likes to trick the enemy into shooting and revealing themselves which was another classic WWII sniping technique developed and used in/around their front lines. Given their ultimate demise, the Germans were relatively effective in sniper employment in both World Wars. There are numerous stories of German snipers causing high casualties and widespread "sniper fear" as mentioned above and among the Allied troops after Normandy landings in 1944. -Excerpt from article written by Pat McTaggart for World War II Magazine, March 1997. -Osprey Publishing, Elite 68, The Military since 1914