Perspective: How the myth at the center of a Hollywood blockbuster is driving the Russian president’s war in Ukraine.
But this is not just a case of Hollywood taking a creative license to dramatize a military battle. Rather the story itself was Russian propaganda, which was repeated by Zaitsev himself in his postwar memoir that was later published in English in the 1990s. It has since become a pillar of the Stalingrad story, something that still plays a role in Russian propaganda.
The five-month-long battle witnessed unparalleled carnage: more than 1.5 million combatants killed and a city that stretched more than 30 kilometers along the river Volga, was razed. Over the course of the battle, 2.9 million aerial bombs, artillery shells and mortar rounds were dropped on Stalingrad, destroying 95 percent of civic buildings, 110 schools and 15 hospitals.
The Siberian never encountered an enemy officer called Major Konig, a commander of a Berlin-based sniper school. The officer played by Ed Harris and the school he supposedly traveled to Stalingrad from, didn’t exist. No German army reports at the time have him officially registered, and Zaitsev’s own account has been proved to be factually inaccurate.
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