1.
Battle of Stalingrad
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Marked by fierce close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as one of the single largest and bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to replace their losses, the German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in August 1942, using the German 6th Army and elements of the 4th Panzer Army. The attack was supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble, the fighting degenerated into house-to-house fighting, and both sides poured reinforcements into the city. By mid-November 1942, the Germans had pushed the Soviet defenders back at great cost into narrow zones along the west bank of the Volga River. On 19 November 1942, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, the Axis forces on the flanks were overrun and the 6th Army was cut off and surrounded in the Stalingrad area. Adolf Hitler ordered that the stay in Stalingrad and make no attempt to break out, instead, attempts were made to supply the army by air. Heavy fighting continued for two months. By the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces in Stalingrad had exhausted their ammunition, the remaining units of the 6th Army surrendered. The battle lasted five months, one week, and three days, elsewhere, the war had been progressing well, the U-boat offensive in the Atlantic had been very successful and Rommel had just captured Tobruk. In the east, they had stabilized their front in a running from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. There were a number of salients, but these were not particularly threatening, neither Army Group North nor Army Group South had been particularly hard pressed over the winter. Stalin was expecting the main thrust of the German summer attacks to be directed against Moscow again, with the initial operations being very successful, the Germans decided that their summer campaign in 1942 would be directed at the southern parts of the Soviet Union. The initial objectives in the region around Stalingrad were the destruction of the capacity of the city. The river was a key route from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea to central Russia and its capture would disrupt commercial river traffic. The Germans cut the pipeline from the oilfields when they captured Rostov on 23 July, the capture of Stalingrad would make the delivery of Lend Lease supplies via the Persian Corridor much more difficult. On 23 July 1942, Hitler personally rewrote the operational objectives for the 1942 campaign, both sides began to attach propaganda value to the city based on it bearing the name of the leader of the Soviet Union. The expansion of objectives was a significant factor in Germanys failure at Stalingrad, caused by German overconfidence, the Soviets realized that they were under tremendous constraints of time and resources and ordered that anyone strong enough to hold a rifle be sent to fight. If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny then I must finish this war, Army Group South was selected for a sprint forward through the southern Russian steppes into the Caucasus to capture the vital Soviet oil fields there
2.
Eastern Front (World War II)
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The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. The Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches, ghettos, of the estimated 70 million deaths attributed to World War II, over 30 million, many of them civilian, occurred on the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome of the European portion of World War II and it resulted in the destruction of the Third Reich, the partition of Germany for nearly half a century and the rise of the Soviet Union as a military and industrial superpower. The two principal belligerent powers were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. Though never engaged in action in the Eastern Front, the United Kingdom. The joint German–Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish–Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front, in addition, the Soviet–Finnish Continuation War may also be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. Despite their ideological antipathy, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union shared a dislike for the outcome of World War I. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939 was an agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It contained a secret protocol aiming to return Central Europe to the pre–World War I status quo by dividing it between Germany and the Soviet Union, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would return to Soviet control, while Poland and Romania would be divided. I need the Ukraine so that they cant starve us out, the two powers invaded and partitioned Poland in 1939. The annexations were never recognized by most Western states, the annexed Romanian territory was divided between the Ukrainian and Moldavian Soviet republics. Adolf Hitler had argued in his autobiography Mein Kampf for the necessity of Lebensraum, acquiring new territory for Germans in Eastern Europe, Wehrmacht officers told their troops to target people who were described as Jewish Bolshevik subhumans, the Mongol hordes, the Asiatic flood and the red beast. The vast majority of German soldiers viewed the war in Nazi terms, Hitler referred to the war in unique terms, calling it a war of annihilation which was both an ideological and racial war. In addition, the Nazis also sought to wipe out the large Jewish population of Central, after Germanys initial success at the Battle of Kiev in 1941, Hitler saw the Soviet Union as militarily weak and ripe for immediate conquest. On 3 October 1941, he announced, We have only to kick in the door, thus, Germany expected another short Blitzkrieg and made no serious preparations for prolonged warfare. Throughout the 1930s the Soviet Union underwent massive industrialization and economic growth under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, Stalins central tenet, Socialism in one country, manifested itself as a series of nationwide centralized Five-Year Plans from 1929 onwards. It served as a testing ground for both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army to experiment with equipment and tactics that they would later employ on a wider scale in the Second World War
3.
West Germany
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West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War era, NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border, after 1961 West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. With the reunification of West and East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, enlarged now to sixteen states and this period is referred to as the Bonn Republic by historians, alluding to the interwar Weimar Republic and the post-reunification Berlin Republic. The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, US and British forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Its population grew from roughly 51 million in 1950 to more than 63 million in 1990, the city of Bonn was its de facto capital city. The fourth Allied occupation zone was held by the Soviet Union, as a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interbellum democratic Weimar Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided among the Western and Eastern blocs, Germany was de facto divided into two countries and two special territories, the Saarland and divided Berlin. The Federal Republic of Germany claimed a mandate for all of Germany. It took the line that the GDR was an illegally constituted puppet state, though the GDR did hold regular elections, these were not free and fair. For all practical purposes the GDR was a Soviet puppet state, from the West German perspective the GDR was therefore illegitimate. Three southwestern states of West Germany merged to form Baden-Württemberg in 1952, in addition to the resulting ten states, West Berlin was considered an unofficial de facto 11th state. It recognised the GDR as a de facto government within a single German nation that in turn was represented de jure by the West German state alone. From 1973 onward, East Germany recognised the existence of two German countries de jure, and the West as both de facto and de jure foreign country, the Federal Republic and the GDR agreed that neither of them could speak in the name of the other. The first chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who remained in office until 1963, had worked for an alignment with NATO rather than neutrality. He not only secured a membership in NATO but was also a proponent of agreements that developed into the present-day European Union, when the G6 was established in 1975, there was no question whether the Federal Republic of Germany would be a member as well. With the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the Berlin Wall, East Germany voted to dissolve itself and accede to the Federal Republic in 1990. Its five post-war states were reconstituted along with the reunited Berlin and they formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany
4.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
5.
Sniper
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Sniping requires the development of basic infantry skills to a high degree of skill. A snipers training incorporates a variety of subjects designed to increase value as a force multiplier. The art of sniping requires learning and repetitively practicing these skills until mastered, a sniper must be highly trained in long range rifle marksmanship and field craft skills to ensure maximum effective engagements with minimum risk. The verb to snipe originated in the 1770s among soldiers in British India in reference to shooting snipe, the agent noun sniper appears by the 1820s. The term sniper was first attested in 1824 in the sense of the word sharpshooter, a somewhat older term is sharp shooter, a calque of 18th-century German Scharfschütze, in use in British newspapers as early as 1801. According to figures released by the United States Department of Defense, the average number of rounds expended by U. S. military snipers to kill one enemy soldier is 1.3 rounds. According to the United States Army, the soldier will hit a man-sized target 10 percent of the time at 300 meters using the M16A2 rifle. Graduates of the United States Army Sniper School are expected to achieve 90 percent first-round hits at 600 meters, different countries use different military doctrines regarding snipers in military units, settings, and tactics.50 BMG, like the Barrett M82, McMillan Tac-50, and Denel NTW-20. Soviet- and Russian-derived military doctrines include squad-level snipers, snipers have increasingly been demonstrated as useful by US and UK forces in the recent Iraq campaign in a fire support role to cover the movement of infantry, especially in urban areas. Military snipers from the US, UK, and other countries that adopt their military doctrine are typically deployed in two-man sniper teams consisting of a shooter and spotter, a common practice is for a shooter and a spotter to take turns in order to avoid eye fatigue. A sniper team would be armed with its long weapon. Sniper rifles are classified as crew-served, as the term is used in the United States military, a sniper team consists of a combination of one or more shooters with force protection elements and support personnel, such as a spotter or a flanker. Both spotter and flanker carries additional ammunition and associated equipment, the spotter detects, observes, and assigns targets and watches for the results of the shot. Using a spotting scope and/or rangefinder, the spotter will also read the wind by using physical indicators and it is not unusual for the spotter to be equipped with a notepad and a laptop computer specifically for performing these calculations. Law enforcement snipers, commonly called police snipers, and military snipers differ in ways, including their areas of operation. A police sharpshooter is part of an operation and usually takes part in relatively short missions. Police forces typically deploy such sharpshooters in hostage scenarios and this differs from a military sniper, who operates as part of a larger army, engaged in warfare. Sometimes as part of a SWAT team, police snipers are deployed alongside negotiators and an assault team trained for close quarters combat
6.
Rachel Weisz
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Rachel Hannah Weisz is a British-American actress. Weisz began her career in the early 1990s, appearing in Inspector Morse, Scarlet and Black. She made her debut in Death Machine. Her first Hollywood appearance was in Chain Reaction, opposite Keanu Reeves and her stage breakthrough was the 1994 revival of Noël Cowards play Design for Living, which earned her the London Critics Circle Award for the most promising newcomer. Weiszs performances also include the 1999 Donmar Warehouse production of Tennessee Williams Suddenly, Last Summer and her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in the latter play earned her the Olivier Award for Best Actress. Weisz appeared in the film, The Mummy in 1999, other films that followed are, Enemy at the Gates, About a Boy, Constantine and Darren Aronofskys The Fountain. For her supporting role in the drama thriller The Constant Gardener, opposite Ralph Fiennes, she received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, in 2006, Weisz received the BAFTA Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year. She starred in Oz the Great and Powerful in 2013, in 2015, she appeared in two Cannes Film Festival films, Youth and The Lobster. Weisz portrays Deborah Lipstadt in Denial, the film is based on Lipstadts book and is directed by Mick Jackson. Weisz was born in Westminster, London, and grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb and her father, George Weisz, is a mechanical engineer/inventor from Hungary. Her mother, Edith Ruth, was a teacher-turned-psychotherapist from Vienna and her parents left for the United Kingdom around 1938, before the outbreak of the Second World War, to escape the Nazis. Scholar Rev. James Parkes helped her mother and her mothers family leave Austria for England and her father is from a Jewish family, her maternal grandfather, Alexander Teich, was also Jewish, and had been a secretary of the World Union of Jewish Students. Her mothers ancestry is Austrian Jewish, Viennese and Italian, Weiszs mother formally converted to Judaism when marrying Weiszs father. She has a sister, Minnie Weisz, who is a photographic artist. Weiszs parents valued the arts and encouraged their children to form opinions of their own by introducing them to family debates, Weisz left North London Collegiate School and attended Benenden School for one year, completing A-levels at St Pauls Girls School. Known for being an English rose, Weisz started modelling when she was 14, in 1984, she gained public attention when she turned down an offer to star in King David with Richard Gere. Her education concluded at Trinity Hall, Cambridge where she graduated with a second-class honours and it won a Guardian Student Drama Award at the 1991 Edinburgh Festival Fringe for an improvised piece called Slight Possession, directed by David Farr. Dirty Something, a BBC Screen Two, hour-long film made in 1992, was Rachel Weiszs first film, playing Becca who met, the opening scenes were filmed at the festival
7.
Red Army
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The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
8.
The Kindly Ones (Littell novel)
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The Kindly Ones is a historical fiction novel written in French by American-born author Jonathan Littell. The 983-page book became a bestseller in France and was discussed in newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books. It was also awarded two of the most prestigious French literary awards, the Grand Prix du roman de lAcadémie française and the Prix Goncourt in 2006, the title Les Bienveillantes refers to the trilogy of ancient Greek tragedies The Oresteia written by Aeschylus. The Erinyes or Furies were vengeful goddesses who tracked and tormented those who murdered a parent, in the plays, Orestes, who has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father Agamemnon, was pursued by these female goddesses. The goddess Athena intervenes, setting up a trial to judge the Furies case against Orestes. The Furies accept and are renamed the Eumenides or Kindly Ones, Andrew Nurnberg, Littells literary agent, said that a possible one-line description of the novel would be, The intimate memoirs of an ex-Nazi mass murderer. When asked why he wrote such a book, Littell invokes a photo he discovered in 1989 of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a female Soviet partisan hanged by the Nazis in 1941. He adds that a bit later, in 1992, he watched the movie Shoah by Claude Lanzmann, in addition, the author studied the literature and film archives of World War II and the post-war trials. Littell worked on this novel for about five years and this book is his first novel written in French and his second novel after the science fiction themed Bad Voltage in 1989. Littell said he wanted to focus on the thinking of an executioner and of origins of state murder, showing how we can take decisions that lead, or not, to a genocide. Littell claims he set out creating the character Max Aue by imagining what he would have done, one childhood event that kept Littell interested in the question of being a killer was the Vietnam War. According to him, his childhood terror was that he would be drafted, sent to Vietnam and made to kill women and children who hadnt done anything to me. For the Greeks it was the commission of the act itself upon which one is judged, Oedipus is guilty of patricide, even if he did not know that he was killing his father. Aue begins his narrative as a member of an Einsatzgruppe in 1941, before being sent to the doomed German forces locked in the Battle of Stalingrad, which he survives. After a convalescence period in Berlin, and a visit to France, he is designated for a role for the concentration camps. He is ultimately present during the 1945 Battle of Berlin, the Nazi regimes last stand, by the end of the story, he flees Germany under a false French identity to start a new life in northern France. Throughout the account, Aue meets several famous Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Himmler, in the book, Aue accepts responsibility for his actions, but most of the time he feels more like an observer than a direct participant. The book is divided into seven chapters, each named after a baroque dance, the narrative of each chapter is influenced by the rhythm of each dance
9.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
10.
Vasily Zaytsev
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Vasily Grigoryevich Zaytsev was a Soviet sniper and a Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II. Prior to 10 November, he killed 32 Axis soldiers with the standard-issue Mosin–Nagant rifle, between 10 November 1942 and 17 December 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad, he killed 225 soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht and other Axis armies, including 11 enemy snipers. Zaytsev served in the Soviet Navy as a clerk in Vladivostok, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Zaytsev, like many of his comrades, volunteered to be transferred to the front line. He was a petty officer in the Navy and was assigned the rank of senior warrant officer upon transfer to the army. He was eventually assigned to the 1047th Rifle Regiment of the 284th Tomsk Rifle Division, during Zaytsevs career as a sniper, he would conceal himself in various locations – for example, on high ground, under rubble, or in water pipes. After a few kills, he would change his position, together with his partner Nikolai Kulikov, Zaytsev would exercise his hide and sting tactics. One of Zaytsev’s common tactics was to one large area from three positions, with two men at each point – a sniper and a scout. This tactic, known as the “sixes”, is still in use today and was implemented during the war in Chechnya, Zaytsev took part in the Battle of Stalingrad until January 1943, when a mortar attack injured his eyes. He was attended to by Vladimir Filatov, who is credited with restoring Zaytsevs sight, on 22 February 1943, Zaytsev was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. He then returned to the front and finished the war at the Battle of the Seelow Heights in Germany and he became a member of the Communist Party in 1943. After the war, Zaytsev settled in Kiev, where he studied at a university before obtaining employment as an engineer. He was initially buried in Kiev despite his final request to be buried at Volgograd, on 31 January 2006, Vasily Zaytsev was reburied on the Mamayev Kurgan in Stalingrad with full military honors. Zaytsevs dying wish was to be buried at the monument to the defenders of Stalingrad and his coffin was carried next to a monument where his famous quote is written, For us there was no land beyond the Volga. Colonel Donald Paquette of the U. S, sniper School was present and laid a wreath as a sign of respect to a legendary sniper. U. S. Army News quoted Colonel Paquette, Vasily Zaytsev is a legend and every American sniper must memorize his tactics and he is a legend amongst snipers. Zaytsev indicates in his own memoirs that a three-day duel did indeed occur, however, there is currently no available evidence that any Major Erwin König ever existed, despite the claim made by the Armed Forces Museum of Moscow to be in possession of his telescopic sight. But as the duel claimed by Zaytsev has never officially determined to be fiction, historians consider it neither proven nor disproven. The video game Destiny allows players to select and use a rifle named No Land Beyond, in recognition of Zaytsev and his quote
11.
Call of Duty: World at War
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Call of Duty, World at War is a 2008 first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch and published by Activision for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. The game is the mainstream game of the Call of Duty series. The game is also the first title in the Black Ops story line, the game was released in North America on November 11,2008, and in Europe on November 14,2008. A Windows Mobile version was made available by Glu Mobile and different storyline versions for the Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2 were also produced. The game is based on a version of the Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare game engine developed by Infinity Ward with increased development on audio. It is told from the perspectives of Marine Raider Private C, Miller, US Navy Petty Officer Locke and Red Army soldier Private Dimitri Petrenko, and is based on several historical battles. The multiplayer component of the game contains various game modes and a system that allows the player to unlock additional weapons and rewards as they progress. The game also contains downloadable content called map packs, which can be purchased online, a new feature to the series was the addition of a cooperative mode, which supports up to two players locally and four players online. In 2010, a sequel, Call of Duty, Black Ops was released, two other sequels followed including Call of Duty, Black Ops II in 2012 and Call of Duty, Black Ops III in 2015. On September 27,2016, the Xbox 360 version of World at War became backwards compatible on the Xbox One, World at War is a game in the Call of Duty series, and features a more mature theme than its previous installments. The game is also open-ended, giving the player multiple ways to complete objectives, the gameplay of World at War shares several features with previous iterations of the franchise. They help during the missions by providing cover fire, shooting down enemies. The Zapper, or Wii Remote and Nunchuk, can be used to aim at targets to fire at them, the games return to World War II-era warfare reintroduces weapons and technology. The player gains access to these over the course of the game, weapons and ammo from fallen foes or friendlies can be picked up to replace weapons in a players arsenal. Players can also find weapons with additional attachments, including guns equipped with grenades, telescopic sights. A character can be positioned in one of three stances, standing, crouching, or prone, each affecting the rate of movement, accuracy. Using cover helps the player avoid enemy fire or recover health after taking significant damage, when the character has taken damage, the edges of the screen glow red and the characters heartbeat increases. If the character out of fire, the character can recover
12.
Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45
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Red Orchestra, Ostfront 41-45 is a tactical first-person shooter video game based on its predecessor Red Orchestra, Combined Arms. Set on the Eastern Front during World War II between 1941 and 1945, Red Orchestra, Ostfront 41-45 depicts the struggle between Soviet and German forces. The games creators, Tripwire Interactive, developed the game out of the previous Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, Red Orchestra, as of April 2009, the game has sold around 400,000 copies. Red Orchestra concentrates mostly on the aspect of the game. The players movements are realistically modeled, giving them the ability to lie and move prone, sprint, Red Orchestra is notable for its emphasis on realism in comparison to other World War II-based FPS games. The former requires compensating for the breathing of the character and natural sway from holding the gun, while the latter is much quicker, the player must also keep track of their ammo usage mentally unlike many other FPS games, most of which use an ammunition counter. Rifles usually kill players in one if they connect with the torso or head. Vehicle support is also a prominent feature of the game, the player can operate the combat vehicles as one of the crew members. When operating a tank solo, the player can perform one of the roles at a time. The game also features artillery support in some maps which can be utilized by both leaders and tank commanders. Red Orchestra features 16 official maps and 10 community-made maps supported by the developers, the Red Orchestra SDK, though never gone beyond beta version, has allowed the production of hundreds of user-created maps. Red Orchestra features several different map types, infantry maps focus on infantry combat, but can occasionally include APCs. Tank maps focus on tank combat, Combined Arms features gameplay which makes the coordination of infantry and armor its focal point. However, in many maps only when something on the map such as a wall or a fence is part of an objective or blockade can it be interacted with. The maps feature many broken buildings and vehicles as well as propaganda posters, Red Orchestra began development as a single player game based on the Red Orchestra spy ring, during World War II. The Red Orchestra developers, Tripwire Interactive, entered the NVIDIA Make Something Unreal Contest, the Combined Arms aspect of the game in version 3.0 was brought about by heavy suggestion that vehicles should be included to secure progression in the MSUC. Further refinement of the Red Orchestra total conversion led to version 3.3, on Monday 21 November 2005 Tripwire Interactive announced that they would be releasing Red Orchestra, Ostfront 41-45 over Steam, Valve Corporations digital content distribution platform. The game was released on Tuesday 14 March 2006 on the Steam network, pre-purchasing and pre-loading began one month prior on 14 February
