NEWS DESK MICHAEL WALSH - 21st February 2001

With cinemagoers soon queuing to see a recycled Soviet wartime propaganda film it is apparent that the difference between Communism and Capitalism has become blurred. The soon to be released movie ‘Enemy at the Gates’ finds its origins in the confused imagination of the Soviet Union’s wartime propagandists. This Red Army tale of derring-do, according to Anthony Beevor the award-winning historian who wrote Stalingrad,‘ is almost entirely fiction’ but we won’t let that spoil a good Bash Fritz movie will we?

This tall tale tells the story of how Vasily Zaitsev, a Red Army sniper, repels the ‘Nazis’ during their siege of Stalingrad. Our sheepherder ‘hero of the motherland’ is something of a marksman given a 7.62mm Mosin-Nagant five-round bolt-action rifle. It is a story that has been told and re-told ever since to millions of gawping hero-worshipping Russian babushkas.

HE SHOOTS 149 GERMANS BUT MISSES THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

Of the movie, Sebastian O’Kelly says: ‘Of all the ‘heroes’ whose improbable feats were trumpeted by Stalin’s propaganda machine, none was more popular than the legendary killer from the Siberian 62nd Army’.

The storyline opens in winter 1942 by which time our Ivan the Barely Credible has notched up 149 German dead. Alas, he is distraught because he has failed to round the figure up for the anniversary of the glorious October Revolution. This is the only target he misses which is unlikely to go down well with his red commissars. Luckily it is a subtle point they missed too.

In desperation the Wehrmacht High Command finally decides enough is enough. Colonel Heinz Thorwald (renamed Major Koenig for the movie) is the man selected to settle the score with Ivan the ‘Orrible. Who better for the task in trigger finger? Heinz is head of the acclaimed Wehrmacht sniper school. It isn’t made clear why the Germans would risk the life of such an irreplaceable asset, unless of course they are all dumbkopfs as in ‘Saving Private Ryan’.

"YOU REALLY DO ‘AVE SOME FRONT, LAD!"

The account given of their battleground duel is pure fiction. It is recounted by a Communist Party hack who’s only awareness of what a front is was when his long suffering mother once said: "Ivan, you really do have some front, lad’ or whatever passes for such an admonishment in Slav Cyrillic.

By the time several of Zaitsev’s cohorts have been picked off by Heinz the legendary German sniper it dawns upon comrade Zaitsev that he the predator has now become the prey. Scanning the bleak landscape he espies what can only be the perfect lair of his adversary. There in the distance is an angled sheet of metal partly hidden by a small set of bricks.

Expressing the Russian equivalent to ‘strewth!’ and presumably having seen a dubbed Roy Rodgers movie during his childhood, Ivan the Incorrigible, placing a glove on a stick, raises it above the parapet. (We wondered if he shouted ‘Heil Hitler!’ as he did so?). Immediately Heinz the dumbkopf who hasn’t of course seen how cowboys do things blasts the glove dangling on the stick. Got im Himmel! His position betrayed by the shot his goose is cooked so to speak.

STALIN’S SUN POINTS THE FINGER AT THE NAZI

As darkness falls ‘noble sniper’ Zaitsev, accompanied by another sniper, work their way towards the Nazi sniper’s lair. The less organised German marksman doesn’t of course have any kamaraden providing cover for him. But sadly, by the time the Soviet pair get close enough to their quarry to zap him the sun rises and they now run the risk that its rays will be mirrored by their telescopic sights.

But it is a Soviet sun rather than a German one and as the two snipers wait patiently it eventually shines its beams directly on to the German sniper’s position. This is the point where Russian guile takes your breath away.

Comrade Zaitsev’s companion – wait for it – raises his helmet (not with his head in it, silly) and slam, the Nazi marksman’s bullet slams into it.

As any self-respecting soldier will tell you the only shot you never hear is the one that gets you, but let’s forget that for a moment. Zaitsev’s comrade lets out a convenient scream pretending he has been hit. The dumbkopf German, (stop smiling like that, you have got to believe it) then pops his head up out of his hideaway to survey his handiwork.

It doesn’t occur to this expert German sniper that 1) there is such a thing as a decoy and 2) snipers are invariably backed up by fellow snipers.

‘GOTCHA!’

‘Gotcha!’ or words to that effect and Ivan the Barely Credible pots his erstwhile adversary. Amidst all this our Red Army hero is conducting a simultaneous affair with a beautiful Red Army girl. Quite a lad our Ivan; watch out, Batman.

Anthony Beevor who is something of an expert on the Battle of Stalingrad says: "All this stuff about a Nazi officer who is head of the Wehrmacht crème-de-la crème sniper school being flown in is complete rubbish. In fact, neither Colonel Thorwald nor Major Koenig ever existed save in the fevered imagination of Josef Stalin – and now ‘Hollywood’. He adds: "A lot of Russian ‘heroes’ had their lives written for them for propaganda purposes. After the war many felt they were being forced to live a lie and tragically a few ended up hitting the bottle." Now that if I may say so is something they are good at hitting.

The film’s French director, Jean-Jacques Annaud admits the fictional nature of the film Enemy at the Gates but expresses the forlorn view that it will give an impression of what being at Stalingrad it was like. Perhaps a better insight into what present day Britain is like.

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