SEPP ALLERBERGER
Wehrmacht Scharfschützen
Newly assigned to sniper duties in his German Army mountain regiment, Private Josef ‘Sepp’ Allerberger had been ordered to eliminate a Soviet sharpshooter who had killed several of his comrades. During August 1943, operations in the southern part of the Eastern Front had coalesced into the type of temporary trench warfare that brought sniper activities to the fore. Allerberger’s unit – the Austrian-recruited, 2nd Battalion, 144th Gebirgsjäger (Mountain Troops) Regiment – had established a reputation for sniping, but this was to be his first mission.
Fortunately for Allerberger, the Soviet marksman was poorly trained and over-confident. Allerberger instructed a soldier to wave a cap above the trench. The inexperienced Soviet rifleman blasted away at the cap, the muzzle-flash of his rifle giving away his position to Allerberger, who had been carefully scanning the enemy line with his binoculars. The Soviet sniper committed a further cardinal error in remaining in his firing position – Allerberger could even see the light glinting on his telescopic sight.
The young Austrian sniper prepared to take his shot, adopting a firing position behind some logs in the German entrenchments. There was a small gap between the logs, just wide enough for the muzzle of his rifle, but too small to permit the use of a telescopic sight. But as the range was short – just about 100 metres – the rifle’s conventional iron sights were sufficient for the task. As he looked along his sights at the enemy soldier, Allerberger – like so many snipers before him – was seized by a spasm of conscience, but his training soon took over and, bringing his breathing under control, he gently pulled the trigger.
The shot rang out across no-man’s land. The blast of dust raised by the bullet leaving the muzzle obscured his view, but an infantryman shouted out: ‘Perfect shot! You’ve got the swine!’ Allerberger’s comrades gathered around him, congratulating his shooting prowess. As a young soldier only recently arrived at the front, he was a little overwhelmed by the praise from these hardened veterans but was privately delighted that he had found his vocation as a sharpshooter in the German Wehrmacht.
Allerberger did not fit the traditional mould for a sniper. Many had experienced an extended background as game hunters in their youth: the Red Army sniper Vassili Zaitsev had developed his skills shooting game in the great northern forest, as had Simo Häyhä in his native Finland; while a youthful Bert Kemp had been sent out to down squirrels for the family pot in the wooded hills of Tennessee. By contrast, Allerberger was an apprentice carpenter who had followed his father into the trade. But during his two years fighting on the Eastern Front he would amass 257 certified kills, making him the second most successful sniper in the German Army during the Second World War.
Born on 24 December 1924 in a village close to the Austrian city of Salzburg, Sepp Allerberger was brought up in a strict, authoritarian environment where military service was not only the norm but also a source of pride. He had few reservations when declared medically fit for service in the Wehrmacht during the autumn of 1942. According to the all-persuasive propaganda machine of Reich Minister Josef Goebbels, the war in the East was all but won, and only a last push was needed to secure final victory.
In February 1943 Allerberger was inducted into the Gebirgsjäger – whose Austrian headquarters was in the Tyrolean town of Kufstein – before being despatched to Mittenwald to begin his basic training, which in the German Army was hard and thorough. While at Mittenwald he was assigned as a machine gunner, and it was with this speciality that he was sent with other reinforcements to the join his regiment on the Eastern Front in the summer of 1943.
The 144th Mountain Regiment was part of the 3rd Mountain Division, deployed in the southern Ukraine on the west bank of the River Donets near Voroshilovgrad. Almost immediately on arrival at the front, Allerberger found himself in the thick of a Soviet offensive, launched in July 1943 and designed to force the Germans back to the River Dnieper. It was a fearsome introduction to the war on the Eastern Front, where the out numbered German forces were subjected to massive artillery bombardments from the Red Army, followed by wave after wave of infantry assaults that almost inevitably forced the Germans to retreat.
During the Soviet offensive it soon became obvious to Allerberger that machine gunners were a focus for Soviet fire, especially from the many Red Army sharpshooters who helped ensure that casualties among German machine-gun teams were disproportionately high. After five days of fighting, Allerberger was hit – not, in fact, by a sniper’s rifle bullet but by a shell splinter that cut into his left hand. Although this was a minor wound, he was sent to the regimental headquarters to convalesce while performing light duties.
One of his tasks was to repair damaged German weapons and to sort the piles of captured Soviet small arms. While sifting through some Soviet weapons he came across a sniper rifle, a Mosin-Nagant 91/30 with a 3.5-power PU telescopic sight. This rugged, reliable and accurate bolt-action rifle, fitted with a five-round box magazine, intrigued Allerberger; he sought and was given permission to try it out, using the copious supplies of captured Soviet ammunition for target practice. This was essentially the same weapon that proved so deadly in the hands of both Vassili Zaitsev and Simo Häyhä. Allerberger also proved a natural with the rifle, and was encouraged by the Weapons NCO to develop his shooting prowess. Soon he was capable of hitting a matchbox out to a range of 100 metres.
Allerberger’s regiment took sniping seriously, and it was no coincidence that among its ranks was Matthias Hetzenauer from the Tyrol, who was to achieve an incredible score of 345 certified kills, making him Nazi Germany’s top sniper. When news of Allerberger’s skill with a rifle reached his company commander, he was released from his duties as a machine gunner and reassigned as the sniper for his company. Although a daunting prospect, this change of role provided the independently minded Allerberger with new challenges.
During the remainder of 1943 the Germans were relentlessly pushed backwards by the Red Army, in a series of cataclysmic attacks that could not be held for long. Between the offensives, the Germans withdrew to new defensive lines, which they would hold until the next Soviet assault. These withdrawal and defensive phases gave great scope for German snipers to deliver telling blows against Soviet targets.
By mid-September the Germans had fallen back to a new defensive line in front of the Dnieper. It was clear to the Germans that the Soviets were planning to resume their offensive, if only from the number of reconnaissance patrols that were being sent out to probe German positions. Allerberger was given wide latitude by his superiors to wage his sniper war in the way he thought best. During this period he would often slip out into no-man’s land during darkness, establish a good firing position and await events. On one clear morning he observed a Soviet patrol pushing forward out of a small stand of trees, entering his field of fire only 150 metres away.
Officers were a priority target for snipers, and on this morning Allerberger was in luck: leading the patrol was an extremely well-dressed officer, the smartness of his uniform giving him away. Looking through his telescopic sight, Allerberger could see the fine detail of the man’s polished leather boots as he paused to look around. It was an easy shot, aimed at the torso. As the muzzle-blast smoke disappeared, Allerberger saw the officer sink to his knees and then fall to the ground. The other Soviet soldiers initially scattered in panic, unaware of the source of the shot. Normally, Allerberger would have slipped away unobserved, but on this occasion he could see that his position was uncompromised and he quickly despatched two more enemy soldiers who were bravely but foolishly attempting to recover the body of their now dead officer.
After the war, Allerberger, Hetzenauer and another sniper from the 3rd Mountain Division, Helmut Wirnsberger, were interviewed about their sniping techniques and tactics, and all three made the point that eliminating officers could stall an enemy attack, and one even laconically noted: ‘Shot the respective leaders of enemy’s attack eight times in one day!’
Although the Red Army smashed its way across the Dnieper in October, the Germans maintained a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the river at Nikopol, and the mountain troops were assigned to help defend the bridgehead.
As the weather worsened and snow began to fall, they received a new batch of winter camouflage uniforms: reversible cotton suits (padded with cotton wool) with white on one side and a regular camouflage pattern on the other. The sniper version had loops fitted so that natural camouflage could be easily attached to the clothing. Snipers had their reservations about these uniforms, however, as they found it difficult to conceal all of the white when the temperate side was being worn, especially with the hoods that left the sniper with a potentially fatal white ring around his face. Unsurprisingly, Allerberger went his own way, and after conducting various experiments he persuaded the regimental tailor to make him a bespoke sniper suit in temperate camouflage, as well as a light-cotton white oversuit that was worn in winter conditions but was easy to fold away when the snows melted.
Although Allerberger had opened his sharpshooting career as a ‘lone wolf’ he began to follow standard sniping practice by using an observer to help locate targets, spot the fall of shot and provide vital moral support. He had struck up a friendship with a soldier called Balduin Moser and they worked effectively with each other – although their relationship was to end in tragedy.
Allerberger had begun to use a Soviet tank knocked out in no-man’s land as both an observational and firing platform. The protection the tank provided had made the normally careful German marksman dangerously over-confident, and he and Moser repeatedly used the position. This had come to the attention of a Soviet sniper who patiently waited for the two Germans to return to the tank. As Moser was scouting targets for Allerberger, the Red Army sniper struck. A bullet hit Moser in the lower face, smashing his jaw and ripping away his lips and much of his tongue. It was a desperate wound, requiring immediate medical attention, but if they attempted to move from the safety of the tank they would be hit again by the Soviet marksman. Allerberger looked on in helpless desperation as what remained of Moser’s tongue began to swell, blocking the airway to his lungs. During what seemed an eternity, Moser slowly asphyxiated. Only when night fell was Allerberger able to drag his dead companion back to German lines. It had been a salutary lesson in not taking anything for granted.
The regular breakdowns in the food supply chain to front-line troops forced them to forage from the land, and after more than two years of war in the East there was pitifully little to eat, with the troops often reliant on a diet of apples and pickled cucumbers. Worn out by the strain of combat, poor weather conditions and a poor diet, Allerberger succumbed to a severe bout of gastro-enteritis as he and his comrades withdrew from the Nikopol bridgehead in January 1944. He was withdrawn from the front, but after a vital period of rest and good medical treatment he was strong enough to return to active service. While at the front he had come to the attention of the new CO of 2nd Battalion, Captain Max Kloss, and from then on he operated at battalion level, often under the immediate direction of Kloss.
The death of Moser had profoundly affected Allerberger. For a while he went back to operating on his own, but eventually returned to using a partner for particular missions, drawing from a pool of men with sharpshooting or reconnaissance experience. He also enlisted the help of his infantry comrades for specific operations, one of which involved using machine guns to fire in the general direction of the enemy to mask his own more accurate aimed fire, which netted an extraordinary figure of eighteen kills against Soviet infantry in one operation.
But, despite their best efforts, the Germans could not hold the Soviet juggernaut, and as they retreated from the River Dneiper back to the Bug and then the Dniester they were pressed so hard that, at the end of March 1944, they were cut off by the advancing Red Army. Charging Cossack cavalry nearly overran Allerberger’s position, and he was forced to exchange his sniper rifle for the 9-mm MP 40 machine-pistol that he always carried for close protection. After the Cossacks were repulsed, the 144th Mountain Regiment’s commander, Colonel Anton Lorch, made the painful decision to order an immediate break-out, which meant leaving behind the seriously wounded. Knowing their likely fate, they were left with weapons to end their suffering swiftly before capture. The break-out succeeded and by 10 April the remains of the regiment had crossed over the Dniester to relative safety.
Once on the far bank of the Dniester the mountain troops had an opportunity for recuperation and reinforcement during the following weeks. To Allerberger’s and his comrades’ relief this was a quiet sector, although Soviet troops held positions on the other side of the river, which at this point was as much as 400 metres wide – too far for ordinary shooting but perfect for sniping. Allerberger patrolled his section of the river, taking shots at Soviet soldiers lulled into the false sense of security provided by their distance from German lines.
On one occasion, during May, he came across a group of Soviet soldiers bathing noisily in the river some 600 metres from his position. It was a difficult long-range shot for Allerberger and his Mosin-Nagant rifle, but there was minimal wind and the light was good. Resting his rifle on a stack of turf squares he had just cut, he prepared to take the shot. His target was sunbathing naked on the river bank, and was accordingly easy to pick out. Quickly looking through his sight after firing the shot, he knew he had been successful: the enemy soldier lay immobile on the bank, while his comrades ran for cover. Allerberger had long since surrendered any scruples about shooting unarmed men; war on the Eastern Front was a simple case of ‘kill or be killed’, and he took a quiet satisfaction from having hit the mark at such long range.
While the units of the 3rd Mountain Division rebuilt their strength, Captain Kloss engineered things so that Allerberger was sent back to Austria to attend a sniper-school course. By this time, Allerberger had pretty much learned all there was to know about sniping in the field, but Kloss decided to give his young protégé a well-earned break from front-line fighting and a chance to see his family.
On 30 May, Allerberger handed over his trusty Mosin-Nagant rifle and boarded a waiting truck, the first stage in a five-day trek back to Austria. The four-week course was held at Seetaleralpe, and Allerberger was surprised – and relieved – to find the instructors friendly and the atmosphere relaxed – in marked contrast to the unremitting harshness of basic training. Allerberger was also pleased to discover that his instructors knew their job, most of them ex-snipers whose wounds had removed them from front-line service.
The German Army had neglected sniping in the early phases of the war, but the heavy casualties inflicted by Soviet snipers on the Eastern Front forced a rethink, and from 1943 onwards sniper schools began to produce highly trained marksmen. The course followed the basic elements of sniper technique: marksman ship, fieldcraft, reconnaissance and tactical awareness. The German and Soviet attitude to sniping as an important military discipline contrasted favourably with the haphazard approaches adopted by the Western Allies. The British sniper trainer Captain Clifford Shore despaired at the British Army’s cavalier approach to the subject, a state of affairs that also bedevilled the U.S. Army.
At the German sniper school, special attention was paid to camouflage, the instructors emphasizing the point with the motto: ‘Camouflage ten times, shoot once!’ The camouflage techniques developed at the sniper schools were often highly elaborate, the recommended hides taking a sniper several hours to construct properly. Allerberger had his reservations about some of these more elaborate schemes, believing a sniper needed to maintain flexibility and freedom of movement. He did, however, find the camouflage umbrella highly effective. This was, in effect, half an ordinary umbrella, its ‘circumference’ spanning only 180 degrees. It was painted to match the terrain and was covered in natural camouflage, with the sniper crawling along the ground, pushing the umbrella ahead of him as a form of concealment.
When operating in static positions, Allerberger did use some elaborate dummies to draw out enemy marksmen. Some were kitted out in full German Army uniform, with masks for faces, and were fitted with cigarettes that were smoked by the sniper’s assistant using a long rubber tube. At other times, the dummy would be ‘armed’ with a rifle that could be fired using a wire pulley.
Allerberger had been happy with his old Soviet sniper rifle but at Seetaleralpe he had the chance to try out other weapons, including the 7.92-mm Mauser Karabiner 98k, which equipped the ordinary infantryman but was popular with snipers because it was highly reliable and its forward-lug locking system made it more accurate than other bolt-action rifles. Snipers received superior quality rifles from the manufacturer and unit armourers were able to make minor improvements. They also received top quality, match-grade ammunition. A variety of telescopic sights were issued for the 98k, including the official Zeiss 1.5-power and 4-power sights and the commercially acquired 6-power Hensoldt sight. Allerberger was issued with a rifle fitted with a Hensoldt sight, which he found highly satisfactory and used for the remainder of the war.
Another rifle offered to snipers was the 7.92-mm Walther Gewehr 43, a self-loading rifle that had been designed with an integral telescopic-sight mount, enabling its easy use as a sniper rifle. Despite the advantage of an increased rate of fire – allowing a follow-up shot by simply pulling the trigger – it was not popular with snipers: it was heavier than the 98k, lacked long-range accuracy and had a tendency to jam at critical moments. Allerberger favoured the 98k for sniper operations, as did Matthias Hetzenauer, who believed the G 43 went against the sniper philosophy of ‘one shot, one kill’.
Allerberger passed out of the sniper course in the top three and, instead of returning directly to the front, he was given a few days’ leave with his family. After nearly a year of combat, Allerberger was no longer the callow youth who had optimistically departed his Austrian village. He was now a hardened veteran, who had witnessed terrible scenes and personally killed scores of Soviet soldiers. Like so many other front-line soldiers he found it impossible to talk truthfully of his experiences – even to his father, a veteran of the First World War. It was a strangely unsettling interlude, and it was with a sense of relief that he bade his parents and sisters farewell and climbed aboard the train taking him to the front.
He arrived back with the 144th Mountain Regiment in mid-August. They were occupying a quiet sector alongside units from their Romanian ally, although it was common knowledge that a Soviet attack was imminent. Complicating matters were a succession of rumours that placed doubt on the reliability of the Romanians. When the Soviet offensive was launched on 20 August, the rumours turned into fact, and three days later the Romanian government was overthrown in a coup with the new leaders taking their country over to the Soviet side. This caused enormous problems for the German mountain troops who were fighting Soviet forces to their front, and now had to contend with hostile Romanians on their flanks and to their rear.
Cut off on several occasions, the Germans were nevertheless able to conduct a fighting retreat into the Carpathian mountains that helped stabilize the line. Allerberger and other snipers were repeatedly employed to act as rearguards. German field commanders often preferred them to machine guns – the standard rearguard weapon – because the flexible sniper teams could disengage more easily. Allerberger found that a few well aimed sniper shots could bring a Soviet attack to a complete halt, without the enemy being aware of his position. A machine gun, by comparison, would immediately give its position away, inviting retaliatory counter-fire.
The new rifle/scope combination now being used by Allerberger was an aid to improved accuracy, and the superior 6-power magnification not only increased the size of the target, but, through a larger objective lens, it provided a better image in low-light conditions.
Rather than having to rely on captured Soviet ammunition, he now had access to regular supplies of high-quality German cartridges. These included the B or Beobachtung (observation) round that was fitted with a small explosive charge that ignited on impact and provided a puff of smoke to indicate the fall of shot. These were used by Allerberger and his sniper comrades to mark out enemy positions for machine-gun and mortar crews, and in dry weather they could set alight straw-thatched wooden buildings. Expensive, and lacking the long-range accuracy of conventional ball rounds, they were seldom employed against enemy personnel – despite the many lurid accounts of their use against human targets (a standard high-velocity bullet hitting the body is sufficiently explosive in itself).
As they fell back to the Carpathians, a group of soldiers that included Allerberger witnessed the destruction of a German patrol caught by heavy Soviet fire in open ground ahead of them. Only one German survived, and he was severely wounded, his screams ringing out across what was effectively no-man’s land. The wounded man lay in highly exposed ground, and any attempt at rescue would have been suicidal folly. Allerberger’s comrades gathered around him, and pleaded with him to end the man’s agony. He hesitated but then reluctantly agreed to take the shot. By careful manoeuvring he was able to get an image of the man’s head in his sights, and with a sick feeling in his stomach he pulled the trigger. After the shot there was silence, and Allerberger’s unit continued the retreat.
Later that day, as night fell, they spotted a Red Army position some 150 metres away, which they carefully skirted. Looking through the semi-darkness Allerberger could see a pale patch close to the position, which, through telescopic sights, proved to be a Soviet soldier bending down to defecate, his trousers by his ankles. A swift, well-aimed shot hit the man in the stomach; his cries alerted his comrades who loosed off a fusillade of wild shots in the general direction of Allerberger’s patrol, which slipped away into the darkness. It was a revenge of sorts.
As the Germans were slowly forced back towards Hungary, Allerberger now worked closely with his battalion commander, the newly promoted Major Kloss, often acting as his bodyguard. Allerberger liked working for Kloss – both men having a natural affinity for the other – and by operating from battalion headquarters he had more freedom of action, and, not least, access to better food. It was during this period that Allerberger tried out one of three scoped G 43 rifles that had been sent to the 144th Mountain Regiment. Never regarding it as a sniper weapon, he found the semi-automatic rifle, with its ten-round magazine, a useful tool for rapid, medium-range shooting, and used it to good effect on a number of occasions.
While defending the Hungarian city of Miskolc, Allerberger was grazed by a fragment from a mortar round. This was the third time he had been hit, but they had all been minor wounds, and given the amount of combat he had endured, he led something of a charmed life. Less fortunate was Major Kloss, who was killed during a Red Army artillery bombardment on 10 November – a profound loss for Allerberger, who, now more than ever, had to inure himself to the consequences of death all around him.
Allerberger was welcomed back to his company, which with the rest of the regiment began the process of withdrawal into the Tatra mountains of the German rump state of Slovakia. As the Red Army pressed inexorably forward, so Slovakia’s loyalty waned, and groups of Slovakian partisans emerged to ambush the Germans in the region’s steep-sided valleys. During their retreat, the mountain troops passed briefly through southern Poland, and there had time to adopt a defensive position on the edge of a village, with Soviet forces approximately 500 metres away – a good distance for long-range sniping.
Allerberger developed several sniping platforms in the attic roofs of the village, following the cardinal rule of not firing more than a couple of shots from any one position. And, in accordance with his sniper training, he would knock out several slates or shingles from a roof to disguise the origin of the shot further. He had little difficulty in taking out careless Soviet infantrymen who erroneously believed themselves safe from the German lines opposite them.
Eventually, the exasperated Red Army commander of the section opposite Allerberger ordered up a light anti-tank gun to blast away the enemy sniper’s position – wherever it was. The gun’s three-man crew had not been properly briefed on the dangers facing them, and they pushed the artillery piece forward in direct view of Allerberger. His first two shots each downed an artilleryman; the third crew member, instead of fleeing to safety, attempted to rescue one of his comrades. As he carried him away, Allerberger’s third shot hit home. The anti-tank gun remained in the open for the rest of the day, unfired. Only with the onset of darkness was it towed away.
A special badge for Scharfschützen (sharpshooters) had been issued on 20 August 1944 to encourage high scores among Germany’s snipers. Oval in shape, and to be worn on the cuff, the badge consisted of an eagle’s head surrounded by oak leaves and was awarded in three classes: the first for 20 confirmed kills, the second for 40 confirmed kills, the third for 60 confirmed kills. Only a few were awarded, however, and Allerberger had to wait until early March 1945 before receiving all three classes simultaneously. Although gratified to receive the award, Allerberger did not sew any of the badges onto his sleeve, fully aware that to be captured with such a badge would mean a particularly brutal end. He simply put the badges into an envelope and posted them to his parents back in Austria.
In early April 1945 he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, which, given his contribution to his battalion’s performance on the Eastern Front, was long overdue. According to his biographer, Albrecht Wacker, he also received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross later in that month, but no mention of this award can be found in official records (a grainy photograph of Allerberger shows him with the Knight’s Cross at his throat, but this part of the image does not fully convince).
By now the war was, at last, drawing to a close. The 3rd Mountain Division had been forced back towards the Czech city of Olmütz early in May, while rumours circulated through the ranks that the Red Army had captured Berlin and that the Führer was dead. On 9 May the Wehrmacht High Command confirmed the inevitable and ordered its forces to end hostilities and lay down their arms. Lieutenant General Paul Klatt, commander of the 3rd Mountain Division, decided not to surrender his men to the Red Army, but instead released them from their soldiers’ oath and told them to make their way west to U.S. Army lines as best they could.
While the majority of the mountain troops marched west ward, Allerberger teamed up with a soldier called Peter Gollup and decided to head due south to Austria. But the two men faced the problem of reaching the Austrian border, which was about 200 kilometres away, all the while avoiding the Red Army and armed gangs of local Czechs, out for vengeance. Before they set out, Allerberger destroyed his sniper rifle; it was a painful moment, but he would have no need for it now, and to be captured with it would be to invite almost certain death. Instead, he relied on his MP 40 machine-pistol to get them out of trouble.
They decided to walk by night and hide during the day to escape being sighted by the civilian population or encountering any roving enemy patrols. On the second night of their journey, a desperate need for food forced them to approach an isolated farmhouse. In this region there were a number of Sudeten Germans, and this building had a generally German look to it. When a man opened a bedroom window and shouted down to them in very broken German, it was obvious to Allerberger that he was a Czech and so he hung back. But Gollup was more desperate for food and advanced further, only to be hit by a hail of machine-pistol fire. Allerberger helped him back into some nearby bushes, but his wound was mortal and he died a few minutes later.
Once more on his own, Allerberger was even more guarded about revealing himself to others, relying on his excellent fieldcraft skills to see him through. While in hiding, however, he heard German voices and recognized the advancing troops as men from his own division. He teamed up with them and continued southwards towards the border. Having survived an attack by Czech partisans, Allerberger and three other companions came across a farmhouse and discovered that they were more than 15 kilometres over the border. They were back in their homeland.
They were subsequently captured by troops from the occupying U.S. Army near the city of Linz, and then taken to a temporary POW camp at Mauerkirchen where they were processed by their captors. The sheer volume of prisoners began to overwhelm the American authorities, who decided to release the walking wounded. Allerberger was able to persuade the American guards to release him to look after one of his wounded comrades. As a free man, Allerberger returned to his village and a tearful reunion with his parents and sisters.
Allerberger was inevitably scarred by his two years of murderous fighting on the Eastern Front. But, like so many men of his generation, he suppressed these horrifying experiences, speaking little of his time at the front. He was simply relieved to have survived the war. Any interest he may have had for travel and adventure had been sated by his wartime service, and with the peace he returned to the family carpentry business, eventually taking over from his father. Other leading snipers – such as Zaitsev and Häyhä – followed a similar pattern of avoiding the limelight in favour of a quiet life.
Among the many people Allerberger did business with in the postwar years, few could have realized that this modest man had been one of the Wehrmacht’s top snipers, with 257 official kills, with many more going unrecorded – an extraordinary achievement. When asked what were the chief qualities required of a sniper beyond marksmanship, he replied: ‘calmness, good judgement, courage’. These, of course, were the qualities displayed by Allerberger himself. Another quality would have been caution, which ensured that the Austrian sniper survived the war and died at the ripe old age of 85 on 2 March 2010.
References
Erich Kern, Dance of Death (Collins, 1951)
James Lucas, Hitler’s Mountain Troops (Weidenfeld, 1992)
Peter R. Senich, The German Sniper 1914–45 (Paladin Press, 1982)
Snipers in Action: The Unseen Weapon (Wehrmacht, 1944; International Historic Films [DVD], 1988)
Sniper: The Invisible Enemy (Wehrmacht, 1944; International Historic Films [DVD], 1988)
William H. Tantum, Sniper Rifles of the Two World Wars (Ottawa Museum Restoration Service, 1967)
Albrecht Wacker, Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger (Pen & Sword Military, 2005)
Charles Winchester, Ostfront: Hitler’s War on Russia 1941–45 (Osprey, 1998)