Did Erwin König Exist?

Question

Erwin König Was a sniper supposedly killed by Vasily Zaytsev in the Battle of Stalingrad. The diary of Vasily Zaytsev mentions killing Erwin Konig, and there is a sniper scope in Russia, but there is no record of Erwin in Germany.

Now the conspiracy theory: (from Erwin Konig's wiki page)

Since the German Army has no record of a Maj. Erwin König it is possible that the German Army destroyed any record of König after learning of his possible death at the hands of Zaytsev. The defeat of the German forces by the Soviet forces in the Battle of Stalingrad was a major blow to German morale and according to many historians, was the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. This explains one possible motive for the German military to destroy records of König, as König's death at the hands of a "sub-human" Russian Communist would add to the humiliating defeat of the German forces at Stalingrad....

At the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow there is a rifle scope that supposedly belonged to a Wehrmacht sniper called Erwin König. In a post-war visit to Berlin, Zaytsev was allegedly confronted by a woman who told him she was König's daughter, with Soviet authorities quickly evacuating Zaytsev to avoid any confrontation.

Oh the other hand, Soviet propaganda was rife with fictitious stories to boost morale during a time when the war was so uncertain.

Answer 1

In "The Battle For Stalingrad," the Soviet Union's General Vasili Chuikov refers to a "Major Konings" as a "Nazi supersniper." (page 142). He assigns the task of finding and killing him to the sharpshooters of Lt. Colonel Nikolai Filippovich Batyuk's 284th Siberian division. These were a group of snipers led by Vasiliy Zaitsev. On pages 143-145 of his book, Chuikov include's Zaitsev's own account of the "hunt." "Konings" reportedly kills or wounds two of Zaitsev's better students and a political agitator, but reveals his position to Zaitsev in the process, allowing Zaitsev to shoot him.

Incidentally, Batuk is an example of Russian "underpromotion" of their officers.

During the battle of Stalingrad, he gets two promotions to Colonel and Major General (the Russian army has no brigadier generals), finally achieve a rank commensurate with his status as division commander.

Answer 2

I seriously doubt that Maj. Erwin König, or any "German supersniper sent out to get Zaytsev" existed, let alone an effort to "remove him from history" after Zaytsev killed him.

Since there cannot be proof of non-existence, you'll have to take personal reasoning:

1) Propaganda. If there had been such a "super-sniper", he'd have had his appearance in the German war propaganda previous to the incident with Zaytsev. No such records exist, neither official nor unofficial. Snipers with comparable success existed (see 3) below), and weren't used as propaganda material. German propaganda focused on heroics and bravery, and a sniper provides for neither. So apparently there was nothing "super" about a sniper with a couple hundred kills in German eyes, let alone a reason for a big "clean-up effort" if he was killed.

2) School. As teacher at a Berlin sniper school, it should be easy to come up with records of at least that school existing. To my knowledge it never even has been properly named.

3) Rank. The most successful German sniper with historical record is Matthäus Hetzenauer. He has 345 kills credited to his name, not that much less than König's supposedly "over 400". Yet he never rose beyond Gefreiter rank (that's a rank lower than a Private First Class (US) or Corporal (UK)). This makes sense, because the moment you promote a sniper beyond enlisted, or possibly NCO rank, he'll stop serving as a sniper (which he's apparently good at), and start serving as a leader (which he might not be good at, and certainly stops him from lying in ambush with a sniper rifle). Only really prominent people were urged to retreat from the front lines for propaganda purposes -- we're talking the likes of Ulrich Rudel or Erich Hartmann. Having a sniper promoted all the way to Major in the German military and still have him serving actively (or recalling him to active duty) is highly unlikely.

4) Procedures. There are several other high-profile soldiers that were killed without "having all records deleted" to cover up. While the German propaganda machine certainly preferred positive news, the death of Hans-Joachim Marseille -- certainly a much more prominent soldier than this elusive Maj. König -- was even mentioned in the Wehrmachtsbericht, at around the same stage of the war. The effort to remove a certain sniper from history for propaganda reasons would be simply inconsistent.

5) Chances. Stalingrad was a battlefield for millions of soldiers. One enemy sniper that might have killed about 200 of your troops hardly matters if casualties ran into many hundreds of thousands, not even for propaganda reasons. (See 1) above.) Even if he mattered, the chances of an assassin actually finding that specific man on the battlefield (as opposed to "finding some random one of the thousands of Soviet snipers operating in the city bounds") are so infinitesimal that I seriously doubt anyone would have bothered.

So, in my eyes, this conspiracy theory is a poor attempt to cover up for what has been an embellishment of Zaytsev's (already remarkable) exploits with a superman story.