Revered by some as the ultimate warrior, and condemned by others as ruthless assassins, the combat sniper is more than just a crack shot. These are highly disciplined individuals, calm professionals skilled in marksmanship, reconnaissance and camouflage. During the Second World War these lethal fighters were deployed by all sides to deadly effect. This collection of biographies written by sniper experts from around the world explores the careers of the top marksmen between 1939 and 1945. As well as providing incisive technical information, each author offers a glimpse of the character and personality of their chosen sniper, giving them a human face that is often missing in standard portrayals. These gripping, in-depth narratives go beyond the cursory treatment in existing histories and will be essential reading for anyone wanting to learn about the role and technique of the sniper during the Second World War. The impressive list of contributors to The Sniper Anthology includes Mark Spicer writing on Harry M. Furness, the last surviving British sniper who went ashore on D-Day; Martin Pegler, who details the famous Soviet sniper Vassili Zaitsev; Adrian Gilbert on the Wehrmacht sharpshooter and lone wolf Sepp Allerberger; and Roger Moorhouse on Simo Hayha, the man with the most confirmed kills in any major war.

June 6, 1944. On the dawn of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, two snipers find themselves fighting a battle all their own. One is a backwoods hunter from the Appalachian Mountains in the American South, while the other is the dreaded German "Ghost Sniper" who earned his nickname on the Eastern Front. Locked in a deadly duel across the hedgerow country of France, the hunter matches wits and tactics against the marksman, both of them one bullet away from victory-or defeat-as Allied forces struggle to gain a foothold in Europe.

'I did not regard myself as a slacker. Even in childhood I taught myself to carry out tasks entrusted conscientiously and carefully. In war, it is no secret that the casual don't survive'.Yevgeni Nikolaev was one of Russias leading snipers of World War II and his memoir provides and unparalleled account of front-line action in crucial theaters of war. Nikolaev is credited with a remarkable 324 kills and his wartime service included time in the siege of Leningrad in 1941/1942.His memoir is not a neutral, apolitical account. Far from it. Nikolaev asserts, for example, that Finland attacked Russia. As a member of the NKVD, it is not surprising that his memoir full of historical misinterpretation and justification of the agencys actions.Equally, Nikoalev is dismissive of his Nazi opponents. On several occasions, he discusses his Nazi counterparts as bandits and scum, and implores the reader to take a look, fellows, at the beast of a bastard Ive laid low.In vivid, arresting recollections he paints his actions in a saintly heroic light. He describes the comfort of the German foxholes, wired with telephone connections, relative to the Russians who fasted without food or water awaiting the moment for a perfect shot. He claims the Russian soldier was a moral warrior, killing only with head or heart shots.In addition to describing details of his kills, Nikolaev explains how his life was saved when an explosive rifle bullet struck a watch that he kept in his jacket pocket. His life was saved by a surgeon who extracted all the watch parts.

Winner of The 2020 Best Book Award for Military History -- American Bookfest An elite platoon of Marine Scout-Snipers, Lieutenant Frank Tachovsky’s “40 Thieves” were chosen for their willingness to defy rules and beat all-comers. When two Marines got into a fight, the loser ended up in the infirmary, the winner in the brig. Tachovsky wanted the winner on his team—a brush with military law was a recommendation. These full-blooded men were trained in a ruthless array of hand-to-hand killing techniques and then thrown into the battle for Saipan—Emperor Hirohito’s “Treasure” and the bulwark of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific—where they would wreak havoc in and around, but mostly behind, enemy lines. They witnessed inhuman atrocities; walked into an ambush after the cunning Japanese used wounded Marines as bait; endured body-punishing extremes of heat, hunger, and thirst; fought a relentless enemy who would not surrender; and watched best friends die. Now Tachovsky’s son Joseph tells their remarkable story—a story he didn’t even know until after his father’s death—reported from an extensive documentary record, including priceless mementos his father kept, and from exhaustive interviews with survivors who served under Lieutenant “Ski.” This is how America won the war in the Pacific, where “uncommon valor was a common virtue.” 40 Thieves on Saipan: The Elite Marine Scout-Snipers in One of World War II’s Bloodiest Battles is true history. It’s also an adventure you don’t want to miss.

While Germany and Austria-Hungary were well-equipped with sniping rifles in 1914, their Allied opponents were not. This highly illustrated volume tells the inside story of the rifles carried by snipers of all the major powers during World War I. Although military sharpshooting had existed since the 18th century, in 1914 only the German and Austro-Hungarian armies fielded trained snipers armed with scoped rifles. Thus upon the outbreak of World War I, the Allied armies found themselves on the receiving end of a shooting war to which they had no means of response. Only the Canadians brought a dedicated sniping rifle into the trenches, but in small numbers. For the British, although production of a suitable rifle and scope were settled on quickly, the establishment of sniper training was difficult and its success was mostly due to the efforts of a handful of dedicated officers. The French eventually introduced a competent scoped rifle and a sniper training system, as did the Italians. Entering the war in 1917, the Americans experienced rifle shortages but were able to build on their pre-1914 efforts to find a suitable sniping weapon. The country that suffered most grievously was Russia; Russian troops fielded no snipers at all and suffered accordingly. Featuring full-colour artwork, carefully chosen archive images and photographs of the sniping rifles and accessories used in the trenches, this is the inside story of the rifles carried by snipers of all the major powers during World War I.

A biography of the second most successful sniper of the German Wehrmacht and one of the few private soldiers to be honored with the Knights Cross award. An Austrian conscript who qualified as a Wehrmacht machine gunner, Josef “Sepp” Allerberger was drafted to the southern sector of the Russian Front in July 1942. Wounded at Voroshilovsk, he experimented with a Russian sniper-rifle while convalescing and so impressed his superiors with his proficiency that he was returned to the front as his regiment’s only sniper specialist. This sometimes-harrowing account provides an excellent introduction to the commitment in fieldcraft, discipline and routine required of the sniper, a man apart. There was no place for chivalry on the Russian Front. Away from the film cameras, no prisoner survived long after surrendering. Russian snipers had used the illegal explosive bullet since 1941, and Hitler eventually authorized its issue in 1944. The result was a battlefield of horror. Allerberger was a cold-blooded killer, but few will find a place in their hearts for the soldiers of the Red Army against whom he fought. “It is a great read and covers just about everything you would want to know about Allerberger, the weapons, techniques and employment of German snipers on the Eastern Front in WWII but does it in a manner and narrative that is never boring and is guaranteed to hold your interest.” —Argunners Magazine “A very unique story and experience worth telling of an Eastern Front Sniper.” —Sniper Central

The girls came from every corner of the U.S.S.R. They were factory workers, domestic servants, teachers and clerks, and few were older than twenty. Though many had led hard lives before the war, nothing could have prepared them for the brutal facts of their new existence: with their country on its knees, and millions of its men already dead, grievously wounded or in captivity, from 1942 onwards thousands of Soviet women were trained as snipers. Thrown into the midst of some of the fiercest fighting of the Second World War they would soon learn what it was like to spend hour upon hour hunting German soldiers in the bleak expanses of no-man's-land; they would become familiar with the awful power that comes with taking another person's life; and in turn they would discover how it feels to see your closest friends torn away from you by an enemy shell or bullet. In a narrative that travels from the sinister catacombs beneath the Kerch Peninsula to Byelorussia's primeval forests and, finally, to the smoking ruins of the Third Reich, Lyuba Vinogradova recounts the untold stories of these brave young women. Drawing on diaries, letters and interviews with survivors, as well as previously unpublished material from the military archives, she offers a moving and unforgettable record of their experiences: the rigorous training, the squalid living quarters, the blood and chaos of the Eastern Front, and those moments of laughter and happiness that occasionally allowed the girls to forget, for a second or two, their horrifying circumstances. Avenging Angels is a masterful account of an all-too-often overlooked chapter of history, and an unparalleled account of these women's lives. Translated from the Russian by Arch Tait