1944-45 BATTLE FOR EUROPE SNIPERS

These elite sharpshooters led the Allied advance in Normandy and eventually beyond the frontier of the Third Reich

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The science of precision killing took an enormous leap forward during the Great War. Such horrific cost in lives and treasure could’ve scarcely been conceived prior to that conflict. The warring nations concluded their tenuous peace at Versailles in 1919, handing Germany the lion’s share of responsibility for the catastrophe; at the same time, the victors and vanquished curbed defence spending and reduced the size of their standing armies. The notion of another global conflict was abhorrent, and yet it came. By 1939 the nations of Europe were at war once again.

Along with the shrinking of armies, the perpetuation of sniper craft had been stifled in the process. Although the sniper and his stealthy capability to change the tactical course of battle had been prized, Western countries allowed that strength to wither. Only the Soviet Union maintained a relatively well-trained, cohesive and competent sniper force integrated into its land armies in the 1930s.

Sniper awakening

By 1944-45 and the final campaigns of the Second World War in the West, the sniper and his contribution to offensive and defensive capabilities of an army in the field had reemerged. The sniper was once again an acknowledged master of concealment capable of demoralising the enemy with a well-placed rifle shot, at times halting entire enemy units, providing intelligence on opposing troop movements, serving as early warning scouts and pickets, and even calling in coordinates for artillery and air strikes against high-value targets.