German snipers during the Second World War did not shy away from using Soviet rifles. This concerned both the good old Mosin rifle and the semi-automatic SVT-40. This fact may seem at least strange to many, because Germany simply produced an incredible amount of weapons, and stocks of the famous Mauser 98 have been stored since the First World War war. What was the matter?
For a start, it's worth talking a little about German snipers in general in order to stop thinking in stereotypes about everything German. So the main thing is that at the start of World War II, the Reich actually failed sniping. Which is quite surprising given the existence of a highly developed system of initial military training in the form of the Hitler Youth and the presence of serious experience of the First World War in this area.
As a result, there were frankly few German snipers in 1941. Sniping was one of the few areas where the gloomy Teutonic war machine had to catch up with the Soviet Union. The latter, by the way, had a huge recruiting base of young people with initial shooting and even sniper training thanks to such things as the TRP and "Voroshilovsky shooter". Therefore, there were not only more Soviet snipers, they, as a rule, were better. And they had to catch up urgently, since the more the war dragged on, the more tangible the problem of Soviet snipers became for the Wehrmacht.
The Germans were able to deliver the training of snipers to the stream only by 1943. Both yesterday's conscripts and soldiers at the front who had distinguished themselves accordingly fell into sniper schools. The second was just one of the two most productive snipers of the Wehrmacht - Joseph Allerberger. Joseph finished sniper courses in August 1943, after which he returned to the front. By the way, Allerberg became one of the few representatives of the lower ranks of the army who was awarded the Knight's Cross.
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According to Joseph himself in his memoirs "A German Sniper on the Eastern Front", his path to sniping began with the discovery of a captured SVT-40 rifle with a telescopic sight. At the same time, during the war, Allerberger used both the German Mauser 98k and the Soviet Mosin rifle in its sniper performance. The use of Soviet captured weapons for the Wehrmacht sniper school was not out of the ordinary. One can come across the opinion that Germany allegedly lacked precisely sniper rifles. However, such statements are not true. In fact, everything is much simpler: the sound of a shot from Mosin and Mauser is quite different, especially for the hearing of an experienced person. That is why German snipers tried to "hunt" with Soviet weapons in order to mislead their enemy when fired.
Continuing the topic, read about why German helmets were more vulnerable during World War IIthan the Soviet ones.
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Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/020321/58034/
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