Vasily Zaytsev Places 6th on the Countdown
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Top Ten Snipers

6. Vasily Zaytsev

Several of the snipers in our top 10 have been portrayed in movies, or had characters based on them, but none more famously than Vasily Zaytsev, whose record was the basis of the 2001 movie Enemy at the Gates.

You know you've made your mark on history when a famously good-looking actor, like Jude Law, plays you in the movie about your life.

Too bad the duel at the center of the movie was fiction.

Scholars and hobbyists alike have tried to puzzle out whether the duel between the ace Russian sniper and an equally regarded German rifleman ever took place. Records are spotty and conventional wisdom is that the Russian press invented the duel as a propaganda tool. They needn't have bothered.

Zaytsev's record speaks for itself: 149 confirmed kills, with an unconfirmed tally that may be as high as 400.

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