In the 1970s, a quiet engineer walked the floor of a textile factory in Kiev checking production quotas. Decades earlier, that same man had been the deadliest sniper in the ruins of Stalingrad. This episode separates the documented life of Vasily Zaitsev from the cinematic myths of Enemy at the Gates, tracing his path from hunting wolves with a single-shot shotgun in the Ural Mountains to a career as a naval accountant in the Pacific Fleet and then to the 284th Rifle Division in September 1942.

We look at how Zaitsev avoided rooftops and bell towers in favor of rubble, pipes and blasted foundations, how the acoustics of a shattered city hid his position, and how he and partner Nikolai Kulikov developed the Sixes formation of intersecting fire that Russian forces still use today. We weigh the evidence on the legendary duel with a German sniper, from Antony Beevor’s skepticism to Oleg Kaminsky’s theory about a corporal named Stoff, and follow Zaitsev through the mortar blast that blinded him, the experimental corneal surgery that restored his sight, and his return to the front.

• How single-shot hunting in sub-zero conditions taught breath control and absolute trigger discipline
• Why hide-and-sting tactics kept him alive when a stationary sniper was a dead sniper
• What the 225 confirmed kills by December 1942 meant for Soviet propaganda and German command
• How Dr. Vladimir Filatov’s tissue therapy in Odessa put him back on the battlefield
• Why he died eleven days before the Soviet Union dissolved and was reburied at Mamayev Kurgan in 2006