Erwin König was reported to have been a German Heer Officer in the Wehrmacht the regular military of Germany or was an Officer in the Waffen-SS who was a sniper killed by the Soviet sniper Vasily Zaitsev during the Battle of Stalingrad.
[3] König is mentioned both in Zaitsev's memoirs Notes of a Sniper (a "Major Konings", potentially SS) and William Craig's 1973 non-fiction book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad.
[5] A fictionalized account of the duel in the film Enemy at the Gates portrays Erwin König—played by Ed Harris—as the head of the Wehrmacht Sniper School.
[7] Initially he is successful, killing four of Zaytsev's partners, but eventually he is outwitted by the Russian, portrayed by Jude Law.
[8] König appears in the 1999 novel War of the Rats by David L. Robbins in which he is an SS Colonel named Heinz Thorvald.