Soviet vs German snipers

[Forgetful Coyote]

Lets say its '41, beginning of Barbarossa... not winter yet so no worries for the krauts in that regard yet. Infrastructure still in nice shape and not bombed to sh!t for both sides, capability to give high quality training still intact, etc.
Who in general/as a whole had the better snipers? I'd have to think the pre/early war K98 a better rifle, with the Soviet PEM likely the best scope between the 2 nations..??
But regardless of that, with both still in their prime early in the war, who had the more effective sniping program?
As always, thanks yall and best regards to everyone

 

[Mike Shoots Stuff]

Having only read three memoirs on this, it seems the Soviets had sniper training prior to the war, and employed snipers immediately when they went on the defense. On the German side, it seems that they brought snipers in a bit later, using captured Soviet rifles, and caught up later. For the Germans, sniper training went by the wayside between wars but when they caught up, it was pretty good. There are some of the German sniper training videos on youtube, translated to English.

 

[RTH1800]

Sepp Allaberger (sp?) wrote a book that describes what it was like from his viewpoint. I do recall that he utilized a captured Soviet rifle due to recoil being less and accuracy being adequate. Decent read.

 

[Forgetful Coyote]

It appears the regular German soldier, at least, was impressed with the Soviets' general camo abilities.
Also, the Soviets had a sniper in each squad while the Germans apparently didn't?

I will say this for the Soviets... as much as I cant stand communism and all that comes with it, there were(are?) several areas we could learn a thing or 2 from them. Their gov't was a bureaucratic mess of a beast, certainly, but their no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners, scientific approach to things allowed them to excel greatly in certain areas. Their weightlifting, wrestling, and judo Olympic teams are absolute machines!(insert state-run steroid program jokes here..) The grappling culture they have there is something Ive always been envious of. A random kid who aint nothing special at all over there, would be state champ 4 years in a row over here LOL..
Their intel/counter-intel operations also... basically wiped the floor with us in that regard for most of the Cold War...

 

[Forgetful Coyote]

Also thought this vid figures in nicely to the discussion:


The Germany vs USSR Eastern front was basically like our USA vs Japan Pacific front...far as brutality, violence, intensity, etc..

ETA: Hayha survived 1 of those Soviet rounds to the face!!!!!

 

[Snoopy513]

Wonder how much they had to pay for that exploding ammo!?

 

[Guthwine]

I think that the difference between rifles is not a factor in that situation. If the rifles shoots 1 or 3 MOA groups is usually irrelevant in combat situations. On an individual marksman level I would say that they were pretty much equal.

All in all the Soviets use of a designated marksmen surely showed some foresight of how useful such a soldier can be in a squad. While the Germans built their squads pretty much around their light machineguns.

 

[ofelas]

Not to mention target rich environments.