One of the most lethal Wehrmacht snipers was a Lithuanian named Bruno Sutkus.
Born in East Prussia in 1924, he joined the Hitlerjugend at fourteen. As a teenager, he smuggled cigarette lighters into Lithuania and brought back bacon, butter and sausages. He later credited those trips with teaching him to avoid detection and keep his nerve.
Conscripted in 1943, he trained as a sniper in Vilnius before joining the 68th Infantry Division on the Eastern Front. He fought Soviet snipers and supported German infantry against Soviet attacks, eventually accumulating 209 credited kills. Each entry in his sniper log required confirmation.
By twenty, he had received both classes of the Iron Cross and the highest grade of the German sniper badge. In January 1945, he was wounded and appointed an instructor at a sniper school.
After the war, the Soviets conscripted him twice, and he escaped both times.
In 1949, he voluntarily accompanied a Lithuanian widow, Antanina Povilaitienė, when she was deported to Siberia. They eventually married. He spent 22 years there, working on collective farms, cutting timber and mining coal, before returning to Lithuania in 1971.
His wartime logbook survived too. A German Red Cross nurse had kept it for decades after he entrusted it to her in 1945. It later became part of his published memoir.
In the 1990s, the former Wehrmacht sniper was helping train Lithuanian soldiers in sniping. He had lived long enough to see Lithuania regain its independence and the Soviet Union disappear