Comparative Characteristics of the Optical Sights of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht During the Second World War

The article presents a detailed analysis of the processes of creating and modernizing rifles and their optical sights in the Wehrmacht and the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. The aim of this research is to study the comparative qualitative and tactical-technical characteristics of the optical sights of fascist Germany and the Soviet Union before and during the Second World War. The comparative analysis showed that, in the interwar period, insufficient attention was paid to the development of musketry in the German army: it was considered that mainly military equipment would be used during the war and that Germany would not need a large number of snipers during the seizure of Europe because their value during the blitzkrieg was minimal; while in the Soviet Union during the pre-war years musketry was developing rapidly, the number of snipers increased. With the beginning of the invasion of Nazi troops on the territory of the Soviet Union, the situation began to change rapidly. Though the Red Army was retreating under the onslaught of the Wehrmacht, it continued to exert fierce resistance, and the Germans repeatedly had to go over to defence in order to fight off counterattacks. Positional war indicated that the Germans had to develop musketry. The comparison of weapons showed that the Wehrmacht's rifles and sniper sights were significantly inferior in quality to the Soviet ones. Germans willingly used Soviet sniper rifles and sights. Our PU-40 to SVT rifle scope was a masterpiece of technical thought, compared to the German ZF-41. Considering disadvantages of ZF-41, the Wehrmacht adopted the ZF-42 optical sight already in 1942 and an even more advanced model of the ZF-4 sight in 1944. Nevertheless, the Wehrmacht used sniper rifles with the ZF-41 sight on all fronts until the very end of the war. The main weapon of the Soviet sniper during the time of the Second World War was the Mosin rifle, which was constantly modernized. The Red Army met the beginning of the Second World War with two main types of optical sights. The PE sight (Emel-yanov's sight), manufactured since the 1930s, supplemented the original sight designed for the SVT sniper rifle and then the PU sight mounted on the Mosin rifle. In conclusion, the author inferred that rifle sights were an important component of small arms during the Second World War. The advantage of the Soviet small arms, including sniper weapons, largely predetermined the end of the war. On the eastern front, the German army lost the sniper war due to imperfect weapons and underestimation of snipers' preparation.

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