Heinrich Amsel (12 July 1889 – 17 September 1942) was a Generalleutnant of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was responsible for several war crimes against Soviet civilians during Operation Barbarossa and the Battle of Stalingrad, and he was killed by Red Army sniper Dimitri Petrenko during the fighting for Stalingrad in September 1942.
Biography[]
Amsel after being shot
Heinrich Amsel was born in the German Empire on 12 July 1889, and he became a junior officer in the Imperial German Army during World War I. Amsel rose in the ranks of the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht during the Interwar period, and he commanded German troops during Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Amsel carried out several massacres during the invasion of the Soviet Union, even killing defenseless women and children.
Amsel became known as "the architect of Stalingrad's misery" during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, as he oversaw the destruction of much of the city and the massacre of wounded Red Army troops at Red Square, where Stalingrad's most famous fountain was located. Red Army snipers Viktor Reznov and Dimitri Petrenko, two survivors of the massacre, planned to assassinate Amsel on 17 September 1942 as he inspected his men in the city. They managed to reach a vantage point on an apartment overlooking Amsel's command post, and Amsel attempted to run from cover to cover as the Red Army advanced on his headquarters. However, Petrenko succeeded in shooting Amsel with his Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle, killing the general and weakening the German forces; the massacre at the Red Square was avenged.