Meet the Greatest Sniper Who Ever Lived

this video is kindly sponsored by curiositystream find out more a little later in the video hey 42 here on the 1st of april 2002 a 96 year old man passed away quietly in an old people's home on the south coast of finland he looked small in death he'd stood only five feet tall in his prime and old age had chunking him further still many years before he'd been a farmer who'd kept himself to himself he'd never married and had no children but the few people who got close enough to think of him as a friend called him simo in his youth however many decades earlier he'd been known by another name one usually whispered by nervous looking men in snow-covered forests who scanned the horizon constantly and jumped at every sound these men had never met simo and therefore didn't know his real name so they gave him another one the white death that might seem like a grand title for a diminutive finnish farmer but it was a very fitting one because over the space of 98 days in 1939 in the quiet snow-drenched landscape of his native country semo became death incarnate a perfect killing machine that snuffed out the lives of men by the hundreds this is the story of simo hyeha known to his enemies as the white death the greatest sniper who ever lived this story about the greatest sniper who ever lived is incredibly interesting and if you love stuff like this like i do then i know you'll enjoy curiosity stream curiosity stream is the netflix for nerds the hulu for history buffs the disney plus for the scientist in us it offers thousands of documentaries and non-fiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers including exclusive originals the best thing about curiosity stream is that it's available worldwide they are continuously updating their content and adding new and exciting titles spanning science history nature technology society and lifestyle as you probably know i adore history and i'm absolutely loving their enormous high quality history selection one of my favorites is how to build a castle which follows a team of medieval enthusiasts in france who are building an actual castle in the modern day using only historically accurate building techniques i genuinely loved every minute of that one so if you're anything like me and you love to learn new things then you should check it out you can have unlimited access to the world's top documentaries and non-fiction series starting at only 2.99 a month or just 19.99 for the whole year and if you head to curiositystream.com forward slash 42 and use my promo code 42 then the first 30 days will be completely free simo was born in a tiny hamlet in south west finland in 1905. he had a pretty normal childhood for the time volunteering in the civil guard at the age of 17 and completing his mandatory national service at 19 where he became a member of the bicycle battalion a unit of cycle riding light infantry if the idea of soldiers on push bikes sounds a little comical you might be surprised to learn that at the time bicycles were considered genuine vehicles of war they played a significant part in the first world war and were still being used in the second albeit in smaller numbers despite this early brush with the military semo had no martial ambitions and every intention of spending his life at home on his farm so after completing his mandatory service that's exactly where he went but over the years the atmosphere across europe began to darken and by the late 1930s simo would be called to serve his country in one of its most desperate hours it started in 1939 as the world teated on the brink of all-out war when germany and the soviet union signed a non-aggression agreement that became known as the molotov ribbon-trop pact the deal stunned the world not only had the soviets been negotiating unsuccessfully with the french and british for months at the time but the germans and soviets were long-time adversaries who pretty much hated each other's guts but as shocking as the pact between the two old rivals was there was even more to the deal than met the eye because behind closed doors a secret protocol had been slipped into the agreement in which hitler and stalin had essentially divided the countries of europe up between them based on what they called their spheres of influence just over a week later germany and the dictators jointly invaded poland the germans from the west and then 16 days later the soviets did the same from the east claiming half of the conquered country each by the way the molotov of the molotov ribbon-trop pact is the very same man for whom the now well-known cocktail you definitely don't want to drink was named after during the brief war that was fought between finland and the soviet union after the signing of the molotov-ribbentrop pact the same war that would soon make a living legend at a semo high the soviets conducted widespread bombing of finnish cities but dropping bombs on your neighbors is generally frowned upon by the international community and so via cheslav molotov soviet minister of foreign affairs conducted a propaganda campaign insisting his nation wasn't bombing the finns but was instead delivering food packages like the good friendly neighbour it was the finns demonstrating an admiral sense of humor considering they were getting shell to at the time started jokingly referring to these bombs as molotov bread baskets when soviet tanks began trundling over the border shortly afterwards the finns responded by pelting them with improvised bottle-based incendiary devices which they called molotov cocktails a drink to go with the food parcels via cheslav molotov had so kindly forced to send them anyway after the german soviet invasion of poland the soviets began doling out ultimatums to the other countries deemed to be in their sphere of influence including lithuania latvia estonia and finland the baltic states were soon forced to accept stalin's demands but the finns stood firm turning down his kind offer of handing over a bunch of their land in exchange for not being murdered their bullying diplomatic approach having failed the soviets decided to let their soldiers do the talking commencing a full-scale invasion of finland in november of 1939 the winter war had begun finland is a land of lakes swamps and densely packed forests and when stalin's army attacked most of that was buried beneath a thick layer of snow the challenging conditions made it difficult for the soviets to successfully deploy the full might of their forces and the finns who were far better prepared began to engage in their own unique brand of guerrilla warfare even so finland had a population of just 3.7 million at the time meaning there were close to 50 soviets for every single fin when the red army crossed the border at several strategic points they brought with them thousands of tanks and aircraft the finnish army on the other hand had just 32 tanks to its name along with around 100 aircraft and an unknown number of bicycles armed with really loud bells and those clicky things you put on the spokes in short the finns needed a hero and a short hero is exactly what they got this was very much a david and goliath clash but when goliath turned up to this particular fight david was nowhere to be seen you see he'd hidden himself in a snow bank more than a kilometer away and he was packing a sniper rifle simo's national service had ended a good 14 years before he was called up to fight in the winter war but that didn't mean he was rusty in many ways he'd been in unintentional training ever since he'd left the army stalking forests he knew like the back of his hand in search of elusive game his trusty rifle slung over one shoulder and making the transition from master hunter to god level sniper turned out to be fairly simple conditions during the winter war were brutal with temperatures generally fluctuating between -20 and -40 degrees celsius but simo didn't mind in fact he didn't even think of the conditions as particularly harsh to him it was just winter and so he put on some more clothes and got on with it the red army on the other hand was woefully ill-prepared the men were given standard-issue uniforms in a kind of dark khaki colour meaning they stood out like shining beacons as they patrolled the endless white of the finnish wilderness simo and his fellow snipers on the other hand were decked out in pure white camo gear making them next to invisible within days at the start of the war it became clear seemer was no ordinary marksman it wasn't just that he could make shots that were practically impossible to the other men it was also his machine-like consistency once the target entered his crosshairs no matter the difficulty of the shot simo almost never missed and yes it wasn't just his outrageous skill that set him apart for starters simo didn't use the same state-of-the-art sniper rifle with telescopic sights that his fellow soldiers favored instead using the same old basic rifle he'd been issued years before during his days in the civil guard a far simpler weapon equipped only with iron sights that's right as crazy as it sounds the deadliest sniper in the history of mankind didn't even use a scope and you don't need to play call of duty to know that no scopes are hard the stuff of youtube compilation legends but that's just how semo preferred to do things and in fact forgoing the scope had a couple of important benefits that extended his edge on the battlefield a sniper using a telescopic sight has to raise his head a few centimeters in order to look through the scope presenting a marginally larger target to the enemy semo also realized that telltale flashes of sunlight from enemy scopes were often what gave them away something he knew better than most could be fatal as well as his unusual choice of weapon simo was meticulous in his preparations for battle he would visit his favorite firing positions in the middle of the night checking they hadn't been discovered by the enemy and ready them for action the following day shaping the snow to better conceal his position and flattening any powder to ensure it didn't puff up when he fired giving him away simo left absolutely nothing to chance making the most out of every advantage available to him to augment that uncanny marksmanship of his he even went so far as to keep snow in his mouth while sniping cooling his breath so it wouldn't be visible after condensing in the frigid air had seemo merely been a good shot he would have most likely come out of the winter war with scores of confirmed kills to his name but by combining that remarkable skill level with all of these different tactics he became a force of nature the war between finland and the soviet union was brief lasting just over 100 days and yet during that time the man who would become known as the white death amassed over 500 enemy kills at an average of more than five per day the exact number of confirmed kills is unknown but most sources put simo's tally at between 505 and 542 kills the most of any sniper in history to put those numbers into perspective arguably the most famous sniper of recent years chris kyle subject of the film american sniper had 160 confirmed kills to his name gained across four tours of duty during the iraq war and 10 years of service another legendary sniper hero of the soviet union vasily zaitsev who became known to western audiences after being played by jude law in enemy at the gates is credited with 242 kills during 80 years of service in the second world war simo's kill count dwarfs both of these and he achieves defeat in a matter of months not in the better part of a decade and all this despite using relatively basic gear and not even being a career soldier unsurprisingly rumors of an almost supernatural sniper who never missed began to spread amongst the red army soldiers and the legend of the white death began to grow the soviets became so concerned about the number of men they were losing to this mysterious finnish ghost they sent literally scores of their own snipers to hunt him down but simo dispatched each and every one of them becoming more desperate they tried to bomb simo out with mortar fire but he picked his hiding spots carefully sniping from natural foxholes and deep snow banks nothing less than a direct hit would have taken him out and since the soviets were never quite sure exactly where he was even as he picked them off one by one they never managed it that is until the final week of the war when an explosive round caught him in the face during a particularly fierce battle simo's fellow soldiers later found his body unmoving in the snow and grieving for their fallen hero solemnly placed him with the dead but hours after the battle had ended a soldier noticed movement amongst the piled bodies a twitching leg remarkably despite having lost his upper jaw most of his lower jaw and the whole of his left cheek seemo was alive he was taken to the hospital immediately where he would remain in a coma for a full week before regaining consciousness on the day peace was declared with the soviet union his injuries were terrible and he would require 26 surgeries over the following years to mends the damage to his face though he remained badly scarred for the rest of his life the winter war ended with the moscow peace treaty in which finland ceded border territory to the soviets in exchange for the cessation of hostilities whilst the finns ended up losing more lands than the soviets had demanded before the war most observers believe stalden had meant to seize the entire country by force something which he was ultimately unable to do so thanks to the bravery of men like sema in the face of overwhelming gods by the end of the war simo had become a genuine national hero and he was promoted from the rank of corporal to second lieutenant as a reward for his service it remains to this day the single biggest promotion ever given to a soldier in the finnish army he was also given a farm it was called white lake a fitting home for the man called the white death despite the truly terrifying number of kills to his name semo never reveled in his work in his diaries discovered for the first time in 2017 he referred to the staggering number of men he'd killed as his sin list he rarely talked about the war but not long before his death he was asked if he regretted having taken the lives of so many men his response was typically modest i did what i was told to do as well as i could there would be no finland unless everyone else had done the same thanks for watching

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,607,180

Rating: 4.901587 out of 5

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Id: gOyfswWtFIY

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ICantForgetNow]

Without a scope. That’s absolutely ludicrous. Im sure he was a very good shot but I’m sure that fact meant he was firing well inside the range of his contemporaries. If conventional sniping ranges at the time were about 600m I’d bet he was making most of his kills well inside 400m. Mind boggling

[u/IamSub_Zero]

Simo the real deal.

[u/omnititan]

everybody gives Americans shit about Vietnam, we should start giving the Russians shit about the Finnish!!!!!!