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In Deadly Combat

A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front

Gottlob Herbert Bidermann

Translated and edited by Derek S. Zumbro

Introduction by Dennis Showalter

xiv, 330 pages, 60 photographs, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Modern War Studies
Paper ISBN 978-0-7006-1122-5, $17.95 (t)

SELECTION OF THE HISTORY BOOK CLUB

Book Cover ImageIn the hell that was World War II, the Eastern Front was its heart of fire and ice. Gottlob Bidermann served in that lethal theater from 1941 to 1945, and his memoir of those years vividly recaptures his grueling experiences with an army marching on the road to ruin.

A riveting and reflective account by one of the millions of anonymous soldiers who fought and died in that cruel terrain, In Deadly Combat conveys the brutality and horrors of the Eastern Front in detail never before available in English.

Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations for valor, Bidermann saw action in the Crimea and siege of Sebastopol, participated in the vicious battles in the forests south of Leningrad, and ended the war trapped in the Courland Pocket. He shares his impressions of countless Russian POWs seen at the outset of his service, of peasants struggling to survive the hostilities while caught between two ruthless antagonists, and of corpses littering the landscape. He recalls a Christmas gift of gingerbread from home that overcame the stench of battle, an Easter celebrated with a basket of Russian hand grenades for eggs, and his miraculous survival of machine gun fire at close range. In closing he relives the humiliation of surrender to an enemy whom the Germans had once derided and offers a sobering glimpse into life in the Soviet gulags.

Bidermann's account also debunks the myth of a highly mechanized German army that rolled over weaker opponents with impunity. Despite the vast expanses of territory captured by the Germans during the early months of Operation Barbarossa, the war with Russia remained tenuous and unforgiving.

Translator Derek Zumbro has rendered Bidermann's memoir into a compelling narrative that retains the author's powerful style. This English-language edition of Bidermann's dynamic story is based upon a privately published memoir entitled Krim-Kurland Mit Der 132 Infanterie Division. Zumbro has also added important events derived from numerous interviews with Bidermann to provide additional context for American readers.

"Since 1945, the front-line realities of Germany's Russian war have been submerged under so much myth that a book like this represents a welcome reality check. The 132nd's story, and Bidermann's, are part of the 'master narrative' of a 'demodernizing' Wehrmacht, whose men held against unbelievable odds and in the end were sacrificed to one of history's most purely evil causes. It is a story worth making available to American readers."--Dennis Showalter, author of Tannenberg: Clash of Empires

"Stands head and shoulders above the many other books in this genre. Bidermann's style is crisp, succinct, and lucid and Zumbro has done a great job of translating."--David Glantz, coauthor of The Battle of Kursk and When Titans Clashed

"In Deadly Combat is Bidermann's unforgettable account of life and death under almost impossible circumstances. Released for the first time in English, it offers battle descriptions of unprecedented detail. Yet, this memoir goes deeper into a typical German infantryman's wartime experience, lending insight into the mind of a soldier fighting far from home, describing the lives of Russian peasants trapped between two brutal antagonists, and recalling the humiliation of defeat and surrender, and the brutality of the Soviet gulags."--History Book Club Review

GOTTLOB HERBERT BIDERMANN, who served in the 132nd Infantry Division, is retired from a career in the textile industry and currently resides in southern Germany.

DEREK S. ZUMBRO, a retired Navy SEAL officer and resident of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, has translated German World War II accounts for the Eisenhower Center, University of New Orleans. His translations have been widely used in books and documentaries.