In Deadly Combat

A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front

Author: Gottlob Herbert Bidermann, Denis E. Showalter and Derek S. Zumbro Series: Modern War Studies

In the hell that was World War II, the Eastern Front was its heart of fire and ice. Gottlob Bidermann served in that lethal theatre from 1941 to 1945, and this memoir of those years recaptures his gruelling experiences with an army marching on the road to ruin.

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Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations for valor, Gottlob Herbert 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 in the Courland Pocket.

In his memoir, 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 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. His story commits that living hell to the annals of World War II and broadens our understanding of its most deadly combat zone.

Critic Reviews

“"What distinguishes Bidermanns book are his soldiers insights on the German army and the Eastern Front. Rather than glorifying the war as Germanys eastern crusade, Bidermann looks at the lives and the feelings of the soldiers as they relate to their adversaries and the battles they fought."Parameters”

"What distinguishes Bidermann's book are his soldier's insights on the German army and the Eastern Front. Rather than glorifying the war as Germany's eastern crusade, Bidermann looks at the lives and the feelings of the soldiers as they relate to their adversaries and the battles they fought."--Parameters

"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

"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