Deadly fight

Gottlob Bidermann’s captivating, thought-provoking war memoir paints a vivid picture of the brutality and horror of the Eastern Front, with a level of detail that is unique in the genre’s literature. A II. in memoirs written about the land battles of World War II, two fundamental questions arise: why the author did what he did and how he managed to withstand the ordeals. Gottlob Bidermann reveals a story that is becoming increasingly rare at the dawn of the new century - a story that also requires an intellectual approach and an emotional response. Bidermann was one of the ordinary soldiers, an infantry, not a tanker or pilot. He served not in an elite division, such as the Grossdeutschland or the Panzer Lehr, but in an anonymous corps, whose numbering is reminiscent of entries in the telephone directory. He did not receive any prestigious awards, and none of his merits were presented in person by Adolf Hitler. His two Iron Crosses, the Crimean Shield and his melee strap, were among the more or less standard decorations of infantry veterans of the Russian Front, as long as they survived to be worn. But that doesn’t mean they could be easily earned. In 1942, Bidermann fought on the front lines of the attack on the Russian fortress, Sevastopol: it was a desperate six-month siege that resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of people, but was pushed into the background behind the campaign against Stalingrad. Bidermann and his division were commanded north on the Leningrad Front in 1943 for the final months of the legendary struggle for the city, when war correspondents and photographers had already left the area for more stories. The end of the war was found in the cauldron of Kurzeme, where a whole group of armies was trapped on the shores of the Baltic Sea in the wake of the large-scale Russian offenses of 1944. Bidermann received his more prestigious honors — the German Golden Cross, the gold grade of the wound badge, and the Heer Hall of Fame strap — when the 132nd Infantry Division fought fierce battles in the forests and swamps of the Leningrad Front, and later in the last months of the war. The main feature of the latter honors was that their wearer, as an infantry officer, had to survive quite a few injuries and several battles over several months in order to receive it. However, his performance was again in the footnote, this time due to the destruction of the Third Reich. A memorable account of life and death amid the inhuman reality of the front. Bidermann’s story offers battle descriptions of unparalleled detail. At the same time, his memoir goes deeper than the average German infantry battlefield experience, giving a glimpse into the thoughts of a soldier at war away from his homeland, describing the lives of Russian peasants trapped between two tensioning enemies, recalling the humiliation of defeat and capitulation. - History Book Club Review