BIDDISCOMBE, Perry 1959-

PERSONAL: Born 1959. Education: University of New Brunswick, M.A., 1983.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, University of Toronto Press, 10 St. Mary Street, Ste. 700, Toronto, Ontario M4Y 2WB, Canada.

CAREER: Author, historian, and educator. University of British Columbia, assistant professor.

WRITINGS:

Werwolf! The History of the National SocialistGuerilla Movement, 1944-1946, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998.

SIDELIGHTS: At the end of World War II, organized bands of German partisans, known as Werwolves, struck repeatedly at the approaching Allied troops and at German nationals they believed had cooperated with the victorious armies. Historian Perry Biddiscombe examines the desperate efforts by these groups of German guerillas in Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerilla Movement, 1944-1946. Based on Biddiscombe's doctoral thesis, the book "uses the Werwolf movement to provide a grim and intriguing picture of the Third Reich on its last legs," commented Neil M. Heyman in History: Review of New Books.

Born from the realization that Germany would shortly be invaded by enemy forces, the Werwolf group emerged from a contentious and haphazard allegiance between the Nazi party, the S.S., the German army, and various government organizations. Originally confined to the German border regions, the Werwolf fighters eventually moved inward to the center of Germany. Among other activities, they set up wires intended to decapitate enemy soldiers on important roads; poisoned food supplies; reoccupied locations overtaken or overlooked in the rapid advance of British and American troops; and even kidnapped and murdered individual enemy soldiers. Biddiscombe's "scholarly and well-documented account shows that the Werwolf movement, while eventually a failure, was for the British, American and French forces in Western Germany more than merely a nuisance," commented Donald Cameron Watt in the Times Literary Supplement. Their group's clandestine warfare was responsible for an additional several thousand lives lost on top of the millions who had already perished in the war. According to Watt, "Werwolf activities petered out at the end of the second year of occupation under the strength and permanence of the victor's occupying armies."

"The book, on the whole, is written with considerable verve and over-long stretches read almost like an adventure story," commented Lawrence D. Stokes in Canadian Journal of History. Stokes remarked favorably on the "truly impressive body of primary documentation drawn from the archives of at least a half-dozen countries" that Biddiscombe collected as the basis for his work. Reviewer J. Farquharson, writing in the English Historical Review, noted that Biddiscombe's"research will be of interest to students of the post-war period," while Heyman concluded that the author "has given us a work that professional historians of Nazi Germany and World War II, as well as a broader audience, will read with profit and pleasure."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Journal of History, December, 1999, Lawrence D. Stokes, review of Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerilla Movement, 1944-1946, p. 468.

English Historical Review, June, 1999, J. Farquharson, review of Werwolf!, p. 782.

History: Review of New Books, Neil M. Heyman, review of Werwolf!, p. 71.

Times Literary Supplement, September 18, 1998, Donald Cameron Watt, "The Nazis Who Stayed On," p. 29.*