Born on 25 December 1930 in
Vienna,
Austria, Durschmied got his first taste of war firsthand as a child when the Germans entered Vienna, and the Allied bombers reduced his neighborhood to rubble. In 1952, Durschmied emigrated to
Canada and attended
McGill University. As a war correspondent, he reported on the ground during every conflict from
Vietnam to Iran-Iraq and
Afghanistan. He reported for BBC from 1959 to 1971. Durschmied interviewed many international figures, including
John F. Kennedy,
Salvador Allende,
David Ben-Gurion, and
Saddam Hussein. He also worked as a cinematographer, covering thirty years of worldwide conflicts. In 1958, he shot the only film about
Fidel Castro, on-site with the rebel in the
Sierra Maestra mountains. In January 1959, Durschmied travelled to
Moscow to interview
Guy Burgess, a member of Britain's
Cambridge Five spy ring, for CBC. The 9 minute film was shown once on the network's
Close Up program in March, and then forgotten. Burgess defected to the
Soviet Union in 1951, and it was assumed only a few photographs existed of him after this point until Durschmied's 1959 interview was rediscovered more than 50 years later. In 1964, Durschmied was part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's documentary unit, with producer-director Patrick Watson, the first independent film crew ever allowed to shoot inside the
People's Republic of China. Their 90-minute film (shot on B&W 16mm film) "The Seven Hundred Million" was released as part of the series
This Hour has Seven Days, which dedicated every fourth Sunday night to a full-length documentary. The following year, he shot
The Mills of the Gods: Vietnam for the CBC series
Document; this episode won two Canadian Film Awards, Film of the Year and TV Information Certificate of Merit. In his ten years in Viet Nam, he produced a number of feature documentaries (BBC Panorama). In 1968, Durschmied shot the CBS Special Report
Hill 943 in which he followed three soldiers in Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion,
12th Infantry of the
4th Infantry Division as they tried to capture Hill 943 in a bloody battle. In Afghanistan he followed Soviet units for CBS "Afghanistan – Under the Soviet Gun". Hanoi recalled him to
Viet Nam in 1977 ("Viet Nam – Bitter Victory", for CBS), and then allowed him to follow the Vietnamese Army during their invasion of
Pol Pot's
Cambodia, where he reported from a devastated
Phnom Penh. He also developed the television series
Die Welt des GEO for Germany's
UFA. Of his work,
Newsweek wrote "Durschmied is a supremely gifted reporter who has transformed the media he works in" and in
Le Monde: "He's survived more battles than any living general." He is author of a series of highly popular books on military blunders that changed world history, translated into two dozen languages. In later years, he has served as Lecturer of Military History at the Austrian Staff College, and has been a guest lecturer at the
United States Military Academy at
West Point. Durschmied lives with his family in
France. ==Bibliography==