Since there were no positions available for "studien assessor", in October 1933, he worked as a teacher in the Army School in Osterode am Harz.

On 20 April 1934 he married his long-time partner, Ilse Kordl, and began working as a substitute teacher in Lyck and was later hired for a permanent job.

[2] On 17 August 1939 Gerlach was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a reservist where he was promoted to unteroffizier and appointed leader of telephone-construction crews.

During heavy fighting in the city centre, the 14th Panzer Division lost almost all of their tanks and stood in the section between the Bread Factory and the Volga River.

He was interrogated by the NKVD for four months because of his position as a Third General Staff Officer and the associated responsibility of the enemy intelligence department.

On 23 December 1944, by order of the Oberkommando des Heeres, Gerlach was released "provisionally" from active military service in absentia, together with 19 other officers in Soviet captivity, for carrying out a case before the People's Court.

He moved with his family to Brake, where he got a job as a secondary school teacher, and eventually died at the age of 82 on 27 March 1991.

In addition to his personal experiences, Gerlach also recalled the stories of his fellow prisoners, which allowed him to describe the battle from many perspectives.

Upon returning to Germany, Gerlach learned of the possibility of recovering memories from the subconscious through hypnotism in a copy of Quick magazine.

The original manuscript of Gerlach's novel Breakout at Stalingrad was found on 14 February 2012 by Carsten Gansel in the State Military Archives in Moscow.

The original version of Breakout at Stalingrad distinguishes itself from The Betrayed Army with an increased confrontation with his guilt, conflicts of conscience and self-reflection.

[7] Jochen Hellbeck assumes that Breakthrough at Stalingrad was heavily influenced by concepts of Soviet re-education, which Gerlach had come into contact with as a prisoner of war.

In the novel Odyssey in Red, Gerlach used his experience as a long-term prisoner of war and his commitment to the NKFD and the BDO as central themes.

In an epilogue, the editor Carsten Gansel explains the results of extensive research on Heinrich Gerlach, which had taken place in the run-up to the new publication.