"Hitler's willing Austrians"

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steve248
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Joined: 10 Aug 2003, 21:53
Location: Hertfordshire, England

"Hitler's willing Austrians"

#1

Post by steve248 » 20 Jun 2022, 16:44

I do not recall where I saw a reference to this book sometime this year but I decided to buy a copy.

Stephan D.Yada-McNeal
"Heim ins Reich - Hitlers willigste Österreicher", 348 pp.
On the front cover it states "Lernen aus Geschichte 3"
"Herstellung und Verlag: BoD-Books on Demand, Nordstedt, ISBN 978-3-7481-2924-0
The cheapest source I could find was in the UK from P-O-D company in Milton Keynes.

The book is both interesting and disappointing. Dealing with the disappointment first, the author has simply re-hashed what others have written in their published works without doing any archival research himself. Because of this, the author repeats the errors that appear in his choice of published works. Not helped by occasionally using wikipedia without supporting evidence - wikipedia is a guide not gospel.

On the interesting side there are 140 Austrians detailed and divided into a series of subjects. Most of the entries have a small photo and have birth and death details. Most entries are 2-4 pages in length. His chosen subject areas are:

Hauptkriegsverbrecher und bekannter Männer
(includes Eichmann (a non Austrian), Kaltenbrunner, Globocnik, Skorzeny etc)

RSHA (Gestapo-SD)
most of the Vienna and Prague Zentralstelle officials; along with Sanitzer, Mildner,
Silberbauer.

Ärzte des Todes: Ärzte und Pfleger
29 persons listed from T4, Euthanasia, KL doctors and nurses.

Einsatzgruppen
7 entries, two wrongly attributed.

HSSPF-SSPFs
12 entries incl Schimana Kutschera, Rauter, Fitzthum, Taus - even Artur Phelps of Waffen-SS fame.

KZ Personal
SS guards, SS officers, Aufseherinnen

Wissenschaftler im Dienste der Nazis
5 entries incl Wilfried Krallert

Politik und Verwaltung
15 entries, incl the Austrians Gauleiters

Kriegsverbrecher
4 entries incl Andergassen and Blösche.

As I said at the beginning re-hashing the works of other authors with the appropriate archival research means quoting their errors. I made about 20 remarks on a simple read-through where I could see an error. There are some omissions in the choice he made of personnel to write about. The most notable being Alois Persterer rather than Rudolf Bast.
Persterer being a real mass-murderer.

His bibliography is more interesting. Where can I find a copy of Joachim Hösler, "Finis Mundi - Endzeiten und Weltenden im östlichen Europa" (1998) which is probably more interesting than the book reviewed here.

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