Killing Hitler’s Reich

The Battle for Austria 1945

By: William Alan Webb

Narrated by: David Stifel

Length: 36 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

Killing Hitler's Reich, The Battle for Austria 1945, is the history of the bloody Battle for Austria in 1945.

Austria's fate held major ramifications for postwar Europe and the entire free world, yet there is no complete account of the campaign written in English. Given the scale of the fighting and the scope of the consequences, this book fills a major gap in the literature of World War Two.

On VE Day Army Group South listed 450,000 men still under arms in four armies. It was this massive force that made General Dwight Eisenhower change the entire focus of American ground operations to cut off Germans from retreating into the National Redoubt.

Moreover, it was Austria not Berlin, that proved to be the graveyard of the Waffen SS. No less than fifteen of Himmler's divisions ended the war there.

And as the German war effort disintegrated into chaos, high ranking Nazis fled the dying Reich through Austria and into Italy. Some made it, many didn't. Killing Hitler's Reich follows the chase and capture of some of the most notorious, such as Himmler's Second in Command, Ernst Kaltenbrunner.

©2019 William Alan Webb; Maps drawn by George Anderson copyright 2019 by Helion & Company (P)2020 Tantor

An amazing detailed work

A day by day, unit by unit recount of the last 5.5 weeks of WW II in Austria. The sheer immense amount of research behind this is absolutely astounding. No military history or WW2 buff should miss this.

finally a history of the war in austria

I did not expect such a detailed and accurate account of the conquest of what used to be called the >ostmark< from a fiction author. Incredibly well researched considering the few literature available on that war theatre and very accurate as far as I can judge - even the fighting in the little remote village I come from - where SS troups made a last standoff against us troops - is described. Although the author tries to keep a balanced account - an even more critical view on the ss madmen would probably not have hurt.. implaccable narration

Outstanding Account of the Battle for Austria

The amount of detail provided by the author allows a reader to trace the war in Austria on maps. And it gives us an extensive account of how bitter the battles in Austria were for the control of the country. It is fortunate that Eisenhower sent the American army and Austria and also the British army as well.

Need map handy

William Alan Web has written quite a book here. This is a very extensive and detailed work, with untold mentions of very specific locations in Austria. If you don’t know Austria, which I don’t at all, getting confused is guaranteed. I had to restart at least once to get my bearings. The author did an outstanding job in going into such detail, even though it’s very technical and requires complete focus.

The narrator is good, and I got used to him, though he’s not the ideal choice for this. But that’s not to take away anything from him. This book just stops and starts a lot and his pronunciations of divisions, et Al and locations can be distracting. All in all it’s a real scholastic accomplishment.

Good military history but...

The author is quick to point out Soviet atrocities which is fine if he did the same for the Waffen SS. His portrayal of some of the most murderous military units in history is unfortunately very sugar coated. The author portrays them as brave soldiers merely fighting for survival against a vast Soviet horde. Why the Soviets were invading and what the SS men were doing in Russia the last 3 years was apparently not worth mentioning.