Customer Reviews

Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover-Up

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I am surprised that this book did not receive wider review, it deserves more acclaim, and is very revealing. I kept "abreast" of Mr. "Herr Oberleutnant" Waldheim for many, many years. And, contrary to a customer review, this book does not portray "Austria" as "the scariest place on earth"; I was in Austria during the time frame of the author's investigation, and Mr. Rosenbaum "hits the mark" in his description. Austrians vehemently deny their past in its ENORMOUS contribution to the HOLOCAUST and the slaughter of "subhumans", especially in the Balkans. Austrians comprised a majority percentage of many units in the Wehrmacht and SS troops stationed in "Yogoslavian Region"; many whom, at that time, hoped for the restoration of the "Austro-Hungarian Empire" (mostly run by the Austrians then) of pre-WWI. Kurt Waldheim was well known in professional Allied military circles, including my "NATO service days", to have been a participant in the slaughter, that "military bureaucrat staff officer" that helped the likes of Eichmann and Loehr. But during the 70's, his past was so much like the Soviets, as well as the then-present tinpot governments from Romania to Asia, that he "flowed" through easily. ..........Anyway, this book is excellent reading, the truth is ladened in the details that can be so overwhelming to any reader; but, then again, that is how the evils of history escape true review.

That is one of the central questions to the frustrations in this book. That the mundane and the truely horrifying alike has been ignored far too long, just as Austria has white washed the American public into believing that it is the idelic alphine state from the first half of the Sound of Music.

The reader should be prepared for four things when reading this book:

1. It is not easy reading. I am a fairly fast reader even through some of the most difficult material, and this still took me months to get through. Rosenbaum is an excellent lawyer and researcher, he does not make engaging reading. You must really want to read this book to get through it.

2. Be prepared to be horrified. Perhaps the last pages where it discusses that this man's voice, as leader of the human race, will be traveling in space for possibly a billion years.

3. Be prepared to loose any remaining faith you have in the United Nations. Simple fact. The secretary general of the United Nations was a wanted war criminal by that self same organization.

4. Be prepared for a stinging indictment of Simon Wiesenthal. The author says that people have told him that he can not take on a legend and win. He is correct, he can't win, but he certainly does a good job of shattering illusions.

Fundamentally this is a book that should be read. Not because it is fun. Not because it is easy, but with the full understanding that it is not. It should be read though, in the names of the men, women, and children of the Balkans who's justice was denied, both by the mechanics of their own Marshal Tito, by the ineptitude of the United Nations, and most likely by the express consent of the Soviet Union.

Finally though, what this book is best for is in contrast to similar reading dealing with post war Germany. It is important to realize how far the Germans have come by their admission of guilt, painful and sometimes incomplete, which the Austrians have denied themselves and their children in their creation of the victim's fiction.

This book is Jewish Paranoia gone hay-wire. After reading it you may think Austria is the scariest place on earth. It's not so much that the reporting is shotty and one-sided, it's the general sense of conspiracy that is ludicrous. ML