Customer Reviews

The Secret Front: Nazi Political Espionage 1938-1945

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Overall I rated the book 3 stars because the writing isn't focused well. However, there are nuggets of information that make the book a most valuable read.

I've been investigating the Holocaust because of recent media events surrounding Catholic Bishop Williamson's [...] revisionist statements concerning the Holocaust. I'm a college history major and it seemed peculiar that there is such vitriol about a specific number of Jewish deaths. Millions died from all backgrounds in WWII, but the specific number of Jewish deaths is sacrosanct. Further research led me to discover that people are being arrested world-wide for questioning the details of the Holocaust.

Nugget #1: Hoettl is the official source of the 6 million number and this was stated during his trial at Nuremberg as being told to him by Eichmann [...]. In this book he elaborates about the event. "This number of 6 million almost seems to be magic" (pg 319). The 6 million number was used in an article written by a former New York governor after WWI asking for assistance for European Jews; it was used by the head of World Zionism in 1942, and used by Ben Hecht in Readers Digest in 1943. Hottl mentions that the number possibly was used by Eichmann after listening to English broadcasts by Sefton Delmer([...]).

Nugget#2: Mussolini's diary excerpt mentions that the allies were terrorists for they killed more civilians than soldiers. This is another controversial historical subject. The firebombing of Dresden as recorded by Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five is an example.

Nugget #3: Recent releases from the CIA records ([...] indicate that Hottl was a suspected Soviet spy and that he was interrogated by a Jewish-American Army officer who later was determined to be a Soviet spy. Was the 6 million number planted by the Soviets who had everything to gain by overshadowing their crimes with those of the Germans? I don't know, but these are all questions worthy of investigation, not suppression.

Forget the hype about Hoettl being Eichman's assistant and the man to whom the figure of six million Jews killed in the genocide was first revealed. This barely figures in the book and it is misleading to sell it as part of mainstream Holocaust literature. Hoettl occupied an important role in the German espionnage unit responsible for south-eastern Europe and does a superb job (this book was first published in 1953) outlining the chaos the Nazis were faced with in Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and the like and how their often bone-headed decisions only made matters worse. What I found particularly interesting were his observations on the brutal behaviour of the Croats and the Serbs, which helped explain the course of the war in the early 1990s, as well as the translation of the self-incriminatory and often downright depressed notebook which Mussolini wrote after the Italian government put him in detention in 1943. After Mussolini was rescued by German commandoes, the contents of the notebook fell into Hoettl's hands. This is a must-read book for anyone wanting more details as to what the Germans were up to in south-eastern Europe in the last war.