Customer Reviews

Waldheim: The Missing Years

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I think all of you have heard the stories that Kurt Waldheim was a ...Nazi that went on to be the head of the UN, well this book tries it's best to prove this theory. The book covers Waldheim's full life, and at first the reader would almost think it was an authorized biography. It covers the first 20 years of his life in a nice and short method that seams that it could have been anyone growing up in Europe at the time. When we hit World War Two that is when the family has problems and this book turns into a very unauthorized biography. After reading the book I went to the library and pulled up a few of the old news paper articles on the topic when it was big news, and it looks like this author captured the mood of the media at the time. Convict the man for ratings and let him prove he did not do it, a very difficult issue with something so old.

Overall the book does document Waldheim's service in the Waffen SS, but does not defiantly put Kurt in the location of any known atrocities of war (then again sometime it is all a matter of judgment of what is and is not fair play in combat). I think the author's main push is simple to make you believe that just because he was in the Waffen SS, that he must have preformed war crimes. This may be somewhat of a convincing argument if you do not know much about the make up of the Waffen SS, but if you do then it does not hold water. The Waffen SS was just a unit of fast reaction forces, not the head holocaust perpetrators. Overall the book was mildly interesting, but only if you are really into the topic would I suggest you read it.