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

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.

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.

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.