Publisher Description
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.
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About William Alan Webb
William Alan Webb has studied the Second World War his entire life. His earliest memory is watching a TV program about US submarines. A native of West Tennessee, his childhood involved reading accounts of the war, debating military decisions with his friends, and playing war games. Building on this lifelong passion, he graduated from the University of Memphis with dual concentrations in history and English (creative writing). Over the course of a long career in sales and marketing, Webb was employee of the year four times for three different companies. In pre-computer days he took board games on the road to play solitaire in hotel rooms. Russian front was a favorite. In September of 2000, his first article about the battle of Velikiye Luki appeared in World War II magazine. Hundreds of compensated mystery book reviews followed over the years. Other non-fiction works include such diverse subjects as college sports and crowd funding for honeymoons. During a 2006 visit to Austria, Webb discovered that no history existed in English about the events of April and May 1945. He decided on the spot to rectify that and so Killing Hitler’s Reich was born. Coming as a complete shock, in 2014 Webb wrote two novels strictly as a lark. Published in 2016, Standing the Final Watch and Standing in the Storm became instant best sellers. Standing at the Edge, Sharp Steel, and Jurassic Jail soon followed, as did two non-fiction works, Unsuck Your Book and The Last Attack. In 2018 he won the prestigious Darrell award.