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Exploding star: A young Austrian against Hitler
English, German (translation)
280 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1979
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 26, 2015
A good but somewhat rambling memoir of a liberal Austrian's man experience with Austria under its authoritarian government, the Anschluss, and then World War II. A friend loaned it to me no doubt owing to my quipping that the shortest book ever written was the Austrian Resistance to the Anschluss. In fact, Molden does not indicate there was substantial resistance to the Anschluss, but he blames the heavy-handed way Nazi Germany arranged the "vote" on the issue for this outcome. The book starts off rather out of focus, but improves readily as the action picks up, so to speak. There are not many daring tales of violent resistance (so it's not an "exciting" book of war and combat, if that's what you're looking for), but there are some interesting tales as to how Molden moves to, from, and through Nazi-occupied Europe even after he is wanted by Nazi authorities. My favorite is the tale of how he and his confederates got the SS to actually help them smuggle a clandestine radio set into Austria by convincing their Nazi hosts it was a captured set.
Molden focuses a good deal on the larger political picture, including his efforts to organize not only military resistance but a political umbrella and Allied assistance to/recognition of same. However, he seems to display extreme naiveté in terms of the motivations of his erstwhile allies (i.e., their interest in monitoring and controlling any such Austrian group, etc.). However, both in the operational as well as the political side, he tends to skim and skip and leaves the reader with a feeling of having achieved only a superficial understanding of just what went on.
Once through the first chapter, the book is an easy enough read and does fill in some gaps in an area not typically the focus of other histories of World War II, so I recommend it for those interested in the period or in Austrian history in particular (though a fair amount of the resistance action goes on in northern Italy as well).
Molden focuses a good deal on the larger political picture, including his efforts to organize not only military resistance but a political umbrella and Allied assistance to/recognition of same. However, he seems to display extreme naiveté in terms of the motivations of his erstwhile allies (i.e., their interest in monitoring and controlling any such Austrian group, etc.). However, both in the operational as well as the political side, he tends to skim and skip and leaves the reader with a feeling of having achieved only a superficial understanding of just what went on.
Once through the first chapter, the book is an easy enough read and does fill in some gaps in an area not typically the focus of other histories of World War II, so I recommend it for those interested in the period or in Austrian history in particular (though a fair amount of the resistance action goes on in northern Italy as well).
July 28, 2015
Interesting read. Seems to ramble most times, but as the saying goes "The man has been through a lot."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews