70 years after Kurt Schuschnigg’s resignation his son Kurt recalls the dramatic days of March 1938, when the armed forces of the powerful German Reich invaded Austria. For five years the country had managed to resist the National Socialists’ attempts to create a single state, during which time Chancellor Schuschnigg desperately tried to alert the democracies of Western Europe to Austria’s plight. After his father’s arrest and imprisonment Kurt Schuschnigg junior visits him at the Gestapo headquarters in Munich and later at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. In 1944 he volunteers for the marines, joins the resistance movement and undertakes an Odyssey covering the length and breadth of Europe. When the family is finally reunited after the war, conversations between father and son return to the catastrophic events of 1938 time and time again.
- A gripping report by a contemporary witness
- Insights into the federal chancellor’s private life
- A glimpse behind the curtain at political events
Kurt von Schuschnigg was born in Innsbruck in 1926. In 1927 he emigrated to the USA where he worked as an arts dealer.
Janet von Schuschnigg grew up as one of seven children in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1981 she married Kurt von Schuschnigg. They divide their time between New York and Kitzbühel, Austria.