Gordon Brook-Shepherd (1918–2004)

Questa vuole essere una biografia sull'uomo politico austriaco Engelbert Dollfuss, cancelliere durante l'austrofascismo, ma non vuole essere solo questo, intende dare anche un quadro generale di quella era dei grandi dittatori, nelle cui spire egli si trovò dapprima avvolto e poi schiacciato. Combatté una lotta quasi disperata con il più grande coraggio e incontrò la fine più tragica.

Brook-Shepherd seems to know the Austrian 1% really well, but has no insight into the other 99%. I thought all along that this book had a rather peculiar take on Austrian history, but the Waldheim bit confirmed it. He left out the really right wing candidate in the election, and seemed to have no idea of the way the attacks on Waldheim were seen in the general population here.

The title is slighly misleading, as this account begins in the late summer and ends on November 11, when the Armistice was declared. I would have liked the book to cover more of that month, so I could find out more about how the citizens (and armies) of Europe began to adjust to all of the momentous changes that had so suddenly come upon their world. However, a great deal of my curiotity about these changes derives from how vividly and clearly they had been described in this intense book.

An interesting account of early British intelligence's role in opposing the Bolsheviks. It does drag slightly in places and the chronology of events was a little confused, but contains some thrilling escapades that could have come straight from a spy novel.