Setting of the Pearl Book

The author of this book comes from a family whose paternal ancestors quite literally saved Vienna during Ottoman siege. Yet he fled Vienna and still feels excluded today because his mother's ancestors were central European Jews. In addition to telling the story of "Vienna Under Hitler," this book does the important work of having the conversation about antisemitism in Europe, especially the powdered-sugar variety practiced in Vienna. Although it is not as rotten on the outside, perhaps, it is just as vile to its core, and just as persistent in its viral ability to survive and reinfect.

Weyr starts with a day-by-day, almost minute-by-minute account of the Anschluss, largely taken from synthesizing pre-existings works of popular or academic history. From there Weyr takes a step back in history in an effort to determine why Austrians would voluntarily align themselves with Hitler's Germany--even granting that the referendum was polluted with Goebbels' propaganda and German troops massed at the border. Weyr covers the waning days of the Hapsburgs, Austria's defeat in the Great War, and the interwar years when Austria was quite literally "the Country nobody wanted," including the Austrians.

The two chapters actually covering Vienna under National Socialism are fairly long and lagged where they lapsed into too much recitation of governmental archive or newspaper material. They were strongest (and were in fact quite strong) where they stuck to diaries, interview, stories of actual people, and reportage of how Viennese culture was used and abused by the Prussians.

Finally, the chapter on post-war Vienna has an axe to grind, but it is probably one that needs grinding. Weyr idealizes the socialist interwar governments and would find any government who believes in markets and business to be "right wing," even if markets were (and are) demonstrably better at lifting whole nations out of poverty and empowering people with true liberty.

One should not forget that Weyr is a refugee who lost a Vienna that probably only existed in his parents' imagination. That Vienna will never rise again, because it was only partially realized in the golden past. While Weyr is correct that persistent and mostly latent antisemitism (and Islamophobia) still exists in Viennese politics, socialist Vienna was not heaven on earth, and conservatism without racism is not the tenth circle of hell. Read with a grain a salt and understand the author's experience and point of view.

There as here, we must be clear-eyed about our populist strong men.