Prison Elite: How Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg Survived Nazi Captivity

"Rummel brilliantly describes and analyzes how Schuschnigg attempted to cope psychologically with his personal plight and to explain to himself why he had failed as chancellor."

Evan B. Bukey, University of Arkansas, emeritus, Central European History

"A clear-sighted reading of the diaries and letters of pre-war Austria’s last Chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, during his seven-year internment in Nazi prisons and camps – where, as a privileged prisoner, he was more witness than victim of Nazi atrocity. Part political memoir, part prison diary, part psychological coping mechanism, in Rummel’s astute hands these hybrid texts disclose a man in daily struggle not just with his own incarceration, but also with his political role in Austria’s downfall."

Jane Caplan, Professor Emeritus of Modern European History, University of Oxford

"’Quite nice in Sachsenhausen’ – Erika Rummel’s remarkable work focuses on a little-known chapter of the National Socialist dictatorship. While the atrocities in concentration camps are well documented, the existence of VIP sections within various camps is not common knowledge. Rummel approaches the less covered theme through the eyes of a most controversial figure in Austria´s contemporary history. A new perspective worth reading!"

Hannes Leidinger, Lecturer at the Institute for Contemporary History, University of Vienna and member of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War