Hitler and the Habsburgs. The Führer’s Revenge on the Ruling House of Austria

In his youth, Adolf Hitler lived in Vienna for five years. It was there and then that his hatred for the ruling imperial family of the Habsburgs fully formed, along with his desire for revenge against the vanished empire, the murdered archduke, and his heirs. This became one of the main reasons for World War II and the Holocaust.

From the heights of power, Hitler unleashed all his hatred towards the Habsburgs and their colorful empire on the sons of Franz Ferdinand, who openly opposed the Nazi Party and its racist ideology. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, it was Maximilian and Ernst who became the first Austrians arrested by the Gestapo. Sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, the brothers went from the palace to the dungeon in just a few hours. The women of the family, including the only daughter of the archduke, Princess Sophie von Hohenberg, stood up against Hitler. Their resilience and bravery in the face of betrayals, treason, torture, and hunger helped the family survive both during the war and in the difficult peacetime that followed.

In search of an answer to the question of why Hitler was so determined to eradicate the family of the murdered archduke, the author James M. Longo spent ten years researching and conversing with the descendants of the ruling house of the Habsburgs, ultimately detailing the story of the fearless struggle of Franz Ferdinand's family against the Führer.