Mauthausen History of a Concentration Camp Complex

In August 1938, just a few months after the ‘Anschluss’ of Austria to the German Reich, the SS established Mauthausen concentration camp in the Mühlviertel region of Upper Austria. Over the following years, this ‘main camp’ and the Gusen branch camp, set up in 1940, were expanded into a vast network of more than 40 subcamps. By the time Mauthausen was liberated by the US Army in May 1945, some 190,000 people had been deported to this concentration camp complex. Around 90,000 of the deportees, the majority of whom came from occupied Europe, died or were murdered there. As the only ‘main camp’ on Austrian territory, the crimes committed in the Mauthausen concentration camp complex took on particular significance for Austria’s post-war history. This book is the first monograph since the 1970s to present a comprehensive history of the camp system as a whole, bringing together the extensive international research of recent years.