" He was a very dangerous person....He only looked out for his own advantage. He was very crafty and impenetrable. You couldn't pin anything on him. But he was a swindler nonetheless." Edith Frischmuth (former member of the Austrian Resistance)
Unlike many Nazi colleagues whose careers finished at the end of a rope or in exile, the former Austrian SS officer and SD operative returns to Austria in late 1947, ready to embark on a series of equally opaque activities. Taking advantage of the rivalry created by the growing Cold War, H ttl resumes plying his wares, initially with the American Counter Intelligence Agency (CIC), and German based Organization Gehlen, and later with whomever happened to show interest. Eventually outed as a dubious source and cast back into the cold, he returns to his academic roots, founding a school and assuming its directorship, while managing to publish three stylized versions of his wartime recollections. Despite suspected involvement in the 'Ratlines', a mechanism set up to aid Nazi fugitives flee to safer havens, entanglement in a Soviet-American spy scandal, a death sentence handed down by a Hungarian court, and numerous demands to testify at the trials of former colleagues, including that of Adolf Eichmann, H ttl nevertheless slithers through the jaws of justice to emerge as a 'qualified Zeitzeuge', catering to an enduring media circus willing to pay for his flawed reflections right up until his final breath.