Madmen led the Blind: Memoirs of an SS Obersturmführer

Farm boy. Franciscan Seminarian. Waffen SS Obersturmfьhrer. American POW. Doctor in Vietnam

A private person, devoted to his career, Sepp rarely mentioned his past, even to his own family. When in the late 1960s US secret documents about WW II interrogations and illegal eavesdropping were leaked to him, he decided it was time to tell his eldest son Herwig the truth in a letter.

Sepp’s letter forms the basis of this remarkable memoir. From an almost medieval childhood in an impoverished hill-village near Graz, proceeding to his years at a Franciscan seminary, contemplating God whilst Austria passed from Civil war to the orderly insanity of Nazi rule. And on to Sepp’s own part in it:

explaining why he joined the Waffen-SS in 1939, recounting his medical studies and his front-line service in the last brutal conflict of the Second World War, his growing horror at the realities of Nazism, and his reasons for surrendering to the U.S. military. As the war ends, his battles continue: to justify his actions to the Allies, to betray former comrades, to carve out a future in a country still run by Nazis.

This is a compelling and provocative true story, confronting readers, not only with the atrocities of the time, but with an insight into the ordinary people who took part in them and lived with the consequences.

University Professor Dr. phil. Alois Kernbauer, Karl-Franzens University Graz, Austria, History Department. Published ‘Die SS Дrztliche Akademie’ (‚The SS Medical Academy’ in Graz, 1939-1945) in an email to the author:
‚EVERYTHING is extremely interesting to me. There is no comparable informative description of any of the 'Junkers' [students] of the SS Medical Academy like his [Sepp Salmutter's] life and thus of these years. Your very interesting manuscript indicates that your father wrote you lengthy letters. This gives the text great liveliness.’