Here is the story of a modern martyrdom and a document of human and spiritual travail almost without parallel in present-day annals. Kurt von Schussnigg became Chancellor of Austria, after the assassination of Dollfuss, at the time the shadow of Hitler was beginning to fall across Europe, and most blackly of all on Austria. For four desperate years the Chancellor tried to avoid giving provocation to his great neighbor while still maintaining the integrity of his country. We are taken behind the scenes of conferences with Mussolini, at the League of Nations, and in other capitals of Europe. Much that has been obscure in the dealings of the various governments and statesmen during those fateful days is made clear here for the first time. This story reaches a crescendo in the bitter days extending from the famous interview between Hitler and Schussnigg at Berchtesgaden to the final overwhelming of Austria by German armed might. We see the Chancellor, betrayed within and abandoned by the Great Powers, almost single-handedly, attempting to stem the onrush of savagery. Although crushed by force in the end, he displays a spiriutal and moral firmness which will forever stand as a great victory of the human spirit. Once in the hands of the Gestapo he became a modern Man in the Iron Mask, deprived even of his name, torn from the woman he loved, living under the imminent threat of death, degraded by every device the fiendishness of his captors could contrive. During these bitter days his faith neve wavered, and under the very noses of his captors he penned this record of anguish and faith in the ultimate triumph of decency. While making the rounds of the concentration camps he saw most of the illustrious as well as the humble captives of Himmler and had an unequalled opportunity to obtain the material for this, one of the most moving journals of a prisoner's life. His faith was finally justified, and he lived to see the downfall of his persecutors and to be restored to the world of free men. As revealing as the Ciano Diaries, though completely honest in its reporting, as moving as De Profundis in its emotional appeal, here is one of the great political and human documents of our time.