Hitler's Hunting Squad in Southern Europe

Auteur

Thanasis Fotiou is a native son of Marathousa Greece one of the villages in Northern Greece targeted by the Nazi War criminal Fritz Schubert in 1944. A graduate of Aristotle University of Salonica followed by a PhD in Classics from the University of Cincinnati, he became an associate professor of classics at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada, spending his life teaching undergraduate and graduate students in his adopted country. His memories of near death at the hands of the Nazi occupiers at age ten continued to haunt him into his retirement years and led him to piece together the real events of this period from extensive hours of survivor testimonies and long forgotten government documents. The last voices of a brutal period in Greek history cannot be forgotten.

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Examines Fritz Schubert's brutal actions and atrocities across occupied Crete and Macedonia during WWII.

'The book relates in wonderful detail the tragedy of an era through the dreadful actions of a war criminal' - Nikos Marantzides

Hitler's Hunting Squad in Southern Europe traces the violent path of Fritz Schubert and his Greek 'hunting squad' across occupied Crete and Macedonia, offering a complete translation of Thanasis Fotiou's comprehensive study on the German Lieutenant during World War II.

The author's research reveals previously unknown aspects of Schubert's life and his actions as an officer, including the murder and torture of civilians, and the looting and burning of homes.

Fritz Schubert, born in 1897, joined the German Forces in 1914 and concluded his service in Turkey, where he settled and married. By 1934, he had joined the National Socialist Party, influenced by Nazi ideology and propaganda. Fluent in several languages, he trained at the School of Interpreters under the reserve army's administration, attaining the rank of Unteroffizier. Hitler intended for Crete to play a significant role in the Middle East and Egypt due to its strategic oil reserves.

In 1947, a special commissioner's report on Schubert's hunting squad stated, 'They murdered, they tortured in the most brutal ways numerous civilians, they looted and burned many homes. Generally, the arrival of Schubert's gang signaled unrelenting plunder, marked by tears, pain, and bloodshed.'