The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

The Lachout Document
Anatomy of a Forgery

Austrian Resistance Archives, 1990


C. The Stamp "Republic Österreich-Wachbataillon Wien-Kommando"[27]

Austria did not have her own military force until 1955. In 1945 the Under-Secretariat for Military Affairs, then under Franz Winterer, was part of the Chancellory of the Provisional Chancellor, Karl Renner and was dissolved at the Allies' request with the resignation of the provisional government on December 21, 1945.

The newly elected National Assembly reaffirmed this on January 18, 1946. The gendarmerie's alarm-formation was only formed in 1949. The so-called B-Gendarmerie, a small number of para-military units, was only established on August 1, 1952. It was put under the command of the Interior Ministry.

Therefore, there was no "Guard Battalion Vienna" in 1948. This has been confirmed in letters from the Defense and Interior Ministers to the DOEW.[28] A further problem: How was it possible that an "original" stamp of the "Guard Battalion Vienna" ever got on a "copy" of a tenth copy, as it appears on the published facsimile? This could only have been possible years later with the advent of photocopying.


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