Florian Wenninger | Crime, Revenge and Justice. The Viennese Mob’s Hunt for Nazis after 1945

After their return from Nazi prisons and camps in 1945, a group of Viennese criminals founded an organization called "The Iron Broom" in Vienna. Similar to Murder, Inc., the contract killing center of the New York Kosher Nostra, the Iron Broom also commissioned murders and other acts of violence - but preferably those whose victims were former Nazis. Starting with the central figure of the "Iron Broom", a Viennese Nobel gangster, this lecture by Florian Wenninger (Institute for Historical Social Research in Vienna) traces the history of the organization, which was also shaped by a transatlantic cultural transfer: the members of the "Iron Broom" clearly imitated an American mobster culture, which was characterized by a specific self-presentation, but also by a (differently strictly interpreted) moral code.