Walter Reder; Austrian Nazi War Criminal
Walter Reder, 75, convicted Nazi war criminal whose 1985 return from an Italian prison brought down an Austrian coalition government. Reder, a commander in the SS, or elite guard infantry, was convicted in Bologna in 1951 for murdering children and elderly civilians in a 1944 massacre near Marzabotto in northern Italy. Known as Austria’s “last prisoner of war” upon his release, he was greeted by Defense Minister Friedheim Frischenschlager. That caused the fall of the coalition of the Socialists and Freedom Party. On April 26 in Vienna.
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