Mühlviertel Rabbit Hunt: Nazi Manhunt for Escaped Soviet Prisoners of War in 1945

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · Jul 8, 2026 · 14m

he Mühlviertel Rabbit Hunt was one of the most brutal massacres of escaped Soviet prisoners of war during the final months of the Second World War. In February 1945, as the Third Reich was collapsing and Allied forces closed in from all sides, one of the most brutal episodes of the Holocaust and the Second World War unfolded in the forests of Upper Austria. It would later become known as the Mühlviertel Rabbit Hunt — a systematic manhunt for nearly 500 escaped Soviet prisoners of war from Mauthausen concentration camp. These men had been held in Block 20, the camp’s infamous “death block.”…