Books: How It Was in Vienna

NIGHT FALLS ON THE CITY by Sarah Gainham. 572 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. $6.95.

When the major novel about the Nazi terror is written, its theme will almost certainly be not physical brutality but moral decay. Night Falls on the City merely anticipates the probability. Some of the animal savagery is there, and the death and suffering, but what is even more shameful is the almost total collapse of human decency in a highly civilized—perhaps overcivilized—society. Author Gainham knows Austria well, and the Viennese victims, fence sitters, Nazi bullyboys, happy collaborators and German overlords are all convincing enough for documentary purposes....

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