ABSTRACT
Mauthausen had the particularity, among all the camps in the SS archipelago, of being situated at the point farthest from the invading armies, whether from the east, the west, or the south. The Hauptlager, and the majority of its Nebenlager, were situated in Upper Austria (Oberdonau), and the race to reach them first, though not a conscious one, was a race between the Soviets and the Americans. There was, in any event, an International Restraining Line, agreed upon on 30 April 1945 (in a slighdy revised form), by General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander SHAEF, and Marshal A. J. Antonov, the Soviet Chief of Staff. This demarcation line for the Western and Eastern Allied forces meeting in Austria was the Enns river, and north of that river it followed the railway line running north—south from Freistadt to St Valentin, some 20 kilometres to the east of Linz.
