Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she explores the different facets of Nazism and compares the protagonists in "The White Horses of Vienna."

In 1935, two years after she first moved to Austria, Kay Boyle told a friend about her experience listening to an illegal radio broadcast of an Adolf Hitler speech. She spoke of his "moving appeal" to Austrians to "return to the Fatherland," or unite with Germany. "I prefer the emotional thing," she wrote, "and the Germans have got it in Hitler anyway."

By that time, Boyle had come to grasp the economic and political woes that had plagued Austria since the end of World War I and had seen the serious ramifications they had on an entire generations of Austrians. She also became acquainted with Nazis...