[2] On 2 March 1944, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel issued a decree (Aktion Kugel—"Operation Bullet") stating that escaped Soviet officers were to be taken to Mauthausen concentration camp and shot.

[3] Some were shot immediately, and others imprisoned in Block 20, which was separated from the rest of the camp by a fence 2.5 meters high, on top of which was barbed wire.

Some 40 murdered prisoners' bodies were taken to Ried in der Riedmark, where the search was based, and stacked in a pile of corpses, "just like the bag at an autumn hunt", as one former gendarme, Otto Gabriel, put it.

[10] The Linz criminal investigations department later reported to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, "Of the 419 fugitives [who managed to leave the camp] [...], in and around Mauthausen, Gallneukirchen, Wartberg, Pregarten, Schwertberg and Perg, over 300 were taken again, including 57 alive.

"[5][9] According to a witness, Gauleiter August Eigruber, whose orders the SS, SA, and Volkssturm were following, told commandant Franz Ziereis that "All these pigs will have to be finished," in reference to the recaptured prisoners.

In spite of the extremely high risk, a few farm families and civilian forced laborers hid escapees or brought food to those hiding in the woods.

August Eigruber, who, along with some of his codefendants, was implicated in the crime and numerous other atrocities, and tried by an American military court at the Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials.

[11] Hugo Tacha, a Wehrmacht soldier at home on leave at the time of the breakout, was convicted for his role in the crime and sentenced to 20 years in jail by an Austrian court.

[13] The events of the Mühlviertel massacre gained prominence with the 1994 film The Quality of Mercy by director Andreas Gruber, and was a box office success in Austria.

Aktion K juxtaposes interviews with local residents about the film and the actual history with archival footage and the eyewitness testimony of Mikhail Ribchinsky, a survivor of the Mühlviertler Hasenjagd.