The Nazi's had some excellent graphic design, the typography in most of those ads around the city are excellent. Modern display advertisements really do make cities uglier.
A lot of totalitarian propaganda has that attractive, simple but striking design; it's not hard to understand how it can sway people. And hand painted signage always looks classy, even when it isn't hate speech...
That's an oddly ironic suggestion, seeing that Apple's decision not to include Flash support in the original iPhone was probably our best hope for killing the damn thing.
I don't see any excuse for lazy web designers using Flash just for a static image gallery. My browser is perfectly capable of rendering images without a proprietary plugin.
That's not the point. Installing Flash player is, of course, very easy to do; it's just that doing so comes only at the cost of slightly decreased security and stability.
Of course, Adobe could have avoided these issues, had they only chosen to release Flash player under an open source license. At this point it's simply legacy software being phased out in favor of HTML5, and is mostly just a nuisance.
Thankfully, ever since Youtube released their HTML5 player, I can't think of a single time in which I was denied access to critically important content because it was locked inside a SWF.
You certainly are correct that alternatives for Flash video exist too. Youtube is a great exemplar of this, but sadly, even their competitors (such as Vimeo or Dailymotion) seem to bother.
> In the late 1930s, despite several attempts by some leaders to maintain Austrian independence, Nazi influence within the Austrian government and among the populace was too strong. The Nazis entered Austria on March 12, 1938 and absorbed the country into Germany the following day; the annexation was known as the Anschluss. A manipulated plebiscite administered a month later indicated that over 99 percent of Austrians were in favor of the situation. And though questions persist about the Austrians’ willingness to be a part of Nazi Germany, the raw footage in these films presents at least one side of the story.
I've been reading a history of Central Europe lately, and one of the interesting points that it brings out is that in the 1800s there was a desire on the part of some to unify the different German states within the general German world; this included Austria, and this unification for a greater German state was called Anschluss. Particularly after Austria-Hungary broke up in the WW1 aftermath, this was up for discussion a lot. I was quite surprised to read that; it suggested that the annexation of Austria was not a Nazi invention at all and had much more historic roots.
(I'd love to hear more from someone who knows more; this is just cribbed from history books).
The modern Austrian will be the first to tell you that Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression .. and ignore the welcome that was put out by a majority of the Austrian populace for Hitler, but there really is a deeper truth that the reason they are telling you that Austria was a victim is that the de-Nazi'fication of Austria after the war required the then-growing generations to discard the culture of their parents, which did indeed welcome Nazi ideology with open arms. Austrians' have been programmed to think that their country was the first victim in the war - lest they perpetuate the ideologies that allowed such an easy victory for the Nazi's in the first place.
No Austrian wants to admit the long-standing cultural roots of imperialism and fascism that took hold of their country - and still reflect in its darker depths. Authoritarianism is still the mode of the day; group-think and the mob mind very much still grips the Austrian zeitgeist, as it has for centuries.
> No Austrian wants to admit the long-standing cultural roots of imperialism and fascism that took hold of their country - and still reflect in its darker depths. Authoritarianism is still the mode of the day; group-think and the mob mind very much still grips the Austrian zeitgeist, as it has for centuries.
Boy, that's a hard thing to say about an entire country. You sure you don't want to get some sources for that one?
while 30% of the population vote far right, there is also a strong left tradition in Austria, as exemplified by Red Vienna (Das Rote Wien), with its revolutionary social housing and socialist Mayor (re-elected, again).
They are populist and without concepts. However they attract lots of voters because the traditional parties are failing at governing. This topic however is way more complex than that and I think has very little to do with Austria in the second world war or afterwards.
> and having the largest amount of neo-nazis
Most likely, but I doubt we have more neo nazis in general than other countries. But I would love to see statistics on that. We're one of the few countries that have strong punishments on this sort of stuff.
> The modern Austrian will be the first to tell you that Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression
Uh. That has not been the case for many years now. Austria has had this attitude right after the war but things have changed a lot in the last 60 years.
As someone who went through Austrian education I can tell you that Austria's view as it being a victim was controversially discussed throughout our history education and ultimately dismissed.
There are probably still some that think Austria was a victim in this, but I doubt that this would be the majority.
Hear where exactly? I really would like to see some reference to that.
//EDIT: Just to be clear. I'm not saying there are not some people that believe that, but it has been taught differently in schools for a long time, Austria's official position for the last 30 years is that it was not a victim. If you talk to old people, sure, but the last two generations? I doubt it.
"After its convention in early 2011 mid-way between general elections, the FPÖ had a support in opinion polls of around 24-29%—at par with the SPÖ and ÖVP, and above the BZÖ. Among people under 30 years of age, the FPÖ had the support of 42%.[61][62] In June 2015 the main part of the federal party section of Salzburg split of and formed the Free Party Salzburg. [63]"
Presumably a fair chunk of those voters would describe the situation as the GP quoted. Not hard to believe at all.
(And 'under 30' is definitely not 'old people')
Painting yourself as the victim is a tried and true strategy of nationalist parties. After all, someone else has to be blamed for whatever is wrong it would not do to seek fault with yourself. I'm sure they were taught different in school but that won't stop people to believe whatever it is that supports their desired outcomes most, even if that goes contrary to their education.
I don't like the generalization to all Austrians, that makes absolutely no sense. But some Austrians, quite probably and with 30% voting for right wing nationalists quite a few of those would be under 30.
We have a similar dumb thing going on here in NL with a guy called Wilders. He's managed to enlist the young people with his brand of scapegoating and populism and most of what those people believe would leave a student of the run-up to WWII horrified. That doesn't mean all Dutch people are Wilders followers or fans but I would not rule out any demographic from being his supporters.
I'm not sure how this is in any way related to the discussion at hand. The FPOe never had the opinion that Austria was a victim. If anything the FPOe had party members there were way too attached to national socialism and probably still has some.
However if you look at present day FPOe they are attracting votes because they are the only party which promises a solution for the refugee crisis and problem that badly managed immigration in Austria causes.
It's related because you take exception to the term 'modern Austrian'. I take exception to the generalization to all but find it perfectly believable that a segment of modern day Austrians is still in convenient denial. From personal anecdote I can confirm it but I don't like to go down that route so I'd rather stick to the statistics about the right wing party representation in Austria and submit that amongst a group that large there must be some overlap with the group that still sees Austria as the victim of the Nazis. That's simple statistics and does not require exceptional leaps of faith.
Aside: Nationalist parties are pretty good at finding ways to gain a foothold using single-issue scapegoating games. What you get once they're in power is a totally different kettle of fish.
> but find it perfectly believable that a segment of modern day Austrians is still in convenient denial.
Sure, but I did not dispute that. There are people with questionable ideologies in all countries. However if you look at the population as a whole the question is how large that percentage is (among people who were not actively involved in the war).
The reason why I object to the concept that Austria is particularly problematic in that regard (which is what international opinion appears to be) is because we can have a direct comparison to Germany. You can basically divide a German statistic by 10 and then compare it to Austria to see how the countries are doing. And with regards to most things with regards to national socialism we are doing significantly better than Germany these days.
>I'm not sure how this is in any way related to the discussion at hand. The FPOe never had the opinion that Austria was a victim.
No, but the presence or a large right wing means that old ideas are not totally eliminated now from a totally un-nazified enlightened modern populace, including the idea that Austria has been a victim.
The line is, almost verbatim across multiple disparate sources: "Austria was the first victim of the Nazi's".
Its so striking to hear it as a statement that it has become very much expected whenever I make a new acquaintance and the topic of discussion gets around to Austrian culture. There is so much affinity for the cliché of it, that I think it still persists as a meme. Austrians seem to love their wry, ironic, cliché .. and to excuse the current madness with a brush of "oh, its normal for Austria to have such politics.."
I live in Austria too and agree with the_mitsuhiko: the older generations might still think that way in 2015 Austria but the younger are more conscious, probably thanks to Hubertus Czernin's work in revealing some dirty past stories
Your statement is probably true for the majority of the generation after WWII (with politicians leading the way), but definitely not for "The modern Austrian" (where I count myself in). We are well aware of what happened back then and we definitely know that Austrian people were involved of the cruelties that happened in WWII and before it.
There's also a Wikipedia entry about the Victim theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_theory. As you can read there official Austria confessed the role of Austria during WWII in 1991. That's late, I know. But also, that was nearly 30 years ago. That's what I would call "modern".
What use do you want us to make of that comment? Be upfront if you actually have something to say. Do you mean that Austria has only just changed its official position, relative to whatever scale matters to you personally, and should not be let off just yet from this long chain of acrid remarks?
Going by your time scale, WWII was still on three days ago. Then again, there are people who might come onto this forum and in all honesty say that 1943 was only yesterday to them, and that you mistakenly said that this morning was yesterday afternoon. Do we revise our comments yet again, in light of this fact?
By many measures, 24 years are scarcely any. Which measure do you want to make use of, and what consequences does it have? You haven't said anything.
It means that to me 1991 is figuratively speaking yesterday. I remember it clear as day and it does not seem long ago at all.
I realize that for lots of people on HN the early 1990's seem like forever ago, and probably quite a few of them weren't even born back then but for me personally it's an eyeblink.
Yes, there are some who remember WWII vividly, I'm not one of them because I was born well after that but I can see how what you determine to be a 'long time' very much depends on your own personal time-line and that was the full extent of the meaning of that comment.
To me it means yes, that they have just changed their official position, and they definitely should not be left off just yet, not because it took them that long but mostly because of developments in Austria since then. The legacy of Haider is alive and well.
Just like NL should not be let off the hook either, we have our own version of that problem to contend with. (And, for that matter, our own version of the Anschluss even though you'll never hear about it outside of NL, we had a very large chunk of the Dutch openly collaborating with the invaders and a political party (NSB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Movement_in...) with substantial following.)
I love the Christopher Hitchens quote: "... the two great achievements of Austria was to convince the world that Hitler was German, and that Beethoven was Viennese."
as i commented above: "when i learned about WW2 in school in the 90s we weren't really thaught that we were hitlers "first victims". we did learn about the widespread vote manipulation and effective propaganda, but also that there were the pictured parades to welcome the "occupiers" and that big parts of the population openly welcomed him into the country."
Austria did not exist a nation state before 1918, it was a piece of the Habsburg monarchy/empire. After the empire got split up, it was clear for the populace that it could not survive on its own, surrounded by former "colonies" and under threat from Russia, Italy and others.
But then you have the rise of Adolf Hitler - an Austrian from Upper Austria - in Germany, focusing on race and heritage.
Keep also in mind that even the German nation state was net new, before that it was Prussia plus a lot of smaller "states". Austria had less business of being a nation than Bavaria.
1945 saw Austria being separated out again, 1955 forced movement into a neutral statehood. At all times it was closely coupled to Western-Germany, as exemplified by tieing the national currency (Schilling) to the German D-Mark.
To this day you have a strong element of German-Nationalism within the far-right movement in Austria. Late populist Jörg Haider of the Freedom Party went on record calling Austria a ideological miscarriage in 1988.
Interestingly, the assassination of Dollfuss caused Mussolini to almost go to war with Nazi Germany. One might wonder what would have happened if tensions remained such that Italy stayed out of the Axis and the war in Europe...
"Hitler will create an army, Hitler will arm the Germans and make war- possibly even in two or three years. I cannot stand up to him alone. We must do something and we must do something quickly." - Mussolini, 1934
> A manipulated plebiscite administered a month later indicated that over 99 percent of Austrians were in favor of the situation.
The vote was manipulated but it would not have mattered. I can tell you from stories of my grandfather of how dire his childhood and the one of everybody in the area was. They were ready to rally behind anyone who would take them out of starvation and suffering. Hitler came with popular support because he found an enemy who is to blame and he managed to unite people to be motivated to move themselves out of misery.
There is a fine line behind a populist approach that motivates people to do something and overstepping the line and doing a lot of damage in the process.
>I can tell you from stories of my grandfather of how dire his childhood and the one of everybody in the area was. They were ready to rally behind anyone who would take them out of starvation and suffering.
Not sure how much this holds as a reason compared to "cultural affiliation" etc. As far as European countries go, Austria was one of the most affluent at the time -- and afterwards too. Vienna in particular was legendary. What to say about people in places such as Southern Spain and Italy, Greece, Eastern Europe, etc, that were several times as dire?
Austria after the first world war was left as a non functioning country. The industry was largely in parts of the country that were lost in the war, there were high reparations to pay and the government apparatus was largely broken. Things got so bad that Austro fascism started which was terrible in it's own right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrofascism
Well, up until 1815 there was only the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which covered mostly the German-speaking parts of Central Europe and some historically aligned places; in reality, several dozen mostly sovereign nations under control of noblemen. But there has never been anything resembling Germany, rather Germany and Germans were defined by culture and by language. That's why Kafka could have had this mixed identity of being German (he wrote in German after all), Jewish and Czech.
Following the napoleonic wars, nationalistic movements started to emerge in Europe, which, naturally, were opposed by the individual rulers of all the small states within the cultural area of Germany. Two separate ideas were discussed: the "kleindeutsche" or small solution and the "großdeutsche" or large solution, the latter including also the Austrian empire. There were two issues with the latter. Prussia and Austria were the two dominant states within the German cultural area. Austria, however, was a giant multicultural and multiethnic state with its own separatist movements. So when Bismarck pushed for unification, his aim was mostly to have Prussia gain power, not to cater to romantic ideas of pan-germanism. To achieve this, he had to keep his main potential rivals, the Austrians, at bay, and actually even fought the Austrians in the second of three unification wars (in 1866). So in a sense, the Anschluss was a step back to the "großdeutsche" solution, not some inconceivable invasion of a militarily inferior power.
In the 140 years since the first German unification, Austrians and contemporary Germany have separated culturally quite a lot; but still, at least in the sphere of culture such as literature, music and the arts, Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland are treated similarly.
Disclaimer: IANAH and wrote it up in less than ten mminutes
You can really read the entire history of Europe from roughly 1800 to today as one long struggle to answer the "German question" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Question): should there be a unified state for German people, instead of having them scattered across lots of tiny, independent principalities? And if the answer to that is "yes," where do you draw the lines of that state's borders?
It was a central question to the politics of the age, for the simple reason that it was always obvious that by gathering so much of the continent's population under a single flag a unified German state would immediately become one of Europe's most powerful. Until the rise of German nationalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationalism), the largest and most powerful state in Europe had been France, and Napoleon had tapped that power to make the French the masters of the continent. A unified German state would be large enough to be a counterweight to French power, or even eclipse it altogether. So the German question became the fulcrum on which power politics in Europe balanced.
Obviously the French, along with the rest of Germany's neighbors, had an interest in keeping the boundaries of a German state as limited as it could be. But there were divisions of opinion within the Germanic world about how big a German state should be as well. The maximalist position was the "big German solution" (Großdeutsche Lösung), which advocated pulling all German-speaking people, including those in Austria, into the new state. Advocates of the competing "little German solution" (Kleindeutsche Lösung) were more modest; they simply proposed unifying the northern German states.
This argument reflected the division of power in the Germanic world itself, which was split between Prussia in the north and Austria in the south. Austria then was much larger than it is today, part of the enormous kingdom of the House of Hapsburg (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Monarchy), so the Austrians tended to support the "big solution", since it was assumed that if Austria was part of the German coalition it would dominate its smaller partners. For the same reason, the Prussians favored the "little solution"; they wanted to dominate the united Germany, and the only way they could do so was by keeping the Austrians out.
All of this got worked out in a series of wars and revolutions between 1848 and 1871, during which Prussia beat first Austria and then France soundly on the battlefield. These victories put the Prussians in the driver's seat in terms of determining what a unified Germany would look like, and since the Prussians supported the "little solution," that was the shape the new German Empire took.
As they had hoped, once Germany took the form they wanted, the Prussians more or less ran the Empire. But then came World War I, and Germany's bloodletting and defeat in that war knocked the Prussians off their pedestal. That created a power vacuum, which was eventually filled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state. And unlike the Prussians, Hitler was very much a believer in the "big German solution" -- so much so that his "Greater Germany" encompassed more people than even the most strident 19th century German nationalists imagined.
One of the arguments for the "little solution" had always been that making Germany too big would unite the rest of Europe in an effort to cut it down to size, as had happened to the French during the Napoleonic era; and Hitler's wild expansion proved that was the case. And once the war was over and "Gre...
In general, you want to search for the German Question [1]. Germans have been populating central/eastern european territories for a long time, both as colonists (think Katherina/Kasachstan/Siebenbuergen-Rumania) and as remainders of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation.
The French Revolution [2] and the coming of the Spring of Nations [3] brought the question back on the table. Throughout this period, but especially around 1848, it was heavily debated among Germans.
Europe, dispite its small size, has a very exiting and thrilling history. A pity what happened to it in the last century. Mais c'est la vie, so to say.
But back to Austria - of course many an Austrian loved to be unified into the new German Empire, a technologically moderns society, the Third Reich, that was prophesized to last for a thousand years. After the scars of defeat of WWI, and Entente dictation, people looked for a savior.
He came in the form of a failed Austrian artist. History has its ironies..
My grandmother was a 'mischling' (mongrel), half Jewish on her father's side (a doctor who converted to christianity for convenience), and a gentile mother. Both died before the war, and she was orphaned, interrogated by the Gestapo, imprisoned (for listening to the BBC), and survived through begging for her life.
Though half her family were wiped out in the Holocaust, she still casually said to me in her old age that 'the Jews must have done something' to provoke such a response.
I don't hold with that, but it does give some indication of how brutal the world view was, and how everyone bought into the anti-semitism - even Semites. If you think she was a one-off, then read up on Wittgenstein, who wrote about the 'dirty Jew' inside him.
Every 7 years at the end of Shemitah, the jews sell tons of stuff and trigger markets to collapse. Right now in Q4 of 2015 we are facing this same problem.
They also had a network of street gangs through Europe, they could steal and the threat of violence was enough for people to let them get away with it.
The jews had a lot of connections but as a normal citizen of Austria or another country you couldn't really join them.
There's some other cronyism and random bad behavior they don't so as much any more.
on the internet nobody can tell if you're joking or not. as you're obviously a jew yourself you'd better make it a bit more obvious, otherwise people may believe you're just a run-of-the-mill troll.
Somewhere around the end of Shmitah, the jews make big sales and trigger markets to panic. Then once all the goyim have sold, they buy everything on sale. This goes all the way back to babylon, and it is the reason why many kings and queens expelled the jews and possibly the reason for many pogroms.
Call your nearest jewish organization and demand they learn from history. Shmitah conspiraces have no place in the modern world!
Tell them to get their shmitah hands off our Europe and off my free market!
Please don't make the thread worse by feeding trolls, annoying as they are. Instead, flag the comment by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag'.
There have always been a number of german speaking states with close cultural ties. The german identity goes back to the battle of Varus [1], they say. This is 8-9 centuries before the formation of the holy roman empire (aka "First Reich"). The holy roman empire reached a huge size, but ultimately fell apart after French intervention. The two strongest parties within this empire were Austria in the south and Prussia in the north. There was, at most times, a sense of rivalry.
This empire falling apart did of course not mean that these parts of the world suddenly stopped being inhabited by people who called themselves "Germans". Imagine the US breaking up today. You got lots of them in what is now northern Italy and in Eastern Europe (now Czech Republic, Poland, ..). Notably, after the 'First Reich' falling apart, Austria under the Habsburg monarchy and its complicated alliance with Prussia stayed intact.
Soon, Prussia asserted its dominance over Austria (see the battle of Koniggratz [2]) and the result was an alliance under Prussias benevolent control. This battle is also interesting for how military technology (the Prussians had more modern rifles) can alter world history IMO.
What was next was the 'Second Reich', Imperial Germany -- still in alliance with the austrian monarchy. This ended in WW1. After WW1, the winning nations imposed a set of restrictions on the loosing nations (concerning the armament they are allowed and demanding huge reparation payments) and they also lost further land. The austrian monarchy was no more and Austria entered the period of Austro-Fascism as the tiny nation that it is today.
In this historical context, I believe that it is not at all surprising that Austrians wanted back to former power: Europe has been a war-torn continent in all of recorded history before then. Austria having old enemies (as a former super power does), being set in a geographical location that is in everyone's way must have seemed like a scary prospect - especially given the disadvantage after loosing WW1. The conditions imposed by the winning nations must have been causing a lot of issues and bad spirit. I think it's important to note that (IMO) you wouldn't have needed to be a fascist to want the Anschluss! Putting myself into these peoples shoes, only knowing what I believe they knew -- I could imagine myself being in favour, too!
I would love to see a historian make a documentary out of this with some good voice over commentary. I enjoyed watching some of these clips but couldn't guess as to what was the context in a lot of them.
It would be an extension or cousin of the BBC "World At War" series from the mid 70s, episode 16 which covered life in germany or 18 which covered occupied territory life. I guess better added as an appendix to ep 18.
WaW is a truly excellent documentary, however be prepared that it not a new wave American style documentary ... there will be no historical re-enactments, no computer graphics, no nostalgic soundtrack, no camera panning across photographs ... I wish we had more "real" documentaries like WaW, its almost a completely separate genre from the modern american style.
There are a lot of much better documentaries with proper comments available. Many intellectual Austrians have the DVD set of Hugo Portisch' TV documentaries about Austrians History (Oesterreich I + II), and most have seen it on TV.
I have seen most of the pictures from this Smithsonian collection already. Maybe because the Austrian Film Archive worked with them. Esp. the pictures with the huge Swastica flags all over the streets are very well known.
But I as Austrian I enjoyed their German wartime video and picture archive, which I haven't seen before.
> “It’s pretty controversial. Austrians have for the most part perceived themselves as Hitler’s first victims, and as you can see through a lot of these films it was really not entirely that way. There was a lot of immediate sort of acceptance of the Nazi philosophy,” says Zarwell.
when i learned about WW2 in school in the 90s we weren't really thaught that we were hitlers "first victims". we did learn about the widespread vote manipulation and effective propaganda, but also that there were the pictured parades to welcome the "occupiers" and that big parts of the population openly welcomed him into the country.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadhttp://efilms.ushmm.org/film_player?movieID=33&movieSig=EF-N...
I don't see any excuse for lazy web designers using Flash just for a static image gallery. My browser is perfectly capable of rendering images without a proprietary plugin.
Of course, Adobe could have avoided these issues, had they only chosen to release Flash player under an open source license. At this point it's simply legacy software being phased out in favor of HTML5, and is mostly just a nuisance.
Thankfully, ever since Youtube released their HTML5 player, I can't think of a single time in which I was denied access to critically important content because it was locked inside a SWF.
Still, they should have alternatives by now.
You certainly are correct that alternatives for Flash video exist too. Youtube is a great exemplar of this, but sadly, even their competitors (such as Vimeo or Dailymotion) seem to bother.
I've been reading a history of Central Europe lately, and one of the interesting points that it brings out is that in the 1800s there was a desire on the part of some to unify the different German states within the general German world; this included Austria, and this unification for a greater German state was called Anschluss. Particularly after Austria-Hungary broke up in the WW1 aftermath, this was up for discussion a lot. I was quite surprised to read that; it suggested that the annexation of Austria was not a Nazi invention at all and had much more historic roots.
(I'd love to hear more from someone who knows more; this is just cribbed from history books).
No Austrian wants to admit the long-standing cultural roots of imperialism and fascism that took hold of their country - and still reflect in its darker depths. Authoritarianism is still the mode of the day; group-think and the mob mind very much still grips the Austrian zeitgeist, as it has for centuries.
Boy, that's a hard thing to say about an entire country. You sure you don't want to get some sources for that one?
while 30% of the population vote far right, there is also a strong left tradition in Austria, as exemplified by Red Vienna (Das Rote Wien), with its revolutionary social housing and socialist Mayor (re-elected, again).
Economically they are probably not as much right. They are rather opportunistically interventionist, corrupt, and just plain stupid.
> and having the largest amount of neo-nazis
Most likely, but I doubt we have more neo nazis in general than other countries. But I would love to see statistics on that. We're one of the few countries that have strong punishments on this sort of stuff.
> Most likely, but I doubt we have more neo nazis in general than other countries.
Yes, probably not. I'm just guessing, but it looks like the former DDR has the most issues. Then there's also Greece.
Uh. That has not been the case for many years now. Austria has had this attitude right after the war but things have changed a lot in the last 60 years.
As someone who went through Austrian education I can tell you that Austria's view as it being a victim was controversially discussed throughout our history education and ultimately dismissed.
There are probably still some that think Austria was a victim in this, but I doubt that this would be the majority.
//EDIT: Just to be clear. I'm not saying there are not some people that believe that, but it has been taught differently in schools for a long time, Austria's official position for the last 30 years is that it was not a victim. If you talk to old people, sure, but the last two generations? I doubt it.
"After its convention in early 2011 mid-way between general elections, the FPÖ had a support in opinion polls of around 24-29%—at par with the SPÖ and ÖVP, and above the BZÖ. Among people under 30 years of age, the FPÖ had the support of 42%.[61][62] In June 2015 the main part of the federal party section of Salzburg split of and formed the Free Party Salzburg. [63]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Party_of_Austria
Presumably a fair chunk of those voters would describe the situation as the GP quoted. Not hard to believe at all.
(And 'under 30' is definitely not 'old people')
Painting yourself as the victim is a tried and true strategy of nationalist parties. After all, someone else has to be blamed for whatever is wrong it would not do to seek fault with yourself. I'm sure they were taught different in school but that won't stop people to believe whatever it is that supports their desired outcomes most, even if that goes contrary to their education.
I don't like the generalization to all Austrians, that makes absolutely no sense. But some Austrians, quite probably and with 30% voting for right wing nationalists quite a few of those would be under 30.
We have a similar dumb thing going on here in NL with a guy called Wilders. He's managed to enlist the young people with his brand of scapegoating and populism and most of what those people believe would leave a student of the run-up to WWII horrified. That doesn't mean all Dutch people are Wilders followers or fans but I would not rule out any demographic from being his supporters.
However if you look at present day FPOe they are attracting votes because they are the only party which promises a solution for the refugee crisis and problem that badly managed immigration in Austria causes.
Aside: Nationalist parties are pretty good at finding ways to gain a foothold using single-issue scapegoating games. What you get once they're in power is a totally different kettle of fish.
Sure, but I did not dispute that. There are people with questionable ideologies in all countries. However if you look at the population as a whole the question is how large that percentage is (among people who were not actively involved in the war).
The reason why I object to the concept that Austria is particularly problematic in that regard (which is what international opinion appears to be) is because we can have a direct comparison to Germany. You can basically divide a German statistic by 10 and then compare it to Austria to see how the countries are doing. And with regards to most things with regards to national socialism we are doing significantly better than Germany these days.
No, but the presence or a large right wing means that old ideas are not totally eliminated now from a totally un-nazified enlightened modern populace, including the idea that Austria has been a victim.
Its so striking to hear it as a statement that it has become very much expected whenever I make a new acquaintance and the topic of discussion gets around to Austrian culture. There is so much affinity for the cliché of it, that I think it still persists as a meme. Austrians seem to love their wry, ironic, cliché .. and to excuse the current madness with a brush of "oh, its normal for Austria to have such politics.."
There's also a Wikipedia entry about the Victim theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_theory. As you can read there official Austria confessed the role of Austria during WWII in 1991. That's late, I know. But also, that was nearly 30 years ago. That's what I would call "modern".
Going by your time scale, WWII was still on three days ago. Then again, there are people who might come onto this forum and in all honesty say that 1943 was only yesterday to them, and that you mistakenly said that this morning was yesterday afternoon. Do we revise our comments yet again, in light of this fact?
By many measures, 24 years are scarcely any. Which measure do you want to make use of, and what consequences does it have? You haven't said anything.
I realize that for lots of people on HN the early 1990's seem like forever ago, and probably quite a few of them weren't even born back then but for me personally it's an eyeblink.
Yes, there are some who remember WWII vividly, I'm not one of them because I was born well after that but I can see how what you determine to be a 'long time' very much depends on your own personal time-line and that was the full extent of the meaning of that comment.
To me it means yes, that they have just changed their official position, and they definitely should not be left off just yet, not because it took them that long but mostly because of developments in Austria since then. The legacy of Haider is alive and well.
Just like NL should not be let off the hook either, we have our own version of that problem to contend with. (And, for that matter, our own version of the Anschluss even though you'll never hear about it outside of NL, we had a very large chunk of the Dutch openly collaborating with the invaders and a political party (NSB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Movement_in...) with substantial following.)
But then you have the rise of Adolf Hitler - an Austrian from Upper Austria - in Germany, focusing on race and heritage.
Add civil war in 1934, austro-fascism under Dollfuss (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Dollfuss) - quite a time. Dollfuss tried to ban the Nazis, got murdered, fini.
Keep also in mind that even the German nation state was net new, before that it was Prussia plus a lot of smaller "states". Austria had less business of being a nation than Bavaria.
1945 saw Austria being separated out again, 1955 forced movement into a neutral statehood. At all times it was closely coupled to Western-Germany, as exemplified by tieing the national currency (Schilling) to the German D-Mark.
To this day you have a strong element of German-Nationalism within the far-right movement in Austria. Late populist Jörg Haider of the Freedom Party went on record calling Austria a ideological miscarriage in 1988.
"Hitler will create an army, Hitler will arm the Germans and make war- possibly even in two or three years. I cannot stand up to him alone. We must do something and we must do something quickly." - Mussolini, 1934
The vote was manipulated but it would not have mattered. I can tell you from stories of my grandfather of how dire his childhood and the one of everybody in the area was. They were ready to rally behind anyone who would take them out of starvation and suffering. Hitler came with popular support because he found an enemy who is to blame and he managed to unite people to be motivated to move themselves out of misery.
There is a fine line behind a populist approach that motivates people to do something and overstepping the line and doing a lot of damage in the process.
Not sure how much this holds as a reason compared to "cultural affiliation" etc. As far as European countries go, Austria was one of the most affluent at the time -- and afterwards too. Vienna in particular was legendary. What to say about people in places such as Southern Spain and Italy, Greece, Eastern Europe, etc, that were several times as dire?
like many things attributed to Nazi. Even fascism itself wasn't a Nazi invention. Or "Drang nach Osten" - since and even before Teutonic Knights ...
Following the napoleonic wars, nationalistic movements started to emerge in Europe, which, naturally, were opposed by the individual rulers of all the small states within the cultural area of Germany. Two separate ideas were discussed: the "kleindeutsche" or small solution and the "großdeutsche" or large solution, the latter including also the Austrian empire. There were two issues with the latter. Prussia and Austria were the two dominant states within the German cultural area. Austria, however, was a giant multicultural and multiethnic state with its own separatist movements. So when Bismarck pushed for unification, his aim was mostly to have Prussia gain power, not to cater to romantic ideas of pan-germanism. To achieve this, he had to keep his main potential rivals, the Austrians, at bay, and actually even fought the Austrians in the second of three unification wars (in 1866). So in a sense, the Anschluss was a step back to the "großdeutsche" solution, not some inconceivable invasion of a militarily inferior power.
In the 140 years since the first German unification, Austrians and contemporary Germany have separated culturally quite a lot; but still, at least in the sphere of culture such as literature, music and the arts, Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland are treated similarly.
Disclaimer: IANAH and wrote it up in less than ten mminutes
It was a central question to the politics of the age, for the simple reason that it was always obvious that by gathering so much of the continent's population under a single flag a unified German state would immediately become one of Europe's most powerful. Until the rise of German nationalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationalism), the largest and most powerful state in Europe had been France, and Napoleon had tapped that power to make the French the masters of the continent. A unified German state would be large enough to be a counterweight to French power, or even eclipse it altogether. So the German question became the fulcrum on which power politics in Europe balanced.
Obviously the French, along with the rest of Germany's neighbors, had an interest in keeping the boundaries of a German state as limited as it could be. But there were divisions of opinion within the Germanic world about how big a German state should be as well. The maximalist position was the "big German solution" (Großdeutsche Lösung), which advocated pulling all German-speaking people, including those in Austria, into the new state. Advocates of the competing "little German solution" (Kleindeutsche Lösung) were more modest; they simply proposed unifying the northern German states.
This argument reflected the division of power in the Germanic world itself, which was split between Prussia in the north and Austria in the south. Austria then was much larger than it is today, part of the enormous kingdom of the House of Hapsburg (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Monarchy), so the Austrians tended to support the "big solution", since it was assumed that if Austria was part of the German coalition it would dominate its smaller partners. For the same reason, the Prussians favored the "little solution"; they wanted to dominate the united Germany, and the only way they could do so was by keeping the Austrians out.
All of this got worked out in a series of wars and revolutions between 1848 and 1871, during which Prussia beat first Austria and then France soundly on the battlefield. These victories put the Prussians in the driver's seat in terms of determining what a unified Germany would look like, and since the Prussians supported the "little solution," that was the shape the new German Empire took.
As they had hoped, once Germany took the form they wanted, the Prussians more or less ran the Empire. But then came World War I, and Germany's bloodletting and defeat in that war knocked the Prussians off their pedestal. That created a power vacuum, which was eventually filled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state. And unlike the Prussians, Hitler was very much a believer in the "big German solution" -- so much so that his "Greater Germany" encompassed more people than even the most strident 19th century German nationalists imagined.
One of the arguments for the "little solution" had always been that making Germany too big would unite the rest of Europe in an effort to cut it down to size, as had happened to the French during the Napoleonic era; and Hitler's wild expansion proved that was the case. And once the war was over and "Gre...
The French Revolution [2] and the coming of the Spring of Nations [3] brought the question back on the table. Throughout this period, but especially around 1848, it was heavily debated among Germans.
Europe, dispite its small size, has a very exiting and thrilling history. A pity what happened to it in the last century. Mais c'est la vie, so to say.
But back to Austria - of course many an Austrian loved to be unified into the new German Empire, a technologically moderns society, the Third Reich, that was prophesized to last for a thousand years. After the scars of defeat of WWI, and Entente dictation, people looked for a savior.
He came in the form of a failed Austrian artist. History has its ironies..
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Question [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848
Though half her family were wiped out in the Holocaust, she still casually said to me in her old age that 'the Jews must have done something' to provoke such a response.
I don't hold with that, but it does give some indication of how brutal the world view was, and how everyone bought into the anti-semitism - even Semites. If you think she was a one-off, then read up on Wittgenstein, who wrote about the 'dirty Jew' inside him.
They also had a network of street gangs through Europe, they could steal and the threat of violence was enough for people to let them get away with it.
The jews had a lot of connections but as a normal citizen of Austria or another country you couldn't really join them.
There's some other cronyism and random bad behavior they don't so as much any more.
Until the end of the year, sideways is up in all markets.
This isn't a coincidence. It's because of the Shemitah. Call the jews and tell them to learn from history.
Call your nearest jewish organization and demand they learn from history. Shmitah conspiraces have no place in the modern world!
Tell them to get their shmitah hands off our Europe and off my free market!
Soon, Prussia asserted its dominance over Austria (see the battle of Koniggratz [2]) and the result was an alliance under Prussias benevolent control. This battle is also interesting for how military technology (the Prussians had more modern rifles) can alter world history IMO.
What was next was the 'Second Reich', Imperial Germany -- still in alliance with the austrian monarchy. This ended in WW1. After WW1, the winning nations imposed a set of restrictions on the loosing nations (concerning the armament they are allowed and demanding huge reparation payments) and they also lost further land. The austrian monarchy was no more and Austria entered the period of Austro-Fascism as the tiny nation that it is today.
In this historical context, I believe that it is not at all surprising that Austrians wanted back to former power: Europe has been a war-torn continent in all of recorded history before then. Austria having old enemies (as a former super power does), being set in a geographical location that is in everyone's way must have seemed like a scary prospect - especially given the disadvantage after loosing WW1. The conditions imposed by the winning nations must have been causing a lot of issues and bad spirit. I think it's important to note that (IMO) you wouldn't have needed to be a fascist to want the Anschluss! Putting myself into these peoples shoes, only knowing what I believe they knew -- I could imagine myself being in favour, too!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_K%C3%B6niggr%C3%A4tz
WaW is a truly excellent documentary, however be prepared that it not a new wave American style documentary ... there will be no historical re-enactments, no computer graphics, no nostalgic soundtrack, no camera panning across photographs ... I wish we had more "real" documentaries like WaW, its almost a completely separate genre from the modern american style.
I have seen most of the pictures from this Smithsonian collection already. Maybe because the Austrian Film Archive worked with them. Esp. the pictures with the huge Swastica flags all over the streets are very well known. But I as Austrian I enjoyed their German wartime video and picture archive, which I haven't seen before.
Seems to skip the bloody advertisement.
when i learned about WW2 in school in the 90s we weren't really thaught that we were hitlers "first victims". we did learn about the widespread vote manipulation and effective propaganda, but also that there were the pictured parades to welcome the "occupiers" and that big parts of the population openly welcomed him into the country.