The degree of Austria's collaboration with the Nazis before and after the country's annexation by the Germans in 1938 is one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the European continent.
by Ricardo Angoso
Long before Austria was annexed by the Germans in 1938, the Nazis had already organised themselves in this country and openly conspired against the Austrian state and its democratic institutions, not disdaining political violence against their opponents. While Hitler openly threatened to occupy Austria, since for the Nazis it was part of the “living space” of Germany and was not considered a nation with its own cultural identity, the Austrian fascists mercilessly and with impunity murdered their opponents – for example, the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was murdered by the Nazis after a failed coup d’état. Austria, in the nauseating thinking of the Nazis, was an indispensable part of the Third Reich that would be built by Hitler in blood and fire and destined to last more than “a thousand years”. But, fortunately for the world, it was not to be.
The annexation of Austria by Vienna, seen as a tragedy by some and as a great celebration of reunification by the vast majority of Austrians, was the beginning of the Nazi expansionist project, the turning point that gave way from rhetoric to brutal action. On March 12, 1938, German troops, after a series of threats to the abandoned and defeated Austrian authorities, crossed the Austrian border and completed the Connection (annexation in German). Nobody lifted a finger for Austria and an atrocious act was consummated.
Madness gripped the country and the excitement of seeing the new masters of Austria triumphantly enter the country seized almost all Austrians. “Overnight! It all happened overnight,” was how one exceptional witness, Erika, a 15% Viennese Jew, described the entry of the Nazis into Vienna. A few days after the entry of the German troops and with the entire country already subdued, on March 1938, XNUMX, a triumphant Adolf Hitler entered the Austrian capital, Vienna, at the head of his troops and hordes, being received, in a euphoric atmosphere filled with patriotism, by the Viennese populace and acclaimed everywhere he went with euphoria, emotion and joy. The Cardinal of Vienna, Theodor Innitzer, carried away by the ecstasy produced by the triumphant entry of the SS, with their black uniforms and their shields with the skull, rang the bells of all the churches in the city as a greeting to the new order in which there was no longer room for Jews or other "subhumans", presumably "thanks to God."
In those days of March 1938, marked by the overwhelming emotion of the Nazi youth in the streets, the Jews would experience first-hand the ridicule, persecution and public humiliation of those who were, ultimately, their captors. Continuing with its anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi tradition, the Austrian Catholic Church threw itself at the feet of the new Hitlerite regime, just as it had done in Germany and to some extent in fascist Italy, accepting the chalice of opprobrium and losing its human dignity.
NATIONALIST HYSTERIA
The climate at that crucial moment was one of unprecedented nationalist hysteria. “The deafening strains of a national prayer” was what Joseph Goebbels heard when he commented live on German radio on the triumphal entry of the Austrian Adolf Hitler into the Austrian capital: “In this way, redemption has come from the endless torments of the German people in Austria,” the top Nazi propagandist assured. Later, after that romantic description laden with false victimhood, the Führer and Chancellor of the German Reich ascended like a demigod to the columned balcony of the Neue Hofburg palace. And on the gigantic Heroes' Square, in a moment of great emotion and nationalist candour, 300.000 Viennese gathered together to shout the frenzied howl of “Sieg Heil!” A new era had begun and Hitler had fulfilled his secret mission of involving Austria in his delirious project of blood, death and shared pain from that moment on. Everything had an air of Greek tragedy, like those that inspired his beloved Richard Wagner in his delirious works.
Very soon, as would later happen in other territories occupied by the Nazis, the collaborators, the felons and the opportunists would rub shoulders with the high Nazi leaders and the former criminals who had contributed to blowing up Austrian democracy and putting the country under the Nazi boot. The climax, at those crucial moments, was one of macabre, almost funereal enthusiasm, like the prelude to a cataclysm that is sensed to be near but has not yet been consummated.
This sordid atmosphere, a prelude to what was to come, took hold of all of Austria, and in Vienna, carried away by the emotion of the triumphant entry of their Führer, thousands of Viennese, with clubs and sticks, forced the Jews to clean up the streets of the city in images that still insult humanity and the Austrian soul. “We thank the Führer for finally giving the Jews work,” shouted the emboldened mob, aided by the Gestapo and the brownshirts. On March 23, 1938, the New York Times correspondent in Vienna wrote: “In the first two weeks, the National Socialists have succeeded in subjecting the Jews here to harsher treatment than would have been possible in Germany over the course of several years.”
“Popular euphoria over Hitler, National Socialism and unification with Germany was matched by hatred and violence against Jews, which surpassed any public demonstrations in Germany up to that time. The majority of the 191.000 Austrian Jews lived in Vienna, accounting for 10% of the city. After Warsaw and Budapest, Viennese Jews were the third largest community in Europe. But numbers mattered little. The SA and other Nazis threw them out onto the streets to clean barracks latrines and scrub sidewalks with their bare hands, and sometimes just for ‘fun’ with their own toothbrushes and underwear,” wrote authors Deborah Dwork and Jan van Pelt in their monumental work The Holocaust: A History.
BETWEEN NAZIS, BISHOPS, GENOCIDES AND COLLABORATORS
Austria was, without a doubt, one of the countries that contributed the most sinister characters to the history of Nazism. The list of these would go beyond the scope of this work, and therefore we will focus only on some of the most outstanding “butchers”. One of them is, without a doubt, the aristocratic General Otto Gustav von Wächter, from the rancid Viennese nobility, who was in charge of the governorships of Krakow and Galicia between 1939 and 1944. Closely linked to Heinrich Himmler, boasting of his friendship in his closest circles, he was a cold, ruthless, inhuman and emotionless person. It is estimated that he ordered the elimination of more than half a million Jews. He died of jaundice under the protection of the Vatican in a hospital in the Italian capital, Rome, and never repented of his crimes.
The story of this criminal is closely linked to one of the most despicable characters of World War II, the Austrian bishop Alois Hudal, author of a book entitled The foundations of national socialism, in which he tries to find a compromise between Catholicism and the “Christian” and “conservative” vision of Nazism. A furious anti-Semite and admirer of Hitler, he was, along with a good part of the Austrian bishops, one of those who welcomed the arrival and occupation of his country by the Nazis with open arms. A trusted man of Pius XII throughout the war and a friend of several Nazi leaders and genocidaires, Bishop Hudal is also known because after the war he helped, from his position as rector of the Santa Maria dell'Anima College in Rome, to escape dozens of Nazis, even falsifying documents, passports and official credentials. Among his protégés we highlight ADolf Eichmann, Gustav Wagner, Alois Brunner, Erich Priebke, Eduard Roschmann, Franz Stangl, Walter Rauff, Aribert Heim, Josef Schwammberger, Herbert Cukurs and Josef Mengele. Between 1946 and 1949, he gave refuge to the aforementioned General Wachter in the educational institution that he directed with the approval of the Vatican authorities, including the Holy Father. What a bunch of people!
Another genocidal maniac in these Austrian circles was the army officer Kurt Walheim, whose story is truly unique and, I dare say, incredible. This German army officer of Austrian origin once had his office very close to the Jasenovac concentration camp in 1942, and, as a good National Socialist, he knew nothing and heard no one speak of such a sinister place. Like everyone else, he knew nothing and was only following orders; but in that camp, by chance, some 800.000 Jews, Serbs, Bosnian Gypsies and partisans, among other groups, were murdered. Walheim was a well-off boy from Vienna, born in 1918 in the Austrian capital to a well-off family who preferred to adapt to the new times after Hitler's annexation of Austria and to accept, without hesitation, the new Nazi order. Walheim would conceal these facts throughout his life, in a sort of collective amnesia that affected all of Austria, and the matter was only a brief stain on his resume that would not harm his political career, first as Secretary General of the United Nations (1972-1981) and then, these facts already known, as President of Austria, between 1986 and 1992. The Austrians had no qualms about electing someone who had held relevant positions in the Nazi genocidal machinery, a trivial matter, of course, for most Austrians.
Austrians were very likely to collaborate with the Nazis, even more so than other occupied peoples, and enlisted in their thousands in the ranks of the German army, but also in other organisations. For example, of the approximately 7.000.000 inhabitants of Austria during World War II, some 700.000 belonged to the Nazi party, the NSDAP, before the annexation. In total, 10% of the population, an astonishingly high figure, unparalleled not only in any democratic society but in Germany itself, where fewer people were affiliated with Hitler's party. The degree of collaboration with Nazism was extremely high, although after the war, in an exercise of shameless historical revisionism, Austrians wanted to present themselves as "victims" of the Nazi regime. What a different reality; it is clear that cynicism is the refuge of all scoundrels.
Photos by the author of the article. Jewish Museum in Vienna
Next article. “This is how Europe is selling its soul to the devil today”…The fascists of yesterday are back in the European parliaments today. In different clothes with the same purposes.
Austria, like Germany, never stopped being Nazis and anti-Semites, they just waited for the opportunity to re-emerge. The result of the elections in both Austria and Germany, where 20% of the population votes for the far right, should not surprise us. They did it and will do it again whenever they can.
It is not AUSTRIA, it is not GERMANY…it is the fascists who are back…AUSTRIA already has a fascist government that won the elections…now it remains to be seen how it will move forward…