Vienna’s a lovely city, a lot of Austrians are great people, yadayada.
I get the impression that, unlike Germany, it’s a country that hasn’t fully come to terms with its Nazi past. A lot of Austrians seem to be in denial about the Anschluss or how popular it was. Many will even argue that Austrians were victims, while ignoring that there was overwhelming popular support for the Anschluss at the time.
For example, my grandfather would often sarcastically remark that the Dutch resistance gained most of its members after 1944. To quote Adolf Eichmann on Dutch collaboration: “The transports run so smoothly that it is a pleasure to see.”
In Belgium, you have a similar issue where some Flemish nationalists (sometimes disingeniously) minimize the extent of their relatives collaboration during the war, as it’s politically incovenient and embarassing. Same thing in France with Vichy. Same thing in much of Europe, tbh.
That is unfortunately pretty true. The So-called Austria victim theory, which is basically “oh, we poor Austrians were Nazi Germanys first victim!”, is obvious bullshit.
This was only really officially stated to be definitely false in the late 1980s … and there’s still plenty of people who probably would believe it or at least like to pretend that that was the case.
But as I said: at the very least we got to the place where pretty much any official/political actor has to acknowledge that it’s wrong.
I was literally taught this in schools, " the first victim of Nazi Germany was Austria who was annexed against their will."
It wasn’t until after highschool with me getting more into ww1/2 history that I found out that was total bullshit.
“anschluss” was just a word nobody would explain to me from the Sound of Music. Watching that movie was somewhat different afterward too, since a lot of references went over my head as a kid.
Austrians haven’t still come to terms with the fact that the main Nazi was an Austrian, I don’t really expect them to come to terms to Nazism in Austria as a whole
What? France is more than open about Vichy’s collaboration. I don’t know about Belgium and the Netherlands, but it seems you’re trying to dilute the responsability and lack of accountability of the Austrians
What scares me more is that researchers found many more units and branches in that network. Yes, it wasn’t just one institution in Harbin that most talk about for it was discovered first. They were all over occupied China torturing whoever they can get a hold of.
They were pretty clever about hiding it, moreso than germans who were running when the first camps got seen by the armies. I’m pretty depressed at a thought that monsters like that could’ve succeed in it, or that many attrocities are still unknown to us.
Fun fact: that movie is in fact way less known in Austria than elsewhere. Fun fact: I once saw Michael Moore talk in Vienna and he made some “Sound of Music” joke/reference and the reaction by the audience was … crickets. No one knew what he talked about.
Austria is low key awful country that skates by on old reputation and sheltering world’s oligarchs.
Vienna’s a lovely city, a lot of Austrians are great people, yadayada.
I get the impression that, unlike Germany, it’s a country that hasn’t fully come to terms with its Nazi past. A lot of Austrians seem to be in denial about the Anschluss or how popular it was. Many will even argue that Austrians were victims, while ignoring that there was overwhelming popular support for the Anschluss at the time.
Here’s a relevant article:
This isn’t just Austria, obviously.
For example, my grandfather would often sarcastically remark that the Dutch resistance gained most of its members after 1944. To quote Adolf Eichmann on Dutch collaboration: “The transports run so smoothly that it is a pleasure to see.”
In Belgium, you have a similar issue where some Flemish nationalists (sometimes disingeniously) minimize the extent of their relatives collaboration during the war, as it’s politically incovenient and embarassing. Same thing in France with Vichy. Same thing in much of Europe, tbh.
That is unfortunately pretty true. The So-called Austria victim theory, which is basically “oh, we poor Austrians were Nazi Germanys first victim!”, is obvious bullshit.
This was only really officially stated to be definitely false in the late 1980s … and there’s still plenty of people who probably would believe it or at least like to pretend that that was the case.
But as I said: at the very least we got to the place where pretty much any official/political actor has to acknowledge that it’s wrong.
I was literally taught this in schools, " the first victim of Nazi Germany was Austria who was annexed against their will."
It wasn’t until after highschool with me getting more into ww1/2 history that I found out that was total bullshit.
“anschluss” was just a word nobody would explain to me from the Sound of Music. Watching that movie was somewhat different afterward too, since a lot of references went over my head as a kid.
Austrians haven’t still come to terms with the fact that the main Nazi was an Austrian, I don’t really expect them to come to terms to Nazism in Austria as a whole
What? France is more than open about Vichy’s collaboration. I don’t know about Belgium and the Netherlands, but it seems you’re trying to dilute the responsability and lack of accountability of the Austrians
Same in Japan too. Search for ‘unit 713’ if you hate your mental peace.
*731 but yeah, that’s some heinous shit to say the least! 😬
What scares me more is that researchers found many more units and branches in that network. Yes, it wasn’t just one institution in Harbin that most talk about for it was discovered first. They were all over occupied China torturing whoever they can get a hold of.
They were pretty clever about hiding it, moreso than germans who were running when the first camps got seen by the armies. I’m pretty depressed at a thought that monsters like that could’ve succeed in it, or that many attrocities are still unknown to us.
WW2 was very, very toned down in every aspect of my formal education.
Basically the only war crimes we learned about was “Germany starved Jewish people and worked them to death”
But holy shit that’s just the surface level.
It wasn’t just jews, it wasn’t just death camps, it wasn’t just Germany and it wasn’t just starvation.
If I had learned everything, I’d have had nightmares about humanity.
It’s like they’ve never seen the sound of music
Fun fact: that movie is in fact way less known in Austria than elsewhere. Fun fact: I once saw Michael Moore talk in Vienna and he made some “Sound of Music” joke/reference and the reaction by the audience was … crickets. No one knew what he talked about.