There is a rather disturbing poll out this week where 54% of Austrians think neo-Nazi groups could be successful in Austrian elections if a ban is lifted and 42 percent of Austrians think “not everything was bad under Hitler.” Of course, one has to focus on trains arriving on time and traffic control while forgetting about the genocide and war that left Austria and Germany in utter ruins.
Fortunately 57% seen “nothing positive about the Hitler era.” Yet, the poll shows a surprising number of Austrians seeing a positive side to one of the greatest mass murderers and tyrants in history.
Jewish leaders have complained of rising anti-semitism in the country.
Source: JPost
The Austrians are too nostalgic.
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The Austrians are the same as the Germans.
Yes, technically the economy got better under Hitler but that was overriden by the whole genocide and war thing.
When I read it, I was thinking more of Sandy Hook, the 2nd amendment, and the guns being blamed for everything just as the communists were. It’s almost like a guidebook!
Here are the contents of wikipedia’s version of the Reichstag Fire and Reichstag Fire Decree in 1933:
On February 27, 1933, the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down due to arson. The government falsely portrayed the fire as part of a Communist effort to overthrow the state.
Using emergency constitutional powers, Adolf Hitler’s cabinet had issued a Decree for the Protection of the German People on February 4, 1933. This decree placed constraints on the press and authorized the police to ban political meetings and marches, effectively hindering electoral campaigning. A temporary measure, it was followed by a more dramatic and permanent suspension of civil rights following the February 27 burning of the parliament building.
Though the origins of the fire are still unclear, in a propaganda maneuver, the coalition government (Nazis and the German Nationalist People’s Party) blamed the Communists. They exploited the Reichstag fire to secure President von Hindenburg’s approval for an emergency decree, the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State of February 28. Popularly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, the regulations suspended the right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other constitutional protections, including all restraints on police investigations.
Justified on the false premise that the Communists were planning an uprising to overthrow the state, the Reichstag Fire Decree permitted the regime to arrest and incarcerate political opponents without specific charge, dissolve political organizations, and to suppress publications. It also gave the central government the authority to overrule state and local laws and overthrow state and local governments.
The Nazi press described the Reichstag fire as the work of the Communists and a signal for their planned uprising. Even the U.S. independent Fox Movie Tones newsreel reflected the German government version. Although the Communists had not, in fact, developed any plans for an uprising, the impact of propaganda and terror on existing fears of a Communist takeover convinced many Germans that Hitler’s decisive action had saved the nation from “Bolshevism.”
Within months, for example, the Nazi regime destroyed Germany’s previously vigorous free press. By 1941, the Nazi Party’s Eher publishing house had become the largest ever in German history, and its main daily newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter (The National Observer) had reached a circulation of over 1,000,000.”
-end
von Hindenburg was President. He signed the Decree. The rest is history. The parallels with September 11 are uncanny. Terrorists bring down the Twin Towers, hit the Pentagon and try for the White House. Congress passes The Patriot Act. Liberties go away. For the Germans it was the Commies for us it is Muslims with boxcutters. And now the TSA is letting them bring them back on board. “Its just a small knife!”
One thing I had never learned about in school, which shocked me when I studied the war, was the regard Hitler had for his troops and his people. For some odd reason, I had not thought that he held all of them in such disregard.
I love the comment I saw on Find a Grave once on the July 20th anniversary, under von Stauffenberg. It said ” D A _ _ oak table!”
Thanks for the info!
Arthur, my understanding from my readings is that that is what put so many of the people behind Hitler so solidly. Was how he took them from starving to comfort, with what he did for the economy. At that time, there was not slavery at work was there? Didn’t that come later?
The Germans never voted in a majority for Hitler. That is a fact. After he was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg, he of course, started the Reichstag fire to use as an excuse to ban his opposition, and then imprisoned enough members of the Reichstag to pass the emergency decree which gave him sole executive and legislative powers. He used that to impose the Nazi dictatorship. Germany was hit with the Great Depression as were all the countries of the capitalist world, and Dr Schacht was retained as Economics minister and he was the force behind the massive deficit financing that pulled Germany out of the depression. He broke with the Nazis later because he opposed the massive arms budget and feared the inflationary effect of it. It was not Hitler who brought economic progress to Germany, but Schacht and his embrace of the economic theory of Keynes.
Most Germans were quite happy that they had jobs under Hitler, and that dampened overt opposition as much as the police state. The persecution of Jews and confiscation of their property had little to do with the economic recovery, thus Nazism cannot legitimately claim to have done much of anything other than appointing a competent economist to run things. Hitler of course screwed everything up with his policies and started a war. The results of that are known to all.
“efficient techniques to improve economy, what’s wrong with that?”
Those techniques included the persecution, which included the denial of access to many groups from social, political and professional institutions. When you deny citizens the ability to earn a wage and also deny them social services it should come as no surprise that the economy got better. Add to that the amount of slave labor that the German economy benefited from and it hard to not see what is wrong with that. The bettering of the economy and persecution of the Jews and other groups are not mutually exclusive events.
The German economy recovered fron the Depression because of his Economics and Finance minister Dr. Horace Greely Hjalmar Schacht. it had little to do with Nazi ideology, but was instead a massive application of Keynes economic theory to use deficit spending to get the economy going.
Sorry for not editing this. The trench war was in WWONE and German humiiliatios came after that.
Saw an interesting BBC documentary last night on the Blitzkrieg. No waving of British. Based in its entirety on German films. It claimed to show the course of their 12 day march to the sea, forcing the retreat of the Englishmen from Dunkirk. Many films of the Fuhrer, his face, his body language at times. Was he demonized? No, only his strengths and character weaknesses are shown, when having achieved the goal of humiliating those who had humiliated his nation after WW2 in the trenches, he dis not stop.
What possessed him to go on?
But 99% were views along the route of advance, the peoples who with no warning became refugees, the elation that struck all segments of the German pop, as well as the glee of soldiers, and the segments of the Paisian pop who needing lifes’s necessities became coopeative in the days following the Blitzkrieg, and the German parades in Paris on arrival.
It’s easy to call devil and sentence everything about a person because there are some things we don’t like. If one wanted to focus on the good sides, there are quite a few things to say about Hitler. His paintings are not bad, his talents as an orator are legendary.
The problem outlined by the article is, of course, not about the person. If the 42% mentioning positive aspects were thinking of efficient techniques to improve economy, what’s wrong with that? If they were thinking of discrimination and exterminations, then the problem is with the current trend of thought rather than past governments.
I hope I’m making sense. It is a touchy subject that tends to raise emotions in people, but that shouldn’t let us forsake logic for denial.
Barkin Dog you are a riot! That was too funny!
There also could have been a fair amount of history rewritten there. Just as here, many people do not believe the Holocaust took place. The Communists generally rewrite history when they take over a country. It’s quite the thing anymore and is being done all over the place.
If history had not basically been rewritten, the things happening today in this country would not have been allowed to happen. Many of us know what happened in the war to people, and know it can happen again. Actually, we see things happening right in front of us. And other people are believing the history rewrites, and do not realize what is going on in front of them.
But there ARE those of us who know real history and hear the march of the jackboots thudding down the streets of our once great country. God help us!
Die Österreicher sind zu nostalgisch.