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
IJ: “State Capitalism” is essentially the system the USA has today, but some call it Crony Capitalism. The govt. and Big Biz are inextricably linked in a circular promotion so deep and dark, and each to the further enrichment and empowerment of themselves, to the exclusion of the representation of taxpayers. Except, of course, to shear them of what little they have left after the crash. The State is a primary consumer of all things military, which use is also seeping into the culture through the huge array of policing agencies in the US. We are the new Naziland. War is good for a spendthrift govt. and their buddies, but bad for the taxpayers and the peoples targeted by militia.
One does not have to have been in a war as a soldier to be a Kraut. In England, many people who do not take to the notion of Royalty, lord and lassie and all that, make fun of the Royal Family by referring to them as The Krauts. BarkinDog’s great grandfather on the human side was a Kraut from Alsace which is now in France and another great grand father on the human side was a Jewish violinist from Vienna, Austria. He ate kraut but would not think of himself as a Kraut since he never played the violin in Germany and high tailed it over to New Orleans in 1853 before the Vienna Orchestra decided on A Minor. So, BarkinDog is part Kraut, part Frog, part violinist and can not sprech deutsch or francais. A paw works on a violin. Gotta keep the tail down.
BarkinDog 1, March 12, 2013 at 1:02 pm
Use of the first name only might draw less criticizm since most people would not make the connection. Not many Americans today know that Hitler was an Austrian. Or that Ike was German-American. Or that the present day royal family of England are Krauts. Queeny looks Kraut but the offspring look weenie English. Maybe an AdophBahn from Vienna to Salzburg would not be too offensive.
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Sorry. Third generation American. Half Kraut. So I’m told. One great uncle, an army ground pounder in WWII who was French said he had two rifles. One was an automatic. The other was a bolt action in case the automatic jammed. He said he didn’t have any problems killing the krauts.
I asked my paternal grandfather, who was a kraut, if he threw grenades. He said yes. I didn’t ask any more questions.
ID, Welcome back, paisan. And pretty nurses give you a sponge bath?
I have to take issue with MS that most of the Austrians were overjoyed at Hitlers takeover. In fact, in the working class parts of Vienna there was armed opposition to the Nazis. I knew one person who as a child was a runner for the anti-Nazis during the fighting.. He and his family had to flee when they lost, and slipped over the border to italy and then the US.He grew up and graduated from high school, and then joined the US Army in the 10 Mountain Div. and fought in italy against some of his own family who had stayed.
A humerous instance he told was that he was in the Alps fighting against the Nazis. He saw a hut that he knew was probably occupied by Nazis, and he saw some smoke coming out the chimney. So he got a mortar, and fired a round, and as luck would have it, it went down the chimney and blew up the hut. At the end of the war, when he was on occupation duty in Austria, he was visiting family, and one of his cousins, came limping in. He asked what had happened, and he said that he was in the lines in the Alps, and some American soldier had put a mortar round down the chimney of a hut he and some of his fellow troops had been using. So while it is true, many Nazis were Austrian, many were also fighting against them. I doubt that most Austrians are in favor of Hitler or his type of politics. I have been to Austria many times and I love the folks there. Indeed Leonard Bernstein loved the place as well, and was in turn loved by them.
Maybe if the Austrians would take credit for Hitler the Germans would take credit for the English Royal Family and all their little cutsie ways. Let the Germans take credit for Ike too.
Hitler promoted the autobahn which of course got good traction here in the U.S. after Ike Man took over the Presidency. In fact, Ikeman had a lot of things he did as President that he learned in Europe. I liked Ike. In fact when we ere kids we had buttons that said: I Like Ike. There is an Eisenhower Expressway. Perhaps the Austrians could throw one small bone to their countryman and name an autobahn after Adolph. Use of the first name only might draw less criticizm since most people would not make the connection. Not many Americans today know that Hitler was an Austrian. Or that Ike was German-American. Or that the present day royal family of England are Krauts. Queeny looks Kraut but the offspring look weenie English. Maybe an AdophBahn from Vienna to Salzburg would not be too offensive.
Mike S.,
You think….
Question… Because we have appointed ourselves… The world (earth) overlord…. Are we really the victims….. It plays out in many nefarious ways…. Victim aggressor….aggressor victim…. Right here…
Indigo Jones 1, March 12, 2013 at 9:59 am
China is big on business, and even wants a laissez-faire trading environment: they don’t want to clean up pollution, they want to be able to do whatever they want with their currency, they don’t want accountability for the quality of their products. They don’t want regulation, they just want to sell.
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What does the United States want? The want to continue issuing massive amounts of debt until the collapse occurs. There is a currency war going right now. Some people think that will eventually lead to WWIII.
Why is there a massive bunker underneath the Denver airport? Why is there so much strife in the Middle East? What happens when the chickens come home to roost?
Here in the U.S. I don’t think we need look so far as Europe for this. Didn’t a basketball player (whom I’ll leave unnamed) recently visit North Korea? Didn’t he come back all glowing about how great this wonderful leader is? Oh sure there a few bad things like prisons but hey, we have prisons here to. But by golly, he likes basketball.
Hitler was an Austrian. Ask an Austrian to say something positive about anything and you will get something positive. If you are in Vienna drinking skunk wine with an Austrian and ask him something positive to say about the wine, he will think of something– maybe about skunks. He will also inform you that it is German wine, not Austrian. So, they had a skunk. They sent him over the border to Germany. The Germans adopted him as the next best thing to Hindenburg and the rest is history. Austria sent most of the skunk wine to Germany about the same time- grapes and all. Smart people. Hitler did not have any offspring.
I guess these things are relative.
Hitler killed 6 million Jews. Bush turned 5 million Iraqi citizens into refugees. The way I see it, a life destroyed is a life destroyed.
Some Russians these days get wistful about Stalin. Stalin killed 50 million.
Compared to what we have today… well, I think a lot of people would rather not think about that.
Hitler called his movement “National Socialism” but it wasn’t really socialism. The only wealth that was re-appropriated was that of the Jews. In fact, it was industrialists and bankers who pushed for the German re-armament, and the Nazi regime was what the anarchist critics of Marx called “state capitalism.”
http://www.wbenjamin.org/Behemoth.html
Essentially, Germany was a capitalist economy where the state was the primary consumer of manufacturing output, that used an imperial war of expansion to organize production. Remember that Zykon-B was a commercial product.
“State capitalism” is essentially the situation in China today. The only reason “Communist China” doesn’t sound like an oxymoron is because the American ear has been trained to associate “communism” with “authoritarianism.” China is big on business, and even wants a laissez-faire trading environment: they don’t want to clean up pollution, they want to be able to do whatever they want with their currency, they don’t want accountability for the quality of their products. They don’t want regulation, they just want to sell.
There very few conversations involving both Hitler and anything positive that can ever end well. Maybe none at all.
When the German’s took over Austria the majority of the people welcomed them with joy. After Germany’s defeat in WWII the Austrians claimed they were victims and that was how they portrayed their history. Having kept an eye on Austria for years this does not surprise me.
HEY! He made the trains run on time! Forget that many of them were full of humans & headed for a death camp they arrives on schedule.
“Now, its true what they say about Boss Grissum, he was a murderer and a fiend but, on the other hand, he had a lovely singing voice.” – The Joker
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html?pagewanted=all
THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.
What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.
The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.
The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.
“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.
“We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”
The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel. “http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Legends live on. Facts die quickly. Besides that, Hitler was an Austrian.
With the net today, it is easier and cheaper to legendize someone.
Not just historical figures.
Enough scapegoating and dualism. Until we see that nature and reality has been excluded by the system and replaced with ideas we will continue this social Darwinism. We need to eliminate the underlying causes that are leading to perpetual Hitlers.For a start we need a Capital (Pyramid) system with an inverted pyramid along with it. No more Trillion airs- no more homeless, food less, water less, prisoners full warriors full. We all end up near the middle and work six hours a day for a middle class existence as described by Buckminster Fuller. We can only kill ourselves and the planet. Until we see ourselves as part of nature we will fight nature and produce many more Hitlers and continue Plato’s racist/sexist ideas which led to Hitler and us being part of it like it or not. Leaders are free to lie and slaves free to be slaves according to Plato. We are still living in Plato’s cave. Lets get real and quit the dualism. None of us is even human or the world would not be this way.
How quickly they forget the millions killed in the Holocaust!