We have an interesting topic for our next discussion: Austria's role in World War 2. Markus brought you some very informative articles to read:
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=1575&HistoryID=ac43,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss#Austrian_identity_and_the_.22victim_theory.22,
and
http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/bibliography/index.php?content=anschluss.
Since this topic is not one that is controversial for all of us, I would like you to be well-prepared for our discussion by reading them carefully.
As always, have fun,
Kinga
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8 comments:
This topic may require a substantial amount of reading by the reader and a certain amount of effort to look up for additional information. However, what I concluded by this topic was Austria's role in helping Hitler was their downfall. By allowing Nazi troups to cross the border line into Austria was their biggest mistake as a certain population in Austria were Jewish. The hypocrisy by Hitler as he spluttered outrageous lies to the Austrian chancellor eventually lead to the Nazi's occupation of Austria. The burning of books written by the Jewish which was carried out all across Germany turned out to be a sign that Hitler wanted to erase all influence from Jews and promote Anti-semitic behavior across the country.
uh...i don't personnaly interested in this topic and i hate talk about political issues. that's is to say though i spent some time on reading these links but i cant find a mood to say anything...i just lack a sence of history~
I agree with boon shern. I do not think three links are not enough to have the necessary amount of information to discuss this topic. Therefore, what I will write is very short, and basic, and may be wrong. After reading the information on the websites, all I can say is that Austria successfully recovered from the Nazis. Even though, Austrians had a lot of trouble, they did what was necessary to execute the problem. Coming up with Victim Theory and making use of it, I believe, played a very important role in this process.
By reading the articles in the links provided, I would say that I might miss some details, but I will try to make a comment for this topic. Personally, I think Schuschnigg did the right thing, as he refused to accept Hitler's demand, even when he was threatened. But I think Austrian people shouldn't have agreed to Hitler's proposal, which was to unite Austria under the German Reich. The reason is because there was a big Jewish community in Austria. As expected, when the Nuremberg Laws was declared in Austria, the Jewish shops and businesses are looted throughout Austria, and individual Jews are attacked and humiliated. This incident showed us what a big mistake Austria has made by letting Hitler took control over the country.
Austria was somehow being used by Hitler in order to reach his goal. Austria should have not kept her identity as 'Germany state', because that way, Austria had to follow all the Germany rules and all Nazi party had full freedom in Austria. Those mistakes were just open a chance for Hitler. Moreover, Schuschnigg will bend to his will. It seemed like everything was as Hitler wished.
I should have posted this earlier, but there is a good reason I chose this topic. The general view of the public that Austria was, by its own choice, a part of the Nazi empire, is wrong. As you can read (or have read), Hitler invaded only hours before the votes of the Austrian people could be collected. That 99% of the votes were pro-German is an obvious lie he made up afterwards. By no means did Austria choose to participate in Germany’s war. We simply were not given the choice. We did not have an army that could have stopped a German Wehrmacht that would be able to dominate European armies for the next 4 to 5 years. I have to admit that there is a big discussion going on, even 60 years later, if we should have fought against the Nazis. I say, if we did, we’d have kept our honor, but lost a great part of our men on the battlefield. There WERE anti-Semitic and nationalistic people in Austria, as well as there were innocent people in Germany, but that does not mean my country, as a whole, was evil. Although Austria was nonexistent and a part of Germany at that time, the reason we didn’t subordinate was that we were not given a choice.
Wow!! We were taught about World War I and II in our 8th - 10th standards. As far as my memory serves, we were always taught that Hitler took over Austria in a political maneauvre and then went ahead invading other countries.
This is a very comlex and important topic. The information given is not enough to generate a strong and fact-bases opinion. However, I know that Austria was dragged by the Nazis. They where not given any chance. The nazis gave them to options: Join or die. Under the circumstances they had no choice.
If Austria had dicedied to fight against the Nazis, they would have lost thousands or millions of people and possibly their land. They would have kept their honor and good name but for what?. So, I blame it all on the Hitler and the nazis.
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