So long, farewell, aufweidersein, goodbye, I have a gun, So kiss your ass goodbye! Seriously I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the thumbpick, That alone deserves an upvote.
Not sure if this applies to ww2 Wehrmacht but during ww1 a lot of allied soldiers would note some differences between the German regiments based on where they were raised. Bavarians and Saxons were noted to be more laid back and defensive. Whereas Prussian and Brandenburg units were considered to use a modern term "totally not chill".
Germany was a young mosaic country. There was no German army uniform until 1912. So many men in the military had reason to feel like Bavarians first and Germans second. Also within the British troops many wanted to point out that they were Scots, Irish and such. But I guess willingness to fight also depended on the unit type. A Prussian Grenadier Guard unit might have more willingness to fight than a unit of Saxon reservists. Provincealism existed also in the German army in WW2, but it was probably to a lower extent than in WW1 since Germany had existed for some time now and more merged together into a country.
@Fabian Kirchgessner I guess the high losses in the beginning of the war demoralized the Austrian army for the rest of the war. Germany won victories, while the Austrians won none. Germany modern equipment while the Austrians lacked artillery. The Austrians faced one bloodbath after another. Battles were lost or ended even. A few were won, but usually with German help. So it is easy to understand why the war no longer was fun for the Austrians by the end of 1914. The empire had already become dependent on life support from Germany. This was a humiliating prestige loss, and took a toll on the country's self-esteem. Most of its best units had been wiped out. And the slavs within the army had limited willingness to fight. And the Austrian militia units were also of low quality. So there was not much left of the Austrian army. It had become too weak to launch large offensives on its own. Its only major military victory it won on its own for the rest of the war, was when some Austrian militia units which were badly equipped and trained managed to hold off the entire Italian army which were attacking through the Alps and thinking that Austria was an easy win after all catastrophic defeats it had suffered against Serbia and Russia. But despite greatly outnumbering the Austrian low quality units were the unable to break through. And they suffered large losses.
Anthony Beevor in "Stalingrad" relates that in the Russian archives recording the interrogation of Wehrmacht prisoners that when captured Austrian POWs identified themselves as Germans until Stalingrad started to go bad. Afterwards they identified themselves as Austrians when interrogated.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 can't really blame them, given the displacements/ethnic cleansing that happened in eastern europe post-war. Edit: just to clarify, this was initially a response to someone else speaking about Baltic Germans doing something similar when the red army approached until the collapse of communism.
There is certainly a lot of cultural overlap with Switzerland as well in Austria. Language and culture don't always correlate with ethnicity. Naturally, smaller countries feel themselves more neutral, although as part of the so-called West.
My grandpa in 43 was in the Italian Army with an anti air battery alongside Germans and Austrians. He always said that Germans despised Italian soldiers (it was 1943 after all) while Austrians were basically chill dudes, more down to Earth. Of course a single experience doesn't usually mean much, but I think it's interesting how he noticed this big difference
I am Italian-Austrian and my uncle was in the royal army and after September 43 he went with former soldiers in a white partisan unit. The strange thing is that the only one who wasn't killed as a prisoner was a young Austrian man of 19 years old who spoke Italian. My father in 1951, 20 years old, escaped to Italy when Lower Austria was under Soviet occupation.
@@scratchy996 More than that, even. Depending on which linguist you ask, Austro-bavarian is an entirely separate _language_ from standard german instead of just a dialect group.
@@GaldirEonai the difference between a language and a dialect is political, not scientific. I have seen northern Germans and Austrians speak English with each other 40 years ago - in the meantime the TV did a lot of leveling of the Language
The young lovers singing about love and stuff, only for him to become as about “Brown Shirt” as he could get.... is amusing.........likely he died in Russia years later.
My grandmother was Austrian, born in Vienna and lived through the war there. Her brother was in the German Army as a mechanic. He contracted tuberculosis and died during the war. My grandmother after the war, met my grandpa, an American GI from Brooklyn serving in the occupation in Vienna. My dad was born in Vienna in 1948…
My great grandfather was part of the 45. Infanterie-Division. He fought in Poland, Luxembourg, Belgium, France and Russia, where he died in September 1941. There is a book called "Mein Weg mit der 45.Inf.-Div." and I highly recommend reading it.
"Please forgive me that I didn't include a disparaging comment about Vienna this time. I will try to do better next time." Spoken like a true Österreicher.
Seems there's a similar notion in most countries. Capitals breed a certain type, and it's far from all of the inhabitants of course, but by God do they stand out and rub people the wrong way.
Vienna is our one and only genuinely cosmopolitan city. Everything else in the country has a very provincial feel to it when you leave out the tourists. So yeah, it's basically a different country.
Awe I was looking forward to the disparaging comment about Vienna, I love those Off the top of my head I giggled when you said “provincial capital of northern Austria” instead of just saying “they entered vienna”
We had a Austrian relative who at wars end married and moved to nw England. Freda was a nurse and fell in love with a British soldier. She was a lovely and kind woman She passed away 15 years ago sadly
My great grandfather was an Austrian private in the Wehrmacht 435th infantry regiment, 215th division. He suffered a headshot in Uritsk, South Leningrad, in January 1943. We have a photo of a wooden cross marking his burial in a desolate snowy landscape. The German war graves commission recently got back to us to report that the grave is currently located in Raykuzi, about 15km Southwest of St Petersburg. Amazing that this information is still out there!
One reason for the lower loses on the austrian armed forces could also be that they provided most of the mountain divisions. These divisions saw service most of the war on rather "safe" fronts like norway or finland. Only the ones used in the Caucasus come to mind of beeing in "big danger". What I mean by that is not that they had it easy but that they were generally used on frontlines with little movemeant. Little movemeant means fewer routs, fewer encirclements and generally more static warfare. This means that the loses would be lower. I currently cant think of a mountain division that was ever "grinded down to the last" and had to be compleatly rebuild from scratch. Of course the other austrian units mentioned in the video got the shitty frontlines as the majority of the german units, but on average austrian soldiers would be in more specialized divisions (the mentioned mountain ones) then the german soldiers. Would be worth to look into i guess :) Additionally on the "dead male population" you should have added that towards the end of the war there was "only lighter fighting" in austria proper compared to the germany proper. Austria only saw combat itself in the last days after the remnants of the SS-tank army was pushed out of Hungary compared to main germany which, especially in the east, saw heaviest fighting, includign the Volkssturm. I dont think there was anything comparable to sieges like Königsberg (which you covered before), Breslau or even Berlin. Only Vienna saw major combat, but the loses (using wikipedia as the "source" for the time beeing) were comparatively small with around 40.000 dead german soldiers and 20% civilian casualties. Im pretty sure if Vienna would have been turned into a "Berlin" or worse a "budapest" style of battle the civilian casualties would have been far higher and more austrian males in general would have died as part of the Volkssturm in the last battle. But these are just my theories on the issue because I find it rather hard to believe that austrians were significantly less willing to fight for facist germany based only on the data you provided. Also what I found a bit lacking in the video is the subject of austrians in the Waffen-SS. I remember havibng read something that the austrians were overrepresented in Waffen-SS leading positions, but that might have been wronk., Further infromation might be really nice as well.
I am mostly Croatian from my heritage. The croatians sent the 369th reinforced Regiment (it had 3 battalions instead of 2) into the eastern front to please Pavelic and Hitler - they were mostly volunteers. They were part of the 100th Jäger division, which was designated a "light" division. The other part of this division was mostly austrians. There was even consideration to name that division "german/croatian" at some point. In any case, this division "happened" to be around the area of Stalingrad, and I guess, germany, needing to feed soldiers into the meatgrinder of that battle, decided that this light division of croatians and austrians are good enough. Few croatians lived to tell the tale, same for the austrians, I assume. The croatian 369th regiment were the only axis minor ally forces who took part in the fights to control stalingrad, before the soviets made their counter offensive and created the "Kessel" - where other german allies got trapped as well...
@@variszuzans299 yes but those were normal infantery divisions. And I guess you know but normal infantery divisions suffered Stalingrad events on the eastern front post 1942 on a regular basis. What I mean isnt that there werent Austrian units with major loses but that their number was lower because austrians were on average in more specialized divisions (mountain divisions) then the germans. I mean for example of all german divisions mountaineers would be something like 5% of total troops at most while for the austrians it was more like 30% of their deployed soldiers (the mathe is just guessing on memeory, cant look it up right now) Im not saying some austrian units didnt see the shitty frontlines, but in comparrison to their german based allied units the percentage was smaller.
@@noobster4779 The 3rd mountain division (the ones taking Narvik) left norway in 1942... They got transferred to the eastern front and basically served as normal infantery wherever they were needed. The rest of the war they spent at the eastern front reatreating back all the way to hungary/slovakia with everyone else.
To anyone who wants to read a book about an Austrian's experience on the eastern front, I strongly recommend reading 'Until the Eyes Shut', a thrilling yet short memoir
I made the mistake of reading the comments without my glasses and at first read that as "Eyes Wide Shut", which is . . . not about the Second World War. It is based on an interwar Austrian novella though.
@@Shauma_llama Yeah, as much as I don't want to parrot something that people (probably with little to no military history knowledge) have been saying as they comment about how much the thumbnail for this video upsets them, Captain von Trapp is a great example of a politically unreliable officer from the former Habsburg Empire. I don't think monarchism was very popular in Austria in the interwar period (even compared to Hungary, oddly), but the officer corps had a lot of committed monarchists.
I think both the 'anschluss always wanted' and 'Hitler's first victim' interpretations both have some truth and both are massively oversimplifying the situation. Dolfuss had fascist sympathies but also very strongly believed in Austria being both German yet not Germany. Similarly Schussnigg in a last desperate act was willing to contemplate making the SPO legal again to seek their help in maybe stopping Anschluss. I also think that the distinctive identity of Austria from Germany and Austria seeing itself as the last corner of the old Empire and the Empire as 'their' empire even has its origins in the First Republic with various, albeit often half hearted, attempts to promote a distinctive Austrian identity. However, for very understandable reasons, Austrians did not think their country was viable in its extremely dessicated borders and it is hard to imagine the shock and trauma from going from being at the centre of one of the great powers of Europe and the centre of an Empire that had existed for four hundred years to suddenly being a somewhat nicer version of Switzerland and also denied access to what had formerly been part of one country as well as the sharp and often violent discrimination German speakers faced in the new 'national' states that rose out of the ruins of the old Empire. Even though Austria had respectable growth in the 1920s - better than Hungary and in a lot of years even Germany - this could not go away in so short a time.
I think it's important to remember that prior to the post WW1 Austria was a fairly multi-cultural empire. Aside from the obvious Hungarian side, many families had connections to, e.g., Southern Poland / Galicia. It gave the average soldiers an alternate group identity to fall back on, when their German supremacism went sour; something that the "mainland" German soldiers had more completely been stripped of.
@@lucidnonsense942 I think the opposite is the case. Etno-nationalism is a typical thing of the Balkans. The nazis and the Serbians under Milosevic liked to put ethnic minorities into concentration camps so they could purify an area for their own race. Nazism was born in Hitler's mind when he was in Vienna. His contact with jews and slavs there did not make him feel more tolerant. Instead did those two groups became the largest victims of his murder programs. And to some degree I can understand the frustration of the German minority of the Habsburg empire. They stood for the bulk of its military strength and they were the ones keeping this thing together, while all other minorities were just thinking about themselves and trying to carve out privileges for their own ethnic group, without thinking much about what was in the best interest of the empire as a whole. Germany was rich, while Eastern Europe was less so economically and culturally. So of course did some South Germans like Hitler think that it would be better with a dictatorship and a hard rule with an iron fist, instead of listening to dozens of minority people and not get anything done in this dysfunctional state. Much is also talked about the old German roots to racism and anti-semitism. But no one ever talks about Austria's racist and anti-semitic roots. It was the Habsburg rulers religious intolerance which created the thirty years war 1618-1648. Prussia under Frederick the Great practiced religious toleration. While Maria Theresa on the other hand was a warm believer in the Catholic faith, and she could not tolerate the jews so she kicked them out from all her inheritary dominions. And as I said earlier, etno-nationalism had a long history within the Habsburg empire. And on top of all that was serfdom very strong in this empire. The fragmented state was too weak to force the oppressive German nobles who run this empire to pay their taxes or giving up their privileges like in other more modern and free countries. So when the nobles didn't pay any taxes - then did the poor peasants have to pay more taxes instead. So the tax burden was very unfairly distributed. The German landlords paid no taxes, while their slavic peasants paid much taxes to the state and was also forced to serve their feudal lords. And this structure of the Habsburg empire would remain up until the late 1800's when the empires taxation started to became much more fair. But the state was still very backwards compared to the rest of Europe and had not catched up. So no wonder that many people had many good reason to hate this old empire and wanted to break apart from it.
There is a difference between how the population vs how the politicians see the issue. Politicians always try to impose their view to the population, for their own personal gains. I live in Romania and we have a somewhat similar situation with Moldova.
Thank you so much for this feature. My Grandmother was Austrian and her Brothers served in both the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht. Being from Tirol maybe it was the 4th Mountain as One brother was captured on the Russian Front and survived Siberia! The other a fighter pilot won the Knights Cross but did not survive the war.
One German veteran i often spoke with was Austrian, he served as a tank gunner on Panzer llls from October 1941 to wars end in the East, a humble and great man
From my personal experience I can definately say that in school we were fed the "first german victim" lie about "poor" Austria pretty extensively but at least back in my generation few believed it because we could still talk to our grandparents or other relatives who had lived through that time and their story was completely different. Until the end of their lives in the 2000s my grandparents didnot make a distinction between being austrian and german much like some today consider themselves to be european more then nationality x. I also agree with the fact the he disputes the "discrimination" of austrians in the army which also according the what I heard first hand by my grand-uncle (who served in the 2. Mountain Division) was not a thing. Since I'm already writing about that I can dispell an idea that some might have that austrians were treated less bad by their enemies than "real" germans. That was absolutely not the case. Again my grand-uncle told me about his time as a pow in Russia and there was no humanity at all. These were basically death camps as bad as the german ones and very few survived. He only made it as one of very few because of luck and good health.
So glad you started doing a series on Austrians in WW2. I recently read about Post WW2 Austria and I was totally floored by how tolerant they were to "Ex"-Nazis. The fact that they didn't ban the Swastika and allowed former Wehrmacht soldiers to openly wear their uniforms for years blew me away.
@Albert Felsen You're just so wrong on so many levels. Bringing up American and Dutch Slavery doesn't make you're point for you at all, it's actually bizarre. Saying that they shouldn't have gotten rid of their Nazis because some people would lose there jobs is actually a pretty extremely despicable thing to say. We're talking about people that took part in Mass Murder, Genocide, War Crimes. I really shouldn't have to explain why Nazism is bad to anyone. Your opinion is truly flabbergasting. None of what you said makes any sense on any level. You're coming across like a Nazi apologist. I'll parrot the famous American phrase about Communists, "The only good Nazi is a DEAD Nazi". Screw those people and anyone who supports them or idolizes them.
I read somewhere that 20% of the SS members were Austrians, while Austrians made up 8% of the population of the reich. So that seems like an over-representation. However, I do not think that indicates combat willingness. It can just be a sign of political affiliation.
@Panos1972 In later stages of the war even the WaffenSS was not a volutary force anymore. So neither a good indication. (If i can trust the words of my grand-grandmother. 2 of her brothers were conscripted into it. According to her they certainly didn't join voluntarily, they had hoped to be allowed to stay on the mountain farm as needed workers. It was a small farm and they weren't even 18 yet. Both never made it back. The only thing they got from them was a card saying "Wir fahren übers schwarze Meer, und sehen und nimmer mehr" -> We cross the black sea and won't see each other again. But in german it rhymes.)
The young Austrian soldiers didn't grow up with Goebbels' propaganda machine. They weren't radicalized. There are a lot of misconceptions about the SS. It wasn't a monolithic organization like it's portrayed in Hollywood movies and the media (which just repeats what they see in movies). They were volunteers at the beginning of the war, but later new conscripts and entire regular army units were just assigned to the SS. Political views and racial features didn't matter anymore. Of course there were still foreign volunteer SS units, like Nordic and French, and they joined for various reasons.
Regarding the point about Austrian being less loyal to the Reich; My grandfather's partisan division in Dalmatia achieved great victories in part thanks to intel provided by Franz Hubler, a 19 year old radio operator from Vienna. Later, Hubler was caught but even under torture didn't reveal any of his contacts. He was executed in late june 1944. If I remember correctly my grandfather said after the war they all sent money to his mother, back in Vienna, as a sign of gratitude.
From Wikipedia : "The majority of the bureaucrats who implemented the Final Solution were Austrian. Political scientist David Art of Tufts University notes that Austrians comprised 8 per cent of the Third Reich's population and 13 percent of the SS; he states that 40 per cent of the staff and 75 per cent of commanders at death camps were Austrian. "
Some concessions were made to Austrian traditionalism. The 44th Division, mostly consisting of Viennese, was destroyed at Stalingrad. It was rebuilt from a few unit cadre who had survived and was given a unit flag that deliberately included features from Austro-Hungarian unit banners.
Because of the scarcity of Austrian naval officers, the Nazis were particularly interested in re-enlisting one Georg von Trapp, of World War I fame. The "Sound of Music" was based on his family's escape.
Very interesting. I heard from my father who was from Eastern Europe, that the Wehrmacht soldiers occupying his village in late 1941 said they were Austrian, not German. So they obviously felt there was a difference. Anschluss not working out 100 percent, yet, I guess.
I recall reading that if Soviet soldiers learned that an Austrian formation was opposite them, they were more ready to take prisoners, than was the case with "German" formations; apparently, even though Adolf Hitler was Austrian, Red Army soldiers consider Austria a "victim" of Nazi aggression. And supposedly, Austrian units were more ready to surrender, than regular German formations. I wish I could recall the source. As I remember, the reference was in a discussion about the Kursk campaign. This just may be another of the wartime legends you speak of, that made its way into print.
Probably that is true, but considering they were facing the soviets they would have done better to fight to the last man. Not much mercy or a lack of atrocities were recoded during the siege of Vienna.
My grand uncle was a Austrian pow in the Soviet Union and he said it was a lot worse than the war itself and he wouldn’t have surrendered if he knew what was coming.
Interesting Video. A quick question regarding your sources: Did you read Thomas Grischany's "Der Ostmark Treue Alpensöhne" from 2015? He details the intergration of Austrians into the Wehrmacht from 1938 to 1945 and talks about the exactly this topic. (Spoiler) He pretty much comes to the conclusion that Austrians had some trouble integrating, that the early victories had a positive effect on the intergration and that only near the end in 1945 did "Austrian" loyalty begin to desintegrate. If I remember correctly, his conclusion is that Austrians (in general, there were exceptions) were pretty much as loyal as other "Germans" and more so than for example those from the Elsass, which too became part of the Reich.
"The Finnish Government also accepts the obligation to intern German and Hungarian nationals in Finnish territory." This meant deportation to the USSR, causing some 200,000 of them to eventually cross the Norwegian border
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Dann hoffe ich, dass ich dir nicht zu viel zusätzliche Arbeit aufdränge. Du hast sicher schon eine ellenlange Leseliste für alle deine Videos und Themenbereiche.
danke, habs auf meine (lange) Liste gesetzt, werd vielleicht mal darauf zurückkommen wenn ich mich wieder mit dem Thema beschäftige. Dieses Video hatte ich vor zirka einem Jahr angefangen aber dann auf Eis gelegt und erst vor kurzem wieder "ausgegraben".
"Quick" question about this book: does he come to the same coclusion as the guy who wrote the only available german language book about the Narvik campaign, that it basically took until the retreat of the allies in Narvik for the austrian soldiers to be considered equal to "german germans" in fighting?
An account of Poles in the Wehrmacht would be interesting although they were technically Volksdeutsch. They ranged from Germans who happened to find themselves in Poland because of Versailles, to people who spoke German badly or not at all and whose German status was quite nominal.
The best source of information on national identity and German army cohesion that I have found in English is "Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II" by Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz. They interviewed thousands of POWs and published the results in 1948. You can find the article on JSTOR and a number of websites. Basically, politics played no role in the decision to desert. The most cited reason for desertion among former Austrian Volksturmers was that they did not want to be drafted in the first place, followed by dissatisfaction with the primitive state of their tactical training.
There could be a another contributing factor. I listened to a testimony once, i don't remember exactly if it was a Austrian or German wehrmacht/SS soldier but i remember clearly that he talked about when they fleed through former german territory in Poland and were caught by polish. He said they executed the two germans but let the austrian go because he had something on him or his uniform that showed he was from Austria apparently. I think you probably had in general slightly better chances as austrian in certain situations sometimes especially at the end.
It seems that minority of Austrians were during the WW2 the fanatical Nazis, but majority were more human. In general, there were many German/Austrian Catholics that believed themselves opressed by Nazis and considered Poles on the same side.
In addition many Austrians used to settle down in Poland. As Catholics they were mostly on the Polish-German conflict against German protestants. The example is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Weigl.
My Hungarian grandfathers family lived in Sopron near the Austrian border. He said there was a huge difference in border guard attitudes when Hungarians crossed the border to go to Vienna. It only changed when Hitler started being more openly diplomatic and cordial with Hungary( probably because he wanted Hungarians as potential allies), and then quite suddenly, the border guards to Austria had a more welcoming and cordial attitude towards Hungarians. I thought this was a very interesting perspective to hear on the before and after effects of the Anschluss.
Interesting fact: During his lief in austria Tito had a son with an austrian woman. He fought in the Wehrmacht on the Balkanfront - against bis own father.
Tito was actually a test driver for Ferdinand Porsche at Austro Daimler. And there are always a few right wingers who now and then campaign to take of the commerative plaque on the House near Schoenbrunn where Stalin stayed
Very well made video and it’s nice to see that you didn’t go in the trap of the post-war rewrite of Austrian history. It’s very important to understand that until 1919 there was not even an "Austrian" identity. You were German in the K.u.K. The name Austrians wasn’t in use and after WW1 already a majority of Austrians wanted to join Germany. Even with the interwar year push from politicians to create an Austrian identity a lot of people still felt first and foremost German. It was the loss of WW2 and the disillusion with having followed Hitler - so Germany - and the need to denounce Germany to get out of the postwar situation of being partially occupied by the looting red army That created an Austrian identity which in its core is based on denouncing being German (which of course causes anti-German sentiment not felt on the opposite since Germans never had such an identity crisis)
Six EU member states and are not NATO-members: Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta, Sweden and Switzerland (Schengen only). Technically speaking, these countries could invade Germany.
Most of Wehrmacht soldiers that have done crimes against in humanity in Serbia during the WWII where Austrians, they where exceptionally brutal and barbaric. In some academic circles their behavior was attributed to their desire for a "payback" for Austro-Hungarian defeat and humiliation by the Serbia in the WWI!
@lati long Although not an alliance, the USA and France didn't declare war on Finland, thus the 20th Mountain Army was neutral 1941-44. To my recollection, Franz Böhme was the only one who would have been sentenced to death out of 200,000, had not he jumped out the window. They used human shields quite systematically, so I think it was just a tactic of the time. You might want to watch the movie Lone Survivor.
My great grandfather served in yugoslavia during the war. We know next to nothing about what he did down there, because he hated to talk about the war. Still a nice video, greetings from Austria (Vorarlberg)
I read that a substantial part of the guards in the concentration camps were Austrians. Then they also did guard duty in the occupied territories. Therefore fewer dead.
Was there any resistance (significant or not) in Austria following the Anschluss and the beginning of hostilities? I read somewhere that Otto von Habsburg organized and supported some groups (though I'm not entirely sure about how true that is), and the Austrian leftists must have been up to *something* during the war. That might be a good video, don't you think?
The one group we learned aobut in school, you can still find the mark on St. Stephens cathedral in vienna today. If you go around it you will find O5 marked on it. In german Austria is written Österreich and the Ö can be substituted with Oe if there isn't an ö available in the font ect. E is the fifth letter so O5 means Ö. And that's all i know about them. If you want a "cool" story you should look up the battle for castle itter at the end of the war. Resistance plays a small part in it.
There were some, but few. Slovenes, Communists, Socialdemocrats, Convervatives/Catholics, Monarchists. (In this order, by far the biggest groups were the Slovenes & Commies). When the British paradropped agents to foster the resistance, they were quickly caught and handed over to police by the populace.
I do not know if this is a myth but I remember that Austrian looses were a little bit lower because a higher percentage was stationed in norway as occupation troops. They needed more Gebirgsjäger there.
I wonder to what extent the rough figures for losses and Knight crossed are actually good proxies of fighting powers. It seems that Austrians generally were in different types of units, and also fought in different theatres. I know anecdotally that many were stationed in Norway, and I'd assume (this is unsubstantiated) that Gebirgsjäger might have suffered fewer losses in the later years of the war. Also, I'm assuming that on the retreat in the East from 1944 onwards, the Austrians were deployed more or less close to Austria (as opposed to, say Königsberg), and since the main Russian thrust was towards Berlin, again, there might have been fewer losses in these areas. So I guess my point is that the comparison of the figures is not really convincing unless done on a more granular, apples to apples basis.
That isn't entirely correct. The 2nd and 3rd mountain division were baiscally the ground forces for the occupation of norway, but were replaced in 42 or 43 i think by the 6th mountain division (mostly bavarian troops) as occupation force and were moved to the easern front. Both mountain divisions were used as normal infantery on the eastern front as they needed anyone they could find. And no, they weren't deployed closer to austria than the others, the Wehrmacht could not afford such luxury to place someone closer to their liking. And from a book i read about the experiences of an austrian in the 3rd mounatin division who came in in 43 i think, he made almost the whole way from todays ukraine to hungary in fighting retreat on foot.
Thank you for providing some detail and colour! I don’t think that there is in fact much disagreement between what you elaborated on and my initial points. Even being stationed in Norway for only sometime would likely have reduced relative fatality and opportunity for knight’s crosses, and of course being stationed close to Austria is a relative statement depending on where the action is. But when the choice was between Hungary and Danzig, then I’d assume you’d have a larger share of Austrians in close and familiar territory- not least because some might actually have some knowledge of the territory once you were fighting close to Vienna for example.
@@nilshansen8562 "then I’d assume you’d have a larger share of Austrians in close and familiar territory- not least because some might actually have some knowledge of the territory once you were fighting close to Vienna for example." I dont think the germans were logistically able to move troops like that at that stage of the war. I've recently read up on this and I can tell you that it was mostly Volkssturm Truppen maning the defensives on the route between the modern Austria/Hungary border and Vienna, which is less than 100km. The soviets first crossed the border of the Ostmark end of march 45 Vienna was captured on April 14th The city was only held by some 20.000 Wehrmacht troops, a bit of Volkssturm and the rest of the hungarian army (which actually was the strongest axis force in the battle of vienna). The germans had 52 tanks in/around vienna while the soviets had ~700 The war had become very desparate for the german side at that point, austrian Wehrmacht soldiers would be fighting whereever they ended up at this point afaik. My Great Uncle was in the Handelsmarine (merchant navy) when the war ended (TIL he was one of few). He initially ended up in Hamburg, said he was hella scared what Vienna would look like but it wasnt that bad compared to many german cities. He joined the danube river police force in vienna after the war
Good presentation but the title and the picture are a bit of a cheap shot. Von Trapp, the father in Sound of Music, distinguished himself as a submarine commander in the Austrian Navy in WW1. He and family left Austria to avoid having to serve in Hitler's navy.
I think anyone who's ever seen the musical or the movie knows that the von Trapps are anti-Nazi. Anyone who hasn't (probably everyone in Austria itself) wouldn't know or care what the movie is about anyway.
@lati long its importent to remember that a lot of "Von"'s hated the nazis and the third reich, not only from hapsburg background but also prussians and others. its because hitler himself and most nazis didn't come from the nobility.
The POW survey is rubbish, also taking a high award such as the knights cross as an indicator for willingness to fight is not representative. Many of the old guard, those are WW1 veterans were not so favorable of germany, as mentioned a considerable number was expelled, including my grandfather who was a leutnant in the artillery for beeing a social democrat as well as insubordination during the civil war in 1934. He was later a member of O5. My uncle however was a supporter and in contriarty to your video joined the luftwaffe and flew stukas and Fw190s. He was definetly easy going though, getting demoted for pulling stunts and had a french girlfriend as well.
On the other side, was there not a deliberately suicidal anti anschluss armed uprising in Vienna? Also, there was 1 or more Austrian underground resistances?
Most of my aunt's and uncles were killed by the gestapos in Vienna I'm also part German but dint know any history of my German side but my great grandmother told me when the Nazis annexed Austria her and my aunt and my soon to be born grandfather hid up in the mountains somewhere shortly after my uncle got killed in a town square sadly the only one to serve was my great grandfather his progression before that was a forest ranger my great grandmother even said he didn't like doing what he done the last time they were talking before he got shipped to Stalingrad. If it wasn't for him my great grandmother and everyone in my family this day I wouldn't be here even though I'm only 30 but this war scarred me the pain it caused to my relatives.
Given how quickly some Austrian units were incorporated into the German Army how much pre planning do you suppose the Germans did for this? Also given the speed of all this I find it amusing that from the moment of being made a part of Germany the swearing in ceremony there's pictures of the 134th Regiment of Vienna with their Austrian uniforms adorned with the dirty bird to within a few months being replaced with standard German uniforms when the proper numbers came through.
Not much planning needed though. Military structure was after all similar and both countries had the experience of WW1 of how they would fight and plan their units. Also the german practice of keeping divisions from a certain region came in handy again because...well....the austrian divisions were basically just austrian divisions to begin with so no need to change personal on a large scale. Command and combat language was the same anyway and most austrian units, if necessary, propably just got a short retraining to use german weapons and tactics. But all of that would be to hard to achieve. I mean the wehrmacht to begin with expanded from a few hundred thousand soldiers to millions of men in a few years. Incorporating a few already fully trained units with the same language would really be that hard.
I have heard that one reason Austria was not included in the newly unified Germany in 1870s the was that the Protestant Prussians did not want a Catholic Austria included.
Very interesting talk. Good coverage of the subject and interesting stats. I would have been interested also to see something on the behaviour of Austrians during the invasion of their territory and whether any differences were seen here. For example, did Austrian Volkssturm units answer call-up in the same way that those in Eastern Prussia and Berlin did? What of the activities of various anti-Nazi elements in Austria during the fighting in Austria?
Might happen, if I remember correctly some Volkssturm units from Austria were actually moved to Berlin or nearby, but that was an exception not the rule, since most Volkssturm units were old men not young boys. More info on the Volkssturm here: ua-cam.com/video/XHkBXuJUujI/v-deo.html
my Grandfather told me, that the locan Nationalsocialists were the first ones in the queue. They shouted "I need no secrecy, my vote is clear." And people with submachine guns asked the remaining voters if they also wanted to cast their votes in public or needed secrecy...And others were taking notes.
they managed to put armoured recce cars even in small villages, like my godfather told me and the county chronic states, too. They were conservativ catholics in those valleys, but they voted "yes", because it was clear that the Game was over.
I would say anytime a referendum with Two alternatives. Get the clear victory for one of them. I think their is some creativity going on. 99.7% that is kind of strange.
Well that's "easy": as Bernhard mentioned it wasn't anonymous, and parts of the population were excluded from the vote. So anyone known to be sympathizing with a political party other than... wasn't allowed to vote. Jewish people weren't allowed to vote. And when the "local nazi" watches closely which circle you check, and comments for anyone to hear, that has a bit of an intimidation factor. Shortly before the Anschluß the chancellor of Austria wanted to hold a vote, and Hitler threatened him to forcefully invade if he would do that. so it was cancelled. (one could only wonder why.... i would claim because the numbers wouldn't have been as generous as they were when they had control over every aspect of the voting themselves.) When the referendum was held, the new governement had reopened some factories and promised to create even more jobs and prosperity. The reopned factories had to previously close due to not being profitable. They weren't profitable this time either, but it made pretty good publicity in a weak economy.
I have a question, perhaps some of you may be of assistance. I recently received a book from my grandmother that is quite a detailed history of a very small area of Bohemia/Sudetenland. In this book I have found 3 family members that were mia/kia on the eastern front (listed as "Russland" specifically). The year/date placed by the names suggests it was at the start of Operation Bagration. I'd like to know what units they served in. One of them was 38, which has my noggin joggin. They were from a small area of villages around 30 miles south west of Pilsen, during the war this was in the administrative unit of "Bischofteinitz" - right on the border practically. Based on their residence is it possible to at least narrow down what units they might have served in? The above video got me thinking this might be a possibility...
Good Video. You missed on prominent division that was originally raised in Austria. This was the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment "Der Fuhrer" which was part of the 2nd SS Divison "Das Reich". Later in the war the troops were mostly German, but the regiment was originally mostly Austrian.
> You missed on prominent division that was originally raised in Austria. This was > the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment no, because the title is "Austrians in the Wehrmacht", SS was not part of the Wehrmacht. I did 1 video on the SS so far and I paid a historian to check the script for errors, since there is a lot of old myths etc. on the SS out there. I have a rather strict policy for certain topics for various reasons.
My father fought in Yugoslavia as a partizan. He told me that before an upcoming battle with Austrians they knew it would be fiercer than with Germans. Austrians where more ideologically driven and never surrendered. No pardon from either side. Note that before and during "The great War" Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian empire where sworn enemies. Lots of axes to grind. Do I have any input from the Austrian side? Yes. My mother was born in Sankt Georgen im Attergau, Vöcklabruck, Oberösterreich. My "Opa" was a NCO during both wars. de SA3BOW
The Austrians had more mountain troops that Germany. If mountain troops had fewer losses, and the German mountain troops also had fewer Knight's Crosses (no tank, u-boat and figher aces in mountain troops) this difference might explain it.
![Wehrmacht - The German Army 1935-1945 - Sabaton History 052 [Official]](/img/n.gif)
That is a lovely thumbnail 😀
tis the bestest
Maybe the war was all about the good outfits after all.
So long, farewell, aufweidersein, goodbye,
I have a gun,
So kiss your ass goodbye!
Seriously I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the thumbpick, That alone deserves an upvote.
No it's a cursed Thumbnail.
If I recall the father was the commander in Das Boot
the hills are alive with the sound of maschinenpistole
Great Skiing, love the place.
Not sure if this applies to ww2 Wehrmacht but during ww1 a lot of allied soldiers would note some differences between the German regiments based on where they were raised.
Bavarians and Saxons were noted to be more laid back and defensive. Whereas Prussian and Brandenburg units were considered to use a modern term "totally not chill".
Germany was a young mosaic country. There was no German army uniform until 1912. So many men in the military had reason to feel like Bavarians first and Germans second.
Also within the British troops many wanted to point out that they were Scots, Irish and such.
But I guess willingness to fight also depended on the unit type. A Prussian Grenadier Guard unit might have more willingness to fight than a unit of Saxon reservists.
Provincealism existed also in the German army in WW2, but it was probably to a lower extent than in WW1 since Germany had existed for some time now and more merged together into a country.
@Fabian Kirchgessner
I guess the high losses in the beginning of the war demoralized the Austrian army for the rest of the war. Germany won victories, while the Austrians won none. Germany modern equipment while the Austrians lacked artillery. The Austrians faced one bloodbath after another. Battles were lost or ended even. A few were won, but usually with German help.
So it is easy to understand why the war no longer was fun for the Austrians by the end of 1914. The empire had already become dependent on life support from Germany.
This was a humiliating prestige loss, and took a toll on the country's self-esteem.
Most of its best units had been wiped out. And the slavs within the army had limited willingness to fight. And the Austrian militia units were also of low quality. So there was not much left of the Austrian army. It had become too weak to launch large offensives on its own.
Its only major military victory it won on its own for the rest of the war, was when some Austrian militia units which were badly equipped and trained managed to hold off the entire Italian army which were attacking through the Alps and thinking that Austria was an easy win after all catastrophic defeats it had suffered against Serbia and Russia.
But despite greatly outnumbering the Austrian low quality units were the unable to break through. And they suffered large losses.
Anthony Beevor in "Stalingrad" relates that in the Russian archives recording the interrogation of Wehrmacht prisoners that when captured Austrian POWs identified themselves as Germans until Stalingrad started to go bad. Afterwards they identified themselves as Austrians when interrogated.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 can't really blame them, given the displacements/ethnic cleansing that happened in eastern europe post-war.
Edit: just to clarify, this was initially a response to someone else speaking about Baltic Germans doing something similar when the red army approached until the collapse of communism.
Victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan and all that.
There is certainly a lot of cultural overlap with Switzerland as well in Austria. Language and culture don't always correlate with ethnicity. Naturally, smaller countries feel themselves more neutral, although as part of the so-called West.
Austrians continue doing that to this day
@@cv4809 What if a Mexican deny being Spanish?
"The only place Austrians hate taking orders from more than Vienna is taking them from Berlin" -MHV
Well, nevertheless, the orders from Berlin did came from Austrian too.😂😂😂😂
My grandpa in 43 was in the Italian Army with an anti air battery alongside Germans and Austrians. He always said that Germans despised Italian soldiers (it was 1943 after all) while Austrians were basically chill dudes, more down to Earth. Of course a single experience doesn't usually mean much, but I think it's interesting how he noticed this big difference
I am Italian-Austrian and my uncle was in the royal army and after September 43 he went with former soldiers in a white partisan unit. The strange thing is that the only one who wasn't killed as a prisoner was a young Austrian man of 19 years old who spoke Italian. My father in 1951, 20 years old, escaped to Italy when Lower Austria was under Soviet occupation.
There are differences between Northern and Southern Germans, just like there are differences between New York and Texas.
@@scratchy996 More than that, even. Depending on which linguist you ask, Austro-bavarian is an entirely separate _language_ from standard german instead of just a dialect group.
@@GaldirEonai I know, I was trying to give an example that Americans would understand.
@@GaldirEonai the difference between a language and a dialect is political, not scientific. I have seen northern Germans and Austrians speak English with each other 40 years ago - in the meantime the TV did a lot of leveling of the Language
Arguably, however, Austria has better pizza because of her proximity to Italy.
Perhaps Barnhard can quantify that in a follow-on video. Maybe the farther South, the more Italian sausage....
They got better pastry as well, regardless if Vienna bread is Austrian or not
Maybe not pizza, but coffee.
@@nattygsbord I dunno. Sachertorte vs Swartzwaldtorte. It's close...
@Panos1972 yeah, they still use bicycle inner tubes.
I haven’t even seen the sound of music and I still want a poster of that thumbnail art.
The young lovers singing about love and stuff, only for him to become as about “Brown Shirt” as he could get.... is amusing.........likely he died in Russia years later.
@@davidbrennan660 Cant say as I'd use the word amusing. More like sickening.
You should see the movie, it’s genuinely a great movie
@@navaladmiral2962 I’ll get around to seeing it one day.
The thumbnail is excellent.
My grandmother was Austrian, born in Vienna and lived through the war there. Her brother was in the German Army as a mechanic. He contracted tuberculosis and died during the war. My grandmother after the war, met my grandpa, an American GI from Brooklyn serving in the occupation in Vienna. My dad was born in Vienna in 1948…
My great grandfather was part of the 45. Infanterie-Division. He fought in Poland, Luxembourg, Belgium, France and Russia, where he died in September 1941. There is a book called "Mein Weg mit der 45.Inf.-Div." and I highly recommend reading it.
Thank you for the info.
"Please forgive me that I didn't include a disparaging comment about Vienna this time. I will try to do better next time." Spoken like a true Österreicher.
Why do they dislike veinna?
@@edward9674 Because the general stereotype is that vienniese people think they are better than other austrians. Note the use of the word stereotype.
@@ThomasTee Ah! So you mean Vienniese people are like Canadians or Californians?! That makes sense.
Seems there's a similar notion in most countries.
Capitals breed a certain type, and it's far from all of the inhabitants of course, but by God do they stand out and rub people the wrong way.
Vienna is our one and only genuinely cosmopolitan city. Everything else in the country has a very provincial feel to it when you leave out the tourists. So yeah, it's basically a different country.
The hills are alive with the sound of Schmeissers
i shall show this thumbnail to my elderly mother who grew up watching this movie and forcing it on us, the day has cometh, many txs!
Interestingly enough, my mother (who also loved the movie) found the thumbnail to be hilarious.
Absolutely love that you did a video about that subject. Absolutely magnificent
Awe I was looking forward to the disparaging comment about Vienna, I love those
Off the top of my head I giggled when you said “provincial capital of northern Austria” instead of just saying “they entered vienna”
I need that thumbnail as a wallpaper.
Seriously! I'd use it and send it to my mom who loves that movie
What movie?
@@gammelgemse Sound of music (1965)
@Mialisus
>
There you go king, use that for proper greentext
Julie Andrew's with an MP 40 is Brilliant 👏🇦🇹😀
I believe that scene was in the director's cut.
Actually burst out laughing at that title! Well done sir!
We had a Austrian relative who at wars end married and moved to nw England.
Freda was a nurse and fell in love with a British soldier.
She was a lovely and kind woman
She passed away 15 years ago sadly
My great grandfather was an Austrian private in the Wehrmacht 435th infantry regiment, 215th division. He suffered a headshot in Uritsk, South Leningrad, in January 1943. We have a photo of a wooden cross marking his burial in a desolate snowy landscape. The German war graves commission recently got back to us to report that the grave is currently located in Raykuzi, about 15km Southwest of St Petersburg. Amazing that this information is still out there!
"High on a hill was a bitter Corporal/ Yodel-odle-ladie-odle-OH NO!"
One reason for the lower loses on the austrian armed forces could also be that they provided most of the mountain divisions. These divisions saw service most of the war on rather "safe" fronts like norway or finland. Only the ones used in the Caucasus come to mind of beeing in "big danger".
What I mean by that is not that they had it easy but that they were generally used on frontlines with little movemeant. Little movemeant means fewer routs, fewer encirclements and generally more static warfare. This means that the loses would be lower. I currently cant think of a mountain division that was ever "grinded down to the last" and had to be compleatly rebuild from scratch. Of course the other austrian units mentioned in the video got the shitty frontlines as the majority of the german units, but on average austrian soldiers would be in more specialized divisions (the mentioned mountain ones) then the german soldiers. Would be worth to look into i guess :)
Additionally on the "dead male population" you should have added that towards the end of the war there was "only lighter fighting" in austria proper compared to the germany proper. Austria only saw combat itself in the last days after the remnants of the SS-tank army was pushed out of Hungary compared to main germany which, especially in the east, saw heaviest fighting, includign the Volkssturm. I dont think there was anything comparable to sieges like Königsberg (which you covered before), Breslau or even Berlin. Only Vienna saw major combat, but the loses (using wikipedia as the "source" for the time beeing) were comparatively small with around 40.000 dead german soldiers and 20% civilian casualties. Im pretty sure if Vienna would have been turned into a "Berlin" or worse a "budapest" style of battle the civilian casualties would have been far higher and more austrian males in general would have died as part of the Volkssturm in the last battle. But these are just my theories on the issue because I find it rather hard to believe that austrians were significantly less willing to fight for facist germany based only on the data you provided.
Also what I found a bit lacking in the video is the subject of austrians in the Waffen-SS. I remember havibng read something that the austrians were overrepresented in Waffen-SS leading positions, but that might have been wronk., Further infromation might be really nice as well.
8:06 Encirclement at Stalingrad was definitely not the "safest" sector of the front, far from it..
I am mostly Croatian from my heritage. The croatians sent the 369th reinforced Regiment (it had 3 battalions instead of 2) into the eastern front to please Pavelic and Hitler - they were mostly volunteers.
They were part of the 100th Jäger division, which was designated a "light" division. The other part of this division was mostly austrians. There was even consideration to name that division "german/croatian" at some point.
In any case, this division "happened" to be around the area of Stalingrad, and I guess, germany, needing to feed soldiers into the meatgrinder of that battle, decided that this light division of croatians and austrians are good enough.
Few croatians lived to tell the tale, same for the austrians, I assume.
The croatian 369th regiment were the only axis minor ally forces who took part in the fights to control stalingrad, before the soviets made their counter offensive and created the "Kessel" - where other german allies got trapped as well...
@@variszuzans299 i do believe that was said with sarcasm :)
@@variszuzans299 yes but those were normal infantery divisions. And I guess you know but normal infantery divisions suffered Stalingrad events on the eastern front post 1942 on a regular basis.
What I mean isnt that there werent Austrian units with major loses but that their number was lower because austrians were on average in more specialized divisions (mountain divisions) then the germans. I mean for example of all german divisions mountaineers would be something like 5% of total troops at most while for the austrians it was more like 30% of their deployed soldiers (the mathe is just guessing on memeory, cant look it up right now)
Im not saying some austrian units didnt see the shitty frontlines, but in comparrison to their german based allied units the percentage was smaller.
@@noobster4779 The 3rd mountain division (the ones taking Narvik) left norway in 1942...
They got transferred to the eastern front and basically served as normal infantery wherever they were needed.
The rest of the war they spent at the eastern front reatreating back all the way to hungary/slovakia with everyone else.
At The beginning - “the sound of music image plus a submachine gun” - I probably laughed harder than I should’ve!!!😜😜😜
Whoever made that thunbnail, deserves a raise…
I wonder how many Austrian officers emigrated to avoid Wehrmacht service (like Captain von Trapp, for example)?
@Mister Apol: Not enough, nowhere near enough.
@@jgranger3532 But you claim that all Austrians without exceptions were Nazis and that isn't true.
@Fabian Kirchgessner You can absolutely blame them for such blind loyalty.
@Fabian Kirchgessner that is at least doubtfull
@@TomTom-rh5gk On a per capita basis there were more card carrying Austrian nazis than German.
To anyone who wants to read a book about an Austrian's experience on the eastern front, I strongly recommend reading 'Until the Eyes Shut', a thrilling yet short memoir
I made the mistake of reading the comments without my glasses and at first read that as "Eyes Wide Shut", which is . . . not about the Second World War. It is based on an interwar Austrian novella though.
Thank you for the info. I will try to find a copy.
When the Wehmacht was so short of officers dismissing nearly half the Austrian officer corps seems a little short sighted.
They may have been considered politically unreliable.
@@Shauma_llama Almost certainly the reason. Just another way that such dictatorships shoot themselves in the foot.
@@Shauma_llama Yeah, as much as I don't want to parrot something that people (probably with little to no military history knowledge) have been saying as they comment about how much the thumbnail for this video upsets them, Captain von Trapp is a great example of a politically unreliable officer from the former Habsburg Empire. I don't think monarchism was very popular in Austria in the interwar period (even compared to Hungary, oddly), but the officer corps had a lot of committed monarchists.
Stalin purged the Red Army officers for the same reason. When the shit hits the fan you don't want guys around who can rally the people against you.
Thumbnail is what happen if you give a gun to Heidi.
She didn't even follow gun discipline.
Kudos for the opening graphic!
This is probably the best thumbnail & title I've seen on this channel lmao
Wow nice cover photo 😆 i grew up watching that movie it was one of my favorites.
Your thumbnail, dear sir, is simply phenomenal.
I think both the 'anschluss always wanted' and 'Hitler's first victim' interpretations both have some truth and both are massively oversimplifying the situation. Dolfuss had fascist sympathies but also very strongly believed in Austria being both German yet not Germany. Similarly Schussnigg in a last desperate act was willing to contemplate making the SPO legal again to seek their help in maybe stopping Anschluss. I also think that the distinctive identity of Austria from Germany and Austria seeing itself as the last corner of the old Empire and the Empire as 'their' empire even has its origins in the First Republic with various, albeit often half hearted, attempts to promote a distinctive Austrian identity. However, for very understandable reasons, Austrians did not think their country was viable in its extremely dessicated borders and it is hard to imagine the shock and trauma from going from being at the centre of one of the great powers of Europe and the centre of an Empire that had existed for four hundred years to suddenly being a somewhat nicer version of Switzerland and also denied access to what had formerly been part of one country as well as the sharp and often violent discrimination German speakers faced in the new 'national' states that rose out of the ruins of the old Empire. Even though Austria had respectable growth in the 1920s - better than Hungary and in a lot of years even Germany - this could not go away in so short a time.
That's some shade throwing at Switzerland, lol
I think it's important to remember that prior to the post WW1 Austria was a fairly multi-cultural empire. Aside from the obvious Hungarian side, many families had connections to, e.g., Southern Poland / Galicia. It gave the average soldiers an alternate group identity to fall back on, when their German supremacism went sour; something that the "mainland" German soldiers had more completely been stripped of.
@@lucidnonsense942 I think the opposite is the case. Etno-nationalism is a typical thing of the Balkans. The nazis and the Serbians under Milosevic liked to put ethnic minorities into concentration camps so they could purify an area for their own race.
Nazism was born in Hitler's mind when he was in Vienna. His contact with jews and slavs there did not make him feel more tolerant. Instead did those two groups became the largest victims of his murder programs.
And to some degree I can understand the frustration of the German minority of the Habsburg empire. They stood for the bulk of its military strength and they were the ones keeping this thing together, while all other minorities were just thinking about themselves and trying to carve out privileges for their own ethnic group, without thinking much about what was in the best interest of the empire as a whole.
Germany was rich, while Eastern Europe was less so economically and culturally.
So of course did some South Germans like Hitler think that it would be better with a dictatorship and a hard rule with an iron fist, instead of listening to dozens of minority people and not get anything done in this dysfunctional state.
Much is also talked about the old German roots to racism and anti-semitism. But no one ever talks about Austria's racist and anti-semitic roots. It was the Habsburg rulers religious intolerance which created the thirty years war 1618-1648.
Prussia under Frederick the Great practiced religious toleration. While Maria Theresa on the other hand was a warm believer in the Catholic faith, and she could not tolerate the jews so she kicked them out from all her inheritary dominions.
And as I said earlier, etno-nationalism had a long history within the Habsburg empire.
And on top of all that was serfdom very strong in this empire. The fragmented state was too weak to force the oppressive German nobles who run this empire to pay their taxes or giving up their privileges like in other more modern and free countries.
So when the nobles didn't pay any taxes - then did the poor peasants have to pay more taxes instead. So the tax burden was very unfairly distributed.
The German landlords paid no taxes, while their slavic peasants paid much taxes to the state and was also forced to serve their feudal lords. And this structure of the Habsburg empire would remain up until the late 1800's when the empires taxation started to became much more fair. But the state was still very backwards compared to the rest of Europe and had not catched up.
So no wonder that many people had many good reason to hate this old empire and wanted to break apart from it.
@@lucidnonsense942 Shouldn't some shade be thrown at the home of the Gnomes of Zurich?
I mean, if
+++%CARRIER LOST
There is a difference between how the population vs how the politicians see the issue. Politicians always try to impose their view to the population, for their own personal gains.
I live in Romania and we have a somewhat similar situation with Moldova.
How do you solve a problem like the Wehrmaaacht...? How do you catch a Dornier and pin it doooown?
Thank you so much for this feature. My Grandmother was Austrian and her Brothers served in both the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht. Being from Tirol maybe it was the 4th Mountain as One brother was captured on the Russian Front and survived Siberia! The other a fighter pilot won the Knights Cross but did not survive the war.
One German veteran i often spoke with was Austrian, he served as a tank gunner on Panzer llls from October 1941 to wars end in the East, a humble and great man
I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. very thought provoking!!
From my personal experience I can definately say that in school we were fed the "first german victim" lie about "poor" Austria pretty extensively but at least back in my generation few believed it because we could still talk to our grandparents or other relatives who had lived through that time and their story was completely different. Until the end of their lives in the 2000s my grandparents didnot make a distinction between being austrian and german much like some today consider themselves to be european more then nationality x. I also agree with the fact the he disputes the "discrimination" of austrians in the army which also according the what I heard first hand by my grand-uncle (who served in the 2. Mountain Division) was not a thing. Since I'm already writing about that I can dispell an idea that some might have that austrians were treated less bad by their enemies than "real" germans. That was absolutely not the case. Again my grand-uncle told me about his time as a pow in Russia and there was no humanity at all. These were basically death camps as bad as the german ones and very few survived. He only made it as one of very few because of luck and good health.
Its sad that germans of today believe the lies they where told by the Allies after the war.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 What lies exactly?
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 got any citation that the allies calls germans evil?
I see you removed your nonsensical claim.
@Fabian Kirchgessner Of course it does. If the other side doesn't stick to the rules, you don't have to.
So glad you started doing a series on Austrians in WW2. I recently read about Post WW2 Austria and I was totally floored by how tolerant they were to "Ex"-Nazis. The fact that they didn't ban the Swastika and allowed former Wehrmacht soldiers to openly wear their uniforms for years blew me away.
@Albert Felsen You're just so wrong on so many levels. Bringing up American and Dutch Slavery doesn't make you're point for you at all, it's actually bizarre.
Saying that they shouldn't have gotten rid of their Nazis because some people would lose there jobs is actually a pretty extremely despicable thing to say. We're talking about people that took part in Mass Murder, Genocide, War Crimes. I really shouldn't have to explain why Nazism is bad to anyone. Your opinion is truly flabbergasting. None of what you said makes any sense on any level. You're coming across like a Nazi apologist. I'll parrot the famous American phrase about Communists, "The only good Nazi is a DEAD Nazi". Screw those people and anyone who supports them or idolizes them.
Well, this certainly changes a few of my favorite things a bit...
If the best thumbnail from every UA-cam Channel was gathered, this would be best thumbnail of all of the thumbnails.
Wow! Historically I have not Visualized ever getting a comment like from a UA-cam Channel creator.
;)
What was the proportion of Austrians in the SS? That might give an indication of combat willingness.
I read somewhere that 20% of the SS members were Austrians, while Austrians made up 8% of the population of the reich. So that seems like an over-representation. However, I do not think that indicates combat willingness. It can just be a sign of political affiliation.
@@nattygsbord However, only about 200K were barred from voting in 1945. Rest of them did vote for ÖVP or SPÖ.
@Panos1972 In later stages of the war even the WaffenSS was not a volutary force anymore.
So neither a good indication.
(If i can trust the words of my grand-grandmother. 2 of her brothers were conscripted into it. According to her they certainly didn't join voluntarily, they had hoped to be allowed to stay on the mountain farm as needed workers. It was a small farm and they weren't even 18 yet. Both never made it back. The only thing they got from them was a card saying "Wir fahren übers schwarze Meer, und sehen und nimmer mehr" -> We cross the black sea and won't see each other again. But in german it rhymes.)
The young Austrian soldiers didn't grow up with Goebbels' propaganda machine. They weren't radicalized.
There are a lot of misconceptions about the SS. It wasn't a monolithic organization like it's portrayed in Hollywood movies and the media (which just repeats what they see in movies).
They were volunteers at the beginning of the war, but later new conscripts and entire regular army units were just assigned to the SS. Political views and racial features didn't matter anymore.
Of course there were still foreign volunteer SS units, like Nordic and French, and they joined for various reasons.
@@scratchy996 ss security formations were often majority eastern locals in the eastern front
Regarding the point about Austrian being less loyal to the Reich;
My grandfather's partisan division in Dalmatia achieved great victories in part thanks to intel provided by Franz Hubler, a 19 year old radio operator from Vienna. Later, Hubler was caught but even under torture didn't reveal any of his contacts. He was executed in late june 1944.
If I remember correctly my grandfather said after the war they all sent money to his mother, back in Vienna, as a sign of gratitude.
From Wikipedia : "The majority of the bureaucrats who implemented the Final Solution were Austrian. Political scientist David Art of Tufts University notes that Austrians comprised 8 per cent of the Third Reich's population and 13 percent of the SS; he states that 40 per cent of the staff and 75 per cent of commanders at death camps were Austrian. "
Some concessions were made to Austrian traditionalism. The 44th Division, mostly consisting of Viennese, was destroyed at Stalingrad. It was rebuilt from a few unit cadre who had survived and was given a unit flag that deliberately included features from Austro-Hungarian unit banners.
Fun fact: nobody, absolutely nobody knows "sound of music" in Austria...
yeah, pretty much. Well, those who do sometimes know it from abroad and then decided to move to Austria.
I must either be Austrian or a zoomer, 'cause no clue
Lucky them!
I‘m German and only got to know it via american friends
Because of the scarcity of Austrian naval officers, the Nazis were particularly interested in re-enlisting one Georg von Trapp, of World War I fame. The "Sound of Music" was based on his family's escape.
Very interesting. I heard from my father who was from Eastern Europe, that the Wehrmacht soldiers occupying his village in late 1941 said they were Austrian, not German. So they obviously felt there was a difference. Anschluss not working out 100 percent, yet, I guess.
I recall reading that if Soviet soldiers learned that an Austrian formation was opposite them, they were more ready to take prisoners, than was the case with "German" formations; apparently, even though Adolf Hitler was Austrian, Red Army soldiers consider Austria a "victim" of Nazi aggression. And supposedly, Austrian units were more ready to surrender, than regular German formations. I wish I could recall the source. As I remember, the reference was in a discussion about the Kursk campaign. This just may be another of the wartime legends you speak of, that made its way into print.
Probably that is true, but considering they were facing the soviets they would have done better to fight to the last man. Not much mercy or a lack of atrocities were recoded during the siege of Vienna.
My grand uncle was a Austrian pow in the Soviet Union and he said it was a lot worse than the war itself and he wouldn’t have surrendered if he knew what was coming.
Don't think the Russians cared who you are when wearing a German uniform
Interesting Video. A quick question regarding your sources: Did you read Thomas Grischany's "Der Ostmark Treue Alpensöhne" from 2015? He details the intergration of Austrians into the Wehrmacht from 1938 to 1945 and talks about the exactly this topic. (Spoiler) He pretty much comes to the conclusion that Austrians had some trouble integrating, that the early victories had a positive effect on the intergration and that only near the end in 1945 did "Austrian" loyalty begin to desintegrate. If I remember correctly, his conclusion is that Austrians (in general, there were exceptions) were pretty much as loyal as other "Germans" and more so than for example those from the Elsass, which too became part of the Reich.
Nope, didn't know about the book.
"The Finnish Government also accepts the obligation to intern German and Hungarian nationals in Finnish territory."
This meant deportation to the USSR, causing some 200,000 of them to eventually cross the Norwegian border
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Dann hoffe ich, dass ich dir nicht zu viel zusätzliche Arbeit aufdränge. Du hast sicher schon eine ellenlange Leseliste für alle deine Videos und Themenbereiche.
danke, habs auf meine (lange) Liste gesetzt, werd vielleicht mal darauf zurückkommen wenn ich mich wieder mit dem Thema beschäftige. Dieses Video hatte ich vor zirka einem Jahr angefangen aber dann auf Eis gelegt und erst vor kurzem wieder "ausgegraben".
"Quick" question about this book: does he come to the same coclusion as the guy who wrote the only available german language book about the Narvik campaign, that it basically took until the retreat of the allies in Narvik for the austrian soldiers to be considered equal to "german germans" in fighting?
An account of Poles in the Wehrmacht would be interesting although they were technically Volksdeutsch. They ranged from Germans who happened to find themselves in Poland because of Versailles, to people who spoke German badly or not at all and whose German status was quite nominal.
The best source of information on national identity and German army cohesion that I have found in English is "Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II" by Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz. They interviewed thousands of POWs and published the results in 1948. You can find the article on JSTOR and a number of websites. Basically, politics played no role in the decision to desert. The most cited reason for desertion among former Austrian Volksturmers was that they did not want to be drafted in the first place, followed by dissatisfaction with the primitive state of their tactical training.
There could be a another contributing factor. I listened to a testimony once, i don't remember exactly if it was a Austrian or German wehrmacht/SS soldier but i remember clearly that he talked about when they fleed through former german territory in Poland and were caught by polish. He said they executed the two germans but let the austrian go because he had something on him or his uniform that showed he was from Austria apparently.
I think you probably had in general slightly better chances as austrian in certain situations sometimes especially at the end.
It seems that minority of Austrians were during the WW2 the fanatical Nazis, but majority were more human. In general, there were many German/Austrian Catholics that believed themselves opressed by Nazis and considered Poles on the same side.
In addition many Austrians used to settle down in Poland. As Catholics they were mostly on the Polish-German conflict against German protestants. The example is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Weigl.
My Hungarian grandfathers family lived in Sopron near the Austrian border. He said there was a huge difference in border guard attitudes when Hungarians crossed the border to go to Vienna. It only changed when Hitler started being more openly diplomatic and cordial with Hungary( probably because he wanted Hungarians as potential allies), and then quite suddenly, the border guards to Austria had a more welcoming and cordial attitude towards Hungarians. I thought this was a very interesting perspective to hear on the before and after effects of the Anschluss.
After looking at a 1930's ethnographic map of Europe I understand the German position concerning the lands they reclaimed.
Excellent content as always
Such a powerful meme thumbnail, rings the sound of music in my heart 💕😆
I heard from somewhere that Tito, Stalin, Lenin and obviously Hitler were all in Vienna back in 1913 can someone tell me if there is any truth to it?
@Panos1972 Also I heard they visited the same cafe or something like that
Mussolini and Sigmund Fraud was also there
Interesting fact: During his lief in austria Tito had a son with an austrian woman. He fought in the Wehrmacht on the Balkanfront - against bis own father.
@Panos1972 The young painter grew jealous of the Georgian's glorious moustache.
Tito was actually a test driver for Ferdinand Porsche at Austro Daimler. And there are always a few right wingers who now and then campaign to take of the commerative plaque on the House near Schoenbrunn where Stalin stayed
i clicked on this b/c of the sound of music picture.....not what i expected lol
don't have time to watch this at the moment but only came to say thumbnail is epic!
Very well made video and it’s nice to see that you didn’t go in the trap of the post-war rewrite of Austrian history.
It’s very important to understand that until 1919 there was not even an "Austrian" identity. You were German in the K.u.K. The name Austrians wasn’t in use and after WW1 already a majority of Austrians wanted to join Germany. Even with the interwar year push from politicians to create an Austrian identity a lot of people still felt first and foremost German.
It was the loss of WW2 and the disillusion with having followed Hitler - so Germany - and the need to denounce Germany to get out of the postwar situation of being partially occupied by the looting red army That created an Austrian identity which in its core is based on denouncing being German (which of course causes anti-German sentiment not felt on the opposite since Germans never had such an identity crisis)
Six EU member states and are not NATO-members: Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta, Sweden and Switzerland (Schengen only). Technically speaking, these countries could invade Germany.
Danke fur diese Video.
Best thumb nail ever. Can you change your channel logo to that?
Please view "Europa the last battle".
The hills are alive with the sound of ... "DAKKA DAKKA RAT TAT TAT"
Most of Wehrmacht soldiers that have done crimes against in humanity in Serbia during the WWII where Austrians, they where exceptionally brutal and barbaric. In some academic circles their behavior was attributed to their desire for a "payback" for Austro-Hungarian defeat and humiliation by the Serbia in the WWI!
@lati long Although not an alliance, the USA and France didn't declare war on Finland, thus the 20th Mountain Army was neutral 1941-44. To my recollection, Franz Böhme was the only one who would have been sentenced to death out of 200,000, had not he jumped out the window. They used human shields quite systematically, so I think it was just a tactic of the time. You might want to watch the movie Lone Survivor.
What I've researched about The 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking". They did have ethnic battalions, but concurrently they were heavily mixed.
Best thumbnail ever.
That thumbnail meme is hilarious!
My great grandfather served in yugoslavia during the war. We know next to nothing about what he did down there, because he hated to talk about the war. Still a nice video, greetings from Austria (Vorarlberg)
I read that a substantial part of the guards in the concentration camps were Austrians. Then they also did guard duty in the occupied territories. Therefore fewer dead.
those were different troops. The Austrian SS was actually considered 2nd class, so a lot of those guys went for career openings in the east....
Excellent video. Could you also do one about the role of Luxembourg's soldiers in the Wehrmacht?
Was there any resistance (significant or not) in Austria following the Anschluss and the beginning of hostilities? I read somewhere that Otto von Habsburg organized and supported some groups (though I'm not entirely sure about how true that is), and the Austrian leftists must have been up to *something* during the war.
That might be a good video, don't you think?
The one group we learned aobut in school, you can still find the mark on St. Stephens cathedral in vienna today. If you go around it you will find O5 marked on it. In german Austria is written Österreich and the Ö can be substituted with Oe if there isn't an ö available in the font ect. E is the fifth letter so O5 means Ö. And that's all i know about them.
If you want a "cool" story you should look up the battle for castle itter at the end of the war. Resistance plays a small part in it.
There were some, but few. Slovenes, Communists, Socialdemocrats, Convervatives/Catholics, Monarchists. (In this order, by far the biggest groups were the Slovenes & Commies). When the British paradropped agents to foster the resistance, they were quickly caught and handed over to police by the populace.
The Austrians : 100% German and 0% Austrian when the Whermacht was winning and 0% German and 100% Austrian when they were loosing !!!
the same is true for all collaborators
A little history lesson on a bright sunny Friday Afternoon.
Can we have the thumbnail as a highly quality wallpaper link please? One with text and one without?
I do not know if this is a myth but I remember that Austrian looses were a little bit lower because a higher percentage was stationed in norway as occupation troops. They needed more Gebirgsjäger there.
I wonder to what extent the rough figures for losses and Knight crossed are actually good proxies of fighting powers. It seems that Austrians generally were in different types of units, and also fought in different theatres. I know anecdotally that many were stationed in Norway, and I'd assume (this is unsubstantiated) that Gebirgsjäger might have suffered fewer losses in the later years of the war. Also, I'm assuming that on the retreat in the East from 1944 onwards, the Austrians were deployed more or less close to Austria (as opposed to, say Königsberg), and since the main Russian thrust was towards Berlin, again, there might have been fewer losses in these areas. So I guess my point is that the comparison of the figures is not really convincing unless done on a more granular, apples to apples basis.
That isn't entirely correct. The 2nd and 3rd mountain division were baiscally the ground forces for the occupation of norway, but were replaced in 42 or 43 i think by the 6th mountain division (mostly bavarian troops) as occupation force and were moved to the easern front. Both mountain divisions were used as normal infantery on the eastern front as they needed anyone they could find.
And no, they weren't deployed closer to austria than the others, the Wehrmacht could not afford such luxury to place someone closer to their liking. And from a book i read about the experiences of an austrian in the 3rd mounatin division who came in in 43 i think, he made almost the whole way from todays ukraine to hungary in fighting retreat on foot.
Thank you for providing some detail and colour! I don’t think that there is in fact much disagreement between what you elaborated on and my initial points. Even being stationed in Norway for only sometime would likely have reduced relative fatality and opportunity for knight’s crosses, and of course being stationed close to Austria is a relative statement depending on where the action is. But when the choice was between Hungary and Danzig, then I’d assume you’d have a larger share of Austrians in close and familiar territory- not least because some might actually have some knowledge of the territory once you were fighting close to Vienna for example.
@@nilshansen8562 "then I’d assume you’d have a larger share of Austrians in close and familiar territory- not least because some might actually have some knowledge of the territory once you were fighting close to Vienna for example."
I dont think the germans were logistically able to move troops like that at that stage of the war.
I've recently read up on this and I can tell you that it was mostly Volkssturm Truppen maning the defensives on the route between the modern Austria/Hungary border and Vienna, which is less than 100km. The soviets first crossed the border of the Ostmark end of march 45
Vienna was captured on April 14th The city was only held by some 20.000 Wehrmacht troops, a bit of Volkssturm and the rest of the hungarian army (which actually was the strongest axis force in the battle of vienna).
The germans had 52 tanks in/around vienna while the soviets had ~700
The war had become very desparate for the german side at that point, austrian Wehrmacht soldiers would be fighting whereever they ended up at this point afaik. My Great Uncle was in the Handelsmarine (merchant navy) when the war ended (TIL he was one of few). He initially ended up in Hamburg, said he was hella scared what Vienna would look like but it wasnt that bad compared to many german cities. He joined the danube river police force in vienna after the war
Good presentation but the title and the picture are a bit of a cheap shot. Von Trapp, the father in Sound of Music, distinguished himself as a submarine commander in the Austrian Navy in WW1. He and family left Austria to avoid having to serve in Hitler's navy.
It’s just memeing a well known shot from the only movie most English speakers have ever seen set in Austria.
I think anyone who's ever seen the musical or the movie knows that the von Trapps are anti-Nazi. Anyone who hasn't (probably everyone in Austria itself) wouldn't know or care what the movie is about anyway.
@lati long its importent to remember that a lot of "Von"'s hated the nazis and the third reich, not only from hapsburg background but also prussians and others. its because hitler himself and most nazis didn't come from the nobility.
@lati long yes, the main difference on the appearance of waffen ss and the wehrmacht was their camouflage patterns
The POW survey is rubbish, also taking a high award such as the knights cross as an indicator for willingness to fight is not representative. Many of the old guard, those are WW1 veterans were not so favorable of germany, as mentioned a considerable number was expelled, including my grandfather who was a leutnant in the artillery for beeing a social democrat as well as insubordination during the civil war in 1934. He was later a member of O5. My uncle however was a supporter and in contriarty to your video joined the luftwaffe and flew stukas and Fw190s. He was definetly easy going though, getting demoted for pulling stunts and had a french girlfriend as well.
My great Uncle flew FW190s also. In JG 1. His father was also a Nazi official. They seemed pretty into it.
On the other side, was there not
a deliberately suicidal anti anschluss armed uprising in Vienna?
Also, there was 1 or more Austrian
underground resistances?
Most of my aunt's and uncles were killed by the gestapos in Vienna I'm also part German but dint know any history of my German side but my great grandmother told me when the Nazis annexed Austria her and my aunt and my soon to be born grandfather hid up in the mountains somewhere shortly after my uncle got killed in a town square sadly the only one to serve was my great grandfather his progression before that was a forest ranger my great grandmother even said he didn't like doing what he done the last time they were talking before he got shipped to Stalingrad. If it wasn't for him my great grandmother and everyone in my family this day I wouldn't be here even though I'm only 30 but this war scarred me the pain it caused to my relatives.
Can we please get the thumbnail as a t-shirt?
Sometimes it's the laid-back ones you have to watch out for... for example the American Southerner in every war including now.
Texans make up a disproportionate amount of SEALs
I fell in love with an mp40.🎵
*much yodelling follows* ...
Given how quickly some Austrian units were incorporated into the German Army how much pre planning do you suppose the Germans did for this? Also given the speed of all this I find it amusing that from the moment of being made a part of Germany the swearing in ceremony there's pictures of the 134th Regiment of Vienna with their Austrian uniforms adorned with the dirty bird to within a few months being replaced with standard German uniforms when the proper numbers came through.
Not much planning needed though. Military structure was after all similar and both countries had the experience of WW1 of how they would fight and plan their units. Also the german practice of keeping divisions from a certain region came in handy again because...well....the austrian divisions were basically just austrian divisions to begin with so no need to change personal on a large scale.
Command and combat language was the same anyway and most austrian units, if necessary, propably just got a short retraining to use german weapons and tactics. But all of that would be to hard to achieve.
I mean the wehrmacht to begin with expanded from a few hundred thousand soldiers to millions of men in a few years. Incorporating a few already fully trained units with the same language would really be that hard.
Alfredo Carpanetto graduated in Arts, yet he came out as a tank/panzer ace in Baltics.
I found I liked Austria which I thought was beautiful (and Austrians) a lot when I visited there. That said, I had just come from Germany?
I have heard that one reason Austria was not included in the newly unified Germany in 1870s the was that the Protestant Prussians did not want a Catholic Austria included.
Also Prussia: Annexes Catholic Bavaria and Catholic Alsace-Lorraine
Very interesting talk. Good coverage of the subject and interesting stats. I would have been interested also to see something on the behaviour of Austrians during the invasion of their territory and whether any differences were seen here. For example, did Austrian Volkssturm units answer call-up in the same way that those in Eastern Prussia and Berlin did? What of the activities of various anti-Nazi elements in Austria during the fighting in Austria?
Might happen, if I remember correctly some Volkssturm units from Austria were actually moved to Berlin or nearby, but that was an exception not the rule, since most Volkssturm units were old men not young boys. More info on the Volkssturm here: ua-cam.com/video/XHkBXuJUujI/v-deo.html
my Grandfather told me, that the locan Nationalsocialists were the first ones in the queue. They shouted "I need no secrecy, my vote is clear." And people with submachine guns asked the remaining voters if they also wanted to cast their votes in public or needed secrecy...And others were taking notes.
they managed to put armoured recce cars even in small villages, like my godfather told me and the county chronic states, too. They were conservativ catholics in those valleys, but they voted "yes", because it was clear that the Game was over.
Best thumbnail of all time
I would say anytime a referendum with Two alternatives. Get the clear victory for one of them. I think their is some creativity going on. 99.7% that is kind of strange.
Even Germany didn't have that much support for the Nazis. Kind of odd, yeah.
Well that's "easy": as Bernhard mentioned it wasn't anonymous, and parts of the population were excluded from the vote.
So anyone known to be sympathizing with a political party other than... wasn't allowed to vote. Jewish people weren't allowed to vote. And when the "local nazi" watches closely which circle you check, and comments for anyone to hear, that has a bit of an intimidation factor.
Shortly before the Anschluß the chancellor of Austria wanted to hold a vote, and Hitler threatened him to forcefully invade if he would do that. so it was cancelled.
(one could only wonder why.... i would claim because the numbers wouldn't have been as generous as they were when they had control over every aspect of the voting themselves.)
When the referendum was held, the new governement had reopened some factories and promised to create even more jobs and prosperity. The reopned factories had to previously close due to not being profitable. They weren't profitable this time either, but it made pretty good publicity in a weak economy.
Finally someone tells the truth. Thanks for your honesty. Subscribed.
All the best Germans come from Austria
Not when it comes to music.
I have a question, perhaps some of you may be of assistance. I recently received a book from my grandmother that is quite a detailed history of a very small area of Bohemia/Sudetenland. In this book I have found 3 family members that were mia/kia on the eastern front (listed as "Russland" specifically). The year/date placed by the names suggests it was at the start of Operation Bagration. I'd like to know what units they served in. One of them was 38, which has my noggin joggin.
They were from a small area of villages around 30 miles south west of Pilsen, during the war this was in the administrative unit of "Bischofteinitz" - right on the border practically.
Based on their residence is it possible to at least narrow down what units they might have served in? The above video got me thinking this might be a possibility...
generally yes, but not sure if a that point it was done at 100 %: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_district_(Germany)
Good Video. You missed on prominent division that was originally raised in Austria. This was the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment "Der Fuhrer" which was part of the 2nd SS Divison "Das Reich". Later in the war the troops were mostly German, but the regiment was originally mostly Austrian.
> You missed on prominent division that was originally raised in Austria. This was
> the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment
no, because the title is "Austrians in the Wehrmacht", SS was not part of the Wehrmacht.
I did 1 video on the SS so far and I paid a historian to check the script for errors, since there is a lot of old myths etc. on the SS out there. I have a rather strict policy for certain topics for various reasons.
Congrats you got it! I was going to mention that formation.
My father fought in Yugoslavia as a partizan. He told me that before an upcoming battle with Austrians they knew it would be fiercer than with Germans.
Austrians where more ideologically driven and never surrendered. No pardon from either side. Note that before and during "The great War" Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian empire where sworn enemies. Lots of axes to grind. Do I have any input from the Austrian side? Yes.
My mother was born in Sankt Georgen im Attergau, Vöcklabruck, Oberösterreich. My "Opa" was a NCO during both wars.
de SA3BOW
The Austrians had more mountain troops that Germany.
If mountain troops had fewer losses, and the German mountain troops also had fewer Knight's Crosses (no tank, u-boat and figher aces in mountain troops) this difference might explain it.