The Conquest of Austria | The Nazis in Power
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- Опубліковано 15 січ 2024
- By 1937, Hitler’s ever-growing ambitions were driving Europe to the brink of war. Ever restless, he knew that Germany must conquer the world, or be destroyed. His first target was Austria, his homeland, whose annexation to Germany would unite German blood under one indomitable Reich.
However, in an effort to avoid Nazi rule, the Austrian Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, called a referendum on annexation, to show the Austrian people’s will against it. Hitler’s reaction was one of rage, and on the morning of Friday, the 11th of March, 1938, he sent an ultimatum to Vienna.
At 5.30am the next day, the German army crossed into Austria. It was met by great cheering crowds, and Hitler’s arrival in Vienna was one of true apotheosis… Yet the darkness at the heart of Hitler’s European dream was also emerging, as the Nazis began to detain and repress Austrian minorities, particularly the Jewish population, on an unprecedented scale.
Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the annexation of Austria, and the post-war myth of Austria’s victimisation at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis. They also look at the Nazis’ first acts of violence, discrimination and deportation against Vienna’s Jewish population, prefiguring the horrors to follow.
Watch the previous episode here: • How Hitler Prepared Ge...
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As a recent contributing subscriber to the official podcast, and as a huge fan of Tom’s work, especially Dominion, (and his interviews on UA-cam regarding all his work), and being introduced to Dominic, and his work, has been pure pleasure. Intellectual stimulation from two learned men having fun is just what this technology is meant to provide. Thanks to you both, and to your teams, for your contributions toward raising the Quality of intellectual content in the Public Square. Keep singing and keep laughing, especially while discussing the most somber of topics. We need both.
hear, hear! 👏
Yes, I've just discovered these two and their work and even after only watching a few I'm thoroughly absorbed.
Having spent far too many weekends at my grandparents as a small child I unsurprisingly know The Sound Of Music inside out, back to front, and could quite possibly close my eyes and act the entire film in my mind word for word, scene for scene, song for song, doe ray me for doe ray me... And I would like to say to Tom, personally. Thank you. You have just entered that part of my memory forever and found yourself a prime seat at the front 🤣
Few people realise that if the vin Trapps followed the "Sound of Music" escape route they would have crossed the border and ended up at the Berghof and run into the Fuhrer on his daily walk!
The Berghof is a pleasant four to four and a half hour mountain hike from the von Trapp villa - at 21.2km - some of it steep terrain, but, hey, they're used to it .... When I was young and fit in Australia (that's kangaroos and beer, not apfelstrudel, Der Fuhrer and beer), I could do a 20km walk in 2-3 hours on flat terrain. The route to the nearest Swiss Border Crossing is something like 380km, passing through a significant part of Austria. There is a shorter route, if you cut through Bavaria, but that is really quite beside the point in this case.
You want to go from the Haus von Trapp to place that isn't Austria over the mountains taking a family with you, you go through the very heartland of Hitler's Reich.
This teaches you three things:
1. Americans just have no clue about geography,
2. Hollywood induces stupidity,
3. Australians Austrians and Bavarians basically like beer, and we have that in common...
Further fun fact, the small parts of Australia that have alpine snow, have more of the stuff annually than Switzerland!
Interesting, as always. I have recently discovered that my father, then a 30 year old accountant, travelled through Austria and Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1938, as part of an epic road trip from Glasgow. His photos of swastikas, in places like Innsbruck and Vienna, are chilling.
Why is it chilling?
Because it indicates the degree of control which the Nazi party had taken over the cultural life of Austria. I don't think my Dad expected that Europe was about to be plunged into 6 years of war. He was a lover of mountains, not a spy, but there is one photo of what seems to be a parade or rally. I am sorry that I never got the chance to ask him about this trip
A little known change imposed on Austria was that they gave Austrians about ten days to start driving on the right instead of on the left as Austria (and Czechoslovakia) had been doing up to Hitler's takeover. People see right hand drive cars in "Sound of Music" including Captain von Trapp's Mercedes and think it is a mistake; it's not as it would have been normal until March 1938. Curiously, in the scene where the Trapp Family is seen pushing the car and Herr Zeller the new Gauleiter of Salzberg catches them, SS officer Karl seems quite at home starting the motor of a right hand drive car!
It proved far more difficult to get trains to change over to right hand running, so even to this day trains headed out of Austria to Italy still run on the left, also making them compatible with Italian practice of running trains on the left.
The car in which Archduke Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo is still in a museum in Vienna, and yes, it is right hand drive.
My new favourite podcast. This channel is going to grow and grow
I’m a subscriber and this series has been excellent!
As an Austrian who has read up on the rise of Fascism and WW II rather extensively this strikes me as a very accurate and fair account of the so called Anschluss. I'd like to particularly laud you for mentioning G. E. R. Gedye. His account "Fallen Bastions" is one of the most important contemporary accounts of and reckonings with the Nazi's incorporation of Austria and later the Czech Republic into the Third Reich to date. I can only recommend it to fellow listeners here. Sadly, the book is often overlooked nowadays.
There is one minor objection to your presentation, or perhaps more of an annotation: Contemporary Austrian and German historiography classify the Austrian authoritarian system between 1933/34 and 1938 as fascist.
That being said, the military side of Austria's annexation was one of the worst blunders in the history of 20th century Europe. Had the Austrian leadership had had the nerve to accept the - prohibited - Social Democratic Party's offer of alliance and armed workers' militias the Social Democrats were willing to raise and had it had the courage to order the Austrian military to resist, the invasion could actually have been defeated. The Wehrmacht was in total disorganization, the main column was stuck in a traffic jam for days, and many if not most units did not even have any ammunition. The cost would have been excruciating for the Germans. Now, at the same time however, civil war would have broken out inevitably, and certainly parts of the Austrian army would have joined the Nazis right away. The Nazis had successfully infiltrated both army and police at this point, and they roughly had a third of the population behind them. How this civil war would have ended is anyone's guess. Also, there were no attempts by the Austrian leadership in the months leading up to March 1938 to form any alliance with Czechoslovakia, which had a highly regarded army at that time and could have been persuaded to help in case of a German invasion.
So, it was the incomptence and cowardice of the Austrian dictatorship that delivered Austria to the Nazis, rather than Hitler's abilities.
Interesting insight. Thanks.
Nothing to do with hundreds of thousands of Austrians cheering
and waving flags of welcome then....? Completely laughable
" analysis ".
@@2msvalkyrie529 Which I am certainly not denying. But you underestimate how divided the country was. It was by no means all Nazis...
Love the detailed info in your storytelling, on individuals, nation and culture. So useful for understanding the world today 👍
Hahaha Dominic's expression is pure gold!
As a subscriber I love that you put these videos on UA-cam. This makes it so much more engaging to see you two telling these stories. love it.
On behalf of the Austrians (of whom I am not) and their flowers, it must be said that Edelweiss is NOT an Austrian folk song, it was a purely commercial creation. Nevertheless I am really appreciating this series. And I am hoping that later there will be a followup on the Third Reich directly before the war, and then at least one more series on Germany during the war. And I must confess there is a part of me that craves a deep dive into the SS madness. Thanks indeed.
Edelweiss is associated with Switzerland as its the nations flower.
Even if the song was only composed for the play/movie, as an Austrian I have to say that it still gives me chills when I think about the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were scattered around the world from Mexico to Shanghai and when they showed their Austrian passport some local official answered: but such a country doesn't exist anymore.
Only than you realize the true worth of the Edelweiss.
At first I wondered, "Did I already listen to this in audio form?" and then the intro began. And nope, I would've remembered being serenaded like that!
Worth it for the 'drinking gun-cleaner' line alone! 😅
Serious stuff, but I love your light-hearted approach.
Listening to this again before I head to Austria tomorrow 🤝
Love this podcast wanting to know if they have done any episodes on Roman emperor Caligula?
My step-dad was a POW in Austria. He always said that the Austrians were more fervent Nazis than the Germans.
My grand-father was an Austrian Nazi, and you are absolutely correct.
You are right to point out the cheering crowd in Vienna.There were many in the city, no doubt, and perhaps the majority, that stayed fearfully at home. Outside in the countryside, where both my father and mother's families lived, the divide was sharp. In the hills and valleys of Karnten, for instnace, the German guns trained on the towns and villages ensured submission. My mother's teacher was driven away, never to be seen again. Her family lived in fear of informers. But the region was never fully subjugated. Locals who prospered by being Nazi members would be shot in the street, and though everyone knew the killers' identities none would say anything. All the while the partisans would come down from the hills on raids. But once the war was over the same Nazis who were in charge of the land registry etc were kept in place. And no restitution came for those who had suffered.
You guys are riveting to watch.
Absolutely riveting!
At the 5 minute mark and following, you have placed Hitler's planning to take on Austria and Czechoslovakia during the years 1943-44. This is incorrect. Those discussions involving the takeover of Austria and Czechoslovakia took place prior to Spring 1938 when the Anschluss was directed.
When they were making the Sound of Music, the producers wanted to put up swastikas and other Nazi symbols in Salzburg for the movie. The local city politicans did not want them staging scenes with swastika banners. The producers than threatened instead to include old newsreel footage featuring the banners from the actual Anschluss. They city leaders let them put up the banners.
Fritzsch was framed by the SS. It was a General Frisch who had been blackmailed, but Heydrich forced the blackmailer to say it was Fritzsch in order to force him out. He was cleared later.
A man of the high castle has the best theme tune
Holding back my "like" due to Tom's singing. 😉
The thing that bristled me about that revisionist notion via "Sound of Music", about it reflective of anti-Nazism, is that Austria at the time was already a right-wing fascist entity, it was in essence over which specific flavor of it was going to run the country. Just because Dolfuss and Schuschnigg and the rest of their party didn't wear swastikas or openly (key emphasis on that) talk about anti-Semitic agendas like their Nazi counterparts did, it doesn't mean there wasn't injustice and the demolishing of civil rights already ongoing that harmed the people. As much as figures like von Trapp like to portray themselves as anti-Nazi, they certainly weren't anti-fascism and supportive of civil rights when it counted the most; the state and its authoritarian apparatus was paved enough for the Nazis to just adjust it to their liking rather than building it from the ground up.
Whereas you ( had you been there ) would have resolutely opposed
the Nazis ? With hindsight , obviously....Your courage is an
example to us all !
14:41 a lot of people misunderstand the name "Deutsch-Österreich" (German Austria). It is not a sign that they officially wanted to join Germany already back than. The term "Austria" had been used colloquially for such a long time for everything, everything was "Austria" in a way, from Trieste to Prague, to Krakow and Bukovina. If you would have asked somebody in Czernowitz in 1917 where is Austria, they would have said: here, here in Bukovina, that is Austria. So the Republic that was founded 1918 in Vienna called itself German Austria, because it was the German speaking areas of Austria ... not the Czech Austria, not the Polish Austria, not the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) Austria, not the Slovene Austria, etc. That's what the name means.
When you say French Canada, the name also doesn't imply that this region wants to be part of France.
Austrian parliament voted to join Germany in 1919.
Yeah ,we could see from the newsreel footage that the Austrian people had no wish to be united
with Germany......?!?!? 😂
The World of Yesterday, a memoir begun in 1934, is an interesting look on this period.
they willingly and gladly joined with germany that's how.
How could anyone be anti-Monk? 😀🐵🐵
Guys, I'd love to hear some pods on WW1, who was to blame, how it started, the "stab in the back", anti-Semitism, what the average soldiers thought they were fighting for, etc
From late 1918 to 1921 postage stamps of Austria were printed with 'Deutschosterreich" as the country's name. Likely reflecting the feeling of some that Austria was too small to carry on in its truncated state after the end of WW1.
Austrian parliament voted to join Germany in 1919. Probably related to that.
This series has reminded me that I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts on the song and video "Deutschland" by Rammstein ua-cam.com/video/NeQM1c-XCDc/v-deo.html. It's intense, confronting and controversial, but also a really powerful expression of the conflicted feelings many Germans have about their country. (I can't remember if you speak German but the automatic English translation of the captions is pretty accurate).
I wouldn't normally suggest this was in your wheelhouse, but it truly is a unique piece of art and well worth your time!
I will save you the suspense, sir. There is zero chance they are going to read your comment and then search for & sit through the song. I'm not even going to, and I'm a layabout with plenty of time on my hands 😂
@hnnsy
Sassy boy! 😁
@@petebondurant58 😂
Germans have 78 years of propaganda rammed into them. Om sure that has and will continue to raise all sorts cognitive dissonance.
Mussolini didn't get the trains to run on time but Eichmann did.
@shawnkennedy855
Ouch!
What Putin thought would happen in Ukraine. Rhyming, but not the same.
It had already happened in Crimea. Ukraine had 8 years to purge pro-Russians/Russians from positions of authority to stop similar happening in Ukraine proper.
Had to skip that intro *shudders*
A grim subject indeed. The last four years seems to indicate we learned nothing.
Why is it grim?
What does it have to do with the last 4 years?
@@mattb5427Two weeks to flatten the curve…
Bueno como te dije, Señor Hitler que ya no se si aún.
Estás atrapado en un portal, en una estación o cueva de cristal.
No si en los Alpes Zuisos, o el Imalaya. Recuerdo el 2006 alguien pedía ayuda de AYA
Hitler didn't have to do much to take Austria - he's Austrian himself and simply aligned Austria to Germany as both nations are culturally closely aligned. Many people don't even know that Viennese Jews suffered terribly during 1938 and were immediately deported or stripped of their rights. The incorporation of Austria into Germany is mainly "glossed" over in history as the majority of Austrians voted to join the Reich.
If Hitler was "so useless", how did he achieve such power?
Well was it such a great shock given that when the Austro - Hungarian empire as an ally of Germany(the Central powers) during World War 1, 20 years later, that Germany would want to link up with their brethren? Mussolini, Franco and Hitler only wanted the best for their own countries and her people, and they wanted every European countries' leader to do the same for their respective nations. Mussolini and Hitler were against the plans of the International marxists, so was Japan as an ally of Germany, her emperor Hirohito didn't want to be a part of a World government.
I read with interest about how Austrian divisions fought on the Eastern Front and how the NKVD were amused at how captured Austrians interrogated after capture in Stalingrad were at pains to express they were Austrians and not Germans.. but a few months previously they had happily rampaged across Southern Soviet Union, committing war crimes, looting from civilians, taking all their food stocks, winter clothing etc and often driving them out into the snow to perish ... the Soviets were not fooled. though they often identified Austrian units in the frontline as potentially "weak" spots for offensives
Are we subordinate, Tom? I thought the Union of Crowns would suggest otherwise. I quite like England and am quite fond of English people, I don't feel subordinate to you though. Though, it is good to know what you' d likely think of me.
A fairly uncharitable interpretation of what he is saying. I assumed to point he was making is just that England possess a higher population than Scotland so come general election time the prime minister is usually selected by England, and sometimes against the wishes of the majority of Scots. (I e. Boris Johnson or the Brexit referendum) This has lead to some feelings of unfairness within Scotland, some of who feel like they are being dragged out of the EU / into another Tory gov. Against their will.
He's not saying that he literally believes he is superior to you simply because he is English and you are Scottish.
@@TheNotSoFakeNews Nope you missed the point. England did not subordinate Scotland, Scotland and England formed a Union of Crowns, then the Act of Union voluntarily. Scotland and England never merged into one culture, or even one legal system. Scotland never became part of "Greater England". It was a poor analogy.
@@TheNotSoFakeNewsmm
Scotland....or " North Britain" as it is better known was predicted to produce a landslide majority for the SNP after Johnson and Brexit....mainly by people like yourself . Remind us what's happened since.....😂😂😂 ?
Don’t you mean Australia ?
I understand why, but do we really think that Hitler’s motivation for everything he did was always the worst motivation? Dominic chalks everything up to assuming the worst and most evil interpretations of Hitler’s actions. It’s kind of cheap, especially for a historian. I could feel Tom holding his tongue a few times
Indeed.
And now Israel is doing it to the Palestinians.