Posted on 03/12/2008 5:50:45 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Following an ultimatum from Berlin, the Schuschnigg government in Austria retired yesterday evening and was succeeded by one headed by the Nazi leader, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, as Chancellor. He immediately asked Germany to send troops to help in preserving order. Some 50,000 highly armed and mechanized forces marched to the border. Both Munich and Vienna report some crossed into Austria. Berlin denies this. Nazi mobs took possession of Vienna and raided the Jewish quarter. The swastika was flown over public buildings, and Fatherland Front forces were disarmed. There were similar demonstrations in other cities.
Europe was aghast at the coup of Hitler. His action struck Italy with the force of an exploding bomb. The impression was that Italy would not retort with force, but it was believed the Rome-Berlin axis had been shaken and that Hitlers visit to Rome might be canceled. No advance notice of Germanys intention is believed to have been given to Mussolini.
Britain delivered a sharp protest to Berlin, saying Germanys action was bound to produce the gravest reactions, of which it is impossible to foretell the issue. Other warnings were delivered earlier, but Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop retorted that Germany saw no reasons to confer with Britain until her purposes had been achieved elsewhere.
In Paris it was understood Italy had been asked if she would join in a united effort to save Austria, but had refused. France, however, took action similar to that of Britain in protesting the Reichs action. The parties tried to get together to form a new Cabinet to deal with the situation, but they were still too deeply divided to make that accomplishment possible. It was believed Leon Blum would not be able to gain sufficient support to head a government.
Premier Negrin of Spain announced that Italy and Germany had made unofficial proposals for some agreement with the Loyalists, but they were determined not to enter on negotiations.
Comandeering brewery trucks, now that's commitment!
I appreciate your posts.
While the rest of Europe debated and mulled, Hitler acted.
There are, of course, lots of similarities with how Iraq was handled and how Iran is currently being handled.
Your posts show that things can get a lot worse, real quick.
Ouch....
Another doofus who never took the time to read Mein Kampf.
Lest you forget, however: conservatives were the ones who were most opposed to actually dealing with Hitler.
Liberals didn’t want to deal with Hitler either, until he invaded their beloved Soviet Union.
Well, actually, more like the summer of '41, but you're right.
Depends on how you define "quick." Germany had been moving quite obviously in this direction since at least 1935 (the Rhineland crisis) with a series of overt violations of the Treaty of Versailles ... and the allies neglected to respond to any of them.
Communists, you mean.
Roosevelt had been working a policy of materially assisting Britain since 1940 -- generally having to work around the Republicans in Congress to do it.
Hitler gave orders that if the French so much as fired a shot when the Germans marched into the Rhineland, that his troops were to turn back. It never happened, and from the point on, Hitler knew Britain and France wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him.
Our present war is a result of Bush's having to decide between the Chamberlain and Churchill approach to the problem -- and I think history will conclude that he chose right.
Had France acted against Germany, one supposes the situation would have been at least as messy as the one in Iraq today; and it's difficult to claim that Germany wouldn't have tried to re-militarize in some other way. (After all, they had been secretly, if slowly, doing so since 1919....)
This is correct.
We dodged a bullet because Bush went into Iraq. Iraq was building weapons that were clearly in violation of the Gulf War cease fire terms. As a minimum, missles were found that had a range that were in violation of the cease fire.
Bush may never get the credit he deserves, simply because Saddam hussein was never allowed to put his military build-up into action. Every now and then we do learn from history.
one oddity I noticed here and had never known before was that the Czechs were willing to help save Austria if Britain and France had had some stones to do the same...and what pray tell was Czechoslovakia’s reward for wanting to come to their neighbor’s aid?
On the whole - and I’m sure there will be flaming for saying this - it likely worked out for the best that Germany was successful here and in Czechoslovakia.
Yes, they created much suffering for these peoples and others. I myself have walked under the gate at Auscwitz that says “Arbeit Macht Frei.” I saw the gas chambers and crematoriums that were preserved there along with the barracks for the prisoners. I saw also the number of buildings at this one camp that were not preserved. I am capable of multiplying to draw the full conclusion of the evil.
Here, though, is why I believe that it was better on the whole that Germany was able to do what he did. One of the effects of Germany’s actions was a severly weakened Soviet Union. Many people do not realize that Stalin actually killed more of his subjects than Hitler did. He was even in the process of eliminating his Jewish population in 1953 when he suddenly died. (Thank God!) Had Germany not grown in power to the point of nearly kicking down the rotten mess as Hitler called them, the fate of not only the Jews, but also the rest of the world would have been far worse. Had Germany remained weak, I believe that communism would have eventually taken over all of Europe. All of this while the USA remained isolationist because we weren’t dragged kicking and screaming into world affairs.
Just my thoughts on how WW2 can actually be looked at as a blessing from today’s point of view.
I really enjoy reading these blasts from the NYT’s past when I catch them here. Do you have some sort of ping list for them?
Where do you get these from?
The source is listed as “Microfiche”. Is there an electronic copy somewhere, or do you type/scan them into a computer for posting?
Yeah, that's a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. But who is to say you are wrong? One of my reasons for these posts is see what past events have to teach us about the present. Another is to play the "what if" game. What Stalin would have done had Hitler been squashed early on is one of the big "what ifs."
There is, indeed, a Real Time + 70 Years ping list, and you are now on it.
Politiicans are stunned when someone actually does what they say they are going to do.
The local university library (UC-Santa Cruz) has the Times on microfiche. The readers have copying capability (provided free by us generous taxpayers) so I scroll through the reels and take pictures of whatever strikes my fancy. Then I transcribe them into Word and add HTML formatting. I have tried scanning but so far I haven't been able to make that work very well.
Ain’t isolationism great? /s
I got a book of the New York Times front pages during World War II for Christmas a few years ago. It’s fascinating to see how the media covered events as they happened. Often their perspective (AKA conventional wisdom at the time) was much different than we think.
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