Posted on 03/13/2008 6:57:28 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Adolf Hitler entered Austria yesterday and in a speech before a great throng at Linz proclaimed the unity of that country with Germany. He will enter Vienna in triumph today. He was preceded by large forces of troops, which occupied important cities, a detachment going to the capital and another to Brenner Pass on the Italian frontier. Many bombing planes also appeared at Vienna. Heinrich Himmler organized the police of that city and many arrests were made. Ex-Chancellor Schuschnigg was under guard. Anti-Nazi newspapers were suppressed. Exodus attempts were balked by closing of neighboring frontiers.
Munich reported that at least 65,000 troops had gone into Austria, with much artillery, including heavy guns and tanks. Some 40,000 more moved toward the frontier and reinforcements were brought up. Men up to 38 were mobilized.
France suspended leaves of absence in the forces guarding the Maginot line and a high military council was held in Paris. Leon Blum again failed to gather a National Union Cabinet, but sought one of the Left. In London the Cabinet met and, while accepting the Austrian situation, considered what would be done in case Czechoslovakia was endangered.
The Fascist Grand Council at Rome, after a meeting on Austria, issued a vague communiqué neither approving nor disapproving of Germany’s action, but conceding it was “an open expression of the sentiment and will of the Austrian people.” It had before it a letter from Hitler to Mussolini explaining the former’s course and pledging that the German troops would not go south of Brenner Pass.
In Berlin Propaganda Minister Goebbels broadcast a proclamation by Hitler declaring the unity of the two German countries and warning that no nations could drive them apart. There were indications that a new Danubian settlement would be sought with Rome.
No event in the recent history of Europe matches in importance Germany’s conquest of Austria by force of arms. Theoretically, there is still an Austrian State and there is still an Austrian Government. German troops are merely “keeping order.” But those troops will remain in Austria until Hitler has made himself the undisputed master of the nation. Of that there can be no possible doubt. What remains to be seen is whether large developments are not now in the making which may in the end overshadow in importance even the conquest of Austria itself. Specifically, there is the question whether the same brutal thrust of German power which has sent an army into Austria has not wrecked beyond repair Hitler’s hopes of an understanding with Great Britain and, despite protestations to the contrary, strained the Rome-Berlin axis to the breaking point.
In order to appreciate at its full value what Hitler has risked in England, while his troops are overrunning Austria, it is necessary to remember how desperately Germany needs British financial and commercial aid, if the whole top-heavy structure of Nazi economics is to be kept from collapsing; how important it is for Germany to have at least the tacit assurance that Britain will not interfere with German plans in Central and Eastern Europe, no matter how far these plans may go; how sedulously Hitler has sought to undermine British relations with France and to cultivate the theory that German is a stronger, more natural and more reliable ally for Britain than any other Power on the Continent of Europe. In all these matter, until recently, considerable headway had been made. Political and financial groups in England which favored rapprochement with Germany have unmistakably gained in power. Apologies have been freely offered by British journals for the successive steps by which Hitler undertook to assert Germany’s right to rearm, her right to institute compulsory military service, her right to remilitarize the Rhineland, her right to repudiate the “war guilt” clause – on the ground that all these steps were merely directed toward the restoration of Germany to a position of “equality” with other powers. The recent visit of Lord Halifax to Berlin, the official expressions of British friendliness for Germany and the rise of a strong pro-German faction among the financial community in ”the City” have all furnished evidence of the progress which Hitler has made in winning British opinion to the view that Germany could be counted upon as a reliable partner to any agreement that might be made.
The result of the sudden invasion of Austria by a German army has been to topple like a house of cards the whole structure of confidence and of prestige on which British sentiment in favor of an “understanding” with Germany was based. Our dispatches from London describe the British Government as “appalled – there is no other word to describe it – at the recklessness of Germany’s action.” Not since the blood purge of 1934 has British opinion swung more sharply against Germany. The much-heralded negotiations between Berlin and London have been “postponed indefinitely, if not ruled out altogether.” Eagerness in England to reach an understanding with a Nazi Government which has ignored British protests and invaded Austria “has vanished overnight.”
Precisely the same note of astonishment and consternation was struck in the first dispatches that came from Rome. It is now said that the Italian Government was aware of Hitler’s intentions all along and offered no objection to his plans. One can take one’s choice between this interpretation of Italy’s position in the matter and the first reports, which describe the news from Austria as striking Italy “with the impact of an exploding bomb” and “leaving the official world in Rome aghast.” “Perhaps an open break will be avoided,” wrote our correspondent when the news reached Rome, “so as to gloss over the fact that a pillar that has upheld the whole of Italian foreign policy in the last two years has fallen to the ground; but it seems that the process of a breaking-up of the Rome-Berlin axis has begun.”
The blunt fact of the matter is that after long years of concern in Italy about the potential menace of a German army at the Brenner Pass, a German army is at the Brenner Pass today. That is an enormous fact for all Europe.
BERLIN, March 12. – Following is the text of Chancellor Hitler’s proclamation to the German people as broadcast from all German radio stations by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels: Germans:
Deeply grieved, we have for years watched the fate of our German brothers in Austria. An eternal historic affiliation, dissolved only in the year 1866, but sealed anew in the World War, always included Austria in the community of German peoples and German destiny. Sorrow inflicted on this county first from without and then from within, we feel, is our own suffering just as we know that to millions of German Austrians the misfortunes of the Reich caused equal sorrow and sympathy.
When in Germany, thanks to the victory of the National Socialist idea, the nation has regained its proud national consciousness of a great people Austria began another period of suffering and bitter tribulation.
A regime that lacked every legal mandate tried to maintain by brutal terror, by bodily and economic chastisement and destruction an existence repudiated by an overwhelming majority of the Austrian people. A great people thus lived to see the oppression of more than 6,000,000 of our own descent by a numerically small minority that understood how to possess itself of the necessary force.
Political outlawry and gagging, corresponding to an economic decline, stood in terrible contrast to the flourishing new life in Germany.
Who could blame these unfortunate racial comrades for turning their eyes longingly to the Reich – toward that Germany with which heir forbears had been united for so many centuries, with which they once fought shoulder to shoulder in the greatest war of all time, whose culture was their culture, to which they had themselves contributed in so may domains? To suppress this sentiment would mean nothing more than the damnation of hundreds of thousands of people to the deepest soul-suffering.
For years this suffering was borne in patience, but the Reich’s growing prestige raised ever firmer the determination to eliminate this oppression.
Germans:
In the last few years I have tried to warn the former rulers of Austria of this, their course. Only a madman could believe that oppression and terror would permanently rob the people of their love for their hereditary nationality. The history of Europe proves that such cases only breed even greater fanaticism. This fanaticism then forces the oppressors to adopt even more rigorous methods of oppression and these again only increase the horror and hatred of the afflicted.
I have further tried to convince Austria’s rulers responsible for this that in the long run it is impossible for a great nation, because it is unworthy of its greatness, to be compelled to watch how a people of like nationality are being impressed, persecuted and imprisoned only because of their origin or their adhesion to their nationality or to an idea.
Germany alone had to accept more than 40,000 refugees. Ten thousand others have passed through prisons, jails, and concentration camps of this small country. Hundreds of thousands have been reduced to beggary. They are impoverished and in misery. No nation in the world could forever tolerate such conditions along its frontiers. If it did it would deserve no better than to be itself despised!
In the year 1936 I tried to find some way in which to offer the prospect of alleviating the tragic fate of this, our German brotherland, and in this way, perhaps, arrive at a real reconciliation. The agreement of the eleventh of July, 1936, was signed only, however, to be broken immediately. The overwhelming majority remained subjected to lawlessness; its unworthy position as pariah in this State was not improved. Whoever openly adhered to the German nation was still being persecuted, no matter whether he was National Socialist, road worker or an old deserving army leader of the World War.
I then tried a second time to bring about an understanding. I endeavored to make the representative of this regime who faced me – as the elected leader of the German people – I endeavored to make him understand that these conditions were in the long run untenable since the growing indignation of the Austrian people could not forever be suppressed. I emphasized that from a certain point onward it would be unbearable for the Reich to watch such oppression in silence.
For if a solution of colonial questions is made dependent these days upon the right of self-determination on the part of the lower races concerned, then it is intolerable that 6,500,000 members of an old, great, civilized nation should by reason of its regime be placed in practice below such a standard of rights.
I, therefore, wanted to reach a new agreement allotting the same rights, the same duties, to all Germans in that country. This agreement was to be the fulfillment of the treaty of July 11, 1936.
A few weeks later we had to realize to our regret that the men of the Austrian Government of that time had no thought of fulfilling the agreement in its essential meaning. In order to obtain an alibi for the continuous infringement of equal rights of the Austrian Germans a plebiscite was invented, designed finally to outlaw the majority in this country.
The methods of this plebiscite were to be singular. A country that had had no elections for many years, and that lacks all facilities for listing rightful voters, announces an election to take place within barely three and one-half days.
There are no proper electoral lists, no ballots. There is no check of the electoral body, no obligation to keep the poll secret, no guarantee of impartial conduct of the elections, no safeguard for the correct counting of the votes, etc. If these are the methods designed to lend legality to a regime, then we National Socialists in the Reich have been merely fooled for fifteen years! We have passed through 100 election campaigns and we have toiled to conquer the assent of the German people.
When the late Reich President at last called me to head the government I was the leader of by far the strongest party in the Reich. I have since sought time and again to have the legality of my existence and my actions confirmed by the German people, and they have confirmed it. But if the methods that Herr Schuschnigg wanted to use are correct, then our plebiscite in the Saar territory was also merely a chicanery of the people whose return to the Reich was to be rendered more difficult.
We are of a very different opinion, however! I think we may all be proud of the fact that on the occasion of the plebiscite in the Saar we received the full confidence of this German people in an incontestable manner.
Against this unique attempt of an election fraud rose at last the German people in Austria themselves.
And if the regime should have again tried to suppress the movement by brutal force than the result could have been only civil war. Henceforth the German Reich will not tolerate that in this territory Germans should still be persecuted because they belong to our nation or because they believe in personal conceptions. The Reich wants peace and order!
I have decided, therefore, to put the Reich’s assistance at the disposal of millions of Germans in Austria. Since this morning there are marching across all frontiers of German-Austria the soldiers of the German armed forces.
Armed troops, infantry divisions and S. S. [Hitler Elite Guards] formations on the ground and the German air force in the blue sky – called by the new National Socialist Government in Vienna – will constitute the guarantee that the Austrian people at last will have the possibility, within a very brief period of holding a real plebiscite over their own future and with it their own destiny. And behind these units stand the will and determination of the whole German nation!
I, myself, as Fuehrer Chancellor of the German people, shall be happy now to enter again as a German and as a free citizen that country that is also my homeland.
The world, however, will convince itself that the German people in Austria are living these days through hours of holiest joy and reverence.
They see in their brothers’ coming to their assistance their deliverers from gravest distress.
Long live the National Socialist German Reich!
Long live the National Socialist German-Austria!
Berlin, March 12, 1938
ADOLF HITLER
Real Time + 70 Years ping.
Reply #1 is the Times editorial. Reply #2 is Hitler's explanation for the move into Austria.
Here I had been thinking this was an aggressive move to take over a weaker neighbor. Now I understand that it was really a humanitarian act to liberate the poor Austrians from their oppressors. Glad we got that cleared up.
How exactly is the news from 70 years ago considered “news” today? I don’t really understand your posting series of history (and exclusively the acts of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany), in the “news” category.
I suppose you could also post “news” about whites-only restrooms and drinking fountains, segregated schools, or the Japanese American internment camps of this time period in the USA.
The Germans who did these things are, like the Americans who did the above, all dead. They’re facing their Maker... This ain’t news.
That speech is pretty chilling.... I actually know a guy who (in a much different context) sounds disturbingly similar.
You haven’t got something more important to do than gripe about the title — like counting floor tiles or something?
Hitler’s statement shows that he certainly had a way with words, and understood the power of emotions.
In fact, had the union of Germany & Austria been accomplished legally and democratically, and had its purpose been peaceful, then who could morally object?
But such was far from the case, and the western allies’ failure to effectively object gave Hitler the go-ahead for his next plans.
Does this mean you don’t want to be added to my ping list?
I note that you are an advanced practitioner of that fine art called “moral equivalency.” In this school of thought, everything is “morally equivalent.”
For example, the Americans had segregated drinking fountains, the Nazis had gas chambers, so it's all the same, everyone is equally guilty.
Of course, I would consider such thinking a form of insanity, for which therapy is highly recommended. Might I suggest frequent use of Free Republic?
You are one who is doomed to repeat history. You have no interest in revisiting the past so you can learn from it.
This is really cool. It comes from OTR.net, correct? I loved the quotes reported by the British woman where someone asks a crowd in London, “Who will be a pacifist in this war,” and from the back: “Those of us who fought in the last one.” (or something like that) It gives a really good picture of the problem democratically elected leaders faced with public opinion. Roosevelt was in the same position.
Of course now that I look at that it is part of OTR. Never looked at the right hand side of the header. So yes.
(Sorry, I don't know how to do that html bit.)
This is an extraordinary report, including the speech of a US Democrat Congressman from Washington — explaining how the problem is, the US has our heads in the, er, sand, so the solution is, the US must stick our heads further into the, er, sand.
So, let me get this straight...Herr Hitler was saying that the Germans who were to vote in Austria were going to be disenfranchised...that the government of Austria was selected not elected...that there was voter intimidation and even voter fraud! My God! What a horrible country!
When you think of some of the reactions you hear and read from then, and put them in context with today it almost makes you want to pull your hair out. My wife is well sick of hearing me say “But it didn’t work in (insert time), why do they think that will work now?”
She wont watch news with me anymore.
I wish they had included the reports from Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. I wonder why they did not.
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