Posted on 03/23/2013 10:15:03 AM PDT by Texas Fossil
Her name is Kitty Werthmann, and this is her story:
“I am a witness to history.
“I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history.
If you remember the plot of the Sound of Music, the Von Trapp family escaped over the Alps rather than submit to the Nazis. Kitty wasn’t so lucky. Her family chose to stay in her native Austria. She was 10 years old, but bright and aware. And she was watching.
“We elected him by a landslide – 98 percent of the vote,” she recalls.
She wasn’t old enough to vote in 1938 – approaching her 11th birthday. But she remembers.
“Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.”
No so.
Hitler is welcomed to Austria
“In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25 percent inflation and 25 percent bank loan interest rates.
Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs.
“My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.’
“We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933.” she recalls. “We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living.
“Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group – Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone in Germany was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria. We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back.
“Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.
“We were overjoyed,” remembers Kitty, “and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and
everyone was fed.“After the election, German officials were appointed, and, like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.
“Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been re- quired to give up for marriage.
“Then we lost religious education for kids
“Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school.. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,’ and had physical education.
“Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail.”
And then things got worse.
“The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free.
“We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.
“My mother was very unhappy,” remembers Kitty. “When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination.
“I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing.
“Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time, unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler.
“It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.
“In 1939, the war started, and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and, if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death.
“Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.
“Soon after this, the draft was implemented.
“It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps,” remembers Kitty. “During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys.
“They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines.
“When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.
“Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.
“When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers.
“You could take your children ages four weeks old to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, seven days a week, under the total care of the government.
“The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.
“Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna..
“After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything.
“When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full.
“If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.
“As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80 percent of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families.
“All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.
“We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables.
“Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands.
“Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.
“We had consumer protection, too
“We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the livestock, and then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.
“In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps. The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated.
“So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work.
“I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van.
“I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months.
“They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.
“As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.
“Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law-abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long afterwards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.
“No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.
“Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria. Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.”
“This is my eyewitness account.
“It’s true. Those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity.
“America is truly is the greatest country in the world. “Don’t let freedom slip away.
“After America, there is no place to go.”
Kitty Werthmann
Progressives are fundamentally all the same. Mussolini, Hitler, Wilson, 0bama, Roosevelt (both of ‘em), Lenin—all are more or less on the same page with regard to the standing of the state vis-a-vis the individual. The only difference seems to be whether or not they had sufficient opportunity and excuse to engage in mass murder of their political opponents. I’m convinced the average Democrat today would absolutely be on board if they thought they wouldn’t get slaughtered in the attempt, thus the maniacal drive at removing even remotely combat effective weapons from civilian hands.
I just fnished reading a book titled, “Day of No return” by Kressmann Taylor. It was written in 1942, ad is based on the real life experiences of a young Lutheran seminarian who had to flee Germany in 1938 to save his life. I highly recomment it as reading for anyone who want to understand how the Nazis and Hitler were able to intimidate the German populace and eventually brainwash so many of them.
The plan to get control was to eliminate the religious opposition to Nazism and it’s pagan worship of the nordic gods, and their insistence that people worship Hitler as their Savior instead of Jesus Christ.
They harasssed Catholic priests and nuns and put them into concentration camps, but did not do a frontal assault on the RC Church because the Nazis feared that with such an international church, their diabolical plans would be exposed to the entire world. Instead they decided to divide and conquer the Lutheran Church in Germany. It was so bad that the Lutheran leaders eventually had to clandestinely develop an underground church which they called the
Confessional Church”. But with full force of a police state and the educational system, the voices od dissent were silenced to entirely underground.
This is a powerful account of the 1930’s in Germany. It is inspirational as well as depressing. It demonstrates the strength of a strong faith when facing a demonic cultlike government. OTOH, it clearly shows how any attempt to retain one’s faith and culture can be fruitless when your enemies control all the physical power of an army, and they are filled with hate and an absence of any human dignity.
“Don’t let freedom slip away.
“After America, there is no place to go.”
Kitty Werthmann Kitty, we are losing our FREEDOMS.
An amazing troubling 1st hand account of Hitler's rise to power.
Sounds like Obama way...
Similarities today?
Yes!!
this should be required reading for all school kids, once a year
terrific piece... thanks.
Changes in schools have been taking place since the initial election of Obama.
Shameless… Obama’s Celebratory Obamacare Statement Is Chock Full of Lies
Of course Hitler was a Socialist (more accuarately a Fascists) they called themselves with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party ( Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ).
They were as you correctly stated, Leftist.
The Left in the US has distorted that since WWII. They cannot allow the truth to expose them as brothers in crime.
Totalitarianism in all it’s forms is EVIL. (Progressivism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism, Dictatorship)
Frightening similarities to today.
Look, we don't have much more sunlight to spare, elect Rand Paul for a fresh breath of freedom.
agreed
There is no difference between communism and fascism except the methods of implementation and who they target for cultural cleansing and slaughter.
The communists lastest longer and have slaughtered and enslaved hundreds of millions more people than the fascists. They both have total control socially and economic.
To Europe the elite speak as if there are two choice: communism (which they call socialism) and Fascism (which the communists name “hate.”
Both systems totally control social thought and behavior, business/wealth and workers and both systems thrive on hatred for the other/enemy within. They both view the human lives of “the masses” as you would see cattle on a ranch.
Communists here try to pull the socialist/fascist “choice” Americans face. Everyone against communism and their social and economic dictates is a fascist - a racist hater.
Ofcourse, the communists (calling themselves socialists) hate everyone who disagrees with them. That is why Bammy has officially named communism’s enemies in the US - domestic terrorists. That would be patriots who defend and talk about the constitution, Vets who swore an oath on the constitution, white Americans, middle class Americans-Americans, wealthy Americans who are not a part of the party insiders, and “conservative” Christians who have rejected communism’s liberation theology (which is a KGB invention to convert Christians outside communist control to Marxist social and economic ideology. They made Jesus into an amoral, jealous, theiving comrade.)
We are dealing with some serious toltaltarian wannbes (inspired by globalism) in power (within both parties) and they have managed to overcome the constitution in the name of the war on Islamic terror. They switched the enemy of that war from Islamists to “conservative” Americans who get in the way of their dictates and their progress to overcome the constitution for total control. They want the American public to accept being cattle under their control like the communist’s “masses.”
There is no difference between communism and fascism except the methods of implementation and who they target for cultural cleansing and slaughter.
The communists lastest longer and have slaughtered and enslaved hundreds of millions more people than the fascists. They both have total control socially and economic.
To Europe the elite speak as if there are two choice: communism (which they call socialism) and Fascism (which the communists name “hate.”
Both systems totally control social thought and behavior, business/wealth and workers and both systems thrive on hatred for the other/enemy within. They both view the human lives of “the masses” as you would see cattle on a ranch.
Communists here try to pretend we only have the two choices - communism or fascism. Everyone against communism and their social and economic dictates is a fascist - a racist hater. All memory of the constitutional republic is erased from most schools so the “masses” can be converted into docile cattle. Getting Bush’s federalized education power in uniform National curriculum (no child left behind) promises to speed up the task of re-education for the young.
Ofcourse, the communists (calling themselves socialists) hate everyone who disagrees with them. That is why Bammy has officially named communism’s enemies in the US - domestic terrorists. That would be patriots who defend and talk about the constitution, Vets who swore an oath on the constitution, white Americans, middle class Americans-Americans, wealthy Americans who are not a part of the party insiders, and “conservative” Christians who have rejected communism’s liberation theology (which is a KGB invention to convert Christians outside communist control to Marxist social and economic ideology. They made Jesus into an amoral, jealous, theiving comrade.)
We are dealing with some serious toltaltarian wannbes (inspired by globalism) in power (within both parties) and they have managed to overcome the constitution in the name of the war on Islamic terror. They switched the enemy of that war from Islamists to “conservative” Americans who get in the way of their dictates and their progress to overcome the constitution for total control. They want the American public to accept being cattle under their control like the communist’s “masses.”
They are going to use Obamacare to kill off the old people who won’t be re-educated and who would interfere in their cleansing of American freedom and their progress into a police state future. They flooded us with foreigners and did not teach those foreigners about real American freedom and wealth creation based on property rights. They name social marxism’s class and ethnic hatreds and it’s oppressive solutions as American freedom.
In Latin America I’ve heard people say that the most devastating effect of Marxsism is the loss of neighborly love. It is replaced by anymosity, resentment, and violence (crime, terrorism, government abuse).
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