A Photo of Smiling Austrians and Germans
Herbert Kuhner
The photo was taken in March of 1938 after Austria has been annexed. Austrian officers wearing the round caps, leftovers from World War I, look up at mounted German officers wearing the steel helmets that Hell’s Angels still wear. The officers on foot and the mounted officers are smiling. The grins of the Austrians are wider.
It must be a wonderful feeling to be placed in a supine position and like it!
Here are parts of two accounts by two octogenarian Austrian Nazis who reminisced about the past. (1)
From the first: “Everyone can’t go onto the streets, but when the streets are packed with people, what more could you ask for?”
From the second: “The so-called occupation was met with flowers galore. Vienna has never been covered with so many flowers before and there will never be as many flowers in Vienna ever again. That was the welcome that our soldiers from German territory received when they marched in. This was not an act of war, but an act of liberation, a homecoming.”
My Memoirs of a 39er contains the following sentence “Here’s how the ‘Rape of Austria’ took place in a nutshell: before being violated, the victim yelped and hoisted her skirts.”
The round officer caps would be discarded and replaced with Wehrmacht caps. The Austrian officers would soon be transformed into German officers and they would join their “brethren” in leading their soldiers in triumph over Europe, parts of Africa and deep into the Soviet Union.
However the Blitzkrieg would slow down at El Alamein and Stalingrad, and after those defeats, there would be no more moving forward. The motion would exclusively be backward.
Concerning service in the Wehrmacht, Kurt Waldheim put it this way: “I did my duty like hundreds of thousands of Austrians.”
Among those who did their “duty” were Obersturmbahnführer Friedrich Peter, who served in a murder brigade and Major Walter Reder, who commanded massacres and rape.
Was the Wehrmacht an Austrian, as well as German military force? Did those former Austrians who fought in it consider themselves Austrians or citizens of the Reich?
In order to consider serving as a duty one would have to favor the annexation.
Here’s former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel take on the annexation: “The sovereign state of Austria was literally the first victim of the Nazi regime….They took Austria by force.” (2) I consider this question to have been decided. The country was a victim of aggression, specifically a military aggression. I will never permit Austria not be viewed as a victim. (3)
Former President Kurt Waldheim counters: “Saying farewell to concept of the role of pure victim is a necessity, yes essential for Austrians. It was the basis of our spiritual equilibrium after 1945, of our reconstruction and of our post-war identity, but is only part of reality.” (4)
Interesting to note, is that Austria, not Germany, pays the Wehrmacht pensions of those soldiers who were Austrian citizens before 1938 and after 1945. Here’s he question of questions: If indeed “Austria was the first victim” of Nazi Germany, why on Earth are pensions and benefits for Austrians, who served in the Wehrmacht and the SS, provided by Austria and not Germany? Why does the “victim” have to pay?
[1] Egon Humer: Schuld und Gedächtnis, documentary (four former high-ranking Nazis in conversation), ORF (Austrian TV), 1992.
[2] Wolfgang Schüssel, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 9, 2000; Wiener Zeitung, Nov. 10/11, 2000.
[3] Wolfgang Schüssel, Österreichischer Bundeskanzler Neue Züricher Zeitung, Feb. 15, 2005.
[4] Kurier, March 5, 2006, p. 3
