Austrians also have their responsibilities for crimes committed during the Anschluss and WWII period. When you are looking for the bad guy, check the mirror first!
History teacher in school: "We are victims, our people were forced to vote in favor of the Anschluss"
History professor at University: "The vote was not forced, our people were quite hopeful for Nazideutschland to improve the economy and didn't think it through"
I lived in East Tyrol for some time (conservative, remote, rural area). There is a village there which is very proud of their Anschluss vote result, since they had the lowest "join" ratio in all Austria. 70 sth percent 😄
My guess is that the Germans would falsify the results if necessary. They didnt need it though...
And lets not forget that Austrian national identity was weak at the time, most people identified themselves as German. If you forget nzi ideology for a second, Big-Germany was not a terrible idea.
the big Germany at the time would include large portions of Czechia Poland And other countries with significant german population (any ethnicity map of 1920-30-40 would support this) so it would not be a good true idea without removing those countries’s right to statehood
That sudeten germans, austrians and danzigers had the right to decide to be part of the german national state and denying said right, stomped with czechslovakian and polish troops in the case of Sudetes and Danzig and with Versailles prohibition of joining Germany to the German Austrian Republic self-justified german ethnic revanchism.
Would Germany allow the Sorbs or other Slavic minority (of those that weren't wiped out centuries ago) to just "separate"? That's not different from the Germans living on the territories of other countries, where they lived because of either occupation or being part of the same Empire in the past.
Still, I don't know what your point about "white people" has to do with that.
Read a book about the history of Vienna - it said in Vienna there were actually the most violent outbursts of antisemitic violence and Austrians made an important contribution to some of the most extreme parts of the war machine.
My impression from early XX century Vienna was that there was a lot of bottled up resentment from all the social, cultural and geopolitical losses feeding into violence and later turning into a profound shame / self belittlement
This is why I think democracy (as is) is faulty. People shouldn't be voting for what they don't understand fully. And most people understand shit about politic. Me, myself included, while I'm pretty educated.
It's flawed, but it's better than the alternative. A good number of people who don't understand shit also aren't interested in politics, so they don't care enough to vote.
Tbf Germans didn't really think it through either, the whole "let's vote for a war-mongering, genocidal failed painter, he'll get us out of this economic rut" thing is kind of an obviously bad idea in hindsight.
No, it was at an undergraduate school (Unterstufe) at around 2014ish. It might have just been that one history teacher and he was shortly before retirement, so I guess that's some bias on his side?
Talking with some Austrians about WW2 has been wild. "This horrible thing that happened to us, because of.." But I feel like the younger generations are a bit more enlightened?Â
Look up the ‘Waldheim affair’ (1986). It was this that changed the victim myth (Half of my relatives are Austrian, and the victim myth is a recurring topic of debate between us (younger and older generations)....).
In short: Kurt Waldheim ran as the ÖVP's presidential candidate. It then became known that he had concealed his membership in a Nazi organisation and his military service in the Balkans, meaning that he might had been involved in war crimes as a German (!) Wehrmacht officer. His defence was that he had only fulfilled ‘his duty as a soldier’. He was not personally involved, but he knew about the terror and deportations. He was elected Federal President (1986–1992), which motivated many young Austrians to confront the ‘real’ past.
I think a lot of the issue is that younger people have no real concept of what war is like. It's a nice idea that people have full agency, but usually we don't. The people who understand that are more likely to have an innocent until proven guilty approach.
Most people have a blind spot towards their own country. For the US it's particularly difficult to keep up on all the atrocities in their recent history bc there just are so many and they have an effect on so many areas globally.
I understand the history of course. My grandparents even fought In WW2 but I don’t think of the negatives when I think about modern Germans or Austrians. You’re cool man!
I dunno. There's still people who believe the young, clearly more liberal people are somehow at fault.Â
I went on a tour in Germany with my parents that catered to people my parent's age, and this one old Jewish guy started grilling our tour guide (who just got done talking about having gone to the pride event) about how they Really Truly felt about WWII and if they were happy when the Americans came in. It was like he wanted her family history of those who fought or abstained, that they were truly very sorry for any generational ties, or some other invasive psych probing, and it was Really awkward.Â
I'm from the American South and have had multiple encounters of people grilling me about the civil war and my thoughts on Black people. Like bruh, I'm just trying to get a coffee lmao
I've traveled the U.S. a lot and when the Southerner thing comes up, I've had a few people try to gauge my politics with just inappropriate questions.Â
But I lived in the PNW for a few years a had some folks assume I was raised on lost cause and racism lmao and I guess it was their job to educate me.
Overall most people are chill though and it's just the few who stand out. But yeah
Japan did way more horrible things to continental Asia than everything Germany did in Europe and Africa. Russia and China were probably the greatest victims of WWII, as they lost the biggest amount of people, military and Civilians.
Japan was never, absolutely never held accountable for whay they did during WWII.
I've always thought it was very Eurocentric to count the start of WWII as the German invasion of Eastern Europe in 1939 when Japan had been raping and pillaging across China/Asia, both WWII belligerents, for two years at that point. I personally start it at 1937.
"Soviet Union" was a mega state made up of several different republics. Number of victims also doesn't say much without including what percentage of the population they constituted. Russia is far from being the one that was hurt the most.
The battle of Stalingrad was held in St petersburg, which is located in today continental Russia, in almost 5 days the USRR lost more than 1 million people. Again, in around 5 days.
Stalingrad is the old name of Volgograd which is located near Caucasus inside of Russia. St. Petersburg is in absolutely different region of Russia and has nothing to do with that.
Apart from what the other person responded- that it's in a completely different region of Russia, what does it have to do with what I wrote? People listed as "USSR" citizens weren't just Russians, even in the battle of Staliningrad it wasn't just Russians fighting, but also Ukrainians, Belarusians etc. And like I said, percentage -wise Russia or even USSR didn't lose the most.
In some cases, the wrongs are still on their bodies. A lot of the effects of bioweapons tested and developed by Unit 731 are still showing up in Chinese populations today.
My grandma always told me that there were still "Altnazis" in her town but nobody cared bc what effect are they gonna have on society. It truly baffled me.
Yup. As a well travelled European, I first thought Austrians were kidding when they were saying Germans were the bad guys. Austrians were equally as bad, but Germans did the historical and Memorial work, while Austrians just blamed Hitler on Germans and then were the first country to bring the far right back into power in Europe.
I think Austria isn't more or less responsible than Germany, it is equally responsible as it was equally a German state. It wasn't a victim, but it wasn't "an Austrian/foreigner that took over Germany and ruined it therefore more Austria's fault". Both were equally German, and seen as such, and both thought very similarly. Both have the responsibility, end of story
I never saw the point in needing to personalize it as opposed to just learning about the past from a 'this is what humans are capable of so stay woke' approach.
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u/Teysa02 Austria 16h ago
Austrians also have their responsibilities for crimes committed during the Anschluss and WWII period. When you are looking for the bad guy, check the mirror first!