How The Sound Of Music Distorts History

Interesting... I guess that most people have no idea that the Anschluss had such a big support in Austria.

Intelligence and purity.

But quite a few Austrians believe, want to believe or try to make others believe that Austria was Hitler's second victim (according to this rationale the first would have been Germany itself, the third Czechoslovakia, the fourth Poland, and so on). In other words, all are victims, the Nazis were like Martians or other even stranger and more wicked extraterrestrials (Rigelians?) who suddenly landed in central Europe after the end of the First World War and the treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye!

I suppose that many people in Austria are ashamed of how their parents and grandparents welcomed the Nazis. So they will be in denial and want to believe that they all were victims.

Intelligence and purity.

Yes, you are quite right, and they forget that in 1938 most Austrians who were not Jews, socialists, communists or had a very democratic outlook liked and even loved Hitler, who was an Austrian himself. His entry into Vienna (a personal issue for him for he spent his worst years there) was really triumphal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ixcEgd1SIU.

Then came the war, gradual defeat after 1943 and finally total defeat, humiliation, the Soviets occupying Vienna and the like. Ten years later, in 1955, when they recovered their independence and sovereignty, they were making Sissi and Sissi-like films, showing an idealized, romantic 19th century Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Empire, pure escapism.


Splice the mainbrace