Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

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James Paul
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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#31

Post by James Paul » 06 Dec 2016, 21:18

JLEES wrote:I agree. There was a time when the Germans could have been united under Hapsburg rule, but it went the other way.
Exactly. Even many Germans in the German Empire hoped to include the Austrian Germans to unify all Germans into one-state. I remember watching a BBC documentary The Nazis: A Warning from History and they were interviewing a British person regarding the Anschluss and I think he spoke what a lot of other British people thought, namely that the Austrians were Germans anyway which is why no foreign powers bothered to intervene when the Third Reich annexed Austria in 1938.
When I first visited Austria in 1975, I spoke with a person named "Max" in Salzburg who remembered the Anschluss very fondly and thought his country should become part of Germany again. He was a WWII veteran and enjoyed talking about Stukas. He flew them before being shot down and became a POW in 1940. It was one of the best bar conversations I have ever had that lasted hours. I'm sure there are still many Austrians that wish they were part of Germany again, but as the postwar period gets longer and longer that will continue to fade.
I also wonder it myself, given that the Freedom Party of Austria have been recently getting a lot of voters and Norbert Hofer nearly won the recent election. The party states that "the overwhelming majority of Austrians belong to the German ethnic and cultural community."

I've also spoken to Germans from Germany and asked about Austrians and I've been told on numerous occasions that they are just another type of Germans.

In the UK, a lot of the masses believe the propaganda that Hitler wanted everyone to be a blonde hair blue eyed German and say that he wasn't German because he wasn't born in Germany, completely ignoring the fact that Austrians are ethnic Germans. Of course such nonsense would only be said by the average Joe who hasn't studied the subject but nevertheless such statements do get repeated from time to time.

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#32

Post by JLEES » 06 Dec 2016, 21:31

True. In terms of Nazi racial science the Germans believed the blond blue eyed Nordics were the best types, but this did not mean that darker haired Austrians or Volksdeutsche from Poland were not viewed as being Aryans. The Nazis viewed them all as Aryans. The blond blue eyed Nordics were just considered genetically the best of the Aryan Race and this is why the SS targeted that group for recruitment. Although the Nazis were selective on who could be a member of the Aryan Race, they were not so restrictive that just 10% of the Germans could qualify. People who say these things are examples of the "average Joe", who have not studied the subject and exemplify the thought that "a little bit of knowledge is dangerous".


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James Paul
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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#33

Post by James Paul » 09 Dec 2016, 20:46

JLEES wrote:True. In terms of Nazi racial science the Germans believed the blond blue eyed Nordics were the best types, but this did not mean that darker haired Austrians or Volksdeutsche from Poland were not viewed as being Aryans. The Nazis viewed them all as Aryans. The blond blue eyed Nordics were just considered genetically the best of the Aryan Race and this is why the SS targeted that group for recruitment. Although the Nazis were selective on who could be a member of the Aryan Race, they were not so restrictive that just 10% of the Germans could qualify. People who say these things are examples of the "average Joe", who have not studied the subject and exemplify the thought that "a little bit of knowledge is dangerous".
Nazi racial science, if you can even call it that, was a load of rubbish. The Nazis couldn't even set the record straight on a clear distinction between German and Jew in an ethnic sense, hence the inclusion of religion in the Nuremberg Laws. The majority of terms the Nazis used in a racial sense were never defined completely.

Believe it or not, even ethnic Poles were considered to be Aryans by the Nazis, not that it helped them at all. The Nazis were shocked at how many Nordics were in Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Russia, etc) and tried to claim this showed signs of German blood.

Speak to the average Joe and the phrase "a little bit of knowledge is dangerous" sums up the majority. Try and contradict an average Joe on something about Hitler or the Third Reich e.g if they had won the war we would all be speaking German, then prepare to be called a Nazi sympathiser.

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#34

Post by JLEES » 09 Dec 2016, 21:18

Oh, do I agree. Many of the false ways that the average Joe looks at the subject first came about during the period and WWII. For instance, even to this day there are people who believe Hitler was Jewish. Yet, this perception started during the latter 1920s and was spread around by the Communists and other political enemies of Hitler, who were also anti-Semitic, and have remained with us even to this day. Another would be that Germany wanted to conquer the entire world. This came about during WWII as part of the Allied anti-Nazi propaganda. Yet, it too is often spoken by the average Joe. Another one often voiced in America is that the Nazis pushed for gun-control. The only gun control they did in fact enact was in the occupied areas, as did the US Army when it occupied Germany and Japan in 1945. The Third Reich is looked at through a simple black and white lense and there is no middleground. For obvious reasons there are not too many Hitler defenders and many of the untruths have remained with us even to this day. Therefore, you're correct, try and contradict an average Joe on some of these points and they do look back at you like you're a Nazi sympathiser.

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#35

Post by Geoff Walden » 16 Dec 2016, 23:06

It was reported yesterday that after completing the seizure of the property recently, the Austrian government has decided not to demolish the building (doubtless under pressure), but would instead use it similarly to its use a few years ago, as an educational center for the handicapped, but probably completely redoing the building and changing the front so it would no longer resemble the original aspect.

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#36

Post by JLEES » 16 Dec 2016, 23:33

Hello Geoff,
That's somewhat better, but still too bad. They're squandering an excellent opportunity to turn the site into a museum. Maybe at some point in the future that's what the structure will become.

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James Paul
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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#37

Post by James Paul » 19 Dec 2016, 02:05

It's a bit ironic considering what views Hitler held of disabled people.

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#38

Post by JLEES » 19 Dec 2016, 18:57

LOL!!! Yes, I didn't think about that. It is ironic.

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#39

Post by J. Duncan » 19 Dec 2016, 23:12

I do not buy into the fearful excuse of the site becoming a neo-Nazi Mecca " so therefore we need to destroy it" etc...
Hitler isn't rising from the dead to lead the skinheads to victory. The city probably just wants it gone so they can build apartments or a strip mall or whatever they want to do with that block and use that line as an excuse to the press, which is titillated by such nonsense to sell to the lemmings.

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#40

Post by michael mills » 22 Dec 2016, 10:42

The idea of Austria being part of Germany had first come about when Germany was becoming unified as a nation-state in the mid 1800s. If history had turned out differently, Austria would have unified Germany and Prussia would have been excluded.
This statement is partially correct, but needs greater precision.

In the first place, before 1804 there was no sovereign state that was officially called "Austria". The only territory bearing that name was the Archduchy of Austria, consisting of the two provinces of Upper and Lower Austria. This was the first territory acquired by the Habsburg Dynasty way back in the 13th Century, and as other territories were acquired by that dynasty the term "Austria" came to be unofficially applied to them also. However, all the various territories acquired by the Habsburg rulers remained separate entities, united only in the person of those rulers, who were Archdukes of Austria, Kings of Bohemia, Kings of Hungary, Dukes of Carinthia, Styria,Carniola, Auschwitz, etc.

All the Habsburg territories, excluding the Kingdom of Hungary acquired in 1527 (and extended at the end of the 17th Century) and the Polish territories acquired in 1772, had been part of the Holy Roman Empire since the medieval period, and hence part of a German state, albeit rather tenuously. In 1804, the ruler of the hereditary Habsburg domains, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, fearing the imminent dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 by Napoleon, declared his various dynastic domains to constitute a single political entity, called the Austrian Empire, and proclaimed himself the Austrian Emperor. This was the first time that a sovereign state officially called "Austria" had existed.

In 1806 Napoleon abolished the Holy Roman Empire, and replaced it with the Confederation of the Rhine, from which both Prussia and Austria were excluded. Thus, for the first time the Habsburg domains, now called the Austrian Empire, ceased to be part of a German State.

In 1815, the German Confederation was established, with the Habsburg territories that had been part of the Holy Roman Empire being included in it. Thus part of the Austrian Empire was once again included in a German political entity, while parts of it were outside that entity, namely the Kingdom of Hungary (which included Croatia, Voivodina and Transylvania), the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (annexed from Poland in 1772), the Duchy of Bukovina (annexed from the Ottoman Empire in 1775), and the Kingdom of Dalmatia. That was not a unique situation, since parts of the Kingdom of Prussia were also outside the German Confederation, namely East and West Prussia and the Posen Province, areas with a large ethnic Polish population.

Although the Austrian Empire held the presidency of the German Confederation, that entity did not have an official Head of State, and the Austrian Empire was constitutionally just one of the member states, with no special rights. Nevertheless, there was a tendency for non-Germans to regard the Austrian Emperor as the de facto ruler of Germany, eg Moses Hess habitually referred to "Germany" and the "German Emperor" in his polemical writings about the war between France and Austria in Italy in 1859. That shows that contemporary observers considered Austria to be one of the German states, just like Prussia or Bavaria.

The Austrian Empire ceased definitively to be part of a German State in 1866, after its defeat by Prussia, when the German Confederation was officially abolished and replace by the North German Confederation, consisting of Prussia and the other German states north of the Main. There had been an intention to create a similar South German Confederation, consisting of Baden, Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, and the parts of the Austrian Empire that had been part of the German Confederation, but the proposal was dropped due to French opposition, and the South German states all became formally independent.

In 1867 the Kingdom of Hungary was separated from the Austrian Empire and made was impossible for the Austrian Empie an autonomous entity with its own parliament, connected to the Empire only in the person of the Habsburg monarch, who was also the King of Hungary.

It was impossible for the Austrian Empire to create a united Germany because so much of its territory was not German in population, even after the excision of Hungary and its dependent territories. The only way the ethnically German parts of the Austrian Empire could have become incorporated into a German state would have been if the Empire had disintegrated, and Bismarck did not want that as the non-German parts, Bohemia-Moravia and Galicia, would have gravitated toward Russia, encircling Germany.

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#41

Post by JLEES » 22 Dec 2016, 14:59

You are absolutely correct. But, I think the other commentator was just bringing up the point that there were some Germans and Austrians promoting a unified German kingdom that would have obviously taken in some none-Germans. Goerg Schönerer of Vienna around the turn of the last century comes to mind. He was an extreme anti-Semitic Pan German that promoted Anschluss with Germany prior to the Great War and had a sizable following.

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James Paul
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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#42

Post by James Paul » 25 Dec 2016, 02:29

Good information michael mills. Thanks.

I'm sure you're also aware that there seems to be an agenda to label Mozart as an Austrian composer and not a German composer.

Supposedly labeling him as a 'German' upsets many Austrians. The people labeling him as an Austrian are totally ignoring the fact that his birthplace, Salzburg, was not a part of Austria when he was born and back then Austrians certainly considered themselves Germans. Mozart also referred to himself as German.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3131333.stm

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/11/opini ... 78092.html

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#43

Post by GoeringsPetLion » 07 Jan 2017, 23:44

Mannheim wrote:OK, thanks. I know the one in the Congress Hall but I understand the one under the tribune at the Zeppelinfeld is rarely open.
In Nuremberg, there is furthermore an exhibition about the Nuremberg trials. It is located at Bärenschanzstraße 72 where the actual Nuremberg trials took place.

http://www.memorium-nuremberg.de/exhibi ... ition.html

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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#44

Post by GoeringsPetLion » 07 Jan 2017, 23:46

James Paul wrote:Mozart also referred to himself as German.
Leopold Mozart, his father, was from Augsburg, Swabian Bavaria.

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James Paul
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Re: Decision on Hitler's Braunau Birthplace

#45

Post by James Paul » 10 Jan 2017, 21:16

GoeringsPetLion wrote:Leopold Mozart, his father, was from Augsburg, Swabian Bavaria.
I was already aware of that. Hitler's birthplace was historically part of Bavaria too. Quite a few places have changed rule between Austrian and Bavarian.

But the point is, Salzburg is now part of Austria so Austrians are trying to claim Mozart was an Austrian not German. An Austrian during Mozart's life would have laughed if someone had tried to claim they weren't German. The so-called distinction between Austrian and German simply did not exist back then and only emerged seriously after WWII.

I think it's a shame that any Austrian who identifies themselves as German is tarnished as a Nazi.

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