However, his policies proved devastating not only for Europe and the world at large, but also for Austria and Vienna. Anti-Semitism, which had been widespread in Vienna for many centuries and had become more prevalent since the turn of the century, eventually combined with the Nazi policy of what ultimately proved to be Jewish extermination. In November the city's synagogues, the very points of crystallisation of the religious and social life of Vienna's Jewry, fell prey to the destructive fury of a single night's rampaging, in the "pogroms of November" Reichskristallnacht.
As early as October the city had seen a tremendous extension of its territory, following the example of Greater Hamburg. He, himself, had been born in the Austrian town of Brannau , but for all his life Hitler considered himself German. Many Austrians had the same belief so that Hitler felt empowered to bully Schuschnigg into submission. In February , Hitler gave the Austrian chancellor a list of ten demands. The chief demand was that a man called Seyss-Inquart should be made Minister of the Interior.
Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian Nazi and such a position would give him control of the Austrian police. Such a demand was clearly unacceptable to Schuschnigg. Schuschnigg could not take this risk and he resigned — along with his cabinet. The rank and file tended to view with complete disbelief the new line that Austrians were not Germans, and that not all Germans were villains but just the Nazis.
Vladimir Arkhipov, a signaller in the 3rd Ukrainian Front, sent his family a letter on March 19, that illuminated the prevailing mood of Soviet soldiers on the eve of their entry into Austria.
After a long battle during which the Soviets stopped the Germans at Lake Balaton, he wrote that he had been listening to music on Radio Moscow with his friend Stepan. Arkhipov related that Stepan, before falling asleep, wondered when they would finally destroy the so-called German filth so that they could go back home and listen to a live orchestra, without being interrupted by explosions. Two days earlier, Arkhipov reported, Stepan had received a letter from home informing him that his father and two cousins had been murdered by the Germans, his wife forced into slave labor in Germany, and his younger brother beaten so badly that he was still unwell.
We will get to them as well. Thousands [of soldiers] like Stepan will exact revenge. There will be a holiday on our street! Soviet troops understood their arrival into the Third Reich as their victory and the time to inflict their own justice.
This is what Arkhipov had in mind when he wrote that there would be a holiday in the streets. Soviet soldiers talking to liberated slave laborers from the Soviet Union in Vienna. Image courtesy of the Voennyi album and Tass. The role of liberated slave laborers and prisoners of war in the mayhem of May must also be considered when examining the Soviet rampage.
In Austria, there were hundreds of thousands of slave laborers out of 5 million Soviet citizens the Nazis had taken to the Third Reich from conquered territories. These people, liberated by the Red Army, frequently led the way in looting and in attacking civilians. The army also recruited heavily from the liberated prisoners of war and slave laborers, filling its ranks with tens of thousands of individuals who had a score to settle with the Germans. Such soldiers were also viewed suspiciously by the Stalinist regime for having been in captivity, and by acting aggressively against the enemy they demonstrated loyalty to the system.
One such soldier, Aleksandr Levin, survived captivity for four years while concealing his Jewish identity from the Nazi captors. Freed from a camp in late April, he joined the 2nd Ukrainian Front. In the first letter to his family, on May 12, he wrote:.
All, all, all of that is behind me! I am again a soldier of the Worker-Peasant Red Army. Considering that the fighting was almost over by the time Levin rejoined the Red Army, it is likely that he vented his hatred at civilians or prisoners of war. Although they committed many crimes everywhere, they looted and raped most intensely in Austria.
According to one estimate, in Vienna alone, the Red Army raped between 70, and , women. There is a debate among historians whether Soviet conduct in Austria was as bad as in Germany, and the preponderance of evidence indicates that it was not, although it was similar. For instance, one study indicated that 5. As historians such as Maria Mesner and Jill Lewis have argued, the significance of these numbers is that they contradicted a more popular version, reflected in some academic texts, that virtually all women were raped.
Widespread looting accompanied the sexual assaults. They seized whatever food they wanted and cooked it on their own or forced the civilians to prepare it. In December , Stalin allowed soldiers and officers to send parcels to the Soviet Union. If you are using an evening paper, begin your search on the same day as the event being researched. March , News articles about the German annexation of Austria. March News, editorials, op-eds, letters to the editor, and cartoons reacting to the annexation of Austria.
February 11 - March 11, News articles, editorials, op-eds, letters to the editor and cartoons regarding events leading up to the German annexation of Austria. April News articles about the plebiscite validating the Anschluss. March-October News articles, editorials, op-eds, letters to the editor, and cartoons regarding the persecution and abuse of Jews and political opposition figures in German-annexed Austria. March-October News articles, editorials, op-eds, letters to the editor, and cartoons regarding emigration of Jews and other refugees from Germany and Austria.
Bukey, Evan Burr. Fuchs, Martin.
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