Standing beside the desk in the Kaiservilla in Bad Ischl at which, on July 28 1914, Franz Joseph signed the declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia, thus signalling the start of the First World War- in Kennan's phrase, "the seminal event of the 20th century." Attendants placed a pen in his hand. He turned it over, balanced it between his fingers, studied it for several seconds, lost in thought. With that pen the Austrian Emperor signed the ultimatum to Serbia that sent the world to war. Here too with that same pen he wrote his famous "Appeal to My People" soon after the guns had spoken. The building at the foot of the Jainzenberg was originally a villa in the Biedermeier style built in 1834. After the engagement of Franz Joseph I to Duchess Elisabeth of Bavaria in 1853, Franz Joseph's mother, Archduchess Sophie, acquired the property as a wedding present for the imperial couple. When Franz Joseph died in 1916 he'd left the estate to his youngest daughter, Archduchess Marie Valerie who was married to Archduke Franz Salvator from the Austria-Tuscany line, maintaining ownership to the Habsburg family. Since the Imperial Villa was privately owned by the Habsburgs and Franz Salvator and Marie Valerie renounced all claims to the throne, the property remained in their possession even after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918. Her son Hubert Salvator Habsburg-Lorraine inherited the villa. Today's owner is his son Markus Emanuel Habsburg-Lothringen.
Hitler's
1912 paintings of St. Charles's church and the Vienna State Opera
House; his disinterest in people is pretty clear. This is confirmed as
Frederic Spotts relates in Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics
(172), when in 2002 an art critic was asked to review some of Hitler's
paintings without being told who painted them describing them as quite
good, but that the different style in which he drew human figures
represented a profound disinterest in people. Even back in 1936, after
seeing the paintings Hitler submitted to the Vienna art academy, John
Gunther wrote how they were all "prosaic, utterly devoid of rhythm,
colour, feeling, or spiritual imagination. They are architect's sketches
painful and precise draftsmanship; nothing more. No wonder the Vienna
professors told him to go to an architectural school and give up pure
art as hopeless." Nevertheless, far from 'proving' his paintings as
"grim" as the Wikipedia entry misquotes them, Collotti and Mariani
actually state that "his water colours show that as a painter Hitler was
anything but 'grim'", stating that it was in fact his "political
programme" that was in fact 'grim'. In discussing his paintings, they
write how Hitler's From 1908 to 1913, Hitler tinted postcards and painted houses for a living painting his first self-portrait in 1910 at the age of 21. This painting, along with twelve other paintings by Hitler, was discovered by American Army Sergeant Major Willie J. Mc Kenna in 1945 in Essen. Samuel Morgenstern, an Austrian businessman and a business partner of the young Hitler in his Vienna period, bought many of the young Hitler's paintings. According to Morgenstern, Hitler came to him for the first time at the beginning of the 1910s, either in 1911 or in 1912. When Hitler came to Morgenstern's glazier store for the first time, he offered Morgenstern three of his paintings. Morgenstern kept a database of his clientele, through which it was possible to locate the buyers of young Hitler's paintings. It was found that the majority of the buyers were Jewish. An important client of Morgenstern, a lawyer by the name of Josef Feingold, bought a series of paintings by Hitler depicting old Vienna.water colours have for their subject various urban environments of Vienna and Munich:cities with a strong cosmopolitan spirit,with nothing of the rural about them.They give the impression of having been copied from photographs rather than painted at the easel in front of the subject; the style and treatment are those of works edited at a writing desk. Some of the views are, in fact, repeated, maybe even falsified, maintaining the same optical axis but from a closer viewpoint. In these cases the close-up is an improvement. executed with a surer hand, The urban environment represented is almost always very complex: with a movement of volume, a multiplicity of planes, fragmentation of spaces, attempts at dynamic chiaroscuro etc. The attention to detail is considerable. The various building materials can be easily distinguished as can the condition of the buildings of their decorative details, objects and street furnishings, posters on the walls, even to the dressing of the shop windows.
(28) The Water Colours of Hitler: Recovered Art Works Homage to Rodolfo Siviero
Ecstatic citizens of Vienna were waiting for Hitler until finally at around half past five in the afternoon on March 14, 1938, he entered the city that had once been the capital of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, passing the Schönbrunn Palace. The church bells here also chimed for him, and “the demonstrations of enthusiasm that accompanied Hitler’s entry into the city defied description,” as the Neue Basler Zeitung wrote.
Standing in front of the Hotel Imperial, located on the Ringstraße at Kärntner Ring 16. Hitler stayed here when he finally arrived in Vienna at
around half past five in the afternoon on March 14, 1938. Hitler had actually worked at the hotel as a day labourer during his youthful period as a virtual tramp in Vienna, and now returned as an honoured guest. Now amidst the jubilations and the chorus of the crowd outside of the hotel, Hitler stepped onto the balcony around 19.00 together with the aged Austrian General Krauss and delivered a short address:My German Volksgenossen!What you are feeling now is something I myself have felt to the bottom of my heart in these five days. It is a great, historic change which our German Volk has undergone. What you are witnessing at this moment is something the whole German Volk is experiencing with you; not only two million people in this city, but seventy-five million members of our Volk, in one Reich. They are all deeply stirred and moved by this historic turning point, and they all consecrate themselves with the vow: no matter what may happen, the German Reich as it stands today is something no man will ever again break asunder and no man will ever again tear apart!
There is no crisis, no threat, and no force that might break this vow. Today these are the devout words of all German beings from Königsberg to Cologne, from Hamburg to Vienna!
Benito Mussolini would also stay at the hotel during the war with
considerably less fanfare, being shepherded through the back door on
September 13, 1943, following his spectacular rescue out of detention by
German paratroopers in Unternehmen Eiche. Before the war, the Imperial had partly been owned by Samuel Schallinger, who was forced to sell it in 1938 due to the Nazi persecution of Jews. Schallinger died in 1942 at the Theresienstadt concentration camp near Prague. Simon Wiesenthal celebrated his 90th birthday here in 1998 with a kosher dinner party. “Look, even the chandeliers are shaking,” said Wiesenthal at the dinner. “Hitler is gone. The Nazis are no more. But we are still here, singing and dancing."
Hitler's motorcade approaching the rathaus whilst, on March 15 at around 11.00, 200,000 cheering Austrians assembled on the Heldenplatz in front of the Hofburg to hear a “proclamation of liberation.” This would be the climax to Hitler's triumphal tour through Austria. The Heldenplatz served on 15 March 1938 as the setting for Hitler's theatrical appearance in Vienna, the last of the cities in Austria to embrace his leadership. On that day, more than a quarter of a million people converged on the square, where Hitler was saluted by large formations from the SA, ϟϟ, Hitlerjugend, and the Bund deutscher Madchen. Hitler captivated the cheering masses with a speech in which he compared the new mission of Austria to the commandment that had drawn the German settlers of the old Holy Roman Empire. One commentator makes the stunning claim that "Among the millions of photographs taken during the Anschluss, only a single snapshot of an unhappy face has come to light"—a reflection of the Austrians' hopes that the new union with the more prosperous Germany would benefit their country economically.Gail Finney (52-53) Performing Vienna
Two little boys greeted Hitler upon his arrival carrying a banner between them bearing the slogan “The Sudeten Germans greet the
Führer.” They had all gathered to hear Hitler say that "[t]he oldest eastern province of the German people shall be, from this point on, the newest bastion of the German Reich" followed by his "greatest accomplishment" (completing the annexing of Austria to form a Greater German Reich) by saying "As leader and chancellor of the German nation and Reich I announce to German history now the entry of my homeland into the German Reich." Hitler later commented: "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say: even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier (into Austria) there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
On the balcony of the Hofburg with its commanding view of the Austrian Parliament Building, the Rathaus, and the Burgtheater, Hitler gave the following address:
Germans! Men and Women!
Within a few short days, a radical change has taken place in the German Volksgemeinschaft, whose dimensions we might see today, yet whose significance can only be fully appreciated by coming generations. In the past few years, the rulers of the regime which has now been banished often spoke of the special “mission” which, in their eyes, this country was destined to fulfil. A leader of the legitimists outlined it quite accurately in a memorandum. Accordingly, the so-called self-sufficiency of this Land of Austria, founded in the peace treaties and contingent upon the mercy of foreign countries, was to perform the function of preventing the formation of a genuinely great German Reich and hence block the path of the German Volk to the future.
I hereby declare for this Land its new mission. It corresponds to the precept which once summoned the German settlers of the Altreich to come here. The oldest Ostmark of the German Volk shall from now on constitute the youngest bulwark of the German nation and hence of the German Reich.For centuries, the storms of the East broke on the borders of the Old Mark in the turbulent times of the past. For centuries into the future, it shall now become an iron guarantor of the security and freedom of the German Reich, and hence a safeguard for the happiness and peace of our Great Volk. I know the old Ostmark of the German Reich will do justice to its new task just as it once performed and mastered the old.I am speaking on behalf of millions of people in this magnificent German Land, on behalf of those in Styria, in Upper and Lower Austria, in Carinthia, in Salzburg, in Tirol, and above all on behalf of the city of Vienna, when I assure the sixty-eight million other German Volksgenossen in our vast Reich listening this very minute: this Land is German; it has understood its mission, it will fulfil this mission, and it shall never be outdone by anyone as far as loyalty to the great German Volksgemeinschaft is concerned. It will now be our task to devote our labour, diligence, shared dedication, and joint strength to solving the great social, cultural and economic problems; yet first and foremost to make Austria ever grow and expand to become a fortress of National Socialist willpower.
I cannot conclude this address to you without calling to mind those men who, together with me, have made it possible to bring about this great change— with God’s help—in such a short time. I may thank the National Socialist members of the government, with the new Reichsstatthalter Seyss-Inquart at their fore. I may thank the innumerable party functionaries; I may thank above all the countless anonymous idealists, the fighters of our formations who have proven in the long years of persecution that the German, when put under pressure, only becomes tougher.
Cycling where Hitler drove
These years of suffering have served but to strengthen me in my conviction of the value of the German-Austrian being within the framework of our great Volksgemeinschaft. At the same time, however, the splendid order and discipline of this tremendous event is proof of the power of the idea inspiring these people. Hence in this hour, I can report to the German Volk that the greatest orders of my life have been carried out.As the Führer and Chancellor of the German nation and the Reich, I now report to history that my homeland has joined the German Reich.
The entrance to the Neuen Burg wing of the Hofburg Palace on the left, from which terrace Hitler had made his address. Originally he spoke from a specially constructed wooden balcony erected in the centre of the building’s neo-Gothic facade, but it was later replaced with a permanent stone one to commemorate the event. Such is its impact that to this day, it remains closed to the public with only one speech ever being given since Hitler's- that of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel who gave a speech from it in 1992, calling on Austrians to fight racism and confront the country's past. "The balcony is nothing. It is a symbol, nothing more. The purification, the change cannot come from the balcony. It must come from below." Now the usual group of nutcases plaguing society is calling for the balcony to just be completely destroyed, but not until some "speech for peace"is performed from it. Nevertheless, Willi Mernyi, chair of Austria’s Mauthausen Committee which seeks to preserve Holocaust memory in Austria, suggests that the idea that the balcony only be opened to tours such that guides could provide “context” and “clarification” for visitors although the so-called 'Hitler-Balkon' “must not become a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis."
Prinz Eugen's statue at Heldenplatz. Eugen had been considered by Napoleon for dubious reasons as one of the seven greatest commanders of history. The wartime German cruiser Prinz Eugen was named in his honour, as was the 7th ϟϟ Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, a German mountain infantry division of the Waffen-ϟϟ. It was formed in 1941 from Volksdeutsche volunteers and conscripts from the Banat, Independent State of Croatia, Hungary and Romaniainitially named ϟϟ-Freiwilligen-Division Prinz Eugen.
Although looking uncannily like Nazi eagles, these eagles perched on the Ring in Vienna at the entrance to the Hofburg at Heldenplatz predate the anschluss by about four years when the outer gate of the Hofburg was redesigned between 1933 and 1934 into an "Austrian Heroes Monument." This resulted in a new gate built on each side of the Hofburg as an extension of the axes of these equestrian statues. These two eagle gates designed by Wilhelm Frass were intended to draw attention to the new monument from the Ringstrasse. In the 1930s, Heldenplatz began to be used for mass events, with the speakers mostly speaking to the crowd from the balcony of the Neue Burg, starting in 1932 with a rally during Hermann Göring's visit, a 1934 rally for the Fatherland Front and of course the 1938 Nazi rally for Hitler. All these events made made Heldenplatz a synonym for the "Anschluss". During the war, open-air exhibitions were held on Heldenplatz such as the 1940 Wehrmacht exhibition "Der Sieg im Westen," shown here on the right then and today with the rathaus behind. 
On March 13, 1938 Reich youth leader Baldur von Schirach gave a speech on Heldenplatz in front of 40,000 children and young people, in which he announced that instead of the “Austrian young people” there was only the “Hitler Youth”. Preparations for the corriordination of Austria with the rest of Germany were started in the background by Josef Bürckel based on the model of the Saarland. On March 15, 1938 so-called “liberation rallies” took place here in front of around 200,000 people. People had full pay off work, and children had been off school since March 12th which ensured that enough people could greet Adolf Hitler on his arrival in Vienna. The Austrian Nazi Karl Anton Prinz Rohan described this event as a “festive, happy revolution”. When Hitler arrived at Heldenplatz at noon on March 15, the square was also filled with military, youth and other formations of the Nazi Party. Seyss-Inquart reported to the Fiihrer that Austria had given up its independence and consequently the "Ostmark" had "returned home". Hitler delivered his speech, mentioning the word "Austria" only twice, and spoke of the bulwark against past and coming storms in the East in order to "announce before history the entry of my homeland into the German Reich". Stormy shouts of victory and salvation and applause that lasted for several minutes followed; the Germany and Horst Wessel songs were sung and shouts of “We thank our Führer!” were repeated over and over again. Then Hitler and Seyß-Inquart left Heldenplatz in a car, returning at 14.00 to lay a wreath at the Hero's Gate. The next day Reichsführer ϟϟ Himmler and Austria representative
Josef Bürckel swore in 7,500 men of the Austrian police in the presence
of ϟϟ leader Ernst Kaltenbrunner on Heldenplatz, shown here.
A fortnight later Göring gave his propaganda speech on Heldenplatz for the referendum on the “Anschluss”. In April 1938 the “Day of the Austrian Legion” and the “Day of the Greater German Reich” were held. A maypole from Garmisch-Partenkirchen was transported to Heldenplatz for May Day that year.
On March 13, 1938 Reich youth leader Baldur von Schirach gave a speech on Heldenplatz in front of 40,000 children and young people, in which he announced that instead of the “Austrian young people” there was only the “Hitler Youth”. Preparations for the corriordination of Austria with the rest of Germany were started in the background by Josef Bürckel based on the model of the Saarland. On March 15, 1938 so-called “liberation rallies” took place here in front of around 200,000 people. People had full pay off work, and children had been off school since March 12th which ensured that enough people could greet Adolf Hitler on his arrival in Vienna. The Austrian Nazi Karl Anton Prinz Rohan described this event as a “festive, happy revolution”. When Hitler arrived at Heldenplatz at noon on March 15, the square was also filled with military, youth and other formations of the Nazi Party. Seyss-Inquart reported to the Fiihrer that Austria had given up its independence and consequently the "Ostmark" had "returned home". Hitler delivered his speech, mentioning the word "Austria" only twice, and spoke of the bulwark against past and coming storms in the East in order to "announce before history the entry of my homeland into the German Reich". Stormy shouts of victory and salvation and applause that lasted for several minutes followed; the Germany and Horst Wessel songs were sung and shouts of “We thank our Führer!” were repeated over and over again. Then Hitler and Seyß-Inquart left Heldenplatz in a car, returning at 14.00 to lay a wreath at the Hero's Gate. The next day Reichsführer ϟϟ Himmler and Austria representative
Josef Bürckel swore in 7,500 men of the Austrian police in the presence
of ϟϟ leader Ernst Kaltenbrunner on Heldenplatz, shown here.
A fortnight later Göring gave his propaganda speech on Heldenplatz for the referendum on the “Anschluss”. In April 1938 the “Day of the Austrian Legion” and the “Day of the Greater German Reich” were held. A maypole from Garmisch-Partenkirchen was transported to Heldenplatz for May Day that year. The Nazi rulers were well aware of the power of the unfinished square. Despite their aversion to the Habsburg Monarchy, the Nazis were able to stage and thus justify their own rule as a continuation of the old imperial tradition with the help of the symbols of imperial power that offered them the backdrop of the Heldenplatz. With this in mind, there were considerations to resume the building project of the Kaiserforum and to complete it with a Nazi ceremonial space. To that end a 'Haus des Führers' intended for exhibition purposes as well as various memorials. The fact that Heldenplatz was to be converted into a National Socialist “cultural district” is also indicated by its use as a venue for open-air exhibitions, such as for the show “The Victory in the West” of 1940 mentioned above. During the war and postwar hardship however, Heldenplatz was transformed from the centre of imposing power into an agricultural land and by May 1946, the Allied troops celebrated their liberation celebrations here. From 1951, the British, American, Soviet, and French units used the square as the changing of the guard.
Hitler and his entourage walking through the Äußeres Burgtor, also known as the Heldentor or Hero Gate, on March 15, 1938 after having laid a wreath here. In 1934 the outer castle gate was converted into a war monument dedicated to the fallen of the First World War, although the external shape of the building was not allowed to be changed. Göring visited the place of honour on March 27. At the time of Nazi rule in Austria, there were considerations to upgrade the Heldenplatz architecturally. For this purpose, the main axis of the square was to be rotated by 90 degrees so that the balcony of the Hofburg, from which Adolf Hitler had announced the annexation of Austria, would have become the main focal point for large marches. For this purpose they wanted to relocate the equestrian monuments of Archduke Karl and Prinz Eugen of Savoy. The SA later obtained its own memorial here, which was removed again after the end of the war. 
Standing in front of the Loos Haus on Michaelerplatz and as it appeared during the Anschluß. The sign reads "Gleiches Blut gehoert in ein gemeinsames Reich"- "Shared blood belongs in a shared Reich." The right shows the entrance with a shrine to Hitler, featuring his bust and an honour guard.
According to Hermann Czech (14) "we see the decoration applied just prior to the referendum of 1938 on Austria’s Anschluss with Nazi Germany. The “beautification” of Loos’s portal, transforming it into a “contemporary altar”, generates a mood in which intimidation prevails. The carpet in the image on the right just does not fit, and it is not hard to see why."
The supposed Hitler painting on the left of Michaelerplatz was recovered in Bolzano in 1945, by an Italian governmental stolen art retrieval team under the supervision of Rodolfo Siviero, now part of a collection of twenty alleged Hitler watercolours held at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence since 1954.
Apparently when painting Michaelerplatz, Hitler chose to ignore the building completely-
Actors and theater employees who were classified as “ Jewish ” under the Reich Citizenship Act of 1935 were soon banned from performing; they have been given either leave, dismissed or arrested. Between 1938 and 1945 the Burgtheater ensemble did not offer any noteworthy resistance to Nazi ideology- its programmes were heavily censored, and only a few actively joined the resistance, such as Judith Holzmeister or the actor Fritz Lehmann. Many Jewish ensemble members were helped to emigrate; one actor, Fritz Strassny , was murdered in a concentration camp.
Immediately
after the German invasion of March 1938, the Viennese began to
threaten, torment, and deprive Jewish fellow citizens as the
ϟϟ began to throw them out of their homes. Of the
nearly 200,000 Jewish Viennese, around 120,000 were robbed and emigrated
(the most famous refugee was Sigmund Freud), about 60,000 were
murdered. The Viennese town administration was reorganised according to
the national socialist pattern. On the occasion of the 150th
anniversary of the death of the German composer, the Nazi administration
celebrated a Mozart year in the framework of the "Mozart Week of the
German Reich". From March 17, 1944, more than fifty air raids were
carried out on Vienna, which destroyed about one-fifth of the city. Not
by fighting, but by plunder, the St. Stephen's Cathedral, which had
previously surrendered the air war without a bomb hit, also set fire. In
April 1945 came the eight-day battle for Vienna, which ended with the
defeat of the Wehrmacht and the occupation by the Red Army, which had
advanced from Hungary. Consequences of the time of National Socialism
The effect of the capital function of Vienna in the monarchy, effective
until 1938, ended with the beginning of the Nazi era. The spiritual and
artistic life of Vienna suffered, above all, through the persecution of
the Jews, an enormous, not to be compensated, bloodletting. The
emergence of the Eastern bloc made Vienna a meeting point for the spies
from the East and the West, but slowed down the economic and scientific
reconstruction of Vienna. More than 20 per cent of the house stock was
completely or partly destroyed, almost 87,000 apartments were
uninhabitable. More than 3,000 bombs were counted in the city area,
numerous bridges lying in ruins, canals, gas and water pipes had
suffered serious damage. At first, the problem was solved, and the city
had to be made operational again.
According to Hermann Czech (14) "we see the decoration applied just prior to the referendum of 1938 on Austria’s Anschluss with Nazi Germany. The “beautification” of Loos’s portal, transforming it into a “contemporary altar”, generates a mood in which intimidation prevails. The carpet in the image on the right just does not fit, and it is not hard to see why."
The supposed Hitler painting on the left of Michaelerplatz was recovered in Bolzano in 1945, by an Italian governmental stolen art retrieval team under the supervision of Rodolfo Siviero, now part of a collection of twenty alleged Hitler watercolours held at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence since 1954.Apparently when painting Michaelerplatz, Hitler chose to ignore the building completely-
In 1910, opposite the pompous dome of the new courtcastle at the Michaelerplatz, he built the house of a men’s fashion parlor as a deliberate provocation that flustered the Viennese as “a monstrosity of a house” and as “a house without eyebrows.” For it made do without the usual ornaments above the windows and had a smooth surface. Loos was thoroughly delighted with all the excitement and on December 11, 1911, to an overcrowded audience, gave a lecture entitled “A Monstrosity of a House.” Hitler’s reaction to the house under dispute was idiosyncratic: when he drew the Michaelerplatz, he pretended the Loos House did not exist and copied a historic representation from the eighteenth century.
Hamann (71) Hitler's Vienna
Hitler driving through Vienna with the Burgtheater in the background and my bike today in front. The Nazis would leave their mark on the history of the Burgtheater. In 1939, the strongly anti-Semitic book by the theatre scholar Heinz Kindermann, Das Burgtheater, in which he analysed negatively, among other things, the “Jewish influence” on the Burgtheater. On October 14, 1938, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Burgtheater, a Don Carlos production by Karl-Heinz Stroux was shown, which served Hitler's ideology as the role of Marquis Posa was played by the same Ewald Balser , who a year earlier in another Don Carlos production at the Deutsches Theater in the same role called out to Joseph Goebbels in the audience: "Give freedom of thought!". The actor and director Lothar Müthel, who was director of the Burgtheater between 1939 and 1945, staged the Merchant of Venice in 1943 , in which Werner Krauss portrayed the Jew Shylock as clearly anti-Semitic. The same director staged Lessing's parable Nathan the Wise after the war. Hitler himself only visited the Burgtheater once during the Nazi regime in 1938, later refusing for fear of an assassination attempt.
Actors and theater employees who were classified as “ Jewish ” under the Reich Citizenship Act of 1935 were soon banned from performing; they have been given either leave, dismissed or arrested. Between 1938 and 1945 the Burgtheater ensemble did not offer any noteworthy resistance to Nazi ideology- its programmes were heavily censored, and only a few actively joined the resistance, such as Judith Holzmeister or the actor Fritz Lehmann. Many Jewish ensemble members were helped to emigrate; one actor, Fritz Strassny , was murdered in a concentration camp.By the summer of 1944 the Burgtheater had to be closed because of the general closure of all theatres. From April 1, 1945, when the Red Army approached Vienna, a military unit was encamped in the building, part of which was used as an arsenal. It ended up being damaged in a bomb attack on April 12, 1945 in which the auditorium and stage became unusable with only the steel structure remaining. The ceiling paintings and parts of the foyer were almost undamaged. In 1951 the Burgtheater opened its doors for the first time, but only in the left wing, where the celebrations for the 175th anniversary of the theatre took place.
Immediately
after the German invasion of March 1938, the Viennese began to
threaten, torment, and deprive Jewish fellow citizens as the
ϟϟ began to throw them out of their homes. Of the
nearly 200,000 Jewish Viennese, around 120,000 were robbed and emigrated
(the most famous refugee was Sigmund Freud), about 60,000 were
murdered. The Viennese town administration was reorganised according to
the national socialist pattern. On the occasion of the 150th
anniversary of the death of the German composer, the Nazi administration
celebrated a Mozart year in the framework of the "Mozart Week of the
German Reich". From March 17, 1944, more than fifty air raids were
carried out on Vienna, which destroyed about one-fifth of the city. Not
by fighting, but by plunder, the St. Stephen's Cathedral, which had
previously surrendered the air war without a bomb hit, also set fire. In
April 1945 came the eight-day battle for Vienna, which ended with the
defeat of the Wehrmacht and the occupation by the Red Army, which had
advanced from Hungary. Consequences of the time of National Socialism
The effect of the capital function of Vienna in the monarchy, effective
until 1938, ended with the beginning of the Nazi era. The spiritual and
artistic life of Vienna suffered, above all, through the persecution of
the Jews, an enormous, not to be compensated, bloodletting. The
emergence of the Eastern bloc made Vienna a meeting point for the spies
from the East and the West, but slowed down the economic and scientific
reconstruction of Vienna. More than 20 per cent of the house stock was
completely or partly destroyed, almost 87,000 apartments were
uninhabitable. More than 3,000 bombs were counted in the city area,
numerous bridges lying in ruins, canals, gas and water pipes had
suffered serious damage. At first, the problem was solved, and the city
had to be made operational again. 
The Wehrmacht marching past the parliament building, renamed the Gauhaus during Nazi rule, with me at the same spot today. It was during the renovations that were taking place as seen behind me that workers came across four paintings by Hitler, two busts and a relief in a cupboard in the cellars. “It's not really a surprise when you clear out a building after 130 years,” a spokeswoman for the parliament told AFP. “We know that the building was used as a 'Gauhaus' during World War II and we expected to make discoveries like this.”
During the war, the building was badly damaged by bombing. On February 7, 1945, one such strike destroyed two of the total of 24 monolithic columns in the central hall , made of red-grey limestone from Adnet bear Salzburg. The two destroyed pillars were replaced by two new ones, broken from the same quarry, in 1950. The plenary hall itself was almost completely destroyed.
According to Hamann (4),
He was not yet twenty years old, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, when he set foot for the first time in the magnificent building on the Franzensring, 1 in other words, the Parliament building in Vienna, and to be more precise: the House of Representatives of the Austrian Reichsrat. This time, however, he was not interested in the building by Theophil Hansen, the architect he so admired, but in Parliament as a political institution.
Hitler's drawing from the same vantage point. Hitler attended parliamentary debates here, and in Mein Kampf he claims it was here that he began to loathe democracy. As Hitler himself related (71),
I went to the Parliament whenever I had any time to spare and watched the spectacle silently but attentively. I listened to the debates, as far as they could be understood, and I studied the more or less intelligent features of those ‘elect’ representatives of the various nationalities which composed that motley State. Gradually I formed my own ideas about what I saw. A year of such quiet observation was sufficient to transform or completely destroy my former convictions as to the character of this parliamentary institution. I no longer opposed merely the perverted form which the principle of parliamentary representation had assumed in Austria. No. It had become impossible for me to accept the system in itself. Up to that time I had believed that the disastrous deficiencies of the Austrian Parliament were due to the lack of a German majority, but now I recognised that the institution itself was wrong in its very essence and form. A number of problems presented themselves before my mind. I studied more closely the democratic principle of ‘decision by the majority vote’, and I scrutinised no less carefully the intellectual and moral worth of the gentlemen who, as the chosen representatives of the nation, were entrusted with the task of making this institution function.
The 1,441-room Rococo Schönbrunn palace which had been the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers, located in Hietzing, Vienna. Here it is after the anschluss with its sign forbidding entrance to Jews. Although once in power Hitler chose not to stay here because he detested its "imperial pomp," as a young man would not get out of bed until midday when, according to his best friend at the time, August Kubizek, he would go for a stroll in Schönbrunn Park before sitting up late at night over grandiose and senseless projects in which practical incompetence fought with impatient self-inflation. “We often watched the old emperor [Franz Joseph] traveling from Shoenbrunn to the Hofburg Palace in his coach” Kubizek would later relate. Waite (41) records how "[d]uring his Vienna days he always saved a bit of dried bread to feed the birds and squirrels in the Schönbrunn where he went to read on summer evenings."
After the war during the Allied Occupation of Austria, Schönbrunn Palace was requisitioned to provide offices for both the British Delegation to the Allied Commission for Austria and for the Headquarters for the British Military Garrison present in Vienna. The British had begun by organising racing in the park here at Schönbrunn where commander General Sir Richard McCreery occupied the room that had served Napoleon before him, a fact that caused the French general de Lattre de Tassigny considerable annoyance. McCreery, who had served with the British army in Italy, endured strained relations with Koniev from the outset. Soon after he moved into a villa near the palace in Hietzing the Soviets kidnapped his gardener. He was never seen again.
Döbling
Just north of Vienna with the Leopoldsberg in the background. During the Weimar republic the Social Democrats had planned and established many blocks of public housing, siedlungen of which the Karl-Marx-Hof is one of the largest. The suburb of Döbling had a high percentage of Jewish residents and maintained a synagogue in the district. During the Reichskristallnacht this synagogue (like almost all others in Vienna) was destroyed. The harbour itself only ever became economically important for the logging industry and after the war it was converted into a marina for rowing clubs and motorboats. This was not before the Russian raping and looting that took place in which
After the war during the Allied Occupation of Austria, Schönbrunn Palace was requisitioned to provide offices for both the British Delegation to the Allied Commission for Austria and for the Headquarters for the British Military Garrison present in Vienna. The British had begun by organising racing in the park here at Schönbrunn where commander General Sir Richard McCreery occupied the room that had served Napoleon before him, a fact that caused the French general de Lattre de Tassigny considerable annoyance. McCreery, who had served with the British army in Italy, endured strained relations with Koniev from the outset. Soon after he moved into a villa near the palace in Hietzing the Soviets kidnapped his gardener. He was never seen again.
Döbling
[a] boon to the Russians and the looters were the big wine houses in Döbling and Heiligenstadt. The Russians emptied the great tun in Klosterneuburg and then sprayed it with machine- gun fire when it would provide them with no more solace. People were seen carrying off wine from Heiligenstadt in large vessels... (MacDonogh, 30)Salzburg
‘The great provision of wine and schnapps in Vienna, above all in the vineyard areas, possibly provided a foundation for the raping of the women when it took place.’ It is true that some of the most aggravated instances were in the great cellars of Döbling, where Austrian sparkling wine or Sekt is made, and the wine ‘village’ of Grinzing. (33)
On February 5, 1914 Hitler travelled from Munich to Salzburg and was found "unfit for service, too weak and incapacitated for weapons" (which did not prevent him from serving as a war volunteer in the Bavarian Army during the First World War). Bullock (47) records that "after the Germans marched into Austria in 1938 a very thorough search was made in Linz for the records connected with Hitler's military service and Hitler was furious when the Gestapo failed to discover them." In the years after the Great War, as a politician for the Nazi Party he appeared at party events of the sister party DNSAP; at the Representatives' Day of all national socialists in the German-speaking area held in Salzburg on August 7, 1920, Hitler, who was still unknown outside Munich and who was also not the chairman of the Nazi Party, spoke up and delivered a celebrated speech in which he invoked the "Volksgemeinschaft" (as opposed to class thinking), calling for workers to win national ideas and make National Socialism a popular movement, and attacked Jews. The following evening in the Kurhaus gave him the opportunity for another speech. The Austrian Nazis used the opportunity to invite Hitler for a campaign campaign in the fall of 1920. On October 1, Hitler spoke at the Kurhaus in Salzburg in a speech lasting several hours where he distinguished himself as "a speaker far beyond the usual level of outstanding speakers who has the power to disseminate his views with compelling force," according to the Salzburg party newspaper "Deutscher Volksruf".
The following day Hitler appeared in Hallein at an event disrupted by Social Democrat participants led by Mayor Anton Neumayr. Hitler also gave a speech at the national Nazi party conference which took place from August 13 to 15, 1923 in Salzburg, The Nazi press reports focused more on the staging and inspiring effect of the performance than on the content of the one-and-a-half-hour speech in which Hitler openly announced that in a short time in Germany the decision would fall - bringing this a few months in his later attempted coup. The attitude of the Salzburg Nazi Party to Hitler was ambiguous. On the one hand glorifying him through visits of the Salzburg Nazi functionaries Otto Troyer, Anton Funk and Hans Prodinger with the imprisoned Nazi leader. On the other hand, some articles in the "People's Call" argued against the Hitler cult and against the Munich way of the violent seizure of power.
On the morning of March 12, 1938, German troops marched into the city of Salzburg. In many places, solstice fires in the form of swastikas were lit by supporters of the Hitler Youth in the mountains whilst, on official orders, the church bells rang throughout the country. The first German officers arrived in Salzburg at midnight between 11 and 12 March 1938.
The following day Hitler appeared in Hallein at an event disrupted by Social Democrat participants led by Mayor Anton Neumayr. Hitler also gave a speech at the national Nazi party conference which took place from August 13 to 15, 1923 in Salzburg, The Nazi press reports focused more on the staging and inspiring effect of the performance than on the content of the one-and-a-half-hour speech in which Hitler openly announced that in a short time in Germany the decision would fall - bringing this a few months in his later attempted coup. The attitude of the Salzburg Nazi Party to Hitler was ambiguous. On the one hand glorifying him through visits of the Salzburg Nazi functionaries Otto Troyer, Anton Funk and Hans Prodinger with the imprisoned Nazi leader. On the other hand, some articles in the "People's Call" argued against the Hitler cult and against the Munich way of the violent seizure of power. 
On the morning of March 12, 1938, German troops marched into the city of Salzburg. In many places, solstice fires in the form of swastikas were lit by supporters of the Hitler Youth in the mountains whilst, on official orders, the church bells rang throughout the country. The first German officers arrived in Salzburg at midnight between 11 and 12 March 1938.
Austrians celebrating the German army's entry into Salzburg via the Staatsbrücke over the river Salzach on March 12, 1938 and the site on my birthday, 2018. The first tank tips arrived in the early morning and from 10.30 to 11.00 aircraft of the German Air Force dropped leaflets with Hitler's greeting over the city. The German troops entered Salzburg with the roaring cheers of the population. Large quantities of Nazi flags and armbands had been delivered by truck and were distributed to the population. Franz Krieger's press photos seen here, taken on the afternoon of March 12, show German troops on the Staatsbrücke and Platzl, critical points at which a particularly large number of people had flocked to one another. The propaganda campaign for the "Anschluss" consisted of promises and
concrete economic improvements. In the course of the initial propaganda
effort workers received higher wages; child benefits, marriage loans and
unemployment benefits were paid out.
Not all Salzburgers cheered, although the only noteworthy resistance actions in the district of Salzburg were
in the working class strongholds Hallein and Bischofshofen. In the
afternoon and evening of March 11 there were clashes between Nazis and
Communists in Hallein and riots in Bischofshofen. Nazi newsreels showed
images from Salzburg on April 29, 1938 under the title "The borders have
fallen," where members of the Hitler Youth dismantled and destroyed
border symbols between Germany and Austria as boundary markers and signs
were symbolically burned. Books were next twenty-four hours later when,
on April 30, 1938 at around 20.30 books were burned at Residenzplatz which
the Nazis described as "degenerate art." 1,200 works by Jewish,
social-democrat, Marxist, ecclesiastical or liberal authors were
destroyed including works by Stefan Zweig, Arthur Schnitzler, and Franz
Werfel that had previously been collected
from libraries and private households near Residenzplatzwith as many as
5,000 watching or taking part. This organised book burning was the only one on Austrian soil. Zweig wrote, shocked,
to a friend the next day of how Salzburg was the "most Nazi city" and
"humiliated" him. Zweig had lived in the city for many years, but went
into exile in 1934 after the fascist coup attempt. Now, four years
later, one of his books was thrown into the fire so that "it burns the
flames like all Jewish writing" as it roared over the Residenzplatz.
Nevertheless, at this stage of the dictatorship the Nazi leadership was
not at all happy about the burnings given the view of it abroad and how
it was a provocation for conservative Catholics. Thus the press ignored
the Salzburg book burning; in the Austrian section of the Münchner
Neuesten Nachrichten for example one reads a report about the
celebrations before May 1st, but nothing about the book burning.
In Austria, a total of 72,000 people were imprisoned in the first few
days after the Anschluss. Political opponents, Jewish citizens and other
minorities were subsequently arrested and deported to concentration
camps. The synagogue was destroyed.
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, several PoW camps for Soviet prisoners and other enemy nations were organised in the city. During the Nazi occupation, a Romani camp was built in Salzburg-Maxglan intended as an Arbeitserziehungslager (work 'education' camp), which provided slave labour to local industry. It also operated as a Zwischenlager (transit camp), holding Roma before their deportation to German camps or ghettos in German-occupied territories in eastern Europe.
Soon Allied bombing would end up destroying roughly 7,600 houses and kill 550 inhabitants. Fifteen air strikes destroyed 46 percent of the city's buildings, especially those around Salzburg railway station. Although the town's bridges and the dome of the cathedral were destroyed, somehow much of its Baroque architecture remained intact. As a result, Salzburg is one of the few remaining examples of a town of its style. American troops entered the city on May 5, 1945 and it became the centre of the American-occupied area in Austria. Several displaced persons camps were established in Salzburg—among them Riedenburg, Camp Herzl (Franz-Josefs-Kaserne), Camp Mülln, Bet Bialik, Bet Trumpeldor, and New Palestine.
In Austria, a total of 72,000 people were imprisoned in the first few
days after the Anschluss. Political opponents, Jewish citizens and other
minorities were subsequently arrested and deported to concentration
camps. The synagogue was destroyed. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, several PoW camps for Soviet prisoners and other enemy nations were organised in the city. During the Nazi occupation, a Romani camp was built in Salzburg-Maxglan intended as an Arbeitserziehungslager (work 'education' camp), which provided slave labour to local industry. It also operated as a Zwischenlager (transit camp), holding Roma before their deportation to German camps or ghettos in German-occupied territories in eastern Europe.
Soon Allied bombing would end up destroying roughly 7,600 houses and kill 550 inhabitants. Fifteen air strikes destroyed 46 percent of the city's buildings, especially those around Salzburg railway station. Although the town's bridges and the dome of the cathedral were destroyed, somehow much of its Baroque architecture remained intact. As a result, Salzburg is one of the few remaining examples of a town of its style. American troops entered the city on May 5, 1945 and it became the centre of the American-occupied area in Austria. Several displaced persons camps were established in Salzburg—among them Riedenburg, Camp Herzl (Franz-Josefs-Kaserne), Camp Mülln, Bet Bialik, Bet Trumpeldor, and New Palestine.
The Mirabellgarten and Mozartdenkmal with the wife today. The primary allure of Mozart for the Nazis lay in the representation of a purely German cultural icon. As one of the most revered composers, Mozart's Austrian roots were conveniently overlooked, his legacy instead co-opted into a narrative of German racial and cultural supremacy. Erik Levi argues that the appropriation of Mozart was a strategic move by the Nazis to "claim cultural capital". They reinterpreted Mozart's operas to fit into a vision of German culture that was steeped in the ideals of racial purity, national unity, and Aryan supremacy. This appropriation was not merely an ideological imposition, but was facilitated through active reinterpretation of Mozart's works, with Nazi officials even going as far as altering Mozart's operas to suit their ideology. For instance, Kater's "The Twisted Muse" elucidates how The Marriage of Figaro, a critique of aristocratic privilege, was moulded into a piece that celebrated Aryan nobility. Such distortions of Mozart's operas were pivotal in creating a cultural narrative that served Nazi propaganda.
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Drake Winston in front of Mozart's statue in 2019. Although the performance of Mozart’s Coronation Mass K317 in Salzburg's Cathedral conducted by organist Joseph Messner four days after Hitler’s triumphant entry into Salzburg on April 6 captured the euphoria of the moment, the Nazis had considerable issues with co-opting Mozart into their propaganda as seen later that year when the initial plans for the 1938 Salzburg Festival had been summarily altered. Of the four operas originally promised for 1938 for example, only Don Giovanni and Figaro were retained. Even then, the honour of opening the Festival was bestowed on Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler and staged in the presence of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. This would lead Goebbels to conclude that the inclusion of Wagner’s Tannhäuser and
Die Meistersinger had been a tactical mistake which diluted the
primacy of Mozart given that, despite all the propaganda, ticket sales for performances of Don Giovanni and Figaro amounted to roughly a third of the amount taken the year before. By November 6 Goebbels could record in his diary that Hitler had agreed that in future no further Wagner performances would be allowed at Salzburg, but from now on, the Festival’s main focus would be orientated towards Mozart and Richard Strauss.Despite the uniquely Germanic character of the 1938 Salzburg Festival Nazi propaganda stressed both Mozart operas were still presented in the original Italian, ostensibly to emphasise the burgeoning alliance with Italy, and which overrode the embarrassment of highlighting the Jewish authorship of the libretti. Of note too was the significant role allotted to sacred music, possibly as an attempt to reach out to the Catholic Church although the performance of Mozart’s Requiem under Joseph Messner in Salzburg Cathedral was dedicated to the memory of the 140 Nazis who had died during an abortive coup in July 1934.
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Although depicted at the time as the shining example of youthful German genius, whose memory German soldiers were supposedly fighting on the Eastern front to preserve, his music, unlike that of Beethoven or Wagner, does not easily fit into the mould of Teutonic heroism that was required at this particular time. In fact, Mozart was probably the least easily malleable of all the great composers to have been appropriated by the Nazis. On almost every level, his philosophical and moral outlook seems at odds with their weltanschauung. For example, despite a few isolated expressions of German patriotism that appear in his letters, he does not strike one as a virulent nationalist, at least not in the sense in which such a position was understood by the Nazis. As a libertarian who generally felt at ease in most of the countries of Europe, his vision appears to have transcended national barriers rather than emphasised Germanic hegemony. Furthermore, had he been alive and working during the 1930s, his well-known activities as a Freemason and his apparent willingness to collaborate with a Jewish librettist on three of his greatest operas would surely have placed him on a collision course with the regime.
Hitler at Residenzplatz on April 6, 1938. Hitler had arrived at Salzburg at 14.00 at the main train station where he was met by Gauleiter Anton Wintersteiger, General Eugen Beyer, ϟϟ Obergruppenführer Josef Dietrich, ϟϟ Obergruppenführer Franz Lorenz and various police and party officials. Accompanying Hitler were Reichsführer ϟϟ Heinrich Himmler, SA Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Brückner, Reichspressecheffer Dr. Otto Dietrich and ϟϟ group leader Julius Schaub. The entourage drove here to the residence, where a reception with party leaders including state governor Dr. Albert Reitter as well as Minister Edmund Glaise-Horstenau awaited him. Hitler signed the city's golden book and a choir of Salzburg middle school students under the direction of Prof. Friedrich Gehmacher performed a “folk song homage” and Otto Plantl recited a poem. As a welcome gift, the city presented him with one of the most valuable
objects from the Salzburg Museum Carolino Augusteum: Carl Spitzweg's
painting Der Sonntagsspaziergang. He then drives to the Austrian Court from where Hitler was cheered on the balcony by spectators and then asked a boy from the crowd to enter the hall. At 15.30 the procession continued to travel through Südtirolerplatz, Rainerstraße, Dreifaltigkeitsgasse, Adolf-Hitler-Platz,
Bismarckstraße, Staatsbrücke, Rathausplatz, Kranzlmarkt, Alter Markt,
Residenzplatz, Domplatz, Franziskanergasse to end at the rally in the Festspielhaus which lasted until 17.00. Among the roughly 3,000 people attending were predominantly “old fighters”, and was broadcast with loudspeakers on the streets and squares of the city, where 50,000 people were expected to have listened. 6,000 SA and ϟϟ men served on security detail. The rally itself began with a flag march and speeches by district leaders and Gauleiter Fritz Wächtler; apparently first aid had to be provided in 214 cases during the rally. Hitler spoke in his speech of his supposed longing for home: "For years I dreamed of entering this country in spite of everyone who hated this hour - and now I'm here!" He eventually ended his speech with reference to the issue of an economic integration of Austria into the Reich:
We have a most magnificent goal before us, the goal of rendering this Volksgemeinschaft more profound and to integrate this country economically in the enormous cycle of our great economic life—a truly magnificent goal. I am so happy that I was allowed to create this goal and to work on it. In only a few months’ time, the tide of new creativity and new economic activity will surge through this country. In a few years, thoughts of Social Democracy and Communism will have faded like the memory of an evil spirit from a distant past, and these ideas will be laughed at... Never before have I stepped before the nation with a clearer conscience or with greater pride and confidence. I am certain: on April 10 the entire German Volk will make its greatest avowal in history. It will solemnly pledge its allegiance to the new Reich and the new community. For only if all Germans form part of a sworn-in and unified community can Germany’s future be assured for all time. Our children and grandchildren shall not have to be ashamed of their ancestors. One day they shall, with all due respect, look back to those who lived before them, to those who protected the Reich, the Reich which gives life and sustenance to them. By then, April 10 will have become one of the great days in German history. All of us greatly rejoice in the knowledge that Providence has chosen us to fashion this day.The next day Hitler attended the breaking of new ground at the Walserberg near Salzburg for the Reich Autobahn, which was to connect Salzburg and Vienna one day. In front of an assembly of construction workers, Hitler delivered a short address, declaring
Here, too, we will begin with action immediately. I will hold you responsible, Herr Generalinspekteur [Todt], not only for commencing work here on this very day, but also for completing this first section within three years. You, my fellow workers, will help him. This bond shall tie together all of Germany and it shall serve as proof to the world that a Volk and a Reich capable of seeing through such an enormous undertaking—that these can never be separated. Now I myself will commence this work.Subsequently, Hitler himself inaugurated the construction by digging the ceremonial first spadeful. Nonetheless, his wish did not come true that the Autobahn might be completed “within three years.” As with many of his other enterprises, the war was to end the construction work prematurely.
Roughly three miles west of Salzburg is schloss Klessheim, a Baroque palace located in Wals-Siezenheim. Due to its proximity
to the Obersalzberg, Schloss Kleßheim was chosen as the "Guest House of the Führer" and served as the setting for state receptions. The palace was designed and constructed by Austrian architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach for Prince-Archbishop Johann Ernst von Thun in 1700. It became the summer residence of the Archbishops of Salzburg. After the anschluss Hitler, when staying at his nearby Berghof residence, used Schloss Klessheim for conferences and to host official guests like Benito Mussolini, Miklós Horthy, Ion Antonescu, Jozef Tiso and Ante Pavelić. On April 16 and 17 1943, Horthy was Hitler’s guest at Klessheim castle. In addition to political and military matters, the talks mostly concerned the round-up of Hungarian Jews and their transport to concentration camps, that is, extermination camps. Horthy did not want to deal with this problem, and so Hitler felt forced to explain to him the necessity of the extermination of the Jews in the following manner:
If the Jews do not want to work there, then they will be shot. If they cannot work, they will go to seed. They must be treated like the tuberculosis bacillus that can infect a healthy body. This is not cruel if you consider that even innocent creatures of nature, like the rabbit and the deer, are shot so that they cannot do harm. Why should you be more kind to these beasts, who want to bring us Bolshevism? Nations that do not fight off the Jews go to seed. The decline of the once-so-proud Persian people is one of the most famous examples of this. Today, they lead as pitiful an existence as the Armenians.
Whilst Horthy stayed at Klessheim on another occasion the following year, Hitler on March 19, 1944 secretly gave orders for Operation Margarethe to occupy Hungary and enforce the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. On July 7, 1944, on the occasion of a weapons exhibition, an attempt by several Wehrmacht officers around von Stauffenberg to kill Hitler failed, when conspirator Helmuth Stieff did not trigger the bomb. Until October 1944, the palace remained outside the reach of Allied bombers. In May 1945 it was seized by the American military administration. The American commander Mark Clark had his headquarters in Schloss Klessheim like Hitler before him. Clark was pleased with Klessheim, and was under no illusions about its previous role as a guesthouse for visitors to Berchtesgaden. It had been ‘wonderfully modernised and furnished with art treasures, mostly stolen from France’. Reichsadler statues made of lime stone, that were attached to the entrance portals, remain a reminder of the Nazi era today
Zell am See
Years before the Nazis even took power in Germany, Zell am See organised a "Gautag der Hitlerpartei" for the 11th and 12th of October in 1930 in the district capital. At the welcome party about 250 people, mostly Germans, were involved. On Sunday at 9.00 a festive service took place in the parish church, although its pastor of Zell am See refused to allow the flags and standards inside the church. After the service, a celebration took place in the town square. Here, various speakers from neighbouring Bavaria on the 'Austromarxismus' started. The region, directly adjacent to Bavaria, was well located geographically for supporting propaganda from Germany. After the seizure of power by Hitler in 1933, Austrian Nazi officials found shelter in neighbouring Germany and can continued their work from there. In the spring of 1931 bloody clashes between Nazis and Social Democratic supporters occurred again and again in the Zell am See area. In April 1931, 34 Nazis held a meeting in Ferleiten. On the return trip, they were attacked by about 200 workers, and in the ensuing mêlée one person was severely injured and four persons slightly injured. In September 1932, a meeting in Zell am See ended in a bloody hall battle between the Social Democrats and the National Socialists. The local organisation of the Social Democratic Party was invited under the theme "National Socialist demagogy" to a meeting in the Park Hotel on Zell am See. After the event, three people were seriously injured and ten slightly injured. The Parkhotel was badly damaged. During the parliamentary elections between the National Council election in 1930 and the state election in 1932, the Nazis made considerable gains in this area.
The church and Schmittenhöhe during the Nazi-era and today
From Where Eagles Dare and the same site today
The hauptplatz during Nazi rallies in 1938 and Drake Winston today. The tourist office has moved to the main street..gif)
The first American soldiers in Pinzgau were the paratroopers of the 101st American Airborne Division ( 101st Airborne Division ). They moved into Zell am See on May 8, 1945, the day of the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht. A little later, the " Rainbow Division " (42nd Infantry) took over the administration, denazification and democratisation of the liberated areas in Pinzgau. Soon American commanders, working with city officials, were able to alleviate widespread shortages of food and other necessities. It is also worth mentioning that at that time there was an American university (the Rainbow University) in the Grand Hotel with a branch in the Metzgerwirt. As everywhere else, the first years after the end of the war were difficult in Zell as the shortage of food made things difficult for the people, and there was also extensive clean-up and restoration work to be done. But slowly everything was restored, the infrastructure on the Schmittenhöhe was continuously improved with new lifts and more spacious ski runs, and shipping was also promoted through the purchase of the Libelle boat. This was followed by municipal works, the construction of the elementary school, the adaptation and establishment of the hospital and much more. Due to the rising economy and the steadily growing tourism, Zell am See soon moved up into the front ranks of Salzburg's tourist destinations as winter tourism became more and more important and skiing found more followers.
Overlooking Zell on Schmittenhöhe.
Spending a cold winter morning at castle Fischhorn. As shown in the then-and-now GIFs, a fire on On September 21, 1920 destroyed large parts of the castle. The owner had it restored by the Bremen architect Karl Wolters based on the much simpler architecture that existed before the neo-Gothic reconstruction. In May 1943 the Nazis seized the castle and the surrounding buildings. From then on, the property of the ϟϟ served as a remontage, as a riding school and from September 1944 as a sub-camp of the Dachau concentration camp. On the evening of May 7, 1945 German Corps G, First Germany Army, and the American Seventh Army had negotiated a cease-fire, and both units agreed to stop troop movements as well as to cease shooting at each other. During this time Göring sent a note to Seventh Army Headquarters in Kitzbühel informing them that he would meet the Americans at the Fischhorn Castle at Zell am See, to surrender. As they drove up to the gaunt stone building, Göring glimpsed a G.I. and an ϟϟ officer standing guard on opposite sides of the gateway. Rather alarmingly, the castle still housed the staff of an ϟϟ cavalry division. “Guard me well,” he said, turning to his captors, but a Luftwaffe major noticed that his face was wreathed in smiles. Emmy and Heli Bouhler fell into each other’s arms as they stepped out of the cars. “When do I get to meet Eisenhower?” asked Göring. Stack answered evasively. Later, Göring returned to the matter. He turned to the interpreter. “Ask General Stack,” he said, “whether I should wear a pistol or my ceremonial dagger when I appear before Eisenhower.” “I don’t care two hoots,” retorted the general.Irving, Göring (686)
In May 1945, Hermann Göring was captured in Altenmarkt im Pongau by
American soldiers. From May 7-9, 1945 Göring lived with Emmy and
daughter Edda in castle Fischhorn before being transferred to the Grand Hotel in Kitzbühel.
The castle's story doesn't end there- Philipp Bouhler, a senior Nazi Party functionary who was both a Reichsleiter and Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer and the ϟϟ official responsible for the Aktion T4 euthanasia programme that killed more than 70,000 handicapped adults and children, as well as co-initiator of Aktion 14f13, the so-called "Sonderbehandlung" ("special treatment"), that killed 15,000–20,000 concentration camp prisoners, was arrested with his wife Helene by American troops on May 10, 1945. Thereafter, both committed suicide. His wife Helene jumped from one of the castle's windows whilst on May 19 Bouhler used a cyanide capsule whilst in the American internment camp at Zell-am-See.
Innsbruck
Nazi flags on the former Adolf-Hitler-Platz (now Hofburgplatz) and, below right, Herzog-Friedrich-Straße with its Goldenem Dachl and today. Innsbruck gave the Nazi Party some of its strongest support in Austria before the Anschluss, although when, in 1921 radical nationalists stood for the first time under the name of the National Socialist Party in the Innsbruck supplementary elections, they received only 646 votes (2.8 percent). Their programme - the union of all “German peoples”, racism, anti-Semitism, “common good before self-interest” and “national community” - was more radical than that of the other parties. Despite the proletarian influence, it was most similar to that of the Greater German Party, which had ruled Innsbruck, albeit under a different name, for decades and provided the mayor until 1929. One of the National Socialist candidates was still on the municipal council for the Greater Germans in 1919. In the 1923 elections, the Nazi party won one mandate for the first time, and a second in 1925, which was held by a city teacher. In 1927, the Greater German People's Party, which had suffered significant losses in votes in the previous two ballots, formed an alliance with the National Socialists and ran under the name of the “National Unit List”. The amalgamation of the “national Innsbruck” gained votes and mandates, but not to the extent it had hoped for. In addition, the Nazi party split into a group that followed an Austrian path and one that submitted to the National Socialist German Workers' Party in the German Reich. Both Nazi parties ran separately and lost in 1929. Together they won just 1.4 percent of the vote. 
By the end of the year the effects of the global economic crisis were already being felt, and the established parties seemed to have no recipes to cushion them for the population. This was also evident in the number of lists that applied for votes and seats. In 1929 a total of eight parties ran for election- three from the nationalist camp - Greater Germans and two National Socialist parties; three from the conservative - Tyrolean People's Party, Employees' Party, Homeowners and Innkeepers; and two from the left - Social Democracts and the Communist Party. In the run-up to the 1931 elections, there were riots and riots, especially between Nazi supporters and those of the Social Democrats, but also with the police. The Nazis end the end achieved only 4.1 percent of the vote. From autumn 1931, the Nazi Party relied on a massive propaganda campaign and public presence. Parades, torchlight procession, swastika graffiti on house walls, leaflets, bonfires in the form of swastikas - this and the promise that National Socialism would alleviate the problems of poverty and hardship created by the economic crisis caused many people to gravitate to the Nazi Party. The appointment of Hitler as chancellor across the border gave the Tyrolean Nazi Party further impetus. Before the supplementary election in April 1933, the Nazi party presented itself as a saviour, promising that Austria would flourish like the German Reich under the leadership of Hitler. That election on April 24, 1933, saw them gain a remarkable 14,996 votes (41.2 percent). After the Nazi Party was banned in mid-June after the Dolfuß assassination, the Nazis lost their seats. A few months later the government banned the Social Democratic Party and the Austro-Fascist self-appointed corporate state ruled dictatorially until March 1938 and the “Anschluss”.
During the anschluß and on the occasion of Hitler's visit on April 5, 1939. Hitler would return March 18, 1940 when his train stopped over ifor him to to review an honour guard. According to the Party newspaper, he was “very touched by the enthusiasm demonstrated by the Tiroleans.” Significantly, they sang the “Englandlied” to greet him. It wouldn't be until the catastrophic defeat of the 6th Army in Stalingrad in February 1943 that Innsbruck and other Austrian towns began to feel the impact of the war. With the surrender of Army Group Africa in Tunisia and the landing of the Anglo-Americans in Sicily, the Allies were able to open a new air front from the south. The Gau Tirol-Vorarlberg was now within range of their and the Gau, which until then had been completely spared from the bombing war, suddenly became of strategic interestgiven that war production was increasingly being relocated here as well as the fact that the Inn valley and the Brenner route had become extremely important for German supplies after the Wehrmacht occupied Italy in September 1943. Already on September 1, American planes bombed the train stations of Bolzano and Trento, and on October 1st, the first air raid on the Gau in Feldkirch killed 210 people. Now the neglect of the Nazi regime, which had completely neglected the air raid shelter out of confident arrogance, is taking its toll. Shortly before the first attack on Innsbruck, the Tyrol-Vorarlberg district group of the Reichs Luftschutzbund had expressly pointed out that the "production of tunnels for air defense purposes was completely prohibited." In the summer of 1943, some flak batteries were installed in and around Innsbruck (Tiergarten, Höttinger Au, at the First Tyrolean Workers Bakery, at Tivoli, in Rum, Natters, Lans, Vill, Zirl) and along the Brenner route, but in view of the increasing threat to the In the Gau area, such defences in no way corresponded to the necessities. The regime also had to fall back on 15 to 17-year-old students as air force helpers and Soviet prisoners of war for air defence. On December 15, 1943, the 15th US Air Force used its strategic location, which had been improved by the new bases in the Foggia area, for the first time and launched the first and most disastrous of a total of 22 attacks on Innsbruck. 48 B17 Fortress bombers and 39 P38 fighters dropped 126 tonnes of bombs over the Gau capital to destroy the railway systems. The result was devastating: 269 dead, 500 wounded, 1,627 homeless and massive material damage, especially in the city centre. The causes of the devastating effects of this first attack on Innsbruck lay in the antiquated gun material of the flak, the lack of experienced soldiers and bomb-proof security rooms as well as the complete failure of the warning system. Even before the worst damage had been repaired, the next attack took place on December 19, which, however, met with far greater resistance from the Tyrolean air defence. In addition, for the first (and last) time, there were aerial battles between German fighters and American aircraft. Whilst five American bombers were shot down, the Luftwaffe lost at least 24 aircraft; probably even 38. The consequences of this attack for the Innsbruck population were seventy deaths. Seven 17-18 year old foreign boys were hanged as looters because they had bought clothes and were caught secretly eating bread and jam. A 34-year-old Tyrolean who stole valuable clothes from the suitcase of a bomb refugee from Innsbruck was sentenced to death by the Innsbruck Special Court. Since there were no more attacks on Innsbruck until June 1944, there was time to increase the effectiveness of the air defence by expanding the use of school children and apprentices on the flak and, from November and December 1944, by a larger number of Hungarian soldiers and flak batteries from Italy. Incredibly, it wasn't until January 1944 that the Nazi regime set about building air raid tunnels that offered the Innsbruck population some safe protection. As a result, 8,901 metres of tunnel would be built within a few months through the concentration of funds on Innsbruck and the predominant use of foreign workers, forced labourers and prisoners of war or of the "labour education camp Reichenau" under the supervision of local construction companies. For example, in March 1944 in Innsbruck, in addition to 75 domestic workers, 491 foreign and forced labourers and 112 prisoners of war were working on such tunnel construction.  |
Maria-Theresien-Straße |
The Allied bombing had not led to the hoped-for demoralization of the civilian population, but it did lead to general physical and psychological exhaustion. The Americans saw the successful bombing of the Brenner route as one of the main factors behind the surrender of the German troops in Italy and the failure of a "final battle" on Tyrolean soil. As a result of the air war, around 1,500 bomb victims were mourned in the former Tyrol-Vorarlberg district, a third of them in Innsbruck (504 people). Innsbruck also bore the brunt of the material damage. 80 percent of the total damage concerned the state capital. Almost 54% of the buildings and almost 60% of the apartments in Innsbruck were damaged,destroyed or uninhabitable. The worst damage occurred in the districts of Wilten and Pradl, in the vicinity of the train station as well as in Maria-Theresien-Straße and the old town.The liberation of InnsbruckIn the last weeks of the war more and more people joined the small, heterogeneous resistance groups that Karl Gruber had united. When the Americans threatened to bomb and completely destroy Innsbruck on May 2, 1945 if the Nazis did not surrender the city, Innsbruck was surrendered the next day without a fight after Gauleiter Franz Hofer had previously forbidden any resistance in a radio address.
Kitzbühel
Kitzbühel was fortunate to be spared from destruction in the First and Second World Wars. During the period of National Socialism from 1938 to 1945, Kitzbuhel was a holiday destination among leading national socialists. Albert Speer, Hermann Göring and Leni Riefenstahl were guests; Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop bought a farm in the village of Bichlach. At the same time, a communist resistance group organised in Kitzbühel, with connections to Berlin's Robert Uhrig. Five members of the group, Anton Rausch, Andreas Obernauer, Joseph Pair, Viktor da Pont and Ignaz Zloczower, were arrested and murdered in 1942 after being spied on by the Gestapo. Novelist and sports writer Budd Schulberg, assigned by the U.S. Navy to the OSS for intelligence work whilst attached to John Ford's documentary unit, had been ordered to arrest Riefenstahl at her chalet in here in Kitzbühel, ostensibly to have her identify Nazi war criminals in German film footage captured by the Allied troops shortly after the war. At this point Riefenstahl claimed not to have been aware of the nature of the internment camps. According to Schulberg, "[s]he gave me the usual song and dance. She said, 'Of course, you know, I'm really so misunderstood. I'm not political'".
Bad Radkersburg
Bad Radkersburg, on the Slovenian border (where it is known as Radgona). In the course of the 19th century language conflict, nationalist struggles in the ethnically mixed area arose between the predominantly German-speaking citizens and the Slovene-speaking peasant population down the Mur River. A garrison town of the Austro-Hungarian Army during the Great War, it was occupied by troops of the newly emerged Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) on December 1, 1918. An armed revolt against the occupation forces, led by Johann Mickl, in order to affiliate the town with German-Austria failed. Nevertheless, by resolution of the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain, the area north of the Mur passed to the First Austrian Republic, while Oberradkersburg (Gornja Radgona) and the neighbouring municipality of Apače (Abstall), on the south bank, became part of Yugoslavia. The nationalist conflicts lingered on, on both sides of the border. During the war many members of the German minority greeted the Wehrmacht invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941 and joined the German combat units, while large parts of Radkersburg were devastated by armed conflicts. After the war, most of the remaining German-speaking population south of the Mur was forcibly expelled.
Kufstein
Nazi flag on the Römerhofgaße in front of the Auracher Löchl on the left, and on the Italian-Austrian border during the war and today with baby Drake Winston. In 1938 Kufstein became the connection of Austria to the German Reichkreisstadt in the Gau Tirol-Vorarlberg. Shortly before the end of the Second World War, the city was bombed and attacked with artillery, destroying many historic buildings. After the end of the war, Kufstein was occupied by the Americans and the French.
Gröbming
Adolf-Hitler-Platz and today. During the Second World War, Gröbming hosted thousands of refugees. Between 11:00 and 11:10 on March 11, 1944, three American aircraft arriving from Öblarn attacked Gröbming station killing two men- Otto Kar and Werner Ulbrich- with minor resulting building damage. Later that month on the 25th Gröbming's railway station was bombarded by two fighter bombers approaching from Schladming between 13:00 and 13:15, damaging a locomotive. On February 20, 1945 from 14.55 to 15.20 a passenger train on the Klachau - Bad Mitterndorf railway line at was attacked by six American planes approaching from Gröbming damaging a locomotive and eight carriages.
Waizenkirchen
Adolf Hitler Platz and today; the fountain remains
Bad Leonfelden
Schloss Brunnwald, built between 1724-1727 in the midst of a forest as an hunting lodge. A fire in 1898 badly damaged it but by 1905 it had been rebuilt. In 1939 the castle was confiscated by the Nazis to serve as an NSV Müttererholungsheim. After the war services were held for the large number of refugees within.
Friesach
Nazi flags flying from the Hotel Friesacher Hof and the town today. It was here where famed mountaineer and writer Heinrich Harrer lived and is buried. He is best known for being on the four-man climbing team that made the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland, and for his book Seven Years in Tibet which was later made into a film starring Brad Pitt in the role of Harrer. Escaping from British internment in India during the war, Harrer and his colleague Aufschnaiter (familiar with the Tibetan language), reached Lhasa on January 15, 1946. In 1948, Harrer became a salaried official of the Tibetan government, translating foreign news and acting as the Court photographer. Harrer first met the 14th Dalai Lama when he was summoned to the Potala Palace and asked to make a film about ice skating, which Harrer had introduced to Tibet. Harrer built a cinema for him, with a projector run off a Jeep engine. Harrer soon became the Dalai Lama's tutor in English, geography, and some science, and Harrer was astonished at how fast his pupil absorbed the Western world's knowledge. A strong friendship developed between the two that would last the rest of their lives. 
Standing in front of the Potala palace which served as Harrer's home during his period of exile. By the time he died in 2006, Harrer's Nazi past came back to haunt him. A decade earlier film-maker Gerald Lehner found in American archives the Harrer's SA membership card dated October 1933. After the Anschluss Harrer immediately joined the ϟϟ holding the rank of Oberscharführer, and on May 1, 1938 he became a member of the Nazi Party. After their ascent of the Eiger North Face he and his colleagues were formally received by and photographed with Hitler. Harrer later said he wore his ϟϟ uniform only once when he married Charlotte Wegener, daughter of eminent explorer and scholar Alfred Wegener. Nevertheless, when Harrer returned to Europe in 1952, he was cleared of any pre-war crimes and would describe in his book Beyond Seven Years in Tibet his involvement with the Nazi Party a mistake made in his youth when he had not yet learned to think for himself.
Kapfenberg
Adolf-Hitler-Platz with the Altes Rathaus then and now. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, Kapfenberg's industrial facilities were expanded and expanded to meet the requirements of the massive military rearmament. Since the area around the main plant in the valley of the Thörlbach offered too little space, construction of the plant VI in the north-east of the city was begun. Additional underground tunnelling systems, some of which are still preserved, were built in order to be able to continue production in an emergency. Böhler also founded the non-profit Mürz-Ybbs-Siedlungs-A.G in 1938, which began with the construction of the Hochschwab settlement. In 1943, with the support of Böhler, the municipality decided to found a trolleybus company, Mürzaler Verkehrsgesellschaft m.b.H. (MVG). Soon after the Anschluss, the Antifascist Front, a resistance movement with about one hundred members, formed in Kapfenberg. One of the most important organisers was Anton Buchalka, who was executed in 1941 in Berlin. For the large number of war prisoners and forced labourers who were employed in war production at Boehler, several barracks camps were erected at the Schirmitzbühel, near the plant VI, in Hafendorf and Winkl. From November 1944 to May 1945, the facilities of Böhler, the station and the freight station were attacked several times by Allied bombers in Kapfenberg. After the end of the war, the city was occupied by Soviet soldiers on May 9, 1945, who were then fortunately replaced by British occupiers on July 24 1945. A DP camp was set up for about six hundred Jewish and non-Jewish so-called displaced persons.
Lienz
Adolf-Hitler-Platz with the Nazi Eagle-topped memorial and today. After the First World War the southern parts of the former Cisleithanian crown land of Tyrol (Trentino and South Tyrol) were awarded to the Kingdom of Italy under the terms of the London Pact and the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain, making the Lienz district of East Tyrol an exclave with no territorial connection to the mainland of North Tyrol. As a result of this and the effects of the economic crisis, the number of unemployed rose massively in Lienz. It was only from 1937 that an improvement in the employment figures could be observed. Modest growth in tourism was hampered by the imposition of the Thousand-Mark barrier, and greater investment in tourism remained in Lienz as a result. With the opening of the new building of the district hospital in 1931, however, an important infrastructure project could be realised. In 1936, the Lienzer garrison was also installed and the modernisation of the city began in the 1920s. From the February fighting in the course of the Austrian Civil War in 1934 Lienz was spared, but the Lienzer garrison was used in the crushing of the fighting in neighbouring Carinthia. In the 1930s, the Nazis succeeded in gaining a foothold in East Tyrol, albeit only to a modest extent. In 1933, 150 Lienzers were still members of the Nazi Party, with the share of Nazi members being comparatively low compared to other surrounding municipalities. After the 1938 Anschluss of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi
Germany, the Lienz district became a part of the "Reichsgau" of
Carinthia and with it the integration of the population into
the Nazi organisations. The four Jews
were expelled from Lienz as early as 1938; in Lienz, according to the
Nazis' classification, two families, whose
members were partially classified as "full or half Jews". Although two
members of one of these families were to be deported to Dachau for
several weeks, the families were not killed by
the Nazi persecution although at least twelve were eventually murdered in concentration camps or were poisoned.
The annexation of East
Tyrol to the Gau Carinthia took place in October 1938. Lienz also experienced
population growth through the settlement of several hundred South
Tyroleans, who had decided to resettle in the German Reich. For the new arrivals the so-called South Tyrolean
settlement was built in typical Nazi construction.
Towards the end of the war, several bomb attacks on Lienz occurred, the first attack on June 13, 1944, meeting the district of Peggetz. As a result, the population was often destroyed by minor and major bombings, with the heaviest bombings taking place on February 5 and April 26, 1945. A total of about a thousand bombs were dropped on Lienz, killing thirteen people and destroying 19 buildings, including the station. thirty buildings were also heavily damaged, twelve medium and 41 slightly damaged. Altogether about 360 Lienzers were killed in the war.
Towards the end of the war, several bomb attacks on Lienz occurred, the first attack on June 13, 1944, meeting the district of Peggetz. As a result, the population was often destroyed by minor and major bombings, with the heaviest bombings taking place on February 5 and April 26, 1945. A total of about a thousand bombs were dropped on Lienz, killing thirteen people and destroying 19 buildings, including the station. thirty buildings were also heavily damaged, twelve medium and 41 slightly damaged. Altogether about 360 Lienzers were killed in the war.
On May 8, 1945 victorious British forces occupied Lienz, which together with Carinthia and Styria became part of the British occupation zone. At this time several thousand members of the former Wehrmacht 1st Cossack Division coming from Yugoslavia had arrived in and around Lienz who then surrendered to the British troops before being forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union. These Cossacks
who had fought alongside the Germans had been saved
from Soviet troops in a British-controlled area. The Cossacks,
however, were handed over to Soviet units by the British army in June
1945, and hundreds of Cossacks died by suicide or were killed in the tragedy on the Drava.
