Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1945 WE WILL REMEMBER VIENNA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 11 April 1945, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1945 WE WILL REMEMBER VIENNA

LIBERATION has come to Vienna from an unusual direction—the east. | So often in history Austria has found aggression marchiqg from the east, but the hand that killed the buoyant, care-free spirit of the home of music, culture and art in 1938 descended from the west. It was that of an Austrian-born paperhanger father was a customs officer down by the Bavarian border and who lived five years in gay Vienna by manual labour. No one can tell what trick of heredity, environment, or fate led to Hitler adopting Germany as his country and resolving that Austria should be merged into the Greater Reich. This was his first overt act of territorial aggression, the first direct manifestation of an overweening ambition which was to career madly round Europe and drench it in blood before being contained and driven back to its lair, to be ultimately destroyed.

March 13th, 1938, was indeed an unlucky day for Austria. The staunch little Chancellor DollfusS'had been murdered in advance; Dr Kurt von Schuschnigg was terrorised by the Hitlerian technique and carried off to a concentration camp, where some say he is still alive, and the mechanised might of Germany’s Wchrmacht, spoiling for fight, was soon rattling along the Ringstrasse in Vienna. The Austrians were too dumbfounded at the conduct of their German cousins to offer any resistance; perhaps the impressionable Viennese saw no great harm In the change, for they are easily swayed and not disposed to take the fluctuating fortunes of life too seriously. Very quickly the anschluss was complete and Austria became one of the icde.al divisions of Germany under the Nazi dictatorship. Hitler’s man, Dr. Seyss-Inquart, who afterwards built lor himself an infamous reputation in the Netherlands, was installed as Chancellor. The army was incorporated in the German army; Austrian diplomatic representation abroad was ended, the Germans taking over; the mark currency was decreed to be legal tender and displaced the schilling entirely; the Austrian National Bank was liquidated and the railway system united with that of Germany. As from Ist April, 1940, the new province, known as the “Ostmark,” was divided into seven districts each under the direct rule of a “Stathalter.”

Thus did the Nazi blight fasten itself on Austria and on Vienna, one of the world’s most romantic capitals. The people have not, as far as we have been told, rebelled against their oppressors. Indeed, the absorption process might have proceeded to an advanced stage there, but after the deadening influences of the last seven years. Austria will rejoice at the prospect of becoming free once more fincf enjoying her independence. The dark years are rolling on to bright-

er days and a world which values and respects the artistic and cultural gifts of a warm-hearted people will again be glad to remember Vienna.