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Originally Posted by microbet
If you don't know what "lump Holland in with Austria" means, how can you assert adios didn't do it? It's pretty simple though. He listed them together with no distinction
So everyone has to add caveats to their statements of fact now so that you don't draw false conclusions about what they're saying? Dont be ridiculous. He doesnt have to make distinctions. He made no general statement about either country whatsoever.
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, which I think is not fair as the Nazis were generally received very differently in each country.
Statement of fact is just that. If you draw generalities from them either for yourself or from what other people are saying, that's your problem.
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I'm quite sure every occupied country in the history of the world has had some collaborators. (Though the general characterization of 'occupied' may not even fit with Austria.)
He wasn't talking about terms of degree. If you wanna talk about it though, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Hungary, Denmark, and others all had multiple thousands of volunteers in SS divisions. In fact, the SS was around 50% foreign volunteers as the war progressed. Belgium and Holland also had quite popular fascist parties pre war with the Dutch one winning 4-10% of the vote in pre war elections 1931-1939.
As far as Austria goes, it's pretty clear you need to do some reading If you think the reason for unification was solely massive Nazi factions in Austria.
"Prior to the*Anschluss, there had been strong support from people of all backgrounds – not just Nazis – in both Austria and Germany for a union of the two countries.
The idea of an*Anschluss*(a united Austria and Germany that would form a "Greater Germany")[a]*began after the*unification of Germany*excluded Austria and the German Austrians from the Prussian-dominated*German Empire*in 1871. Following the end of*World War I*with the fall of the*Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1918, the newly formed*Republic of German-Austria*attempted to form a union with Germany, but the*Treaty of Saint Germain*(10 September 1919) and the*Treaty of Versailles*(28 June 1919) forbade both the union and the continued use of the name "German-Austria" (Deutschösterreich); and stripped Austria of some of its territories, such as the*Sudetenland."
You can see from this alone that anschluss was a strongly desired outcome for 50 years before the Nazi party even existed!
Anschluss was widely desired in Austria, but that doesn't either take away from the fact that the anschluss of 1938 was the direct result of a Nazi coup d'etat. The Nazi party was small, and Schushnigg did everything he could to stop Hitler from the hostile takeover of Austria including announcing a plebiscite on unification that almost certainly would have failed. Hitler
invaded Austria to prevent the plebiscite because he knew it would have failed, which pretty much murders your conclusion that "Austria accepted him with open arms."
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As for your post, my tone was a bit accusatory, but the suggestion that Hitler might not have known about the camps was somewhat shocking.
For someone who so often draws quick, simple and unjustified conclusions despite the complexity of the subject matter, this isn't surprising to me. What is really not fair though is drawing conclusions about people's beliefs when you don't know anything about them. Please stop doing that.
Last edited by DoOrDoNot; 03-25-2018 at 01:30 PM.