Austrians Still Love Hitler
Photo ~ Members of the League of German Girls wave Nazi flags in support of the German annexation of Austria in Vienna, Austria, March 1938 (Photo courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Seventy-five years after the Nazi invasion and occupation of Austria, a newspaper in country has asked citizens about their opinion of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi annexation during World War II. Jewish leaders who have been raising the alarm about anti-Semitism in Austria say the results were not surprising.
Forty-two percent said life was not all bad under Hitler, while 61 percent said they would be interested in a strong-armed leader who did not have to deal with democratic challenges like political opponents and elections. The survey, published this weekend, is getting prominent play in the media in Israel, which is home to some 250,000 Holocaust survivors. That’s half the number of survivors who arrived in the country since Israel was founded in 1948.
“If accurate, the results are extremely alarming, but not entirely surprising,” Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, told TheBlaze. “Austria is a country which has a long tradition of anti-Semitism and which produced some of the biggest Nazi war criminals.”
Austira's Love Affair With Nazism
Seventy-five years after the Nazi invasion and occupation of Austria, a newspaper in country has asked citizens about their opinion of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi annexation during World War II. Jewish leaders who have been raising the alarm about anti-Semitism in Austria say the results were not surprising.
Forty-two percent said life was not all bad under Hitler, while 61 percent said they would be interested in a strong-armed leader who did not have to deal with democratic challenges like political opponents and elections. The survey, published this weekend, is getting prominent play in the media in Israel, which is home to some 250,000 Holocaust survivors. That’s half the number of survivors who arrived in the country since Israel was founded in 1948.
“If accurate, the results are extremely alarming, but not entirely surprising,” Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, told TheBlaze. “Austria is a country which has a long tradition of anti-Semitism and which produced some of the biggest Nazi war criminals.”
Austira's Love Affair With Nazism