75th Anniversary of the Anschluss Election

This is an article for The New American magazine that Kurt wrote ia April of this year. Much of what was going on in Germany in the 1930s under Hitler is happening again in our country. Look at the striking similarities and watch our government closely. Thanks Kurt.

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Bruce

'April 10, 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of the infamous Anschluss election. Ninety-nine percent of those voting throughout the German Empire put their stamp of approved on the Nazi takeover of Austria. The percentage of yes votes was even higher in Austria where 99.75 percent voted “Ja.” Adolf Hitler proclaimed, “This hour is the proudest my life.”
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The New York Times for March 12 reported on the front page that censorship had been imposed. Foreign correspondents in Vienna were told all their telephone calls in the Central Telegraph Office must be in German. It also added: “Correspondents for the International News Services, an American organization, were detained against their will, without charges, at the office.” The Nazis closed newspapers that weren’t pro-Nazi. All this while Hitler was making speeches saying everything would be beautiful.

The Nazis rescheduled the election for April 10 and renamed it from an independence election to an Anscluss Election, Anschluss being the German word for Union. The new ballot, paraphrased in English, presents the voter with a fait accompli: "Do you agree with the 13 March 1938 reunification of Austria with the German Reich and do you agree with our leader Adolf Hitler?"
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In typical dictator fashion, the fait accompli happened four weeks earlier and was already the status quo. The ultimatums, the invasion, and the arrests were described as “reunification.”
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Kitty Werthmann was 10 years old when Hitler “reunified” Austria under Germany. She gives a frightening eyewitness account of how many Austrians, sick of years of economic depression, voted for Hitler because they thought it would put the country back to work. But then the reality set in. Werthmann explained how God was kicked out of the government schools. Crucifixes were replaced with pictures of Adolf Hitler and swastikas. The healthcare was socialized and quality went down while the taxes went up. Particularly chilling was Werthmann’s account of what Hitler did to firearms owners:...
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Gaining control over elections was an essential element in Hitler’s strategy for imposing dictatorship. He understood direct democracy, which is simply majority rule, as opposed to a republic, which is rule by law.
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But what would the reality be? If it results in centralization of power to rewrite election rules or change election dates in response to real situations or false alarms, it would become essentially the same power that was abused by Kurt Schuschnigg and Adolf Hitler as they rewrote the rules and the schedule of an election. All the time they claimed it was in the best interest of the people; however, history has shown it was simply jockeying for power on their part.

It can’t happen here? Maybe not now, but we have been moving gradually in the wrong direction for a number of years. We need to reverse course and put elections back on track or we may suffer the same fate the Austrians did 75 years ago today.'