"Eins, Zwei, Eins, Zwei…"
Our guide’s father was a German speaking teenager in the Sudetenland in 1940, just miles from the Austrian Border. After the annexation, he was lined up in a formation and the German officer went down the row saying “eins, zwei, eins, zwei…” His father was "zwei," and went to train as a tank driver for deployment to North Africa and then Italy. All the “eins” went to the Russian Front. Our study of WW2 was personal today.
We started with a tram ride south to the Imperial Armory which houses the Austrian Military Museum. It was built in the middle of the 19th century, as a combination fort, barracks and armory. It was built outside the city by Franz Joseph after citizens took over the arsenal in the city center and had too much success with armed rebellion. It is a clue that something is not going quite right if you have to prioritize relocation and fortification of your national defense FROM your people.
Our guide was so impressed upon learning that John just completed his study of Adventures of a Simpleton by Grimmelshausen (the definitive, semiautobiographical novel of the thirty years war), that he actually ran us through the entry hall, up the stairs and into a room with a painting celebrating the Hapsburg and southern (Catholic) forces victory at Nordlingen. We saw a fabulous display of period armor, weapons and personal effects. It was a nice compliment to John’s literary studies.
We studied the events leading up to the start of WW1 and charted the changing battle lines and participants through each year of the war. A gruesome display of carnage. And strategic blunder. As we all know, the stage was then set for WW2 with the Treaty of Versailles. John and I were treated to an inside story around the Austrian chancellor’s assassination that made way for the annexation of Austria by Germany (the Anschluss). Incredible new information for me. And it is clear why Austrians like to claim that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German, even though the opposite was true.
Some of the uniforms looked more like hunting outfits, reminding John and me of Simplicissimus as the Huntsman of Soest.
John in front of the Archduke of Ferdinand's car...what a series of miscues led the car to be within pistol range of Serbian radical Gavrilo Princip. See the bullet hole in the left rear quarter panel- this was the lethal round that hit Sophie.
Although the Soviet Red Army liberated Vienna from the Nazis at a cost of 20,000 killed in action, the city was divided into zones governed by each of the 4 allies, similar to Berlin. Our guide showed us his parents ID cards that were in English, French and Russian and stamped with each country's seal. The allies agreed to pull out if the Austrian Parliament would declare themselves to be a neutral country. Austria is now one of 5 European neutral countries along with Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland and Finland.
On a very long walk from the museum back to our hotel (14,000 steps that day), our guide took us to see one of the three pairs of anti aircraft towers protecting Vienna in WW2. Each pair consisted of a radio tower and an AA battery. The three towers were arranged in a triangle with the city center in the centroid. The towers were also used as bomb shelters for the inhabitants lucky enough to be on the list. Local companies had places reserved for their employees. There was a Siemens factory near this site and there were specific places allocated to the Siemens team. The efficiency was remarkable, as Hitler Youth would read out lists of addresses destroyed by bombs at the conclusion of each raid so the people would know whether they were returning to a home that we intact or not. There were 53 allied bombing raids on the city of Vienna.