Igor Anatolyev. Hitler is with us!

Hitler is with us!
Igor Anatolyev

Publication date: July 18, 2001

The pioneer of the modern approach to the unification of Europe was Hitler. At first, he showed his skills in Austria, which he dreamed of destroying as a state and annexing it to the Reich. Hitler's policy was to do everything possible to contribute to the erosion of the Austrian state from within, and when it proved unable to defend itself, to strike a decisive blow.

Hitler, whom the Germans considered a peacemaker until 1941, preferred the tactics of “peaceful evolution” in solving the “Austrian question.” On the one hand, Austria was proposed to enter into a monetary union with Germany and begin the process of economic integration. On the other hand, the Austrians were asked to give amnesty to the Nazis who were involved in the murder of the head of state, and, moreover, to give them important positions in the government. The Austrian Nazis advocated the liquidation - if necessary, by armed means - of the very state in whose government they were asked to participate. Germany also insisted that Nazi propaganda in Austria be carried out without restrictions.

Using the political jargon of modern Europe, Hitler advocated freedom of speech, the rights of national minorities, economic integration and the negotiation process.

The Austrians turned out to be disobedient. In secret from Hitler, the Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg prepared a referendum in which voters were asked to answer the question: do they support “a free, German, independent and social, Christian and united Austria” and whether they cast their vote “for freedom, work and equality of all, who stands for race and homeland." The result of the referendum was obvious from the very beginning: yes to a united Austria, no to joining the Reich.

Only after seeing that he had been outplayed on the propaganda field did Hitler decide to go beyond it and undertake open military intervention. Goebbels proposed combining an armed invasion with organizing unrest within the country. To this end, a thousand planes were supposed to scatter leaflets in which the Austrians were called upon to rise up to fight against their own government. Schuschnigg was sent an ultimatum demanding that he postpone the referendum, resign and appoint a Nazi to his post. Left to their own devices by other powers, the Austrians eventually surrendered. Soon crowds of local Nazis took over local government offices. An Austrian Nazi, appointed chancellor, asked Germany for “help” in restoring order.

However, the Fuhrer read his thoughts. Hitler gave the order to the Wehrmacht to occupy Austria half an hour before the telegram arrived asking for help. The Austrian authorities completely capitulated, but the movement of Nazi divisions could no longer be stopped. American journalist William Shirer ironically noted that by doing so, Hitler violated the terms of his own ultimatum.

It is interesting that even then Hitler’s plans did not include an immediate Anschluss, that is, the inclusion of Austria into the Reich. But the enthusiastic reception given to him by the Austrians, and the foreign press, which wrote about the Anschluss as a done deal, added to the Fuhrer’s resolve. The Anschluss took place the day after the entry of troops.

Hitler, however, considered the Austrian Nazis lazy and poorly organized. So officials from the NSDAP and the SS were immediately sent to the country. Jews were taken out into the streets to clean the pavements with toothbrushes, and mass arrests of communists, social democrats and other unfit for life began.

In the plebiscite that soon followed, 99.75% of Austrians voted for the Anschluss and the “Fuhrer list.”

Thus, Hitler was the first to carry out a test destruction of the state as part of his project of building a united Europe led by Germany. Russia, of course, from the very beginning was assigned the role of a raw materials appendage of the Reich, “German India”.

However, the destruction of states was never art for art’s sake for Hitler. Hitler destroyed the essence of the state, its independence - but not the shell. In this sense, Austria was rather an emotional exception - we must not forget that the Fuhrer himself was an Austrian.

In all other circumstances, Hitler preferred to preserve the state shell of the territory he needed, the external rituals and ceremonies of its power institutions. As long as there was a puppet regime in power, which, to use the favorite expression of the Nazis, “worked towards the Fuhrer,” there was no need to eliminate such a state entity.

Almost all states that existed at that time retained formal independence in the Nazi united Europe. The exceptions were, perhaps, Yugoslavia and Poland, but there were reasons for special treatment of these countries - both rational and emotional.

It is known that Hitler was ready to preserve Poland as a state subject to the establishment of a puppet regime there - and, of course, the “return” of some key areas to the Reich. Poland had the imprudence to resist the Wehrmacht, and that is why it was liquidated.

The Fuhrer's Balkan strategy provided for the establishment of friendly regimes in the countries of the region economically tied to Germany. The maximum economic benefit for Germany included peace in the Balkans.

At first everything went according to plan. All Balkan states became allies of Germany - with the exception of Greece and Albania (Italy intended to capture them). In 1941, the Yugoslav government decided that it had no choice but to join Hitler's bloc. On March 25, at a ceremony in Vienna's Schloss Belvedere Palace, Yugoslav Prime Minister Cvetkovic signed a pact with Hitler. In order to ensure a peaceful rear in the event of an already inevitable attack on the USSR, Hitler was ready to accept the conditions of the Yugoslav government: guarantees of the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, a ban on German troops passing through its territory, refusal of any requests for military assistance and support for Yugoslavia’s claims to Greek Thessaloniki.

The signing of the pact, however, caused a storm in Belgrade. The pro-German government was overthrown; the contract is terminated. Hitler was beside himself with anger and vowed to immediately destroy the “treacherous” Yugoslavia. Just ten days later, Belgrade was subjected to merciless bombing (this was personal revenge: while fighting against Greece in the spring of the same year, Hitler banned the bombing of Athens).

On the morning of the bombing, a proclamation was read out on German radio in which Hitler declared that the “criminal Serbian clique” was going, as in 1914, to start a new war in the Balkans. The day before, Yugoslavia signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, but Stalin did not intervene. Yes, this was impossible - in order to help Yugoslavia, the Red Army had to occupy Romania in a short time. The USSR was not yet ready for a big war, Stalin believed.

Two weeks later, the Yugoslav state ceased to exist. The delay in the Balkans may have forced the Fuhrer to postpone the attack on the USSR. At the end of the war, Hitler complained that it was the Yugoslavs who prevented him from defeating the Soviet Union in 1941. If Operation Barbarossa had begun as originally planned on May 15, Hitler said, the “Eastern Campaign” would have been completed before the onset of the “Russian frost.”

So, with a few exceptions, Hitler's “new order” was completely compatible with formally independent states whose leaders knew how to “work towards the Fuhrer.”

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Hitler's experience came in handy in the era of globalization. Now states are created, supported and (in the most extreme case) destroyed by international structures whose goal is to create a “new world order” - oh, of course, exclusively for the benefit of the herd peoples. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman dubbed the new approach to nation-building a "globolution." If the state is unable to initiate the necessary “economic reforms” from above or below, they must be called “from the outside,” writes Friedman. External intervention must establish a regime in the country that is ready to make it a “member of the international community,” which includes opening the economy to international players, carrying out widespread privatization, sharply cutting social programs, and so on. The irony of history is that Yugoslavia was once again the only country in Europe not ready to “fit into” the proposed “new order.”