Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 18 – This week marks
not only the fifth anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s
Crimea but the 81st of Adolf Hitler’s Anschluss of Austria, a coincidence
which provides many instructive lessons but that the Kremlin leader and his
supporters will do everything they can to ignore.
But some Russian commentators are
paying attention. On the Kasparov portal, Tata Gutmakher draws some disturbing
parallels between the two actions not only in how they were carried out but how
international reaction to them opened the way, indeed made inevitable, a major
war (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5C8E88B7D6194).
On March 13, 1938, “the head of one
country joined a neighboring one to it,” she writes. “Adolf Hitler declared the
Anschluss to the Third Reich of his native Austria.” Then followed
Czechoslovakia and Poland; and because the great powers of the day did not
respond to this first act of aggression, “a major war became absolutely
inevitable.”
“The western countries ignored ‘the
fusion of Austria with Germany – no one recalled the St. Germaine peace treaty
of 1919 which guaranteed the sovereignty of Austria.” Instead, they took note of
a referendum that Hitler staged on April 10 in which 99.08 percent of Germans
and 99.75 percent of Austrians voted for their countries to be combined.
Both peoples celebrated, even though
the referendum asked only one question and in one way: “Do you agree with the March
13, 1938, reunification of Austria with Germany and do you vote for our fuehrer
Adolf Hitler?” There was a large space to mark “yes” and a much smaller one to
say “no.”
But another aspect of this ballot
was perhaps even more important. It referred to the joining of the two
countries as Wiedervereinigung, as if
they were coming back together rather than being joined as a result of an act
of aggression. The newly expanded Germany celebrated with medals and
manifestations.
“Doesn’t this remind you of
something?” Gutmakher asks.
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