Snapshot: Democracy’s Survival Demands Attention

A message from Vienna

(Photo by Steven Beschloss)

I came across this billboard in the historic center of Vienna yesterday. “Democracy must be renewed every day,” it says. Perhaps it was just coincidence that fire department first responders seemed to be preparing for an emergency right beside it.

Perhaps it was also a coincidence that this billboard was just a minute away from the main open plaza of Heldenplatz, but maybe not. That was where Adolf Hitler spoke from a balcony to over 200,000 Austrians on March 15, 1938, after he and his soldiers had marched into Austria and Vienna, experiencing an enthusiastic embrace and no visible resistance. In fact, they were greeted with Nazi flags, Nazi salutes, cheers and flowers.

That invasion and annexing of Austria—Hitler’s move to establish a “greater Germany” and end Austrian independence with this Anschluss—was a chilling preface to a World War that led to death and destruction beyond any previous imaginable scale. “Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators," Hitler declared.

The Nazis arrive. The public listens to Hitler.

But over the next month, leading up to an April 10 referendum about the annexation, Hitler’s thugs were busy arresting and stopping any opposition. That included pro-independence critics, Social Democrats, Communists and particularly Austrian Jews; an estimated 70,000 were either imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. (Ultimately, 120,000 Viennese Jews fled Austria and another 65,000 were murdered.)

And when that “voting” happened? The false pretense of democracy and the actual will of the people could not have been more transparent. Nazis stood by the voting booths and the ballots had to be handed over rather than privately submitted. And the ballot itself was a mockery, with the “correct” answer made obvious.

“Do you agree with the reunification of Austria with the German Reich that was enacted on 13 March 1938,” the ballot text read, “and do you vote for the party of our leader Adolf Hitler?" The “voters” could either choose the large circle to say “yes” or the much smaller circle to say “no.” Unsurprisingly, the results were almost unanimous. To dissent was to risk your life.

Now 86 years later, the far right is alarmingly expanding its position in Europe, including the Freedom Party of Austria, which won the largest vote for Austria several weeks ago in the European Union parliament election (25.5 percent).

And on the American side of the ocean, where the threat of fascism by an aggrieved minority is rising—as the memory of the Nazi horrors is fading—let’s pay attention to that billboard noting that democracy must be renewed every day. Let’s also acknowledge the sign those first responders sent: There is an emergency and we need to be prepared.

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One last note: The terrace where Hitler spoke, often called “Hitler’s balcony,” has never been opened to the public, with few exceptions.

(photo by the author)

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Weisel spoke there in 1992. Talking then about confronting the past, Wiesel said that “the change cannot come from the balcony. It must come from below.”

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