AUSTRIA:PRESIDENT HEINZ Fischer of Austria has said his country's annexation to the Third Reich, 70 years ago yesterday, sealed the country's fate as both Nazi victim and perpetrator.
The march of Wehrmacht troops into Austria on March 12th, 1938 and Hitler's jubilant arrival in Vienna a day later remain, seven decades on, the most divisive events in Austrian history.
Conservatives see the so-called Anschluss as a hostile takeover, with a defenceless Austria as Hitler's first victim; liberal historians say there was mass approval for the takeover by the Austrian-born dictator.
President Fischer said yesterday that "from day one there were victims and perpetrators". "The march into Austria was an act of military aggression . . . of which Austria was - in international law - a victim," he told parliament.
"But it was made possible by a considerable number of fanatical National Socialists and an even larger number of sympathisers.
"All over Austria, people raised swastika flags as an expression of the hope they placed in the Third Reich," he said.
The Anschluss took place in a country still dealing with the consequences of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire two decades earlier; its democracy was weakened by inter-party bickering and a strong fascist movement that drew strength from the rise of Hitler across the border.
A 1936 treaty defining Austria as a "second German state" failed to placate Hitler's designs on his homeland and on February 12th, 1938, Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg signed an annexation agreement with the Third Reich.
A ruthless Nazi takeover began a month later, replacing Mr Schuschnigg, the entire judicial system, police and academic system with Nazi loyalists. By 1945 Austria counted 600,000 National Socialist Party members; around 65,000 Austrian Jews and 2,700 resistance fighters were murdered.
Simmering debate about Austria's wartime role was dragged into the open in 1985 with revelations that President Kurt Waldheim, a former UN secretary general, was, allegedly, complicit in wartime massacres.
Today, many Austrians agree that the country was an accomplice in the Nazi machine although a new poll found that 60 per cent of Austrians would prefer to draw a line under the past.
Otto von Habsburg, the son of the last Kaiser, stirred up controversy this week by saying that "there is no country in Europe that has a better claim to be a victim of the Nazis". The 95- year-old Mr von Habsburg, who protested against the Anschluss in 1938, said it was natural that 250,000 people turned out to hear Hitler speak in Vienna because they were "curious".
His remarks have prompted furious reaction from Austrian politicians and historians.
"I regret that he is destroying his lifetime achievements with this absurd revival of the victim thesis," said Gerhard Botz, author of National Socialism in Vienna.