AN AMERICAN EYE WITNESS IN AUSTRIA 1938

Every so often one comes across something which jumps at you from the pages, and grabs your imagination, rivetting you with detailed accounts of experiences which remain to this day indellibly etched into their consciousness of events, people, and places they once encountered that have great significance and meaning to this current generation facing similar challenges.

What follows is a chilling account, but I believe we have reason for concern that the same thing is happening in our wonderful country.

Subject: Austria 1938

Kitty lives in South Dakota and appears to be very active in attempting to maintain our freedom. I encourage everybody to read this article and pass it along. I see so many parallels in this country–are we going to sit by and watch it happen? Spread the word; also contact your congressional reps; vote them out if they don’t do what they should. Google Kitty Werthmann and you will see articles and videos.
For those who would rather watch the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoAg6h4KQnM&feature=related
Once you watch this, you can watch the rest of the segments of her speech on you tube by clicking on the box / link on the right side of the page... She goes into a lot more detail than in the following....

This Truly Is the Greatest Country in the World.
Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away.
By: Kitty Werthmann

What I am about to tell you is something you’ve probably never heard or will ever read in history books.

I believe that I am an eyewitness to history. I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide – 98% of the vote. I’ve never read that in any American publications.
Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.
In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed.. We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates.
Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs. My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.
The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other. Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna , Linz , and Graz were destroyed. The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.
We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany , where Hitler had been in power since 1933. We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living. Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group – Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria . We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back. Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.
We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.
After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.
Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage.
Hitler Targets Education – Eliminates Religious Instruction for Children:

Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang “Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,” and had physical education.
Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail. The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free. We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.
My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination. I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.
Equal Rights Hits Home:

In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.
Soon after this, the draft was implemented. It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps. During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys. They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines. When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.
Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.
Hitler Restructured the Family Through Daycare:
When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.
Health Care and Small Business Suffer Under Government Controls:

Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.
As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income. Newly-weds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.
We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.
We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.
“Mercy Killing” Redefined:

In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps. The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated. So people inter-married and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work. I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van. I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months. They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.
As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.
The Final Steps – Gun Laws:
Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.
No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.
Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria. Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath.
Instead, we had creeping gradualism.
Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.
After World War II, Russian troops occupied Austria . Women were raped, preteen to elderly. The press never wrote about this either. When the Soviets left in 1955, they took everything that they could, dismantling whole factories in the process. They sawed down whole orchards of fruit, and what they couldn’t destroy, they burned. We called it The Burned Earth. Most of the population barricaded themselves in their houses. Women hid in their cellars for 6 weeks as the troops mobilized. Those who couldn’t, paid the price. There is a monument in Vienna today, dedicated to those women who were massacred by the Russians. This is an eye witness account.
“It’s true, those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity. American truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don’t let freedom slip away. After America, there is no place to go.”

WHAT RECOVERY!?

Whether the news is coming from Reuters or from the Associated Press, both news organizations staffed with news people with political biases which translate into how they write, and also reflect the editorial staff who determines what gets released and what gets "spiked."

What has become evident the past year has been that the reality behind the newsroom is not the same reality in the streets; at least with regards to the economy, or rather how it is being reported by the major newspapers.

The unemployment figures are out once more, and they show, as they have for the past two years, that there is absolutely no job growth in this economy, and there has not been since 2007.

But why is the mass media using the words " the recovery," and " this fragile economic recovery" and the broader economy's recovery," as we are reading for example in Reuters report on the unemployment numbers today (Thursday, August 5Th, 2010)?

Because it is nothing more than spin. Nothing more than hogwash crafted by those who wish to evoke a mindsight among the general populace that things aren't as bad as they see around them, and as they are experiencing in their pocketbooks.

This is done for two main reasons; to lead the public to spend with abandon in order to "stimulate" the flaccid retail markets, which they hope will in turn "stimulate" the wholesale market to meet the demand of what the public wants, which is more of what it is purchasing. Again, this is like a fog, it is only good for as long as the public continues to consume, and like a fog, it is short-lived and soon dissipates. Then again reality sets in.

The second reason is politically ideological. Those who spin the news to the reality they wish the public to see are concerned that every measure this administration has taken to stimulate this economy and turn the pendulum in the opposite direction - presumably towards growth and jobs - are concerned, very concerned the direction it is taking. They see it rapidly going south, and they can't explain why, or they simply won't accept the prognosis that we are in the beginnings of a Third Great Depression as Paul Krugman, Dick Morris, Robert Reich and many others have conceded we are in. And thus, the news people spinning the current Depression into a "jobless broader Recovery," as they call it, simply will not report it as such because if they were to do so, they would have to concede that the policies that have led US thus far; those enacted and put into policy by this president since he took office a year and a half ago, have been an abject failure. The political consequences for this president and his party in an election year.and the possible losses to his prestige and to his party, are just too great for them to bear. Thus, they write of being surprised by the hundreds of thousands - not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands - who file for unemployment benefits week after week. This is not a recovery, and these aren't growing job numbers. This is a hemorrhage. America's economic lifeblood is bleeding unstoppably.

America is bleeding unstoppably and there is not a single politician who knows what to do about it. So we see the Left telling US that we are in a "jobless recovery," while the Right's only solution is to criticize this administration's policies without presenting an alternative of their own. The only thing one hears is the usual conservative platitudes of supporting "individual responsibility," supporting a "free market," promoting "lower taxes," and promoting "policies that will spur economic growth" without telling you what those policies are, and how they would specifically differ from those of this president, which are doing just the opposite.

A Reuters story titled, "Surprise Rise in Jobless Claims Casts a Pall on Economy" says it all. The unconvincing but cleverly crated article is peppered with the usual euphemisms of "broader recovery," and "this fragile recovery" to name a few. On one line, we read: "The surprise rise in jobless claims and below forecast sales from domestic retailers..." Well, surprise to whom? Everyone knows how sick this economy is.

In an article titled "Depression 2010 Why It's Coming How to Prepare," the writer explains this Pollyannish mentality on the part of the press in the following manner:
"And folks, the numbers don’t lie. The media has a tendency to put a spin on things and in this morning’s video I talked about one news story where it says consumers are creeping out of their cocoons. Well that’s all happy talk, and so is the word green-shoots, but it’s all meaningless and it simply is designed to try and create a certain mindset for the consumer. It is terribly, terribly misleading, inaccurate and really meaningless."

In another part of this incisive article, we read:

"Clearly, human nature doesn’t change. Just as the populace of the early 1930’s wanted to believe that the worst of the crisis was behind them, so too, the populace of the 2009’s wants to believe that the worst of the crisis is behind them.
The problem is, the populace wasn’t correct then, and neither are they correct now.
Setting aside emotions and just rationally looking at the facts presents a very dire economic outlook.

"My thesis is that an economic depression next year is just about assured. The problems that caused Round One of this financial crisis have not been corrected.
Round Two of this crisis is rapidly approaching. While this is very clear to me, it may come as a complete shock to most people.

"Why can’t we believe the mass media that the worst is over?
The answer to that question is rather lengthy. A short while ago I did a webinar to answer that very question..."

"Remember the old saying. “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” And therein lies the heart of the matter: emotions.
No matter what picture the facts paint, if you emotionally do not want to believe that this recession will be turning into a depression in the next 12 months, a mountain of evidence as high as Mount Everest will be insufficient proof in your mind.

"The key for you is to set aside your emotions and simply examine the facts. If you can do that, you are much more likely to find the truth."

It is time for Americans to set aside their preconceived emotions, and to begin preparing for what lies ahead. This begins with the election of public officials who will serve the public good, and not betray it. The recent scandals with Congressman Charles Rangle (D. NY), and Maxine Waters (D. Cal) are just recent examples of great corruption bordering on criminal activities by public servants who've misused their office and influence to enrich themselves. This has been going on for too long, with large political machineries and unholy alliances between big labor, corporations, and politicians of all stripes. This must change, and it can with the election of new people, hopefully people who are honest - men and women of integrity.

And the other thing which must be done is to repeal the bad legislation of the past two years, help those who truly need help such as the long term unemployed, the disabled, and the indigent, while using the money from the TARP and the stimulus to do this, so that the deficit will not grow any further.

The Tier 5 Unemployment Extension proposed by various key Democrats today can be funded by the Stimulus, and in so doing, there will be no excuse not to pass the much needed Tier 5 extension which over six million hurting Americans desperately need at this time. All in all, if the Republicans do not wish to be mischaracterized as not caring, they can support the legislation being proposed, and ask their Democratic colleagues to use the money from the Stimulus to fund this extension. If the Democrats who are proposing this legislation wish for it to pass with bi-partisan support, they should agree with the Republicans to use the Stimulus to fund it. This way, they cannot be accused of overspending and adding to the federal deficit.

This is what needs to be done and it must be done before things get any worse, because it will get worse before it can get better, yet we can prevent unnecessary suffering with good policy and good legislation.