There’s a HUGE Soviet war memorial in Vienna, I wandered into the plaza by accident and was like “wtf is this doing here?”
Thanking the “liberators”, ignoring the welcome that Austria gave to Hitler.
The Ukrainian flag painted behind it is a nice touch, if it’s still there.
“liberators”
Why the quotes? The Soviet military deserves credit where it’s due when it comes to defending Europe against fascism during WW2
Hitler had a positive approval rating in Austria. It’s like liberating Florida from Trump.
Yes, famously 99.3% totally democratic yes votes for the Anschluss, after the fact and without the votes of the key political dissidents, they were already in prison/KZ.
Why is upper Austria chopped into 2 pieces? And another piece added from Styria?
Also why is upper Austria lower down than lower Austria?
I can answer your second question: Upper and Lower have nothing to do with drawing on a northed map, but rather with the geography of the land. The Alps start to fade out and thus get lower the more you go west in Austria so Lower Austria is physically lower than Upper Austria. Same thing in Bavaria: The Southern part is called Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria) whereas the northern part is Niederbayern (Lower Bavaria).
When did Austria reunify? Also 1989?
Austria was occupied, but it was never split like Germany. They immediately got a unified government in 1945 and the joint occupation ended in 1955.
Austria, unlike Allied-occupied Germany, had its own government from 1945 onwards. While Germany was divided into East and West Germany in 1949, Austria remained under joint occupation of the Western Allies and the Soviet Union until 1955; its status became a controversial subject in the Cold War until the warming of relations known as the Khrushchev Thaw. After Austrian promises of perpetual neutrality, Austria was accorded full independence on 15 May 1955 and the last occupation troops left on 25 October that year.
how nice of the commies to leave as long as austria promises not to defend itself
russia never changes, fucking cowards
Won’t comment on that last statement, but the deal wasn’t ‘no self defence’, it was ‘no taking sides’. With Finland, with the allied plans to invade Norway and axis invasion of Norway and allied invasion of Iceland, the Soviets struck a deal requiring the Finns to have a good standing army so they couldn’t be invaded and made use of. They went as far as selling Finland their best fighter aircraft to ensure this. The threat was ‘Fight to stay neutral during a war or we’ll have to invade you again’.
