On the first day of the Winter Solstice, Carolyn does a kind of Christmas show with an un-Christmasy title. Subjects include:

• The primacy of the fresh-cut Tannenbaum to the German Christmas tradition, going back to the pagan custom of bringing  evergreen boughs into the house in winter, partly to ward off evil spirits;
• My father’s Christmas trees, and my fond memories of “the night we put up the tree”;
• How the Christkindl,  the gift giver, morphed into St. Nicholas and then to the commercial Santa Claus;
• Letters from airman Leopold Wenger on the Western Front (1939-42) reveal that the one necessary element for a Christmas celebration was the tree;
• New Vienna Philharmonic story and European Human Rights Law Court story show that there is no way out except through the holocaust;
• Details on the upcoming Jan. 27 Revisionist Commemoration website, which will be only about Auschwitz-Birkenau, not any other aspect of holocaust;
• Carolyn talked about her German ancestors’ long time of living in Hungary on Tom Sunic’s VoR program in Dec. 2009!

Three-quarters of a century have passed since 1938, but it seems only a short time ago in many ways. The Anschluss, in which the German-Austrian people gave up their independent republic to become a part of the far more prosperous and dynamic German Third Reich, was an event of great joyousness and great hope. That hope was not disappointed, as their society was recharged by new investment in their dormant factories and other projects,  and their economy got moving again. However, the powerful Left media and academia insist on portraying it as a time of moral darkness and tyranny simply because a small minority of Jews were negatively affected. The Jewish question is greatly overplayed in the whole story of Austria after the Anschluss. Some highlights of the program:

• Poll conducted by mainstream Austrian newspaper reveals a 61% approval for a “strong leader”  and 54% think the “Nazi” Party would receive support today;
• Vienna Philharmonic under attack (again) for having too many National Socialist party members in its orchestra during the 1938-45 period under conductor Wilhelm Furtwaengler, and firing all of 13 musicians for being Jewish;
• The mystery of the “replacement”  ring of honor given to (“war criminal”) Baldur von Schirach in 1966 by the Philharmonic is considered “solved” just in time for the anniversary;
• A similar attack by Prof. Rathkolb on Herbert von Karajan, another brilliant “Nazi” conductor whose early writings “prove” he was always racist and antisemitic;
• “Witness to the Anschluss” read from the Wilhelm L. Kriessmann Archive.

Image: Hitler speaks to a massive crowd in the Heldenplatz (Heroes’ Square) in Vienna on March 15, 1938.