Udo Landbauer, leading candidate of Austria’s Freedom Party in the upcoming local elections in the state of Lower Austria, is said to have glorified the Holocaust and the Wehrmacht through songs of his fraternity group Germania. The FPÖ is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party and is since the snap elections in 2017, junior partner of the winner ÖVP with its chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
According to a research report by Austrian magazine Falter “Germania to Vienna Neustadt” fraternity of which Landbauer is a member since 18 years, distributes song books that glorify the Holocaust against the Jews but also the official army of the 3. Reich, the Wehrmacht.
In one song, the lyrics read: “Then came the Jew Ben Gurion in their midst – Give gas, you old Germans, we’ll manage the seventh million.”
“>Another song “Legion Condor” glorifies among others the role of the Wehrmacht Air Force in Guernica massacre during the Spanish civil war. the song is though mainly about the year 1941, when the Nazis attacked the island of Crete thus committing several war crimes.
Aus dem Liederbuch der Burschenschaft Germania, deren stellvertretender Vorsitzender FPÖ-Spitzenkandidat Udo Landbauer ist pic.twitter.com/5EPduE3AH9
— Nina Horaczek (@NinaHoraczek) January 23, 2018
The lyrics are “On Crete the flags are blowing, we paratroopers have won. And many have fallen, but the fame of the paratroopers has remained.”
The Battle of Crete began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany began the airborne invasion of Crete. It was the first occasion where Fallschirmjäger (German paratroops) were used en masse, the first mainly airborne invasion in military history. the battle last until June 1 with 4,123 casualties on the front of Cretan resistance fighters and the Allies UK, Australia and New Zealand. 17,479 were captured while the number of the injured remain unknown.
“>While in Austria the hell has broke out around Landbauer, the spokesman of the 51-year-old politician told Falter that the young politician knows the song book “only through torn out pages and blackened sections.”
Landbauer is a deputy chairman in Germania. In a statement issued late on Tuesday, Landbauer claimed that he is “utterly appalled and shocked by those lyrics that have become the subject of political debate today. When this book was printed, I was eleven years old. I receive this information for the first time today.” He further wrote that he will pause his membership to the fraternity and order an investigation.
Falter reports that Landbauer had vote in favor of banning the song book still in 2017.
The party of chancellor Kurz said that the allegations are “incredibly serious” and the issue has to be “completely cleared up.”
Members of local FPO said that these Germania songs are “incitement of the masses”, the fraternity must be verboten and Landbauer resign.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said in a statement that the song book lyrics are “racist and antisemitic” and have no place in the country.
PS I always knew that fraternities in German-speaking countries were arch-conservative and nationalistic. But still spreading Nazi-propaganda and ideals? Thousands of Austrian politicians will reassure “We didn’t know.” In Udo Landbauers info in wikipedia Germania is clearly described as an extreme-right fraternity.
