Alexander Wienerberger was first and foremost a leftwing sympathizer of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, like so many other freed former Austro-Hungarian POWs. He stayed voluntarily so many years in Soviet Russia, because he wanted to help build the new proletarian paradise. During the NEP years it was also a bit more liberal and there were many foreign specialists working at constructions sites of newly built factories, etc. Some did it for the money (remeber there was the Great Depression in the West from 1929 onwards), some did it out of idealism. In this kind of Ex-Pat community Wienerberger lived. They had more freedom than Soviet citizens and could move around a bit more freely. Only when things got tighter under Stalins rule also for those Ex-Pats (random arrests, etc.) some started to have doubts. And witnessing the Holodomor opend the eyes to Wienerberger that this Bolshevik project of creating an ideal society is a big lie. That's why he returned home to Austria 1934. The fact that he contacted the Catholic Archbishop of Vienna to help him publicize his photos and reports from Russia and Ukraine, shows that he was no Nazi-sympathizer back than. The Nazis in Austria were staunch anti-catholic and had just tried a Coup-d'Etat against the catholic bourgeois government in 1934, which took the life of Chancellor Dollfuß, emphasizes that. Later after the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi-Germany the report of Wienerberger was republished and only there appear this anti-semitic remarks. It is not clear whether Wienerberg himself added them or the Nazi publisher. It is more likely that the regime just reused his material withour asking him, because it fitted so well into their Anti-Soviet propaganda at that time. 109.100.148.173 (talk) 23:46, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
- Are you saying he never joined the Nazi party then? Arrowsof1000 (talk) 17:26, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I have reviewed source 5 on this article, pages 173-76 and I found no mention of Wienerberger. Did he have a pseudonym that I'm not aware of? Was the source supposed to be for a different volume of this work? Arrowsof1000 (talk) 17:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
