Otto von Habsburg warned of Putin's war 20 years ago - and compared him to Hitler

Created: 03/18/2022, 15:18

By: Wolfgang Hauskrecht

Otto von Habsburg, son of the last Austrian imperial couple, pictured in his house in Pöcking on Lake Starnberg on June 26th, 2007.

© Matthias Schrader/ lby/ dpa/ Picture Alliance

Otto von Habsburg, the last crown prince, recognized early on what drives Russia's President Putin - and compared him to Hitler.

Munich – Otto von Habsburg had apparently seen the Ukraine conflict* coming.

During his lifetime, the eldest son of the last Emperor of Austria repeatedly warned against Russian President Vladimir Putin*.

He compared Putin to Adolf Hitler and predicted new Russian "colonial wars".

Putin, he constantly warned, was a danger to all of Europe.

Otto von Habsburg warned against Putin 20 years ago

Otto von Habsburg was born in 1912, shortly before the First World War.

From 1916 to 1918 he was the last crown prince of Austria-Hungary and from 1979 to 1999 a highly respected CSU* member of the European Parliament.

He experienced Hitler's seizure of power as a young man - and at the beginning of this millennium he raised his voice against the Russian ruler.

“Of course, communism as it was under Stalin will not return.

But National Socialism is coming, of course not in the form of Hitler, but of Putin," he said in 2002 to the weekly newspaper

, which is close to the FPÖ .

20 years ago.

Putin had only been president for two years.

Otto von Habsburg was warned about Putin: he was cruel and oppressive

By his own admission, Otto von Habsburg had been dealing with Boris Yeltsin's successor since reunification.

Putin already denounced classmates who were critical of the government when he was still at school and made a career for himself with the KGB secret service early on, said Habsburg, who lived in Pöcking on Lake Starnberg, in a 2003 lecture in Bregenz.

As early as 1990, anti-communist demonstrators warned him that Putin was cruel and oppressive.

In his inaugural speech in January 2000, Putin made it clear that he wanted to make Russia a world power again.

The West, Habsburg criticized, "didn't take any further notice" and believed that after the Cold War we were living in a time of security and peace.

Europe must work closely with the USA and promote European unification, "because that means security for us".

The peace can be saved by timely intervention.

Habsburg warned against Putin: He was "an ice-cold bureaucrat and technocrat"

The lectures and interviews in which Habsburg warned against Putin are numerous.

In an interview with the

in November 2005, he described Russia as “the greatest imperialist country there is.

It goes as far as the Kuril Islands on the one hand and on the other hand still dreams of getting the Baltic States back”.

Putin is "an ice-cold bureaucrat and technocrat", a KGB man.

"Look how much Russia has been re-Stalinized since Putin came to power."

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The Viennese daily newspaper "Die Presse" recently compiled further admonishing statements by the Habsburgs.

Accordingly, he said in 2005 at a lecture by the Paneuropa Union in Vorarlberg, in Russia * there was a "mentality of the police state".

In Washington that same year, during a lecture at Johns Hopkins University, Habsburg stressed that Russia's political and economic power was concentrated in the hands of Putin and his secret police cronies.

"Our biggest problem in Europe today is Russia and Putin's rule." His actions were similar to those of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and Habsburg mentioned Putin in the same breath as the National Socialist dictator Adolf Hitler.

Like Hitler, Putin is open about his intentions.

In 2006 he repeated this at a conference in Ljubljana.

The Russian President is doing "exactly the same steps as Hitler".

Otto von Habsburg: "Russia is not Europe"

Shortly before his 95th birthday, Otto von Habsburg also raised his voice.

"Russia is not Europe," he told the Austrian news agency APA.

Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was "the last great colonial empire in the age of decolonization".

Otto von Habsburg did not live to see that he was right.

He died on July 4, 2011 at the age of 98 in his home in Pöcking.

*