Austria will mark the 75th anniversary of the Anschluss tomorrow (March 12) – an official wartime union between Germany and Austria cemented when Nazi troops marched into the neighbouring country without opposition on March 12, 1938. In recognition of this, the Vienna Philharmonic is publishing a report on its website detailing its links to the Nazi party during the Second World War.

The orchestra has never before revealed the full extent of its involvement with the Nazi regime, but has now allowed three historians access to its archives dating from 1938 to 1945. The research has revealed that 60 of the Vienna Philharmonic’s 123 members - almost half of the musicians - were members of the Nazi Party during World War II and that 13 orchestral musicians were expelled for being Jews or married to Jews. Of these 13, five died in concentration camps and others were deported. There is a suggestion, too, that the orchestra’s celebrated New Year’s Day Concert was originally designed as a propaganda tool for the Nazis.

For full details visit the Vienna Philharmonic website, which is due to publish English translations of a number of articles on the subject in due course.