"The West’s Forgotten Victory:
Why They Hate Vienna"
by John Wilder
"One of the things I’ve learned about history is that they skip all of the really good parts. I recall my time as a leader in that well known paramilitary organization, Boy Scouting® (back when they were boys and they were doing scouting). On occasion the boys would mention some historical event, and I’d go into more detail: the Battle of Britain, the Revolutionary War, heck, even the Romans.
We’d talk through history. Then, when the subject was done, invariably one of the scouts would say, “Man, that’s interesting! Why don’t they teach that in school?” Well, because you’re watching "Frozen" or "Shrek" instead so your teacher can sleep off a hangover and your textbooks prefer pronouns to Patton. Who knew that campfire coffee mixed so well with history?
The nice thing is that there are still subjects that I learn about. Namely, 9/11. Oh, this isn’t the story of that 9/11. This is the story of September 11, 1683. And I believe that it’s a story that the Muslim world has yet to get over.
It’s September 11, 1683. Not a date I learned in school, but it should have been. In the history of the Western world, it isn’t even that far back. Isaac Newton was busy figuring out the delicate ballet of the spheres in the heavens, and Oliver Cromwell’s head was still busy rotting on a pike in London. But this is in Vienna, the heart of the Holy Roman Empire
Vienna on this date is surrounded by 300,000 Ottoman Turks. Think illegal aliens but with scimitars and an even more unintelligible language without any Juan being able to understand it. Vienna is down to 15,000 defenders. They’re starving and outnumbered 20-to-1, so why not just give in? The Turks are promising they’ll be treated well. Thankfully, the Turks had tried this line with another city in Austria that actually did surrender. The Turks had laid siege to the town of Perchtoldsdorf (gesundheit), and promised all the inhabitants would be spared and that the city would not be sacked.
When they surrendered, the city was sacked and the vast majority of inhabitants were killed or enslaved. That’s good, because now the people at Vienna knew exactly what sort of devil they were dealing with. What sort of devil was it? It was the Ottomans, led by Kara Mustafa, who are determined to own Europe, turning cathedrals into mosques, and making the West kneel to the Turks and to their god.
Sound familiar? It’s the kind of existential threat the GloboLeft pretends never existed, because “white culture” is always the bad guy in their revisionist fairy tales. In looking at European history, this was a Very Big Deal, and yet it’s glossed over or (in my case) never even mentioned in class. I think that it’s because the story didn’t end the way the anti-Western Civilization establishment that had taken control of education wanted it to end.
The defenders didn’t yield even a square inch (3.3 millicamels) of the city of Vienna. Instead they held the walls through two months of hell. Disease, cannon fire, Ottoman sappers blowing tunnels under the city. They went through summer, and now were hungry, and they were praying for a miracle.
Enter the relief force arriving on September 11th. 47,000 Germans and Austrians with 20,000 or 30,000 Poles. Most famously, King John III Sobieski of Poland, leading the Poles, including the Winged Hussars. The Winged Hussars were an insane calvary force comprised of big, husky Poles on huge horses, wearing lion and tiger pelts over their armor with huge eagle wings and 19-foot-long lances, four pistols each, swords and war hammers. To be clear, this is exactly what I would have drawn when I was six.
On September 12, Sobieski’s cavalry charges down Kahlenberg Hill, breaking the Ottoman lines like a velociraptor in a room full of puppies. By nightfall, the Turks had abandoned everything. Everything. They were trying to get back to Istanbul before it could be re-named Constantinople. They're running, leaving 15,000 dead and the Ottoman Empire’s dreams in the dust with the single largest military defeat in their history to date.
Sobieski’s letter home after the battle is amazing, and recommended reading (LINK). Vienna is saved. Europe is saved. The West lives to fight another day. The Siege of Vienna wasn’t just a win: it was a philosophical line in the sand. Faith fueled those defenders. Faith in God, in their people, in the idea that the West was worth saving. It’s in the first lines in Sobieski’s letter to his wife: "How Praised be our Lord God forever for granting our nation such a victory and such glory as was never heard of in all times past!"
Contrast that with despair, the kind the GloboLeft peddles today: “Western culture’s evil, dismantle it because it is worse than (whatever their pet culture is today).”
Vienna’s men didn’t negotiate with Kara Mustafa; they fought. More than that, they chose to fight there. They believed in something bigger than themselves: their family, their faith, and their civilization. That’s the code that built the West, from Athens to Rome to Vienna.
The GloboLeft hates this story. They want history rewritten. Sobieski’s a “colonizer,” the Hussars are “problematic.” They’d have you believe the Ottomans were just misunderstood diversity consultants.
Hollywood™ is no help in 2025, obviously: they churn out preachers of pronouns, not legends with lances. The 1683 defenders didn’t care about your feelings; they cared about survival. That’s the difference between faith and despair, valor and cowardice. They want us to forget Vienna because it proves the West’s worth fighting for. The Siege of Vienna shows what happens when men believe in something and act.
History rhymes, and because it does Vienna is a warning and I think there is no mistake in the choice of the date for the attack on the Twin Towers, they’re still stinging from the defeat. The defenders weren’t perfect. Some were drunks, some mercenaries, but they stood together. And the relief force had a clear vision of what they were fighting for. Back to John III’s letter:
"There is a huge pile of captured flags and tents; in short, the enemy has departed with nothing whatever but his life. Let Christendom rejoice and thank the Lord our God that he has not permitted the heathen to hold us up to scorn and derision and to ask, “Where, now, is your God?” So next September 11, remember what happened on September 12."
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