The annexation of Austria, 1938 (1)

Kurt von Schuschnigg, dictator 1934-38 in Austria's clerical-fascist regime

It's 2008, so that means various 10-year-period specials in the news. 1968, of course, is an obvious one. Later this year - I really dread this one - we'll be observing 70 years after the Munich Conference. Flaky applications of the "lessons of Munich" to the Iraq War are inevitable. And this month, there is the following anniversary.

Despite the persisting impression in the United States from that Austria somehow has not sufficiently come to grips with the history of the Third Reich, the 70th anniversary of the annexation (Anschluss) of Austria by Hitler Germany has provided the occasion for yet more articles on that very history. The Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands (DöW) currently features an online exhibit on the events of 1938 in German and English.

Vienna's Der Standard has been running a number of articles about the annexation, such as Der Heldenplatz bleibt mit uns by Hans Rauscher 29.02.2008. The title is, "The Heldenplatz remains with us", a reference to Hitler's triumphant public speech in the Heldenplatz declaring Mission Accomplished over the annexation of Austria.

Rauscher quotes former Social Democratic Chancellor Bruno Kreisky saying that probably only a third of Austrians supported the Nazi regime, and writes:

Richtig. Es waren aber genug, um in einer bestimmten historischen Konstellation den Staat in die Gewalt der Nazis und Hitler-Deutschlands zu kippen. Der "Anschluss" 1938 ist - auch - eine Fallstudie, wie eine entschlossene radikale Minderheit die ganze Macht erobern kann, wenn das Umfeld stimmt. Der unglückselige Kurt Schuschnigg gab, als er fünf vor zwölf endlich auf die Idee kam, das Volk über den Anschluss abstimmen zu lassen, eine durchaus realistische Einschätzung ab: 25 Prozent wären ausgesprochen gegen den Anschluss an Deutschland, 25 Prozent ausgesprochen dafür und der große Rest schaue "wie der Hase läuft". Schuschnigg war bereits zu schwach, um die Beobachter des Hasenlaufs auf seine Seite ziehen zu können. Hitler hat ihm die Volksabstimmung ganz einfach verboten.

[Correct. But it was enough in a particular historical situation to plummet the state into the violence of the Nazis and Hitler Germany. The "annexation" of 1938 is - also - a case study in how a committed radical minority can seize total power if the conditions are right. The luckless Kurt Schuschnigg [Austrian "Standesstaat" dictator 1934-38] when he at five before twelve finally came up with the idea of having the people vote on annexation, gave a thoroughly realistic evaluation: 25% were expressly against the annexation to Germany, 25% expressly against the large remainder were waiting to see which way the wind would blow [literally, "how the rabbit runs"]. Schuschnigg was already too weak to be able to pull the observers of the rabbit's running onto his side. Hitler very simply vorbade him to hold the referendum.]

This paragraph needs more conceptual translation into American English than linguistic.

Engelburt Dollfuss established what he called a Standestaat (corporate state) dictatorship in 1933, in which he substituted his direct rule as Chancellor for parliamentary democracy. Dolfuss' Standestaat was based on the Italian Fascist model with a heavy influence by the Catholic Church hierarchy included, and the term "clerical-fascist" that is often applied to it is descriptive. Dollfuss was murdered in the failed Nazi coup attempt launched from Germany in 1934. Kurt von Schuschnigg became Chancellor and the head of the Fatherland Front, the Catholic conservative party which Dollfuss had declared to be the party of the whole Austrian people.

A couple of linguistic comments: I'm surprised and a little amused to see Rauscher's article refer to him as "Kurt Schuschnigg", not as Kurt von Schuschnigg. That's a bit of an anachronism; Austria banned the use of aristocratic names like "von So-And-So" after the Second World War. Also, the "five before twelve" reference is to Schuschnigg's desperate decision, after Hitler had made it painfully clear to him that he intended to take over Austria, to hold a referendum to discourage the annexation effort.

Germany had reached a formal agreement with Schuschnigg's regime in July 1936, declaring that the German Reich recognized the "full sovereignty" of Austria. But in January, Hitler summoned the Chancellor of sovereign Austria to meet him in his "Eagle's Nest" in Obersalzburg. When the summit took place in February, Hitler showed Schuschnigg his hospitality with accusations such as, "Austria has never done anything that was useful to the German Reich. Its entire history is an unbroken betrayal of the German people."

Although Schuschnigg capitulated to Hitler's demands to legalize the Austrian NSDAP (Nazis) and to appoint the pro-Nazi Seyss-Inquart as Interior [National Police] and Security Minister, he still tried to hold off annexation by scheduling a national referendum in Austria on the issue for March 13. It would be a yes-or-no vote on the question, "for a free and German, independent and social, for a Christian and our own Austria."

If the wording seemed a bit polemical, that was par for the course for this kind of "referendum". Hitler liked to hold fake referenda, too, which regularly showed near-unanimous support for whatever the dictator's preferred position was. A friend showed me a copy of a ballot from one of those referenda. "Yes" was printed in large bold letters; "No" was shown in much smaller print.

Seyss-Inquart and admirers

Schuschnigg's proposed referendum was not planned to be any more democratic than those in neighboring Germany, though Hitler realized that the inevitable "Yes" vote for Austrian independence would nevertheless complicate his plans. The name of the individual voter would be written right on his ballot. The ballots would be cast in the office of the Fatherland Front Party. No one under 24 was allowed to vote, since younger voters were suspected of being more sympathetic to annexation and to the NSDAP than older ones.

By March 11, Schuschnigg knew that the German army was mobilizing on the border and agreed to capitulate without resistance. Schuschnigg resigned immediately that day, but Austria President Wilhelm Miklas still refused Germany's demand to appoint Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor. The plan was to have Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor formally invite German troops into Austria. But Miklas nevertheless ordered Austrian troops not to resist a German invasion and ordered the entire government dismissed. The Germans basically then just pretended that Seyss-Inquart had taken over the government, got an assurance over the telephone that Seyss-Inquart had approved the German entry into Austria and proceeded to march in the following morning, March 12.

By March 13, Seyss-Inquart formally agreed to the absorption of Austria into the German Reich, signing a "law on the reunification of Austria with the German Empire". The following day, a Monday, Hitler himself arrived in Vienna to the sound of church bells ringing, a welcome ordered by Vienna's Archbishop, Cardinal Innitzer.

Hitler scheduled a new referendum in both Germany and Austria on the annexation question for April 10. The result was 99.08% in favor in Germany, 99.75% in favor in Austria.

I don't know if there was any meaningful way to measure actual Austrian sympathy for the NSDAP and/or annexation. The April 10 referendum was certainly no such measure. Nor was the Schuschnigg comment that Rauscher quotes.

It's also worth remembering that, even though it was clear that annexation to Germany meant Nazi government in Austria, that sympathy for annexation (however it might be measured) wasn't quite identical to support for the NSDAP. As Josephy Redlick wrote in "German Austria and Nazi Germany," Foreign Affairs Oct 1936:

In 1919 the peacemakers [the Allied Powers] laid down a veto against the union of the German Reich with small but purely German Austria. This veto went against the desire of seemingly strong currents of popular opinion in both countries. Consequently, during the first decade after the World War the problem of the "Anschluss" of the old Austrian "hereditary lands "with the German national empire preoccupied the cabinets both of the Great Powers and of the new Succession States. It became, in fact, a crucial problem in Central European politics. The transformation of Germany into the National Socialist "Third Empire" [Third Reich] and Hitler's tremendous propaganda for the outright annexation of Austria changed the situation, but it did not diminish the importance of the Austrian question in European politics. (my emphasis)

I did a double-take at the comment that Austria was "purely German", since Vienna had long been a mixing point ("melting pot" is probably not the right metaphor) for people from all over the former Hapsburg Empire. The notion that it was "purely" ethnic German is just plain silly.

But the notion that Austrians mostly saw themselves as rightfully part of the same nation as Germany is correct. Austria's elected government had formally requested a merger with Germany in 1919, a combination that would have offered Austria a more immediately hopeful future economically. And it was viewed by Austrian democrats as a way to more firmly anchor the new democratic system. But the Allies, who carved up postwar Europe with an eye to ethnic unification, decided that they would not allow any such German and Austrian unification.

The rest of Rauscher's piece doesn't seem to make use of such questionable authority for factual assertions. He gives a quick but reasonable sketch of how the two big parties, the People's Party (Christian Democrats,ÖVP) and the Social Democrats (SPÖ), worked to persuade former Nazi supporters to back their own parties' democratic programs. The Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei sterreichs, FPÖ) was notably more intransigent about adopting a critical view of the National Socialist period. And under the leadershipf Jörg Haider beginning in 1986, the FP indulged itself in symbolism and suggestions that the Nazi times weren't so bad.

But despite the persistence of a hard core of neonazi types in Austria, any danger of some mass sympathy for a new Nazi-type regime is small. Rauscher refers in the paragraph below to the 27% vote in 1999 for Haider's party. That was a vote for a party whose leadership at the time was rightwing. And despite Haider's own seeming "brown" sympathies, not all of his party's voters were in symapthy with Haider's more obnoxious ideas. I'm not suggesting a vote for his party in 1999 was a good idea. It wasn't. I'm saying that at worst, it was a vote for a party which was too tolerant of anti-democratic sympathies among the party's activists. Which is bad enough.

German troops cross the Austrian border unopposed, March 1938

Rauscher's summary here of how Austrians have framed the historical memory of the Third Reich period is reasonable:

Die psychologisch-politische "Bewältigung" des Vorganges verlief nach 1945 in mehreren Phasen. Unmittelbar nach Kriegsende und noch zwei Jahrzehnte danach dominierte die "Opfertheorie". Immerhin hatten uns die Alliierten 1943 als "erstes Opfer" Hitlers anerkannt. Der Satz von der "Verantwortung" Österreichs fiel unter den Tisch.

[The psychological-political "processing" of the previous experiences developed after 1945 in various phases. Directly after the war's end and still two decades after that, the "victim theory" dominated. Immerhin the Allies had recognized us as the "first victim" of Hitler. The sentence about the "responsibility" of Austria fell under the table.]

The reference here is the the decision of the United Nations alliance in the Second World War to treat "Austria" as a country "occupied" by Germany which would be "liberated", as opposed to Germany itself, which would be "conquered" by the Allies. The difference was not just rhetorical, but a substantive legal and political judgment that would make a difference in how the countries would be treated during the postwar occupations.

Erst 1986, mit der Wahl Waldheims, und 1988, mit "50 Jahren Anschluss", entstand eine breite, zum Teil überaus wütend geführte Debatte, in der endlich der Anteil der Österreicher am "Anschluss" und an den Verbrechen des Nationalsozialismus thematisiert wurde. Symbolische Folge dessen waren die entsprechenden feierlichen Erklärungen von Kanzler Vranitzky und Bundespräsident Klestil (in Israel). Die praktische Auswirkung war eine Regelung für Zwangsarbeiter und für Arisierungen, durchgezogen von Schüssel, der Österreich nicht noch mehr zum internationalen Paria machen wollte (gleichzeitig aber auf der "Opfertheorie" beharrte).

[It was first in 1986, with the election of Waldheim, and 1988, with "50 years annexation anniversary", that a wide debate developed, in part a very angry one, in which the participation of Austrians with the "annexation" and with the crimes of National Socialism was finally engaged. Symbolic results of it included the decidedly celebratory declarations [of Austrian responsbility] by Chancellor [Franz] Vranitsky and President [Thomas] Klestil (in Israel). The practical consequence was a compensation for forced laborers and for "Arianization", put through by [People's Party Chancellor Wolfgang] Schüssel, which allowed Austria to no longer be held as an international pariah (but at the same time insisted on the "victim theory").]

In regard to that last comment, there are legal as well as political and patriotic reasons that the Austrian government would insist on the formal historical status which the Allies recognized in 1943 of Austria haveing been a country forceably occupied by Germany. Which, for all the complications involved, it was.

Es gab einen Einstellungswandel in der Bevölkerung: Die Österreicher erkennen sich nun als eigene Nation; die noch vor 30 Jahren erschreckend hohen antisemitischen Einstellungen gingen stark zurück; die Stimmung ist mehrheitlich Politik-kritisch, aber nicht antidemokratisch. Schließlich: Die bedrohlichen 27 Prozent von 1999 für die Haider-Partei kommen nicht so bald wieder.

[There was a shift of opinion among the public: Austrians recognize themselves now as their own nation; frightfully intense anti-Semitic attitudes which still were present 30 years ago diminished sharply; the mood is in the majority politically critical but not anti-democratic. Finally: the threatening 27 percent [vote] of 1999 for the Haider Party will not soon return.]

In any case, the FPÖ has split, and Haider turned out to be more of a nasty clown who wants to see himself on TV than a Mussolini- or Hitler-wannabe.

Austria's strong vote in 1994 to join the European Union also anchors the democratic system in the country even more firmly than it was before. Their annexation to the EU and the euro is a long-since done deal. But any sentiment for annexation to Germany is effectively gone.

An amusing illustration of that came back during Helmut Kohl's Chancellorship in Germany. Kohl could be a bit of a doofus at times. And once when he was on holiday in Austria, he told the press that he loved to come to Austria for vacation, that when he's in Austria, he doesn't feel like he's in a foreign country at all!

Austrian Chancellor Vranitsky took pains to remind the German Chancellor that when he was in Austria, he was most certainly in a foreign country.

Tags: anschluss, austria, austrian politics, schuschnigg, second world war