Austria. The Republic of Austria (Republik Österreich) had emerged in 1918 out of the shattered Habsburg Imperial and Royal Monarchy. The name Deutschösterreich, which it had initially adopted, was disallowed at the
Versailles settlement, as was the original intention of union with the German Republic. After settling the disputed borders with Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, Austria comprised an area of barely 84,000 sq. km. (32,400 sq. mi.) with 6.7 million inhabitants.
Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression and expansion. Its incorporation into the Third Reich in March 1938 meant an inestimable gain in military personnel, manpower, raw materials, energy, and industrial potential for Germany and at the same time improved Germany's strategic position by allowing for an easier economic penetration of the Balkans and the elimination of Czechoslovakia, which was to be Hitler's next objective.
While a majority of Austrians no doubt initially welcomed the Anschluss, or union with the Reich, dissatisfaction with German tutelage later increased, particularly during the war, which was perceived as being less and less in Austria's own interest. Finally, the reaction of the population to the defeat of the Reich and the recovery of their sovereignty was one of relief.
From the beginning of its existence the internal stability of the Republic suffered from differences between the political parties–Christian Socialists and Social Democrats as well as German Nationalist and German Liberal groups—that were difficult to reconcile. This resulted in short-lived coalition governments and often bloody clashes, triggered off by private political armies, the so-called
Wehrverbände (defence units), a phenomenon which brought about the assassination of the chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss (1892–1934), during a National Socialist putsch in July 1934.
After 1933, when the National Socialists came to power under Hitler, Austria came under increasing political pressure from Germany. In an attempt to strengthen its position
vis-à-vis Germany, the Austrian government founded a rightist, non-party Vaterländische Front which, after the model of Italian and German united parties, was intended to become the basis for an authoritarian, corporative Austrian state. It proved ineffective and even Kurt von Schuschnigg (1897–1977), federal chancellor from July 1934, became less and less able to stand up to German interference. Italian support for Austrian independence grew weaker as Rome and Berlin formed closer political ties. The German–Italian Axis was seen, as the Austrians sarcastically put it, as a roasting spit on which the country was to be browned. An agreement of 11 July 1936 between Germany and Austria, under the terms of which Austria undertook to conduct its foreign policy as a ‘German state’ and Berlin promised to respect its sovereignty, could not halt the course of events. Berlin used the agreement primarily as a pretext for exacting from Austria the subordination it required.
Schuschnigg, summoned to
Berchtesgaden by Hitler on 12 February 1938, found himself confronted by further German demands, among them the dismissal of the Austrian Chief of General Staff and the inclusion in the government, as minister of the interior, of the National Socialist
Artur Seyss-Inquart, who would become responsible for security. A last-ditch attempt by Schuschnigg to obtain a substantial majority vote for the maintenance of an independent Austrian state through a referendum, planned for 13 March and announced on 9 March, forced Hitler's hand. On 11 March Schuschnigg was replaced by Seyss-Inquart and the next day the Wehrmacht, which had been partially—and not wholly successfully—mobilized, entered the country. It did so unopposed as the Austrian government had already decided that military opposition was pointless, a decision to which the balance of power between Austria and Germany, the lack of any foreign help, and the split in the population, which had led the Austrian National Socialists to prepare themselves for the Anschluss, all contributed.
The German occupying forces, over 100,000 strong, drawn mainly from Wehrkreis (military district) VII [Munich] and XIII [Nuremberg], were combined to form the Eighth Army. For political reasons their C-in-C,
General von Bock, was not given executive powers; however the troops were instructed to be extremely ruthless if necessary in breaking up any opposition. Hitler wanted to give Operation OTTO, as it was called, as unwarlike a character as possible and to allow it to unfold as ‘a peaceful incursion welcomed by the population’. This was, indeed, what transpired. However, what was then and still remains controversial was the measure of acceptance given to the Anschluss by the Austrians: many, possibly the majority, greeted it with enthusiasm, though there were also consternation, despair, flight across the frontiers, and some cases of suicide. While Hitler was welcomed with great jubilation during his appearance in Linz and Vienna, the numerous police and
SS who had arrived in the country made their first arrests and were soon sending transports of prisoners to the German
concentration camps. A year later a concentration camp was set up on Austrian soil at
Mauthausen near Linz.
Seyss-Inquart had induced President Wilhelm Miklas (1872–1956) to step down and had taken over the presidential rights. On orders from Berlin he introduced a law on 13 March 1938 which announced the ‘reunification’ of Austria with the German Reich and provided for a plebiscite to be held on 10 April. It was enacted as a law of the German Reich on the same day and, after the dissolution of the Reichstag (parliament) and according to the wishes of the National Socialist rulers, the German people were also to be given the opportunity to record, in a plebiscite, their assent to the creation of the new ‘Greater German Reich’.
On 15 March Hitler appointed Seyss-Inquart as Reich Governor of Vienna and put him in charge of running the Austrian
Landesregierung (provincial government). Josef Bürckel,
Gauleiter of the German province of the Saar-Palatinate, was also sent to Vienna to reform the organization of the National Socialist Party and prepare the plebiscite, which produced the customary result in totalitarian states: 99.08% of those entitled to vote agreed to the proposed ‘reunification’. Thereafter 73 deputies represented the former Austrian state at the Reichstag in Berlin.
Work on the assimilation of the new territory into the Altreich (Old Reich) started immediately.
Göring secured
raw materials (iron ore, magnesite, wood, and mineral oil), industrial plant, and foreign exchange reserves for his Four Year Plan; and the German police and SS began mass arrests of opponents of the regime and of Jews (see
Final Solution) even before they had the legal authority to do so. In order to speed up the integration of Austria into the Reich, Bürckel was appointed ‘Reich Commissioner for the reunification of Austria and the German Reich’. As Hitler's personal representative, he was given authority to issue directives to all administrative departments of the state and the party, and Seyss-Inquart was pushed aside. Austria, ruled for the moment by a kind of ‘authoritarian anarchy’, was re-christened Ostmark, its administrative unity was broken up and the name Österreich was formally eradicated from everyday language.
From May 1939, the former republic was divided into seven
Reichsgaue (party regions), some of them bearing what were at the time novel names: Greater Vienna, Lower Danube, Upper Danube, Styria, Carinthia, Tyrol, and Salzburg. Upper and Lower Danube had been enlarged after the
Munich agreement of September 1938 with the incorporation of Sudeten German territories (see
Sudetenland) which had been taken from Czechoslovakia. An ‘Ostmark Law’ of 14 April 1939 brought the state administration into line with the new regional organization. The
Gauleiter, all of whom were at that time National Socialists from what had been Austria, also acted in most cases as Reich governors of their districts. It was intended that the same system should be adopted in Germany at a later date. In January 1942 the concept of Ostmark was abandoned in an attempt to suppress memories of
Austrian sovereignty in what were now called the ‘Alps and Danube Reich Regions’.
Bürckel, who had been constantly at loggerheads with the highest state and party authorities in the Old Reich and under whom disagreements between the citizens of the Old and New Reichs had been greatly exacerbated, had in August 1940 been replaced as
Gauleiter in Vienna by Baldur von Schirach (1907–74), a former
Hitler Youth leader. However, his competence for the post was soon called into question, even by fellow party members. Schirach, who considered himself a man of letters, was meant to turn the former capital into the second cultural centre of the Reich. To achieve this he made continuous use of well-known personalities such as Heinz Hilpert, Lothar Müthel, Karl Böhm, and Wilhelm Furtwängler, from the worlds of the theatre and music. When he had become Gauleiter in the summer of 1940, Schirach had also been given by Hitler the task of winning over the Viennese (whom Hitler absolutely distrusted) to the New Order (see
Germany, 4). However thanks to his knowledge of modern art he not only irritated Hitler but also antagonized
Goebbels, the Reich minister for propaganda. This isolated him from the Nazi leadership while at the same time in Vienna he became less and less able to control a resurgence of Austrian national feeling and an upsurge of determination to revive the country's cultural heritage. The wave of nostalgia, expressed on the stage and in concert halls, was much to Schirach's annoyance flaunted openly and ostentatiously.
In the mid-thirties, during which period the federal chancellor also acted as federal minister for defence, the Austrian government had decided to increase the size of the army by the end of 1939. Conscription was introduced on 1 April 1936. By 1938 the Federal Army, supported by front-line militia, was about 60,000 men strong which included seven infantry divisions, a motorized division, and two air force regiments equipped with 90 obsolescent aircraft. On mobilization these numbers were doubled, but the army possessed neither modern aircraft nor modern tanks. Two days after the German invasion of 12 March 1938 the German Army ordered the Austrian armed forces to take the oath of loyalty to Hitler (125 refused to do so), and three days later the civil service was ordered to do likewise. After excluding those deemed ‘unworthy to bear arms’ and undesirables, and reinstating previously discharged National Socialist officers, the Federal Army was integrated into the Wehrmacht. This entailed restructuring the units, adapting their equipment and training to those of the Wehrmacht, and the immediate call-up of several age groups for military service. Compulsory retirements and what were felt to be discriminatory procedures, such as the sometimes unfavourable adjustment of Austrian service ranks to those in the German Army, caused resentment; this was exacerbated by a lack of sensitivity on the part of senior officers drafted in from the Altreich and by the distribution of Ostmark soldiers among Wehrmacht units, where the rule that they were not to exceed 25% of the complement of any unit was regarded by them as reflecting German mistrust and arrogance.
The former Austria was divided into Army District XVII (Vienna) and XVIII (Salzburg) and 1,600 Austrian officers, two infantry, two mountain, and one light divisions were immediately added to the strength of the Wehrmacht. These, along with an armoured division drawn from Germany, were merged into three army corps (XVII, XVIII, and XIX) under the command of Fifth Army Group with headquarters in Vienna. Air Force District XVII (Vienna) and an air force command which formed the nucleus of the Fourth Air Fleet were set up in March 1939.
After the war began, the Reich districts in what had been Austria, like the rest of the Reich, had continually to contribute to the formation of a variety of new units. By 1945 at least 220 Ostmark soldiers had reached the rank of general in the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS, or the police; and 326 soldiers had been awarded the Knight's Cross (see
decorations). The Austrian share of Wehrmacht losses amounted to approximately 230,000 men; and about 104,000 people lost their lives through the Allied
strategic air offensives on such targets as Vienna (fuel works); Steyn (ball bearing and aircraft industries); Linz (steel and fuel industries); Innsbuck (road/rail communications); and Wiener Neustadt (aircraft and motor vehicle industries).
The German invasion was soon followed by growing disillusionment, frustration, and discontent. Many of the methods of ‘assimilation’ in the administrative, military, and economic spheres were felt to amount to discrimination and undeserved slights, and aroused increasing dissatisfaction. The rapid fall in unemployment—which was linked to the dispatch of workers to Germany—and a short-lived economic upturn which was checked by the outbreak of war did not make up for the mounting feeling that Austria was being subjected to foreign rule.
The realities of life under a totalitarian regime, and increasing restrictions and impositions imposed after the start of the war, soon restricted cultural activities. The suppression of religious communities and practices, and propaganda hostile to the Church, offended the traditions of the country and were generally rejected.
The repressive measures immediately taken against racial and ethnic minorities, particularly against the Jewish population who were deprived of all their rights, often met with incomprehension and refusal to co-operate. Of barely 200,000 Austrian Jews more than half were forced to emigrate; the others mostly died later in concentration camps. During the second half of the war the general mood of the population changed for the worse as a result of Allied air raids, which by the summer of 1943 had begun to reach as far as the south-eastern part of the Reich.
After the German invasion resistance groups were formed in socialist, monarchist, and nationalist circles, and although they were continually broken up by a strong police force it proved impossible completely to eradicate opposition to a German presence that was regarded as foreign rule. The opposition had links with resistance groups in Germany and from 1943 was encouraged by the fact that the Axis powers were being defeated on all fronts. It was further stimulated by the outcome of the conference of foreign ministers in Moscow in November 1943, at which the Allies—who had more or less acquiesced in the Anschluss in 1938—officially declared that the former republic had been the first victim of German politics of aggression and held out prospects for the liberation of its people. Attempts by the Austrians to shake off German domination were to be given consideration when, in due course, assessments were made about Austrian participation in and responsibility for Hitler's war.
After the bomb plot of 20 July 1944 (see
Schwarze Kapelle) in which officers of the Vienna Wehrkreiskommando (regional army command) were involved, a new wave of arrests took place; but in view of the evident decline of the National Socialist regime the Germans became less and less able to suppress the spread of resistance in Austria. This resistance soon established contacts with the Allies and with Austrian émigrés who, being split into a number of factions, had not been able to form a
government-in-exile. Specific acts of resistance—for which, right up to the end, the price had to be paid in loss of lives—prepared the ground for the change of government, separation from the Reich, and the restoration of sovereignty.
Hans Umbreit
Bibliography
Bell, P. M. H. , The Origins of the Second World War (London, 1986).
Keyserlingk, R. H. , Austria in World War II (Toronto, 1989).
Williams, M. , ‘German Imperialism and Austria, 1938’, Journal of Contemporary History, 14 ( 1979), 139–54.
