(This takes 4.5–6.75 minutes to read.)
For the fourscore and eighth anniversary of Chancellor Arthur Seyss-Inquart proclaiming the Anschluss, I want to talk to you about the Austrofascists.
From 1936 to 1938, Austrofascists oscillated between cracking down on [German irredentists] and offering them olive branches, never really settling on one distinct response to the overbearing [irredentist] presence. Instead, Austrofascists sought to earn [the Third Reich’s] respect for Austrian sovereignty with a two-pronged response of both carrots and sticks, depending on the situation.
The constitutive contradiction between regionalism and nationalism drove forward the seemingly contradictory response of both “appeasement” and punishment (Starhemberg 169, 246). The unity among Austrofascists and [German Fascists] along theoretical grounds, from shared emotional fantasies of German nationalism to common fascist beliefs, authoritarianism, and zealous anti-Bolshevism, all created ample opportunity for cooperation.
The discord between Austrofascists and [German Fascists] along other fault lines, from regionalism to personal power struggles and the backlash to any specific solution to the Austrian question, also created conflicts that resulted in force.
[…]
Another discursive reconciliation between state separation and common national identity was the claim that Germans and Austrians were national brothers. An anonymous letter expressed gratitude to Schuschnigg for the treaty that preserved “economic cooperation […] with the German brothers, which will hopefully create more bread and work again” (Hochverehrter Herr Bundeskanzler!).
A Viennese teacher claimed that the “reconciliation with our German brothers” was nothing short of a “feat” (Weifs), while another letter thanked the Austrian chancellor for making peace with the “brother Volk” (Tertsch). One accepted Austria as the little brother in this fraternal relationship, expressing joy at the “normalization of relationship to our big German brother Volk” (Bürgermeister Klagenfurt).
Another labeled the [Third Reich] itself as the “Bruderreich” (Hauptgruppenleiter). This sentiment of two fraternal Völker also cut both ways: a letter from Heidelberg rejoiced at the “friendship with the Austrian Brudervolk. […] G-d bless this step for both Völker, who are of one blood” (Sturm).
Despite the strain on diplomatic relations, Germans and Austrians were seen as national “brothers,” blood-related and fraternal but not identical; as such, the best way forward for their joint prosperity was independence from and coexistence with each other rather than irredentist unity.
If the twentieth century was the era that idealized the creation of uniform nation-states (Weitz), then many Austrian inhabitants simultaneously desired national cooperation and clear-cut state autonomy.
[…]
The exasperated and flabbergasted local VF members complained to their Viennese leaders about the relaxed border policy, claiming that:
Austria displays in such [questions? illegible because of typological errors] a generosity, which sometimes really appears incomprehensible. So the strongly-punished National Socialists, who were reliably reported on by us, who had to serve long-term prison sentences on account of the bombing attacks, and who were pardoned as part of amnesty, were invited by NSDAP-sites in Germany to a multiweek recreational holiday. These persons were also awarded exit visas without any trouble. (An das Generalsekretariat)
The Austrofascist state offered 18,684 pardons to [irredentist] agents in the second half of 1936 alone (“Chronology” vol. 13, no. 15, p. 12). The porousness of the Austro-Bavarian border created anxiety and embarrassment for some VF officials, especially since many of these [irredentist] agitators could expect to face little to no consequences.
It cited a Linz newspaper that commented on how Austrofascist leaders demanded order in the face of [irredentist] uprisings while simultaneously showing legal leniency to [irredentist] agents: “patriotic Austrians who rallied to the Government’s anti-Nazi appeals now felt themselves dupes confronted by triumphant adversaries. Convicted Nazis, for instance, had been released from custody through influential intervention” (“Chronology” vol. 13, no. 13, p. 13).³
The Austrofascist leaders’ balancing act between stopping [irredentist] aggression without angering their fascist Germanic brothers left fellow VF members feeling resentful. As VF members began to place their faith in a hermetically sealed border as their only hope to end the strife of this intra-national borderland, their leaders continued to believe in potential großdeutsch solidarity.
Meanwhile, intra-national borderlands chaos in 1937 continued, varying from [irredentist] schemes to terrorize the borderland into a perpetual state of anxiety to actual physical contestations along the border.
The Salzburger Chronik discussed the revelation of a scandalous [irredentist] “war plan” that involved “throwing bombs onto the [Austrian] Federal Chancellery from an airplane,” in addition to [irredentist] ambitions “to marshal in all of Austria an existing shock corps of 2000 to 3000 men, which will first ‘purge’ the ranks of the NSDAP but then it should commit acts of violence of the worst kind.” The paper condemned [Third Reich] agents as “brown terrorists,” their machinations as a “terror campaign,” and the planned militia unit as a “terror shock corps,” leaving panic in their wake and increasing the volatility of the borderland (“Braune Terrorstoßtruppe”).
Two pages later the same paper reported on an actual border scuffle involving Austrian veterinarian Karl Zoller, who was visiting the Austrian town of Jungholz. On the map, Jungholz “belonged” to Austria, but because of the Alpine topography on the ground, the only way to access it was via roads that, on the map, “belonged” to Bavaria.
While in this Bavarian juncture between Austrian spaces, he refused to return the “Hitler greeting” to a group of five Bavarian [Fascists]. He believed that “as an Austrian he had no reason to answer with this greeting,” which led to him being “mauled.” The paper continued the story by stating, “The outrage of this egregious incident is very great in the Tyrolean border territory” (“Gestern, heute, morgen”).
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Schuschnigg spent the day subject to verbal berating and power moves, culminating in an “addendum” to the Juli-Abkommen from 1936 (“Ein Zusatzabkommen”). Officially, Hitler again claimed to uphold Austria’s autonomy, but this time with one key exception: Schuschnigg had to appoint Nazi agent Arthur Seyss-Inquart (also born and raised in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire) as Home Minister “with the police directly under him” (“Chronology” vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 18–19). With this administrative appointment, Schuschnigg paid a heavy price for an adulterated version of Austrian “autonomy”: one of his key chess pieces was now playing for his opponent.
(Emphasis added. Click here for more.)
Jewish newspaper, Die Stimme, reported on how Schuschnigg reemphasized how this German national (even racial) identity was to be channeled for regionalist autonomy: “Anschluß? No! Absolutely and very clearly: No! Our race, our language, our culture, and our history are German. That is certain. But Germany is one country and Austria is another country. […] The ideology of both countries is different, so that nothing about a fusion can be spoken” (“Äußerungen des Bundeskanzlers”).
To be sure, right-wingers in Austria contributed to and participated in interwar antisemitism (Wasserman 6). Yet presented with either discrimination in the Ständestaat or persecution in the event of Anschluss, this Jewish newspaper saw the choice as obvious. The Jews in Austria leading up to 1938 thus inhabited a liminal borderland between types and intensities of antisemitism.
And while the two German states were fascist, their fascist objectives were oriented toward fundamentally opposing ends: Austrofascist autonomy versus [Third Reich] expansion. Austria was to be a German state imbued with its own völkisch German nationalism to assert its autonomy from Germany itself.
As well, I could not help but think of how Democrats and Republicans try to compete with who is more ‘American’ when I read about how the Austrofascists bragged that they were even more German than the German Reich itself:
The VF propagandists embraced this constitutive contradiction wholeheartedly and without reservation. Within the intra-national borderland, it was understandable to feel German, but in a specific, southeastern, and Austrian way. As odd or confusing as they may sound, such proclamations as “Freedom! German Loyalty! […] Yes, with Schuschnigg for Austria!” (Ray) made logical sense in context. They framed loyalty to the German nationality as the key to independence from the German state.
A report from Salzburg reiterated just such pro-autonomy rallying cries: “For a free and German, independent and social, for a Christian and certain Austria, for peace, work and the equality of all, who profess themselves to the Volk and Vaterland” (Cited in Der Landeshauptmann 1).
The Austrofascists thus became the ultimate reflection of the [German Fascists]: German-speaking, German-identifying fascists charged with similar affective sentiments but in opposite directions. They attempted to take [Fascist] German nationalism and flip it around for their own purposes.
And speaking of paradoxes, it seems that making a mess in somebody else’s piss-soaked hellhole can be a surprisingly effective strategy for persuading them to unite with you:
The hope that a referendum would provide a definitive answer to the Austrian question only unleashed more uncertainty. On 11 March, just two days before the planned plebiscite, the Neues Wiener Tagblatt reported street showdowns in Vienna between [irredentists] and VF loyalists, with the VF shouting “Heil Schuschnigg and different battle cries” in response to their [irredentist] rivals (“Demonstrationen in der Innern Stadt”). The Salzburger Volksblatt likewise commented that the police and troops were called up for “the maintenance of peace and order” following similar such [irredentist] marches (“Demonstrationen in Wien”).
Given that many of these reports came from papers with [irredentist] sympathies, the news was surely exaggerated to make the [irredentists] look as victimized as possible and to make Austria seem as chaotic as possible. Doing so would lend credence to [irredentist] claims that Germany needed to get involved to restore peace, order, and stability. That the [irredentists] were the party instigating so much of this disorder did not matter. On the contrary, the perception of disorder itself was central to Hitler’s strategy.
It is very tempting to compare the Austrofascists’ largely benign treatment of irredentists with how liberal régimes treated fascists, or how neoliberal ones treat neofascists. Despite the serious dangers that they posed, the Austrofascists were gentle with most of the worst irredentists, much as they were gentle with Croatian fascists who plotted homicides. Anticommunists have demonstrated time and again that defending capital from lower-class revolutionaries takes precedence over imperialist competition, which was why WWI ended with the Entente turning its attention away from the Central Powers and onto the Bolshevik Revolution.
See also: ‘Making Austria German Again’
