After the Reich (55 page)

Even the staunchly communist parts of the city in Heiligenstadt had had enough of their Soviet liberators by the summer. For their own part, the Red Army had found it unbelievable that the Austrian communists had managed to live in such
Gemütlichkeit
in their fortress-like blocks of flats. There were homely lace curtains and soft sofas more readily associated with the bourgeoisie. Once the scales had fallen from their eyes the usual scenes of rape and rapine had followed.
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On 22 July 1945, thirty American cars were spotted in Mauer.
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Three days later a British quartermaster came to see Eugen Margarétha. He asked the economist politely if he had any room to spare. The Margaréthas volunteered two rooms on the parterre. It turned out that the English were expected the next day. That proved to be yet another optimistic rumour. They had still not pitched up on 5 August. Finally on the 12th a captain in the Coldstream Guards arrived, ‘a nice, well-turned-out person’, who took pity on them and gave them sandwiches and beer. At the end of the month electricity was restored and the Margaréthas’ fridge started to work again, prompting much jubilation in the house.
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The world was at peace from the 15th. On the 19th the bedraggled former capital of the great Habsburg Empire received a new monument. A soaring column was set up on the Schwarzenberg Platz in the centre of the city, surmounted by a figure of a Red Army soldier in a gilded helmet. The coy Margarétha, who could not bring himself to talk about what the Russians had been doing since their arrival that spring, said it had already been dubbed ‘The Monument to the Unknown Looter’. Most of his compatriots knew it as the ‘Unknown Father’ or, more coarsely, the ‘Unknown Rapist’. The Russians erected their monument just six days before the other Allied commanders moved into their digs.
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Koniev had asked the Allies to come to Vienna on 23 August to admire the ‘Unknown Father’, but he was going to return Clark’s hospitality first
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and asked him to visit him in his HQ in Baden, the old summer capital. In 1945 it became Soviet army HQ and Russian officers and men moved into holiday residences rendered infamous by the stories of Arthur Schnitzler. The Russians had taken over most of the little spa and fenced off their quarters with barbed wire. Clark was asked to review the troops, then was taken back to headquarters and a bottle of vodka. It was the early afternoon. The Russians were ‘obviously prepared for an afternoon of drinking. My party was plied with vodka and there was more liquor on the table when we went to Koniev’s for dinner about 5 o’clock.’ Clark came to the conclusion the Russians wanted to get them ‘plastered’.

Not unnaturally, Clark was put out that Koniev was matching his shots of vodka with nips of white wine. He complained, telling his Russian opposite number that he wanted to drink the same juice as he was having: ‘you see, I’ve got just one stomach to give for my country’. At ten they finished dinner and went to Baden Opera House to see a performance of Russian dancing. Clark had problems staying awake. The dancing was followed by a propaganda film. Then Zheltov insisted they have another meal before they went to bed. Clark went to his cot at four or five. Zheltov said he’d be back at eight so that they could go for a swim. Clark had his black batman wake him at 7.30 a.m. When he set eyes on his commander, he asked, ‘Boss, did you drink some of that kerosene too?’
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Clark had no personal objection to Koniev, and they got on quite well at first. The froideur of the Cold War only set in the following year, but in his autobiography Clark gives the impression it was there from the start. The American general cites an example of their mutual understanding when he told the Russian his opinion of Fischer: ‘I don’t like him because he is a communist.’ Koniev was completely unabashed. He apparently replied, ‘That’s fine. I don’t like him because he’s an Austrian communist.’
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The American intelligence officer Martin Herz, who interviewed Fischer in August, understood him better. Fischer was a pragmatic communist. Unlike Ulbricht in Berlin, he admitted that the Russians had raped women during the occupation and that the emergency police they appointed contained ‘many of the lowest, criminal elements of the population’. They had been partly responsible for the looting. He was not in favour of the proscription of half a million Austrian Nazis. The number was just too large and doubtless included a great many hangers-on and nominal Party members: ‘To outlaw them and make pariahs out of them would not only be unwise, but also unjust.’ Fischer admitted candidly that National Socialism was ‘a terror machine that worked with deadly precision and exacted nominal acceptance from people who conformed only in order to be able to live’. The Nazi rank and file should be allowed to redeem themselves.
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Clark had a little present for the Viennese before he went back to his hunting lodge in Hinterstoder. In a mine in the Salzkammergut the Americans had discovered the crown and regalia of the Emperor Charlemagne. Now they wanted to restore it to its rightful place. Unfortunately that meant the Hofburg, the imperial palace in the centre of Vienna, which was occupied by the Russians. Renner was very much opposed to the Americans letting it go anywhere near the Russians, so they kept it in the vaults of the bank building that served as their HQ.
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The Americans had armed it as if it were the Pentagon itself.
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It was Koniev who put an end to the British intransigence. He announced on 27 August that he would withdraw his command over the Western sectors of Vienna as of 1 September and that these areas would then be ‘without masters’. The ploy worked, and the Americans, British and French took up their positions on the first of the month.
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They could now look closely at Vienna, which had been the Russians’ exclusive preserve since early April. Herz noted that 200,000 Viennese were eating at the soup kitchens set up by the Russians.
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It was hard not to give the Austrian communists some credit. They were not tainted by their Austrian past, only by their period in Moscow and the uncertainty of their instructions. The socialists were compromised by their support for amalgamation with Germany; the conservatives because they had been part and parcel of the anti-democratic Corporate State. The communists had their ‘Immediate Programme’ which called for a purge of the Nazis, three-party commissions to weed out fascists in the administration, administrative reform, nationalisation of industry and a democratic foreign policy. It was not meant to be a revolutionary programme.
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The first meeting of the high commissioners took place under Koniev’s roof at the Imperial on 11 September. Clark thought it a shambles. It was Béthouart’s first chance to meet the charismatic American general, who he decided resembled a Sioux Indian. The agenda was based on the four-power arrangement decided in London before the end of the war. The Russians knew exactly what they wanted: mastery of the Danube, the big oilfields at Zistersdorf in the eastern Weinviertel, and the Austrian ‘bread-basket’ in Burgenland.They already had most of the infrastructure - control of the railway lines, the roads, the airfields and the telephone lines. All international calls passed through Vienna, giving the Russians the chance to monitor and control them. Similarly, the RAVAG, or Austrian radio network, was based in the Soviet Zone. The Soviet forces thus still oversaw important parts of the Austrian economic infrastructure, not just in the east of the country, but nationwide.
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From 20 October 1945, the Western Allies thought it prudent to shift the meetings around the corner to the Chamber of Industry on the Schwarzenbergplatz (for the time being, Josef-Stalin-Platz). That meant throwing out the Margaréthas. They found new premises and were helped to move by black American drivers and Nazi forced labourers who were so weak from hunger that they could hardly carry the boxes of files. The Allied sessions took place once a month. They were stiff. For a while the British high commissioner refused to attend because the Soviets would not allow the West to bring in food supplies for the half-starved population. There was a tea afterwards and attempts were made to break the ice. Koniev talked to Béthouart about Balzac, which he had read in Russian.
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Possibly his interest in French literature led him to invite Generals Béthouart and Cherrière, together with the civil administrator Alain de Monticault, to a lunch in his Baden villa. Once again the vodka flowed. Once again Koniev had an ulterior motive - he wanted to propose an alliance with the French that would serve both their interests on the Council.
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The communists were still a power to be reckoned with in French politics, and, of all the Western Allies, the Russians had the most empathy with the French.

All the main receptions to commemorate important Soviet feast days were held in the Hofburg Palace. The feasts were as lavish as those held in the Russian embassy in Berlin. There was copious vodka and caviar and the Russians looked far more splendid in their Red Army dress suits than the Western Allies in their khaki.
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A certain style and an ability to entertain on an imperial scale may explain the gracious treatment accorded to the former Austrian ruling house. Franz Joseph’s nephew Hubert Salvator was told that the Russians would respect his property and person, and he was excused from the duty of billeting officers. Béthouart relates that the Russians even helped him put out his relics on Holy Days of Obligation.

The British HQ was in Schönbrunn Palace, where the commander General Sir Richard McCreery occupied the room that had served Napoleon before him, a fact that caused the French general de Lattre de Tassigny considerable annoyance. McCreery, who had served with the British army in Italy, endured strained relations with Koniev from the outset. Soon after he moved into a villa near the palace in Hietzing the Soviets kidnapped his gardener. He was never seen again.
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Each of the four powers was granted an hotel where they could put up their guests. The Russians took the Grand, opposite the Hotel Imperial, where the Russian commandant had his lodgings. It had also been Hitler’s favourite on his visits to Vienna. The portrait of the Emperor Franz Joseph had been replaced by one of Stalin. The Americans appropriated the smaller but grander Bristol. The French occupied the Hotel Kummer in the Mariahilferstrasse, and only later moved into the rather more impressive Hotel de France on the Ring. The British were in Sacher’s behind the Opera. The Western Allies all sponsored a newspaper which now joined the largely propagandist Russian press consisting of
Neues Österreich
, the
Arbeiterzeitung
, the
Österreichische Zeitung
and the
Kleine Volksblatt
. Now the Americans launched the
Wiener Kurier
, the British
Die Weltpresse
and the French
Die Welt am Montag
.

Clark gradually took on the role of baiter of the Russian bear that was performed by Clay in Germany. He believed the Americans were ‘selling Austria down the Danube’.
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When the Russians staked a claim to all shipping on the river, Clark noted that the vital river barges were in the American Zone in Linz. Linz was on the border with the Soviet Zone, so Clark had them taken upstream to Passau, in the American Zone in Germany. It transpired there were Yugoslav barges among them, and the Yugoslavs began to complain. It was only when Clark had a direct order from the secretary of state, however, that he agreed to hand over the Yugoslav vessels.
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The political scene was beginning to move, and it looked hopeful for Austria. On 11 September, the Allied Council gave permission for the re-establishment of the three main political parties: popular, socialist and communist. On 24 September Renner obligingly reshuffled his cabinet to include Figl, leading the Western Allies to recognise his government on 20 October. Renner took the hint and resigned following the elections, which took place on 25 November, eventually becoming federal president a few days before Christmas when the deputies unanimously voted him upstairs. On 3 December his place was taken by Figl.

The results of the first free elections since 1930 were announced on 2 December. There had been a 95 per cent turnout. Margarétha, who was one of the founders of the People’s Party, the ÖVP, called them ‘brilliant’ and with good reason: communist hopes were dashed and his party headed the list with just over 1,600,000 votes, representing nearly half the electorate. The SPÖ, the Socialist Party, won 1,434,898 votes. The communists, the KPÖ, limped home a long way behind with 174,255 or 5.5 per cent. Even in ‘Red Vienna’ they had come third with just six seats in the regional assembly. The SPÖ did best, with fifty-eight; the ÖVP won thirty-six. The communists achieved just four seats in the Federal Parliament. Women, it seemed, had been their undoing.

Women were now 64 per cent of the electorate, and they had suffered unduly at the hands of the Red Army. The ÖVP campaigned with posters that also showed the Russians in their worst light: ‘Ur-Wiener und Wiener ohne Uhr, wählt ÖVP!’
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Another ruse was to put up posters telling the Austrians, ‘For all who love the Red Army, vote KPÖ!’
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Missing from the electorate were around a quarter of a million Austrian dead, 600,000 POWs, half a million Nazis and sundry other political undesirables. The ex-Nazis would not have helped the left much. Their half-million votes would probably have gone to the People’s Party. Margarétha thought the message would cause relief at home and abroad.
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He was right. The Americans reported that Austria was now finally aware of the meaning of democracy. The Figl government was recognised on 7 December 1946.
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