Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis (3 page)

The final terms of the Treaty of Saint Germain, signed on 12 September 1919, awarded to other states not only the more remote German-speaking areas, such as northern Bohemia, Austrian Silesia, and northern Moravia, (ceded to Czechoslovakia), but also contiguous regions with solid German majorities. Thus, southern Bohemia and southern Moravia, with 357,000 Germans and 18,500 Czechs were given to Czechoslovakia for “historical” reasons.
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The Drau (Drava) River valley of southern Styria, which afforded Austria its best rail link between its eastern and western provinces, was assigned to Yugoslavia without a plebiscite, even though it had a Germanspeaking majority. And most brutally of all, the beloved South Tyrol, with

225.000    German-Austrians and next to no Italians, was turned over to Italy so that the 38 million Italians could have a strategic frontier against 6.5 million Austrians. Only in German West Hungary (later called the Burgenland), with

285.000    people, and in southern Carinthia, were boundary decisions made which benefited Austria.

Crippled from Birth ■ 5

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Assets and Liabilities of the New Republic

With little more than 32,000 square miles the Austrian Republic had only 23 percent of the territory and 26 percent of the population of just the Austrian half of the fallen Dual Monarchy.
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No less than a third of Imperial Austria’s German-speaking subjects had been placed under alien rule. Nevertheless, the country was not entirely without assets. About 96 percent of its population now spoke German, making the country by far the most linguistically homogeneous of the Successor States. Only 10 percent of its land was totally unproductive; 38 percent was covered with forests, and 22 percent was arable.
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Austria also possessed considerable quantities of iron ore, great water-power potential, and many skilled workers. The country’s majestic mountains and baroque cities had long attracted tourists. Moreover, being astride several Alpine passes and the middle Danube, it was at the junction of several important trade routes.

But the negative side of the ledger was more important, at least initially. In many instances the new boundaries had separated Austria’s factories from their natural resources and from allied industries. Styrian iron- and steelworks and the textile factories of Vorarlberg had been powered by coal from Austrian Silesia and Bohemia, now part of Czechoslovakia, whereas petroleum had come from Galicia, which was given to Poland. Nor were the Successor States, which eagerly sought to build up their infant industries, anxious to trade with Austria. Austrian industries, previously having sold their goods in a free-trade area of 54 million people, now had a domestic market only one-eighth the size of the monarchy and had few opportunities for export.
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The draconian reduction in Austria’s size naturally also created a serious shortage of food, all the more so because the country was now largely mountainous. As a result of the peace treaty, Austria was able to produce only two-thirds of its wheat demands in 1919, one-fifth of the necessary rye, one-third of the barley, and one-fifth of its oats. In meat and dairy products the country was considerably better off but still not self-sufficient.
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In succeeding years Austria’s food situation gradually improved. More intensified farming methods and tariffs raised production enough that by 1937 the country was approaching self-sufficiency in certain basic foodstuffs. But the agricultural gains were paid for in higher prices to consumers.
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Even though nearly every Austrian was adversely affected by the breakup of the Habsburg Monarchy, the middle class was by far the hardest-hit social group. The bourgeoisie was traditionally the most thrifty of all the segments of Central European society. As a consequence, it was the group most devas-

tated by the inflation that affected Austria during and especially after the World War. A savings account which before the war would have been enough to buy a small house was worth only a postage stamp by 1922. As late as

1919, sixteen Austrian crowns could purchase a dollar. It took 177 crowns for the same transaction in January 1921, and a fantastic 83,000 in August 1922. During the same period the cost of living increased 2,645-fold.
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Rent control, which began during the war and has lasted to the present day in Vienna, also hurt middle-class landlords by making their rent receipts practically worthless.

Even more important, the passing of the old monarchy left unemployed many middle-class German Austrians, who had made up the largest propor*~ tion of civil servants in the empire. An administrative personnel, which had been too large even for the 30 million people living in just the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy, now served a state with only a fraction of its previous population. There were no fewer than 233,000 civil servants in Austria in 1919-20 or 615,000 counting their dependents.
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Another 120,000 citizens were state pensioners.
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Thus, one of the major ingredients of a successful democracy—a strong, prosperous, and self-confident middle class—was missing in Austria between the world wars. The proletarianization of the middle class, or at least the fear of dropping down into the proletariat, made the Austrian bourgeoisie vulnerable to political extremism, including fascism.

Although Austria’s economy was slow to recover from the ravages of war and partition, some progress was made between early 1919 and 1921 with the help of food and medicine supplied by Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration.
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More substantial assistance ultimately came in 1922 from the League of Nations. In the so-called Geneva Protocols the British, French, Italian, and Czechoslovakian governments guaranteed a twenty-year loan equal to $126 million. The loan did not come without strings. Austria had to agree to a program of financial austerity involving the dismissal of thousands of civil servants. It also had to balance its budget, accept a commissioner general appointed by the League and, most important of all, promise not to give up its independence for the duration of the loan.
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Economically the Geneva Protocols were a moderate success. The loan enabled the government to electrify the railways the next year and also contributed to the development of water power. Likewise, the authorities began a comprehensive highway building program. In 1924 a new currency, the Austrian schilling, was introduced, equal to ten thousand of the old paper crowns and about fourteen American cents. By 1928 and 1929 the government came close to balancing the budget for the first time. The recovery reached a peak in these same two years when the gross national product was 105 percent of the
prewar
level (for the same area) and private consumption was 117 percent of the 1913 level. Only industrial production still lagged slightly behind the prewar standard.

Despite the gradual improvement in the Austrian economy after 1924, serious doubts about the country’s
Lebensfahigkeit
(viability) remained widespread. Even in the most prosperous years there was a troublesome surplus of imports over exports. In an age of autarky only self-sufficient countries were considered viable. For Austrians, their self-doubt became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Foreigners, impressed by the Austrians’ pessimism about their future, were reluctant to invest in a dying state. Consequently, Austrian industries were constantly short of the capital they needed to expand. In turn, this shortage left unsolved the chronic unemployment rate, which rarely fell below 10 percent of the work force,
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The Anschluss Movement

Difficult as its economic problems were, an even worse dilemma for the young Austrian Republic was the repudiation of its very existence by the majority of its citizens. It was this rejection, more than any other single factor, that aided the Nazis’ cause. The heart and soul of the Austrian Nazis’ program was their desire for an Anschluss, or union, with Germany. Far from creating the issue, however, or even monopolizing it, the Nazis merely succeeded in exploiting it more effectively than any other Austrian party.

Although their country’s desperate economic circumstances in 1918-19 intensified the Austrians’ yearning for an Anschluss, the ambition long antedated the end of the First World War. From the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire until Austria’s expulsion from the German Confederation in 1866, the lands that later comprised the Austrian Republic had always been a part of Germany. Thereafter the Austrians continued to look enviously at the German Empire’s higher standard of living. Although for the most part loyal subjects of the Habsburgs, the German-Austrians felt emotionally, linguistically, culturally, and historically closer to the people of Germany than they did to the non-Germans of the Dual Monarchy.

Even though relations between the German and Austro-Hungarian empires were far from untroubled during the First World War,
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propaganda and a shared danger held the alliance together. The war greatly heightened nationalism in each of the belligerent countries. Whereas the ideology had a disruptive effect on the multinational Habsburg Monarchy, it tended to strengthen spiritual ties between German-speaking people on either side oPthe Inn River. When nationalism and the war threatened to destroy the Habsburg Monarchy, union with Germany appeared to be the only practical alternative for the ten million Germans of the Austrian Empire.

The defeat of Austria-Hungary and the disintegration of the Dual Monarchy did have one apparent advantage for the German Austrians: it seemed to settle the question that had been troubling them since 1848: whether they were really Austrians or Germans. Now all divisions of loyalty were temporarily swept away. The Austrian Republic was seen by most of its citizens as a mere" remnant of the old Empire, a totally artificial creation. “Threatened by new neighbors which only yesterday had been her subject peoples, she was lamenting her present, questioning her past, and doubtful of her future. Union with Germany seemed thus to many Austrians the only solution to her staggering problems.”
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The Anschluss represented the possibility of regaining both Austria's former prosperity and its lost prestige.

The Anschluss movement was led in the early postwar years by the Austrian Social Democratic party (SDP), supported by various traditionally pan-German groups. Until at least the beginning of 1918 the Socialists had supported the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, believing that the economic development of the industrial proletariat would be enhanced by a large free-trade area. When the November Revolution toppled the Hohenzollem dynasty in Germany and replaced it with a Socialist government, the Austrian SDP pushed for a union of the two countries.

But pro-Anschluss opinion was not unanimous in Austria. Even traditional pan-German groups, whose roots stretched back far beyond 1919, were repelled at the thought of joining a Socialist Germany. And the conservative Christian Social party (CSP) paid at best lip service to the Anschluss idea when not actively opposing it.
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This fear was especially strong among industrialists and financiers who feared German competition. As Catholics, the Christian Socials showed little enthusiasm for Protestant Germany. If they officially supported the Anschluss program it was mainly to appease their coalition partners in the Austrian government.

Most Austrians in late 1918 innocently if naively believed that their Anschluss aspirations would be realized. President Woodrow Wilson had favored national self-determination as one of his famous Fourteen Points. When he arrived at the Paris Peace Conference he had still not made up his mind whether to exclude German Austria from this principle.
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But Wilson gradually came to agree with Georges Clemenceau, the French premier, that Germany could not be rewarded for losing the war by being given more territory than it would lose. Thus, it was the American president who suggested the compromise formula, incorporated in the treaties of Saint-Germain and Versailles, that Austria could “not alienate its independence” without the unanimous approval of the Council of the League of Nations. But France alone, as a permanent member of the Council, could veto such a move. By leaving alive the hope of a possible future union, the Allies could avoid the odium of flagrantly violating their own principle of self-determination.
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Yet, this very hope helped to keep the Anschluss movement active in both Austria and Germany. A less ambiguous stand, along with territorial concessions to Austria in the South Tyrol, and perhaps along the Czechoslovak border, might well have thwarted the Anschluss drive from the beginning.

Charles Seymour, one of the American experts at Paris, noted in a private letter that “everything that has been done in Paris has tended to force Austria into the arms of Germany. A little more tact and diplomatic skill and Austria could have been kept absolutely free from German influence. ... A really wise policy would have been to place German Austria on the same plane as Jugoslavia and Czechoslovakia—not regarding it as an enemy state.”
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The anti-Anschluss provisions of the Paris Peace Treaties had an unexpected consequence. Pro-Anschluss sentiment in Austria had been at a peak during the winter of 1918-19 just after the fall of the monarchy. But the Bolshevik revolution in Bavaria in April 1919 and Spartacist activities elsewhere in Germany dampened prounion enthusiasm, especially among already skeptical bourgeois circles. Christian Social newspapers editorialized that by renouncing the Anschluss Austria would improve its chance of retaining disputed German-speaking districts in the South Tyrol, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Styria, and Carinthia. This hope, of course, proved to be in vain, as the Treaty of Saint-Germain denied Austria
both
the Anschluss and the contested territories. The Austrians therefore felt doubly betrayed, and pro-Anschluss feelings quickly revived.
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