Austria’s Failure to Find a Third Way
Austrian interwar authoritarianism presents a fascinating series of contradictions. The Dollfuss-Schuschnigg regime was anti-Nazi yet welcomed the friendship of Mussolini’s Italy. It looked towards an Italian movement rife with Nietzscheanism while founding itself on Catholic social teaching. Finally, the Ständestaat (corporate state) looked to uphold a specifically Austrian identity while also defining itself as a German state. The literature on the Austrian regime varies wildly in its sympathies. Some authors praise the Ständestaat as a bulwark against Hitler, while others deride it as just one more fascist regime among many. From the narratives of both camps a common thread can be drawn that reveals the reasons behind the ultimate debacle that was the Anschluss. The Ständestaat failed to secure its independence in the face of German aggression because it failed to create its own distinct mass political movement. Combating the left was considered more important than building effective social support. Adherence to a conservative economic vision prevented the regime from satisfying either the capitalists or the working class. Finally, instead of presenting a radically revolutionary vision of social change, the Ständestaat allowed the Nazis to set the terms of the debate.
A note should be made about the appropriateness of the term fascism in reference to the 1934-1938 Austrian government. For decades the literature about the Ständestaat has been the site of a bitter struggle. Some insist on the term “Austrofascism,” arguing that the Austrian regime was essentially the same as its Nazi counterpart. Others more sympathetic to the record of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg have preferred the more positive term Ständestaat.[1]These historians have emphasized the good faith efforts of the regime to combat Nazism and preserve Austrian independence in the face of aggression. Such debates, though interesting are beside the point.[2] It is more important to understand how the Ständestaat failed to thrive by its own standards than to decide whether it deserves the automatic opprobrium associated with the fascist label.
The Austrian regime was brought down more by own weaknesses than by the overbearing strength of Nazism. As in the case of the French Third Republic in 1940, Vienna in 1938 lacked the will to fight to the bitter end for its national independence. Undoubtedly, Austria had been dealt a bad hand in the domain of foreign affairs. The strongest assurance of protection came from Italy, one of Vienna bitterest historic enemies. When Mussolini decided to embark on his Ethiopian adventure, he alienated the western democracies. This forced Rome to draw ever closer to Berlin as a natural ideological ally. Part of the price of this realignment was the weakening of Italy’s commitment to Austrian independence. With the loss of its one time protector, Austria became increasingly exposed. At the same time, Vienna failed to win over the sure support of the democracies. France was sympathetic, but unwilling to act alone without the support of London. The United Kingdom in turn did not consider central European affairs to be one of its vital national affairs.[3] From this perspective Austria’s diplomatic abandonment was one of the many unfortunate results of the policy of appeasement that characterized a low, dishonest decade.
However, despite these facts, it remained the case that the weaknesses of the Austrian state were essentially internal. Schuschnigg decided to resign even before either Italy or the Western powers had given him a final refusal.[4] The Ständestaat gave up the fight even before trying the path of military resistance. While some governments occupied by Germany chose to go into exile and organize resistance from abroad, Vienna allowed itself to be snuffed out entirely. Further, as pointed out by several authors, the national socialists were not a strong enough as an internal force to bring the Ständestaat to its knees. As Gehl observes, “the Austrian Nazis could not achieve success without pressure from outside, and they were too weak to force recognition from the Austrian government on their own account.”[5] It was the government’s own decisions that led to the final debacle, not the irresistible might of its opponents. Finally, the fact that Italy’s changing diplomacy had such an effect on Vienna should indicate that the regime had a larger problem than just being unreliable friends. Foreign factors took on an exaggerated importance because the Austrian government was laboring under its own chronic ineptitude and internal weaknesses.
The Ständestaat arose out of the crisis brought about in the vacuum left behind by the death of the Austrian Empire and the end of the monarchy. During the late-Habsburg era, the Christian Socials and Social Democrats grew up together beneath a capacious imperial canopy. Outright collision between the rival mass movements was prevented by the supervising mediation of the Emperor. A precarious equilibrium existed which, while not same as the absence of conflict, avoided the polarization of the people into irreconcilable factions locked in a state of civil war. But with the end of the imperial system, there was no longer an overall authority figure that could claim to be equidistant from all competing factions. Now there were only rival citizens who faced each on a horizontal plane of competition from which there was no easy exit.
In addition to the new angst of coexistence within a republican order, there arose the question of whether Austria without the Hapsburgs had a real future. The Christian Socials were still convinced in the viability of the so-called Austrian idea. In part this was an expression of barely repressed royalist hopes for a restoration. Yet it was also an expression of belief that predominantly Catholic Austria, with its centuries old heritage of an independent existence, had a separate identity from the predominantly Protestant German nation. Finally, as will be explored later on, they thought that their country represented a superior brand of “Germanness” than the one offered in Berlin. By contrast, the Social Democrats longed for unification with Austria’s northern neighbor. While they were more committed to democracy than were the Christian Socials, the socialists were not convinced that an Austrian republic had a real reason to exist. They favored unification with Germany as an inevitable working out of the rationality of history.[6] Austria was thus divided between patriots who were dubious about the value of republican forms and solid democrats who did not feel much attachment to the nation they inhabited.[7]
These conflicting ideological tenants led to a spiraling series of confrontations between the two sides, neither of which was unwilling to resort to force to achieve their objectives. Like the Weimar Republic, the Austrian First Republic throughout the 1920s and early 1930s was marked by repeated street fighting between the left and the right while the parliamentary system became increasingly discredited by the economic instability of the times. This culminated in a brief civil war, which consolidated the control of the Christian Socials and paved the way for the issuing of the authoritarian May Constitution. All parties were abolished and replaced with the Fatherland Front, an organization that was supposed to connect Austrians of all backgrounds to the state. One faction had put an end to the seemingly unworkable social contradictions brought about by democratization through declaring a dictatorship. In a typically Austrian gesture, the parliament was declared to have abolished itself, as if no one was willing to take responsibility for the termination of democracy.[8]
The Austrian regime prioritized the suppression of its leftwing opponents over winning a mass following. While it sought to split moderate Nazis from Germany, Vienna waited until the end was in sight before seeking to reconcile itself with the Social Democrats. Rather than trying to protect itself from Nazi aggression through allying with the democratic nations of Europe, the Ständestaat put too much faith in fascist Italy. While the Nazis successfully wooed elements of the social democrats, the Austrian regime remained dependent on a narrow conservative base that proved all too willing to throw in its lot with Hitlerism.
Despite the regime’s commitment to resisting Berlin as well as Moscow, the Staandstaat was at the end of the day more concerned with repressing the left than with combatting Nazism. This was particularly true after the death of Dollfuss and the failure of the 1934 putsch. Despite the obviously aggressive intentions of Germany, a lawyer named Arthur Seys-Inquart was given a position in Austria’s cabinet to represent the “national opposition” (i.e. the Nazis).[9] Further, the Ständestaat, hoping to gain breathing room from the insistent pressure of Berlin, made several concessions to Austrian Nazis as early as 1936. “Nazi political prisoners…were amnestied, a select number of German newspapers would be allowed to circulate in Austria following an earlier ban, and Nazis symbols would be permitted again on certain occasions.”[10] In addition, during that same year, the Ständestaat disbanded the Heimwehr units.[11] These paramilitary groups had been instrumental in the suppression of the socialists 1934. They represented one of the few bottom up expressions of support that the regime had. Yet, the Ständestaat was willing to sacrifice them in the hope of partially appeasing Berlin. Later, in 1937, Schuschnigg made an agreement in conjunction with Berlin which released 145 National Socialists and promised to limit police suppression of “any offices that might be established in furtherance of the pacification movement.”[12]
As a result of these various concessions, Nazis were still not recognized as a legal party but they were given more room to function. In the words of Gehl: “The strength of the regime was no longer based on opposition to the Nazis but on the compromise concluded with them.”[13] This may be too harsh a verdict, but it captures the extent to which Vienna had undermined its own position.
Finally, while the Austrian regime sought to win over “moderate” Nazis, no such effort was made to split the Social Democrat bloc. In fact, attracting national socialists was one of the reasons for the intensity of the regime’s persecution of the left. As Dollfuss explained as early as 1933:
“I am convinced that, as soon as you appeal to all sound national forces in Austria, and strike a blow at the Social Democrats in their stronghold, Vienna … then many of those who today are active in the ranks of the Nazis will come over to the circle of the national front.”[14]
Even at the eleventh hour, Schuschnigg was unwilling to allow the Social Democrats to organize again as a party. In part this was an understandable effort to keep out the Nazis. The Fatherland Front was supposed to represent all Austrians. If this political monopoly was broken to allow for a party of the left, the Nazis would undoubtedly demand their right to participate in political life as well. But deeper than such tactical considerations was the continuing antipathy of Schuschnigg and others to the Social Democrats as a red menace to a Christian Austria. No distinction was made between the socialists and the communists loyal to Moscow. While the Ständestaat should be commended for reaching to its political opponents, it was clearly a matter of too little too late.
Austria alienated otherwise sympathetic countries through its unwillingness to tolerate the existence of a leftwing opposition. Public opinion in both England and France disapproved of the persecution of the Socialists.[15] In a world divided by a global struggle for power between fascism, communism, and liberalism, the idiosyncratic authoritarianism of Austria lacked many viable allies. One of the main reasons for the existence of the regime was its opposition to annexation by Nazi Germany. But because of its rightwing politics it could not expect much natural sympathy from the western democracies or from the Soviet Union. On a more local level, the oddly half-hearted reactionary politics of Vienna alienated its neighbors. The Austrian state could not join Little Entente partly because of its unwillingness to renounce definitively the restoration of the monarchy.[16] Finally, Austria, while eager to gain assurances that other nations would protect its independence, was unwilling to join in any alliance that was explicitly committed to combatting Germany.[17] The bond of kinship between the two nations undercut Vienna’s desire to maintain its own sovereignty.
The Ständestaat failed to win over the left. The state’s sweeping ideological opposition to the Enlightenment left little room to compromise with socialists or liberals. Perhaps more importantly, the Austrian regime’s unwillingness to engage in Keynesianism or to permit unionization gave workers inclined towards socialism little material incentive to change their loyalties. This was in stark contrast to the Austrian regime’s Hitlerite rival, which, while similarly opposed to both liberalism and socialism, was far more adept at branding itself as a truly modern alternative to the status quo. It helped that Nazism, being also an officially proscribed group, was not tainted by association with the government’s suppression of the left. As one observer said as early as 1934:
“Owing to its wait and see attitude, the hands of the NSDAP would remain free of the blood of the citizens, and the NSDP therefore formed the natural reservoir into which the insurgent masses of German workers would be channeled.”[18]
Thus, it is estimated that 1/3 of the Social Democrats base defected to Nazism.[19] Bombarded with anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic propaganda, many workers were convinced that Hitler was a desirable alternative to the current Austrian government. These Social Democrats preferred an admittedly anticlerical foreign regime to being governed by their bitter ideological enemies.Their desire for vengeance and their long established preference for Anschluss with Germany quieted their proletarian scruples
The Ständestaat was prevented from building a mass base by its inability to come up with a popular economic response to the problems raised by the Great Depression. Instead of adapting to modern labor relations, the regime tried to freeze society in the image of a rose tinted medieval past. Rather than adopt a flexible monetary policy, the Ständestaat crucified Austria on a cross of gold. Finally, instead of enabling economic growth, Vienna bogged itself down with shortsighted policies of protectionism.
The Ständestaat sought to transcend social conflict through corporatism. Society would be divided into different estates, which would all be harmonized in the unity of the state. The disruptive forces of trade unionism and entrepreneurial avarice would be negated through integration into a properly Christian social order. Class interests would be channeled into a general spirit of cohesion. This attempt to turn a theological critique of modern social conditions into a concrete third way between socialism and liberalism satisfied no one. Instead of conciliating social-economic differences, it let class differences fester into a general resentment of the Austrian state. The urban proletariat was alienated from a regime that failed to take seriously their demands for autonomy and political participation. Nor could they be expected to appreciate cuts to their living standards in the name of maintaining the budget. While the working class remained unappeased, the well to do were also dissatisfied with the Ständestaat. Capitalists certainly appreciated the state’s suppression of labor militancy. But they did not find much positive value in the corporatist state. The sentimental elevation of the rural countryside as the bedrock of society was no doubt irksome to men who saw themselves as being forces for social and material progress. And while many no doubt liked the absence of new taxes, even the fiscal orthodoxy of Vienna was not an unmixed blessing for big business. The stagnation imposed on the economy by the Ständestaat affected profit margins as well as wages. Many industrialists looked towards the dynamic economy of Nazi Germany as an alternative. As one business man bluntly said:
“Business is always about surviving the next day. After you’ve survived a crisis, nobody asks you how you did it. I am known as a rather successful industrialist. As such I say and can only say: What they are doing out there with the economy [in Nazi Germany, G.S.] is quite simply impressive.”[20]
All this was in strong contrast to American Catholics who were eager to link the liberal modernization of the New Deal to the same papal document, Quadragesimo Anno, cited by the Austrians authoritarians.[21] It was a definite choice on the part of the leaders of the Austrian regime to view the only possible application of Catholic social teaching as being a return to the 13th century. Instead of reinterpreting present day realities through the spirit of orthodoxy, they became lost in the letter of long since departed social realities. Ironically, despite its clear debt to the imperial past, Ständestaat showed none of the Hapsburgs willingness to compromise with modernity. The piety of the old dynasty had not prevented it from being willing to acknowledge contemporary realities. The petite bourgeois clericalism of the 1930s Austrian right by contrast burdened itself with quixotic aspirations.
The regime in Vienna prioritized preserving a balanced budget and the value of the Alpine Dollar over stimulating economic growth. While other countries had adopted fiat currency because of the state of the time, the Austrian government mulishly stuck to fiscal orthodoxy. “Although other countries abandoned the gold standard mentality in the 1 930s - Great Britain in 1931, the United States and Germany in 1933, and even France in 1936 - Austria clung to it until the bitter end.”[22] What is commonly known as Keynesianism remained more or less anathema to Vienna. “Attempts to stimulate the national economy … remained much too weak in Austria since they lacked genuine conviction on the part of the government.”[23] While the American government and the Nazi government, through their expansive monetary policies, were able to take the sting of the Depression from the public imagination, Vienna allowed the economy to largely work itself out. At the same time, the country sought to protect small businesses from being rendered redundant. Centralization and rationalization of production was thus discouraged. At the same time, idle capacity was allowed to build up because of a lack of effective demand. As a result, “Industrial output in 1937/1938 was below that of 1929.”[24]
This flawed approach to economics extended into agriculture. Dollfuss effusive rhetoric about the social importance of the peasantry, the agricultural policies of him and his successor were of dubious value for Austria’s farming industry. The leaders of the Ständestaat were of course unwilling to pursue the “red” solutions of land reform and the creation of unions for farm workers. However, they were also unwilling to use free trade as a means of rationalizing Austrian agriculture. Instead, the Austrian regime pursued a policy of subsidizing the nations’ farmers and imposed a strict quota system on their products.[25] This discouraged agricultural modernization while inflicting high food prices on the already disaffected urban proletariat. The result was that the passive support of the countryside was assured. But laboring masses in the cities were left with little effective attachment to the regime, thereby exposing them to the siren call of Nazism.
The Ständestaat did not succeed in creating a distinct (counter)-revolutionary vision of its own. It failed to compete with Nazism on the ground of German identity politics. Instead of bringing back the monarchy, it tried to recreate the old imperial system minus the dynastic base. While Nazism put forward clear answers on the nature of the people, the Austrian regime offered a confusing ambivalence that really satisfied only a minority of the population it tried to rule. Finally, instead of confronting head on the psychological angst and uncertainty of modern life with a radical vision, the Ständestaat tried to coast by on a weak political mandate with a merely bureaucratic authority.
The Ständestaat defined itself as a ‘German’ within its constitution. This marked its continuity with the programs of the Christian Social party. It was also concession to the self-understanding of a majority of Austrians. But in the long term, this self-definition undermined the attempt to build an Austrian identity. The sincere members of the Fatherland Front (who perhaps were never a majority) believed they represented the better Germany that had not been led astray by the errors of Protestantism and modern Neo-Paganism. Dietrich Hildebrand summed up the official attitude of the regime when he wrote:
“Can one conceive of an ethos or a mentality that is more contrary to the great spirituality and quiet depth of this noble German character than the loud, propagandistic, aspirtual conduct of National Socialism, its mechanical enforcement of conformity in all areas of life, and its disavowal of German traditions and culture…?”[26]
To supporters of the Ständestaat, Vienna was the true uncorrupted embodiment of Deuchteum (Germanness). They thus already ceded that the main issue was a national identity, with dire consequences. As one Catholic intellectual observed at the time, “Those who regard Austria as a German state and speak of the German nation in Austria will sooner or later have to deny the Austrian state.”[27]
A post-imperial Austria could not claim to offer an essentially different conception of political belonging. The choice than was between who could project a more convincing simulation of the reborn Germanic Reich. When the question was posed in that way, the ultimate issue could not be in doubt. The restored Holy Roman Empire was a pipe dream, while the Nazi state was an undeniable reality. The volk proved more politically potent than piety and defunct dynastic loyalties. This in fact proved to be a decisive factor in the death throes of the Austrian state. One of the reasons for Schuschnigg’s final capitulation was his unwillingness to shed fellow German blood.[28]
Many members of the Austrian regime had royalist sympathies including Schuschnigg.[29] However, perhaps bizarrely, they were unwilling to bring back the Hapsburgs. The monarchists were a solidly anti-Nazis constituency both out principal and by necessity. Hitler was violently opposed to the Hapsburgs as a family of degenerate cosmopolitans that had betrayed the German people with their sympathies for the Slavs. This was one of the themes dealt with in Mein Kampf, which diagnosed the death of the Austrian empire as a result of its multinational character. In the face of this one could say that the Austrian regime, hoping to avoid providing a pretext for Nazi aggression, had solid reasons to choose not to bring back the dynasty.[30] But one could also argue that, considering the fact that nothing would convince Germany to abandon its scheme of unification, Vienna had nothing to lose. Something over and above diplomatic calculation informed the Ständestaat’s reluctance to bring back the king. Perhaps at bottom they thought they were building a more genuinely Christian society that would not make the messy compromises with liberalism and socialism that had characterized the late Hapsburg period.
The Ständestaat relationship to Anti-Semitism demonstrated both the reality of its anti-Nazism and its uncomfortable kinship with its northern rival. This relative toleration for Jews definitely distinguished Austria from Nazi Germany. There was no equivalent to the Nuremburg laws or Kristallnacht. Many German Jews found asylum in Austria. The Fatherland Front incorporated into its official party platform the text of 1933’s pastoral letter by the Austrian Bishops. The document clearly denounced ‘racial ‘anti-Semitism along with racism, eugenics, and the exaltation of nationalism over religion.[31] In a sense, the Ständestaat continued the tolerant policies of the late Hapsburg Empire, albeit without the liberal and constitutional features of that regime. In turn, some Jewish writers and intellectuals, such as Joseph Roth and Franz Werfel looked to Austrian identity as a defense against the nationalist extremism of the times.[32] Nostalgia for the old order proved to be in this instance a justification for accepting rather than rejecting cultural outsiders.
However, this atmosphere of relative toleration was fraught with ambivalence. As indicated above, the Fatherland Front and the Austrian bishops only condemned “racial” Anti-Semitism, not all possible forms of hatred towards Jews. Pace the Nazis, no human tribe could be written off as beyond salvation, but there was still a special opprobrium that surrounded the alleged obstinacy of the Hebrews who had rejected Christ. Distrust and hostility towards Jews for being members of an alien religion was implied to be acceptable. The practical difference between the racial anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism was difficult to maintain for most Austrian Catholics, who still insisted on differentiating between gentile and Jewish members of the faith.[33] Further, despite the mildness of the official policy, popular anti-Semitism remained unchecked. Notably, a pro-regime newspaper published the editorial by one “Professor Austriacus” who described the murder of a Jewish intellectual named Mortiz Schlick as a ‘truly satisfactory solution to the Jewish question.’ ”[34] It would only take a small leap from such sentiments to approve of wholesale extermination of the Jews as a people. In the end, the half-hearted toleration of the Ständestaat could not compete with the straightforward racism of the Nazis. The former refused to directly confront the bigotry of the Austrian population, while the latter gave the masses permission to vent their worst instincts.
The May Constitution of 1934 by itself demonstrates the unwillingness of the Austrian authoritarians to settle themselves to the realities of mass politics. The preamble declines to name the power, which issued the constitution. Neither the traditional dynastic right nor the popular sovereignty is admitted as a legitimizing principle. As Eric Voeligan observed: "[The 1934 preamble] lists the principles of the constitution, it names the object benefiting from the constitution-but it says nothing about the power issuing the constitution.” [35] God Himself is invoked, but the founders of Ständestaat did not dare say that their statutes were direct expressions of the divine will. The constitution situates itself more as a provisional document than an enduring expression of a specific set of power relations. This was a continuation of an old problem that had hounded the Austrian polity throughout the 19th century. "The impossibility of creating clear domestic power relations shifted the emphasis of the problem of the Austrian Reich from the field of politics to that of administration."[36] But at least in the past, there had still been at the end of the day the divine aura of the dynasty itself, which could credibly claim to stand apart from the various social and national struggles that had riven the old empire. The May Constitution, by contrast, wants the form of an administrated state without creating a social institution capable of giving substance to such a form of government. The realities of political power are obscured in an appeal to an elusive authority which has yet to commit itself to a foundational decision.
There is a profound irony at work here. Hitler wormed his way into power through technically legal means without having to replace the Weimar Constitution. The Austrian authoritarians, from this perspective, were formally more radical in the sense that they issued a brand new constitution to replace the founding document of the first republic. But this boldness when it came to practice hid a timorous approach to the realities of governing a modern state. Instead of directly tackling the problem of legitimization in modern mass society, the Ständestaat deferred making a political decision about its own foundation to the indefinite future. By contrast, Nazism founded itself openly and unambiguously on the “volkish” people. It tried to ride the modern tide of popular sovereignty even as it schemed its overthrow democratic rule.
Austrian identity had historically been based on two transnational institutions, the Hapsburg dynasty and the Catholic Church.[37] It had grown up in an atmosphere of spiritual and secular cosmopolitanism that had never had to confine itself to the limits of a nation state form. While this sensibility could, under certain circumstances, make Austrians appear more modern than the inhabitants of countries with more straightforward homelands, it left the subjects of the old empire ill prepared for an age increasingly defined by a heady mixture of patriotism and revolutionary politics. The cataclysm of the First World War forced Austrians to consider on what terms they could exist as a distinct people. The loss of the monarchy left Austrian identity even more dependent on the Church. But this made it ever more abhorrent to the socialists. Indifferent to the traditional religious debates between Protestant and Catholics, secular leftist Austrians thought that nationality trumped the lingering scars of the Reformation. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, liberal and leftist partisans participated in pro-Anschluss activism.[38] They sought to affirm a shared republican German identity that would paper over the scars left behind by the departure of the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs. This aim ironically converged with the aims of the post-royalist nationalist right. Even the victory of Hitler was not enough to definitely silence left sympathies for a unification with Germany, particularly as many opponents of the Ständestaat groaned under official persecution.
The Fatherland Front condemned the positing of the nation as a higher collective entity than the state itself. However, this left unanswered where legitimacy flowed from. When a monarch who stood above the people ruled society, the state was truly independent from the nation. But in a post-dynastic present, there was no clear institutional reference point that could play the role of autonomous mediator. There was instead a gaping void in the political imaginary. The Nazi Volksgemeinschaft, by contrast, presented a simpler, perversely more democratic equation: The state was legitimate because it represented the people that made it up. A German people needed a German state. In the face of this simple logic, Vienna could only hem and haw. Austria wanted to be a supranational entity but instead only came across as a deformed parody of the nation state. Deuchteum, in the last instance, trumped whatever the Austrian idea was supposed to stand for.
The Ständestaat’s opposition to democratic forms worked against its attempts to justify its own existence. When distinguishing itself from its northern neighbor was key, Vienna tried to imitate some of Berlin’s forms. The Austrian regime, despite the sincerity of its opposition to Nazism, adopted the Führerprinzip as its own. Within their general practice of governance, each level of organization was subordinated to the leader of the Fatherland Party. Dollfuss even chose to take on the title of Führer.[39] However, as Bruce F. Pauley observes: “All in all, there was a distinctly temporary and defensive quality to the governments of Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt von Schuschnigg. Neither man had any desire to set up a permanent dictatorship.”[40]
If rightwing authoritarianism was the only option available, choosing between an unabashed charismatic leader and a glorified bureaucrat riven by self-doubt might seem like an easy choice to make.
The lack of emotional energy behind Austrian authoritarianism can be vividly demonstrated by its choice of symbols. In contrast to the enigmatic energy of the swastika, the Austrians had the clunky crutch cross (Krukenkruz).[41] These details on the level of spectacle were symptoms of a deeper psychological difference between Vienna and Berlin. Nazis offered the revolutionary division of spoils among racial brothers fused together in an armed mass in the wake of the passing of God and Kaiser. The deserving sons would inherit the inheritance left behind by a father who had proven too weak to stop his own demise. Fascist filiarchy would replace the stale reign of traditional patriarchy [42] The Austrian regime, by contrast nostalgically wavered in front of the void left by the passing of the pre-1914 order. Particularly after the assassination of Dollfuss, the role of Chancellor was more a bureaucratic function overseeing the persistence of the status quo than a post defined by transformative leadership that could promise a new future for the various frustrated strata of modern society. The potent mixture of paternalism and democracy offered by the American New Deal was beyond the capabilities of the Austrian regime. At the same time, the Austrian state did not offer its citizens a true restoration of the ancien regime. The leaders of the Ständestaat lacked the pious audacity to bring back the exiled emperor. At most, they were merely willing to keep his seat warm for him.
The Ständestaat failed in its mission to save Austrian sovereignty because of its inability to successfully engage with the realities of modern mass politics. Rather than win the hearts and minds of the working class, the Austrian regime became fixated with combating those to its left. Instead of effectively reacting to the economic realities, Vienna chose to oversee the strangulation of growth by corporatism and fiscal orthodoxy. Finally, instead of presenting a unique and persuasive vision of the future, Vienna allowed itself to be boxed into an ideological corner by its more nimble Nazi opponents.
Ironically, some of these issues were raised in a report by the Fatherland Front itself in late 1934: “The supporters of the government complained … that its enemies, the capitalists, were not tackled more energetically, that the workers were much too exploited, [and] that the leftwing opponents were punished much more harshly that the ‘brown terrorists.’” [43]
The fact that such a frank and sweeping criticism could be levelled within the governing party itself was a sign of the mildness that defined the regime in contrast to other interwar authoritarian states. But the fact that little to nothing was done to address these concerns during the remaining years of the regime indicates how incapable the Ständestaat was of making the bold decisions necessary to secure its own existence in an age of political flux.
The tragedy of Austria is a microcosm of the fate of Central Europe during the 1930s. It is the story of the inability of both liberalism and the remnants of the ancien regime, of Social Democracy and of the Church, of the intellectuals and the working masses to resist the march of Nazism. When push came to shove, with honorable exceptions, both major Austrian social factions capitulated to the advent of Hitler. It would take the victory of Moscow and Washington to force the various elements of Mitteleuropa to commit to a democratic order.
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[1] Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, and Alexander Lassner, ed. The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria: A Reassessment (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2003), p.1.
[2] Tim Kirk, “Fascism and Austrofascism”, in Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, and Alexander Lassner, ed., The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria: A Reassessment (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2003), p. 26.
[3] Jürgen Gehl, Austria, Germany, and The Anschluss 1931-1938 (London, 1963), p. 114.
[4] Gordon Brook-Shepherd, The Anschluss (Philadelphia, 1963), p. 152.
[5] Gehl, Austria, Germany, and The Anschluss, p. 153.
[6] Anthony Bushell, Polemical Austria: The Rhetoric of National Identity from Empire to the Second Republic (Cardiff, Wales, 2013), pp. 143-144.
[7] Brook-Shepherd, The Anschluss, p. xviii.
[8] Tim Kirk, “Fascism and Austrofascism”, p. 20.
[9] Erin R. Hochman, Imagining a Greater German: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss (Ithaca, 2016), p.234.
[11] Gehl, Austria, Germany, and The Anschluss, p. 143.
[19] Evan Burr Burkey, Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era: 1938-1945 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2000), p. 36.
[20] Gerhard Senft, “Economic Development Policies in the Ständestaat Era”, in Bischof, Pelinka, and Lassner, ed., Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria, pp. 47-48.
[21] Gene Burns, The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World (Berkeley, California, 1994) p. 92.
[22] Hansjörg Klausinger, “How Far Was Vienna from Chicago in the 1930s? The Economists and the Depression”, in Bischof, Pelinka, and Lassner, ed., Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria, p. 67.
[23] Senft, “Economic Development Policies in the Ständestaat Era”, p. 36.
[26] Gottfried Karl Kindermann, Hitler’s Defeat in Austria 1933-1934: Europe’s First Containment of Nazi Expansionism, Sonia Brough trans., (London, 1984), pp 166
[27] Bushell, Polemical Austria, p.165.
[28] Brook-Shepherd, The Anschluss. p. 152.
[30] Gehl, Austria, Germany, and The Anschluss, p.177.
[31] Gottfried Karl Kindermann, Hitler’s Defeat in Austria 1933-1934: Europe’s First Containment of Nazi Expansionism, Sonia Brough trans., (London, 1984), pp. 164-165.
[32] Bushell, Polemical Austria, p. 139.
[33] Bruce F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1992), p.172.
[34]Senft, “Economic Development Policies in the Ständestaat Era”, p.49.
[35] Eric Voeligan The Authoritarian State: An Essay on the Problem of the Austrian State, Ruth Hein trans., (Columbia, Missouri, 1999), p. 252.
[37] Kindermann, Hitler’s Defeat in Austria, p.20.
[38] Hochman, Imagining a Greater German: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss, pp.2-4.
[39] Bruce F Pauley, "Fascism and the Führerprinzip: The Austrian Example." Central European History 12, no. 3, 1979, p. 281.
[41]Carl G. Liungman, Symbols: Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms (Stockholm, Sweden, 1995), p. 587.
[42]Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies Volume 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History, Stephen Conway, trans.,(Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1987), p. 108.
[43] F. L. Carsten, Fascist Movements in Austria: From Schönerer to Hitler (London, 1977), p. 272.
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