Austria within Nazi Germany
State of Austria (1938–1940) Land Österreich Reichsgaue of the Ostmark (1940–1942) Reichsgaue der Ostmark Alpine and Danube Reichsgaue (1942–1945) Alpen- und Donau-Reichsgaue | |||||||||
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1938–1945 | |||||||||
Anthem: Reich Commissioner | | ||||||||
• 1938–1940 | Josef Bürckel | ||||||||
Reichsstatthalter | |||||||||
• 1938–1939 | Arthur Seyss-Inquart | ||||||||
• 1939–1940 | Josef Bürckel | ||||||||
• 1940–1945 | Baldur von Schirach | ||||||||
Historical era | Reichstag election | 10 April 1938 | |||||||
• Ostmark law | 14 April 1939 | ||||||||
13 April 1945 | |||||||||
• Declaration of Independence | 27 April 1945 | ||||||||
• Independence from Germany | 8 May 1945 | ||||||||
Currency | Reichsmark (ℛℳ) | ||||||||
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History of Austria |
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Austria portal |
Austria was part of Nazi Germany from 13 March 1938 (an event known as the Anschluss) until 27 April 1945, when Allied-occupied Austria declared independence from Nazi Germany.
Nazi Germany's troops entering Austria in 1938 received the enthusiastic support of most of the population.[1] Throughout World War II, 950,000 Austrians fought for the Nazi German armed forces. Other Austrians participated in the Nazi administration, from Nazi death camp personnel to senior Nazi leadership; the majority of the bureaucrats who implemented the Final Solution were Austrian.[2][3]
After World War II, many
At the Israeli
Early history
The origins of Nazism in Austria have been disputed and continues to be debated.[10] Professor Andrew Gladding Whiteside regarded the emergence of an Austrian variant of Nazism as the product of the German-Czech conflict of the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire and rejected the view that it was a precursor of German Nazism.[11]
In 1918, at the end of
SDAP, GVP, and DNSAP clearly, although for different reasons, favoured a union of
First Austrian Republic
The First Austrian Republic angered many Austrian pan-Germans who made the claim that the republic violated the Fourteen Points that were announced by United States President Woodrow Wilson during peace talks, specifically the right to "self-determination" of all nations.[13]
Life and politics in the early years were marked by serious economic problems (the loss of industrial areas and natural resources in the now independent Czechoslovakia), hyperinflation and a constantly increasing tension between the different political groups. From 1918 to 1920 the government was led by the Social Democratic Party and later by the Christian Social Party in coalition with the German nationalists.
On 31 May 1922, prelate Ignaz Seipel became Chancellor of the Christian Social government. He succeeded in improving the economic situation with the financial help of the League of Nations (monetary reform). Ideologically, Seipel was clearly anti-communist and did everything in his power to reduce, as far as possible, the influence of the Social Democrats - both sides saw this as a conflict between two social classes.
The military of Austria was restricted to 30,000 men by the allies and the police force was poorly equipped. Already by 1918 the first homeguards were established like the
The German Workers' Party had already been founded in
The Austrian National Socialists linked to Hitler (Nazis) got only 779 votes in the 1927 General Election. The strongest grouping besides the Social Democrats was the Unity Coalition led by the Christian Social Party but including German Nationalists and the groups of Riehl and Schulz. In the course of these years there were frequent serious acts of violence between the various armed factions and people were regularly killed. In the General Election of 1930, the Social Democrats were the largest single party. The Christian Social Party came second but stayed in office in a coalition with smaller parties. The Austrian National Socialists linked to Hitler's NSDAP received only 3.6% of the votes and failed to enter Parliament. In the following years the Nazis gained votes at the expense of the various German national groups, which also wanted unity with Germany. After 1930 Hitler's NSDAP doubled its membership every year because of the economic crisis. One of their slogans was, "500,000 Unemployed – 400,000 Jews – Simple way out; vote National Socialist".
Dictatorship, civil war and banning the National Socialists
The Christian Social Party had ruled from 1932 and
Later in May 1933 the Christian Social Union was converted to the
In Germany Hitler became Chancellor early in 1933. The Social Democrats deleted any intention to cooperate with Germany from its party programme. Nazis had fled to Bavaria after their party was banned in Austria and founded there the Austrian Legion. The Nazis there had military style camps and military training. Nazi terrorists in Austria received financial, logistic and material support from Germany. The German Government subjected Austria to systematic agitation. After the expulsion of the Bavarian Minister of Justice in May 1933 German citizens were required to pay a thousand marks to the German Government before travelling to Austria. The Austrian Nazi Party was banned in June after a hand grenade attack in Krems. Nazi terrorism abated after that though five more people were killed and 52 injured by the end of the year.
On 12 February 1934 there was a violent confrontation in
Attempted Nazi coup and growing German influence
From the start of 1934 there was a new wave of Nazi terrorist attacks in Austria. This time government institutions were targeted far more than individuals. In the first half of 1934, 17 people were killed and 171 injured. On 25 July the Nazis attempted a coup under the leadership of the Austrian SS. About 150 SS personnel forced their way into the Chancellor's office in Vienna. Dollfuß was shot and died a few hours later from his wounds. Another group occupied the building of the Austrian National Radio and forced a statement that the Government of Dollfuß had fallen and Anton Rintelen was the new head of government. Anton Rintelen belonged to the Christian Social Party but is suspected of Nazi sympathy. This false report was intended to start a Nazi uprising throughout the country but it was only partially successful.
There was considerable fighting in parts of
The army, the gendarmery and the police put down revolt with heavy casualties. On the government side there were up to 104 deaths and 500 injuries. On the rebel side there were up to 140 deaths and 600 injuries. Thirteen rebels were executed and 4,000 people were imprisoned without trial. Many thousand supporters of the Nazi Party were arrested. Up to 4000 fled over the border to Germany and Yugoslavia. Kurt Schuschnigg became the new Chancellor.
In Bavaria many sections of the Austrian Legion were officially closed. In reality they were only pushed further north and renamed, “North-West Assistance”. Hitler ordered troops to the Austrian border, prepared for a full-scale military assault into Austria to support the National Socialists. Fascist Italy was more closely tied to the regime in Vienna and sent troops to the Austrian border at Brenner to deter German troops from a possible invasion of Austria. Hitler was at first torn between going ahead with the invasion, or pulling off the border. Hitler realized that the German Army was not prepared to take on both the Austrians and the Italian Army. Hitler ordered the force to be pulled off the Austrian border. The German government stated that it had nothing to do with the revolt. Germany only admitted that it was trying to subvert the Austrian political system through trusted people. They continued to support the illegal Nazi party but sympathizers who did not belong to the party were more significant. This included among others
To put Schuschnigg's mind at ease, Hitler declared to the Reichstag in May 1935: "Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria or to conclude an Anschluss."[14]
Italy began its conquest of
In July 1936 Schuschnigg accepted the
The native
In February 1938 Franz von Papen, the German ambassador in Vienna arranged a meeting between Hitler and Schuschnigg at Obersalzberg in Gaden in Bavaria. Hitler threatened repeatedly to invade Austria and forced Schuschnigg to implement a range of measures favourable to Austrian Nazism. The Agreement of Gaden guaranteed the Austrian Nazi Party political freedom and assisted Arthur Seyß-Inquart in becoming Home Secretary (Innenminister). Schuschnigg endeavoured to maintain Austrian national integrity despite steadily increasing German influence. On 9 March 1938 he announced that he wanted to hold a consultative referendum on the independence of Austria on the following Sunday. Hitler responded by mobilizing the 8th Army for the planned invasion. Edmund Glaise-Horstenau who was at the time in Berlin brought Hitler's ultimatum from there and Göring reinforced it with a telephone message to Schuschnigg. The German government demanded the postponement or abandonment of the referendum. Schuschnigg conceded on the afternoon of 11 March. Then Hitler demanded his resignation which happened on the same evening.
Annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany
After Schuschnigg left office, the federal president Wilhelm Miklas asked Arthur Seyß-Inquart to form a new government as the Germans demanded. From 11 to 13 March he led the Austrian Government and completed the Anschluss. On the morning of 12 March heavily armed German troops and police crossed the Austrian frontier, in total about 25000. Large sections of the Austrian population were very pleased to see them. In Vienna, Aspern met Heinrich Himmler of the SS accompanied by many police and SS officials to take over the Austrian police. Supporters of the Austrian Nazi Party together with members of the SS and SA occupied public buildings and offices throughout Austria without a previously planned transition period. The formation of the Greater German Reich was announced from the balcony of the Council House in Linz. On the following day, 13 March 1938, the second session of the Government passed the “Reunification with Germany Law”. Federal President Miklas refused to endorse it and resigned. Seyß-Inquart was now functioning Head of State. He could make his own laws and publish them. Before the evening was over, Hitler signed a law which made Austria a German province.[16]
On 15 March Hitler, who had spent the previous two days in his birth town of
In March 1938 the local Gauleiter of Gmunden, Upper Austria, gave a speech to the local Austrians and told them that the "traitors" of Austria were to be thrown into the newly opened Mauthausen concentration camp.[19] Overall 200,000 people were killed at the camp.[19]
The
Plebiscite
A referendum to ratify the annexation was set for 10 April, preceded by a major propaganda campaign. Hitler himself, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, and many other leading figures of the Nazi regime held speeches. The controlled press and radio campaigned for a Yes vote to the "Reunion of Germany and Austria". Prominent Austrians like Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, who signed a declaration of the bishops with Heil Hitler, and the Social Democrat Karl Renner promoted the approval. Austria's bishops endorsed the Anschluss.[2] In response to a request from the Nazi government, the day before the referendum, all the churches in Austria tolled their bells in support of Hitler.[2]
According to official records 99.73% voted Yes in Austria and in Germany 99.08% voted for the annexation.[23]
Excluded from the referendum were about 8% of the Austrian voters: about 200,000 Jews and roughly 177,000 Mischlinge (people with both Jewish and "Aryan" parents) and all those who had already been arrested for "racial" or political reasons.[24]
Antisemitism
The antisemitism against Austrian Jews had a long history in Austria; mass antisemitic violence took place immediately after the Germans had crossed the border into Austria. On the day after the plebiscite, a British correspondent estimated that 100,000 Viennese were rampaging through the Jewish quarter shouting "Death to the Jews!"[2] In the wealthy district of Währing Jewish women were ordered to put on their fur coats and scrub the streets while officials urinated on them, as crowds of Austrians and Germans cheered.[2]
The process of
Many were dispossessed of their shops and apartments, into which those who had robbed them moved, assisted by the SA and fanatics. Jews were forced to put on their best clothes and, on their hands and knees with brushes, to clean the sidewalks of anti-Anschluss slogans.
The Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogroms of November 1938 were especially brutal in Austria; most of Vienna's synagogues were burned in view of the public and fire departments.[1]
Antisemitism was widespread even in the highest government offices. Karl Renner, who was the first chancellor of republican Austria, had welcomed the Anschluss in 1938. After the war, Renner again became the Austrian head of state; he remained antisemitic, even with Jewish returnees and concentration camp survivors. Marko Feingold, survivor of the concentration camp and president of the Salzburg Jewish Community, stated in 2013: "Karl Renner, after all the first Federal President of the Second Republic, had long been known in the party as an anti-Semite. He didn't want us concentration campers in Vienna after the war and he also frankly said that Austria would not give anything back to them."[25][26][27] Despite his controversial actions, many locations in Austria continue to bear his name; he is also the namesake of the Karl Renner Prize.[28][29][30]
Austrian participation in the Holocaust and Nazi armed forces
The majority of the bureaucrats who implemented the Final Solution were Austrian.[2]
According to Thomas Berger, professor of international relations at the
Political scientist David Art of Tufts University also states that Austrians comprised 8 per cent of Nazi Germany's population, 13 percent of the SS and 40 per cent of the staff at death camps; but that 75 per cent of concentration camp commanders were Austrian.[32]
The largest
Prior to the Anschluss, the Austrian Nazi party's military wing, the Austrian SS, was an active terrorist organization. After the Anschluss, Hitler's Austrian and German armies were fully integrated. During the war, 800,000 Austrians volunteered for Nazi Germany in the Wehrmacht and a further 150,000 Austrians joined up to the Nazi party's military wing, known as the Waffen-SS.[2]
Prominent Austrians in the Nazi regime
The following Austrians were among those playing an active part in the Nazi regime:
- Adolf Hitler was German Chancellor from 1933 to 1945 and Führer ("Leader") from 2 August 1934 to 30 April 1945.
- Reichssicherheitshauptamt(RSHA).
- Arthur Seyß-Inquartorganized or covered several Nazi crimes in the Netherlands.
- Aktion Reinhardt").
- Franz Josef Huber, appointed chief of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; SiPo) and Gestapo for Vienna, the "Lower Danube" and "Upper Danube" regions.
- August Eigruber, Gauleiter of Upper Austria.
- Alexander Löhr, commander of Luftflotte 4, carried out the bombing of Belgrade in April 1941.
- Montenegro).
- Lothar Rendulic was an army group commander in the Wehrmacht during World War II. Rendulic was one of three Austrians who rose to the rank of Generaloberst (colonel general) in the German armed forces. The other two were Alexander Löhr and Erhard Raus.
- Soviet prisoners of war on behalf of the high command of the army.
- Am Spiegelgrundwith handicapped children.
- Alois Brunner was an Austrian Schutzstaffel (SS) officer who worked as Adolf Eichmann's assistant.
- Karl Silberbauer arrested Anne Frank in 1944.
- Otto Skorzeny SS-Obersturmbannführer in Waffen-SS.
- Edmund Glaise-Horstenau was an Austrian officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, last Vice-Chancellor of Austria before the 1938 Anschluss, a military historian, archivist, and general in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War.
- The Austrian gauleiters Hugo Jury, Franz Hofer and Friedrich Rainer also participated in Nazi crimes.
- Friedrich Franek general in Wehrmacht during World War II.
Austrian resistance
A small minority of the Austrian population actively participated in the resistance against Nazism.[33] The Austrian historian Helmut Konrad has estimated that out of an Austrian population of 6.8 million in 1938, there were around 100,000 Austrian opponents to the regime who were convicted and imprisoned, and an Austrian membership of the Nazi Party of 700,000.[34]
The Austrian resistance groups were often ideologically separated and reflected the spectrum of political parties before the war. In addition to armed resistance groups, there was a strong communist resistance group, groups close to the Catholic Church, Habsburg groups and individual resistance groups in the German Wehrmacht. Most resistance groups were exposed by the Gestapo and the members were executed.
The most spectacular individual group of the Austrian resistance was the one around the priest Heinrich Maier. On the one hand, this very successful Catholic resistance group wanted to revive a Habsburg monarchy after the war (- as planned by Winston Churchill and later fought by Joseph Stalin) and very successfully passed on plans and production facilities for V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks and aircraft (Messerschmitt Bf 109, Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, etc.) to the Allies. With the location sketches of the production facilities, the Allied bombers were able to carry out precise air strikes and thus protect residential areas. In contrast to many other German resistance groups, the Maier group informed very early about the mass murder of Jews through its contacts with the Semperit factory near Auschwitz.[35][36][37][38][39]
A sign of the Austrian resistance was O5, where the 5 stands for E and OE is the abbreviation of Österreich with Ö as OE. This sign may be seen at the Stephansdom in Vienna.
Austrians in exile
From March to November 1938, 130,000 people managed to escape legally or illegally from Austria. Among the most famous emigrating artists, there were the composers
Aftermath
"
The "victim theory" became a fundamental myth of Austrian society. It made it possible for previously bitter political opponents – i.e. the social democrats and the conservative Catholics – to unite and to bring former Nazis back to the social and political life for the first time in Austrian history. For almost half a century, the Austrian state denied any continuity of the political regime of 1938–1945, actively kept up the self-sacrificing myth of Austrian nationhood, and cultivated a conservative spirit of national unity. Postwar denazification was quickly wound up; veterans of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS took an honorable place in society. The struggle for justice by the actual victims of Nazism – first of all Jews – were deprecated as an attempt to obtain illicit enrichment at the expense of the entire nation.
In 1986, the election of a former Wehrmacht intelligence officer,
In 1984 in Lackenbach, almost 40 years after the end of war a memorial for the "Zigeuner-Anhaltelager" Romani was unveiled. A memorial in Kemeten has not yet been started. Prior to the war, 200 Romani people lived in Kemeten. They were deported in 1941; only five of them came back in 1945.
In mid-2004, the question of how to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the death of
In the first years after the war, many memorials were built in several places, commemorating the dead soldiers of World War II who allegedly fought for their country. For the victims of the Nazi regime, memorials have only been built at a much later time.
Since 1992, there is the possibility of doing
The biggest Austrian Memorial for the remembrance of National Socialist crimes is the
A study in 2019 by the Claims Conference showed that 56% of Austrians do not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and that 42% are unfamiliar with the Mauthausen concentration camp, located 146 kilometers (90 miles) from Vienna.[43]
See also
References
Citations
- ^ a b "Austria". encyclopedia.ushmm.org.
- ^ a b c d e f g Cymet, David (2012). History vs. Apologetics: The Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Catholic Church. Lexington Books. pp. 113–114.
- ^ "Austria struggles to come to grips with Nazi past". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 4 November 2015.
- ^ "Austria post-1945 - Auschwitz".
- S2CID 160319529.
- S2CID 145445683.
- ^ "Austria post-1945 - Auschwitz".
- ^ "Recherchen legen tiefe Verstrickung der FPÖ-Parteispitze in Rechtsextremismus offen | Mauthausen Komitee Österreich" (in German). Retrieved 2022-08-29.
- ^ "Broschüre "Lauter Einzelfälle? Die FPÖ und der Rechtsextremismus." | Mauthausen Komitee Österreich" (in German). Retrieved 2022-08-29.
- ^ Whiteside 1962, p. 2.
- ^ Whiteside 1962, p. 1.
- ^ "Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Austria; Protocol, Declaration and Special Declaration [1920] ATS 3". Austlii.edu.au. Retrieved 2011-06-15.
- ^ Parkinson 1989, p. 74.
- ^ Shirer 1990, p. 296.
- ^ Kershaw 2001, p. 45.
- ^ a b Kershaw 2001, p. 81.
- ^ In German: "Als Führer und Kanzler der deutschen Nation und des Reiches melde ich vor der deutschen Geschichte nunmehr den Eintritt meiner Heimat in das Deutsche Reich."
- ^ Bukey 2002, p. 34.
- ^ a b Gellately 2002, p. 69.
- ^ Gellately 2002, p. 108.
- ^ a b Gellately 2001, p. 222.
- ^ a b Gellately 2001, p. 225.
- ^ Kershaw 2001, p. 82.
- ^ Gellately 2001, p. 216.
- ^ "Marko Feingold: "Ich bin fast jeden Tag traurig"". Kronen Zeitung. 3 June 2018.
- ^ Maximilian Gottschlich "Die große Abneigung. Wie antisemitisch ist Österreich? Kritische Befunde zu einer sozialen Krankheit" Vienna 2012.
- ^ Siegfried Nasko, Johannes Reichl "Karl Renner. Zwischen Anschluß und Europa" (2000), p 273.
- ISBN 3-552-04967-3, p 100.
- ^ Gerhard Zeillinger: „Wiedergutmachung? – Das Wort kann ich schon nicht mehr hören!“ in: Der Standard 23 Dezember 2017.
- ^ Ludwig Dvorak "Vom fragwürdigen Umgang mit „nützlichen“ Zitaten" In: Der Standard, 29 March 2013.
- ^ "Austria struggles to come to grips with Nazi past". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 4 November 2015.
- ISBN 0-521-85683-3.
- S2CID 145445683.
- ^ Konrad, Helmut (6 Nov 2008). "konrad.pdf" (PDF). doew.at. Retrieved 28 Aug 2022.
- ISBN 978-3-902494-83-2, p 299–305.
- ISBN 978-3-7076-0622-5, p 161–248.
- ^ Fritz Molden: Die Feuer in der Nacht. Opfer und Sinn des österreichischen Widerstandes 1938–1945. Vienna 1988, p 122.
- ^ Peter Broucek "Die österreichische Identität im Widerstand 1938–1945" (2008), p 163.
- ^ Hansjakob Stehle "Die Spione aus dem Pfarrhaus (German: The spy from the rectory)" In: Die Zeit, 5 January 1996.
- ^ Uhl 1997, p. 66.
- ^ Art 2005, p. 104.
- ^ Embacher & Ecker 2010, p. 16.
- ^ "Most Austrians don't know 6 million Jews were killed in Holocaust, survey finds". The Times of Israel.
Bibliography
- Art, D (2005). The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139448833.
- Art, David (2006). The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-85683-6..
- Bukey, Evan Burr (2002). Hitler's Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-1945. University North Carolina. ISBN 0807853631.
- Embacher, H.; Ecker, M. (2010). "A Nation of Victims". The Politics of War Trauma: The Aftermath of World War II in Eleven European Countries. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 15–48. ISBN 9789052603711.
- ISBN 0192802917.
- Gellately, Robert (2001). Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691086842.
- ISBN 0140272399.
- Parkinson, F. (1989). Conquering the Past: Austrian Nazism Yesterday and Today. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0814320554.
- Pauley, Bruce F. (2000). From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism. Univ of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-6376-3.
- Shirer, William L. (1990). Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671728687.
- Steininger, Wolf (2008). Austria, Germany, and the Cold War: from the Anschluss to the State Treaty 1938–1955. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-84545-326-8.
- Uhl, Heidemarie (1997). "Austria's Perception of the Second World War and the National Socialist Period". Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity. Transactionpublishers. pp. 64–94. ISBN 9781412817691.
- Whiteside, Andrew Gladding (1962). Austrian National Socialism Before 1918. Springer. ISBN 9401500096.