Zachariah

Banned
In OTL, the Austrian Civil War, also known as the February Uprising (or Februarkämpfe in German), consisted of only a few days of skirmishes between national socialist and conservative-fascist forces between 12 February and 16 February 1934, in Austria. The clashes started in Linz, when a force led by Heimwehr commander Emil Fey, searched Hotel Schiff in Linz, a property belonging to the Social Democratic Party. Linz Schutzbund commander Richard Bernaschek was the first to actively resist, sparking off armed conflict between a conglomeration of the Heimwehr, the police and the Gendarmerie against the outlawed, but still existent, socialist Schutzbund, who were supported by Hitler's Nazi Germany. Most of the action took place in Vienna, where members of the Schutzbund barricaded themselves in city council housing estates (Gemeindebauten), the symbols and strongholds for the socialist movement in Austria, such as the Karl-Marx-Hof building. Police and paramilitaries took up positions outside these fortified complexes and the parties exchanged fire, initially only with small arms. Skirmishes between the two camps also spread to other cities and towns in Austria, such as Steyr, Sankt Pölten, Weiz, Eggenberg (Graz), Kapfenberg, Bruck an der Mur, Graz, Ebensee and Wörgl.

An apparently decisive moment in the events came with the entry of the Austrian Federal Army into the conflict. Though the army remained still a comparatively independent institution, chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss ordered Karl-Marx-Hof shelled with light artillery, and they followed his orders, endangering the lives of thousands of civilians and destroying many flats before forcing the socialist fighters to surrender. Viennese and Upper Austrian fighting ended by 13 February, but continued heavily in Styrian cities, especially in Bruck an der Mur and Judenburg, until 14 or 15 February. After that, there were only small groups of socialists fighting against the armed forces, or fleeing from it; by 16 February 1934, the Austrian Civil War had ended, with several hundred people dead and thousands wounded. The incidents of February 1934 were taken as a pretext by the Austrian government to prohibit the Social Democratic Party and its affiliated trade unions altogether, and in May, the conservatives replaced the democratic constitution by a corporatist 'Austrofascist' constitution modeled along the lines of Benito Mussolini's fascist Italy, with the Patriotic Front (Vaterländische Front), into which the Heimwehr and the Christian Social Party were merged, becoming the only legal political party in the resulting authoritarian regime, the Ständestaat.

So, your alternate history challenge is to somehow make the Austrian Civil War last longer than the Spanish Civil War did IOTL, with similarly high levels of foreign involvement and intervention to assist both sides (the Austrian Nazis and the Austrofascists) in the conflict, and with a higher or equivalent proportionate death toll to OTL's Spanish Civil War (135,000+ fatalities). What do you think- are you up to the task? Whose side do you envision that the respective European powers, and any other major powers in the world, would be more likely to support in TTL's Austrian Civil War (excluding Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, who were already completely committed to backing the Austrian Nazis and Fascists respectively)? Who would be more likely to emerge as the winners in the Civil War, if it did endure for so long (almost 2yrs and 9 months)? And would it be a war which either Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini could have afforded to concede defeat in, after all of that time and effort invested, without either being overthrown in a coup or escalating the conflict into a premature alternate WW2?
 

Zachariah

Banned
So... Any takers? Or any opinions as to how such a conflict might play out, and what repercussions it might have?
 
So... Any takers? Or any opinions as to how such a conflict might play out, and what repercussions it might have?

Well, basically the Nazis could launch a full uprising and Dolfuss could call in the Army. Hitler decides to invade, Mussolini counter invades. Within a year the Heer overthrown Hitler, probably less than that.
 

Zachariah

Banned
really? Hitler aided the Social Democratic militia in this instance?
Seeing as how the Social Democrats were the faction who sought to unify Austria with Hitler's Nazi Germany in the event that they came to power at that stage, absolutely. Enough for him to Hitler to orchestrate Engelbert Dollfuß's assassination as part of a failed Nazi coup attempt, backed by 154 SS agents, the July Putsch, around four months later IOTL. And enough for Mussolini to call Hitler out on it- mobilizing a part of the Italian army on the Austrian border, and threatening Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria, announcing to the world that "The independence of Austria, for which he (Dollfuß) has fallen, is a principle that has been defended and will be defended by Italy even more strenuously". Austria was also the main motivation for Mussolini orchestrating and promoting the creation of the Stresa Front (which fell apart after the British 'treacherously) signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement). along with French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou's efforts to establish the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance. Which, when ratified by the French Parliament, would then be used by Hitler as justification for his remilitarization of the Rhineland, and acknowledged as sufficient justification to do so by the British. If it had spiralled into an alternate WW2, you'd certainly have been looking at a very different one...
 
really? Hitler aided the Social Democratic militia in this instance?
No, he didn't. In this instance I have to fully disagree with Zachariah.

Austrian interwar politics are not something simple and often it came down to the individual. There were some symphaties within the ranks of the Austrian Social Democrats for Nazi Germany or a unification with Germany and the hope that the Nazis might be removed from power in the process. The same is true for the Christian Socialists as well as the Heimwehr. Look up Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg for example who participated in the Beer Hall putch.
Recently there has been a paper publish, I only read the abstract however, that examined the ties of the Linz cell of the Schutzbund, not however the Schutzbund as a whole or even the Social Democrats of Linz, on a personal level to various Nazi sympathies. The hypothesis is that they were in fact influenced by them in order to manufature an incident.
Deeper ties between Socialists and National Socialists developed over the following years. As IIRC Kreisky put it, mutal sympathies were forged in prison together.

Hitler in this case was an opportunist. He didn't intend to help the Schutzbund, he was interested in "restoring order". Meaning in this case a military occupation with a eye towards eventual integration.
 
Let's see if we can't get any massacres to stir up conflict and to solidifying national differences between Germans, Austrians, and the Deutsch everyone else.
 
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