Happy new year to everyone, today we will see what happened to Austria so far. As always thanks to Sorairo for his revisions and additions, enjoy!
Extract from ‘In Italy’s Shadow: Austria after WWII’ of Heinrich Lagerfield
In 1815, the Congress of Vienna established the status of Austria as a great European power, with a fragmented Italy under its domination; a century later, Austrian might collapsed under internal strife and military defeat from Italy. No more than a quarter of century since, Austria found itself under total Italian occupation, facing the disillusion of the failure of the Nazi Grossdeutschland and disgrace in shared defeat. In the second half of the 1930’s, Austria was not necessarily was bound to that fate, as the failure of the 1936 October talks between Germany and Italy over the racial laws and Jewish issue, brought the Austrian government leaded by Kurt von Schuschnigg to believe they still had Italian support over Austrian independence. After all, after the assassination of the previous chancellor and de facto Fascist dictator Engelbert Dollfuss in the June of 1934, Schuschnigg managed to prevent a German invasion thanks to the ready mobilization of the Italian divisions on the Alps. Mussolini even managed to further isolate Germany in the April of 1935 with the creation of the so-called Stresa front with France and Britain over the mutual support of Austrian independence.
However, in Austria the support towards the Nazi regime and unity with Germany remained and even became stronger with the months – with an Austrian born chancellor of Germany, dreams of revenge and desire to make Austria mighty again, even if part of Germany, and tiredness towards a pro-Italian government. Schuschnigg’s power was far from being stable, or secure. Besides the Stresa front faltered just few months after its creation, due to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, which Britain and France were forced to condemn. Because at the start of 1936 Italian-British relations were at their weakest, and France was stuck in political instability, Hitler found fertile ground to proceed over the remilitarization of Rhineland during march, especially when Mussolini declared that Italy would eventually not oblige over the treaty of Locarno of 1925 where would have supported the attacked side in a war between Germany and France, hence proclaiming neutrality in a French-German conflict. According to Ciano, the Duce considered the treaty of Locarno void by the recent French-Soviet treaty, and the perspective of a French-German war wasn’t so horrible for Italy if the war in East Africa escalated into a conflict with the British. Also, still according to Ciano, Mussolini declared null the Treaty of Locarno as a way to keep open a negotiation with Germany over Austria – thinking that Hitler’s real objective was Alsace-Lorraine. The Duce said nothing over Stresa, considering that agreement still valid, believing after the end of the war in Africa, with the time the strained relations with the Anglo-French could be recovered, if they lifted the sanctions against Italy.
But in Vienna, Schuschnigg didn’t feel reassured at all by Italian diplomatic moves, so he decided to attempt a negotiation directly with Hitler. The Austrian economy was suffering by a growing boycott from Germany, which Italy wasn’t able to compensate. Hence in July, with both sides agreeing to open talks, the Germans would agree to not interfere in Austrian political affairs, but from their side the Austrian government would declare Austria a German nation, concede an amnesty to the participants of the 1934 coup and open ministerial seats to pro-Nazi members. Schuschnigg would attempt to forestall the agreement as much as he could. At the start of 1938, Hitler was determined to force the union with Austria at all costs. As tensions in the Alpine country never ceased, and terror attacks continued across the country, in February, Schuschnigg would agree to concede amnesty to the 1934 plotters and open the government to Austrian Nazi personalities, the most influent being Arthur Seyss-Inquart as interior minister, practically placing the police under Nazi control. Trying to flip the table, Schuschnigg would decide to host a plebiscite over Austrian independence in March, but Hitler wasn’t intentioned to let him carry the plan, so he threatened an ultimatum. Schuschnigg did not intend to resist, especially when the West wasn’t intentioned to help Austria. When neither France nor Britain declared any intention to help the Austrians, Mussolini, also buoyed by German promises to not reclaim former Austrian territory in Italy, would surrender as well, acknowledging the end of the Stresa front and leaving Austria to her fate.
As from the 12th March the Germans occupied Austria, arresting any possible opposition, including Schuschnigg, removing the rights of the Austrian Jews, and with a controlled plebiscite sanctioned the annexation, the Alpine country would be bound to the Reich’s fate. Hitler, despite being an Austrian born, or in spite of being one, wouldn’t have much regards for his own birth country, as the federal landers would turn it into Reichgaus (territories with even less autonomy than the proper German ones) while the name Osterreich would be changed into the more ancient and reductive Ostmark (Eastern march) and then in the even more bureaucratic and colder Alpen und Donau Reichsgaue, in the attempt to uniform Austrian culture into the mainstream German one. Hitler’s will was clear – Austria didn’t have the right to exist as a state of the Reich like Prussia or Bavaria. The initial presence of a Reichkommissar, first covered by Seyss Inquart, then Josef Burckel, lasted only since 1940: the absence of a single governor would not be a secondary element in the late fall of Nazi Austria.
When the war started, some Austrians grew disillusioned, even if the conflict until the end of 1943 didn’t affect them directly. Austria so far was one of the regions of the Reich that was generally safe, preserved from the Anglo-American air raids and benefiting from the border trade with Italy. The Wehrmacht presence was minimal, whereas the SS one started progressively to escalate. Austria was soon used as a springboard for the invasion of Hungary without noticeable effects, but then it all changed with the surprise invasion of Italy. When the SS invasion force was obliterated in Trieste, and the Italians retook Lubiana shortly after, Austria was exposed. The Wehrmacht local garrisons were weak and small, and the SS was even less effective. The local gautelers and Reichsstatthalters of Austria, aside from the obvious order to resist at all costs from Berlin, soon realized their powerlessness in front of an Italian invasion – if the Reichgaus didn’t immediately fall, it was due to the necessity from Rome to implement a full mobilization of its forces, while the Italians had also to protect Croatia and plan the invasion of Hungary with Hungarian and Anglo-Jewish forces.
In Austria, the only governor who attempted to organize some form of defence or resistance was Baldur von Schirach. He was the leader and the organizer of the Hitler Youth from 1933 to 1940, when he was sent to govern the Austrian metropolis – a role which may appear prestigious if not knowing that the Fuhrer hated Vienna. Schirach, while being anti-Semitic, he was still too soft in the eyes of Hitler on the Jewish matter (he kept the Hitler youth out from the Kristallnacht attacks). As governor of Vienna, Schirach completed the transfer of the Jews of the city towards concentration and extermination camps, essentially Mathausen and Dachau. Of the 40,000 Jews of Vienna at the time of the transportations (with almost three-quarters of the city’s former Jewish population either fleeing or being saved by Mussolini’s Libya intervention) only some 5,000 survived the Shoah. Hence, after the War, the Jew community of Austria became merely symbolic in numbers.
When the Italians entered into Graz, the Valkyrie Conspirators were already working, finding strong support in Austria – the scarce Wehrmacht forces realizing they weren’t able to resist the enemy invasion, and the SS presence was so broken that it wasn’t a problem. When chaos erupted in Berlin, the Wehrmacht rebels were able to secure swiftly the Austrian Reichgaus except for Vienna, because they weren’t sure where Schirach’s loyalties would have been. Schirach holed himself in the Hofburg bunker complex, knowing that the Italians would arrive soon and therefore didn’t have to justify further his actions to Hitler or whoever would be his successor, effectively agreeing to cooperate with the Valkyrie insurgents, accepting to remain governor of Austria and work for the Hamburg military provisional government once established. A few days later, Balbo and Graziani’s divisions were at the door of Vienna. As the Hamburg government wasn’t recognized by the Allies, the Italians let the German rebels in Austria know to capitulate or else. After a brief meeting with the Italian commanders, receiving reinsurances for himself and other plotters, Schirach would agree to surrender and concede Vienna to the Italians. While a couple of raids on strategic sites around were done in the past weeks, the Austrian metropolis was essentially intact. But after hearing of the imminent entrance of the Italians, the Viennese were fearful over their fate. What happened on Lubiana could easily be done on Vienna as well.
Fortunately for them, the Italians had other plans – but what happened the 15th May, a month after the Valkyrie coup, would be remembered for the Viennese as one of the most ominous if not humiliating moments of the city, and by extension of all Austria: after a morning of proper preparations, the Italian troops would march in parade across the main streets of Vienna, being properly filmed by Istituto Luce operators, with Balbo and Graziani arriving at the Hofburg welcomed by Schirach, where a formal ceremony over the passage of the administration over the Italian military was done. A few hours later, the Hofburg would be covered by Italian flags, becoming the Italian headquarters at least till the end of the War, and while most of it would be returned to Austrian authorities soon as possible, at least a wing was still used by the Italian military governor till the end of the period of occupation. As for Schirach, being put to house arrest by the Italians, he would be declared guilty at Nuremberg but only for military crimes, his defense being that he allowed the final deportations of the Viennese Jews but was unaware of the real orders from Berlin nor having a real hand in the Holocaust. He would receive a short imprisonment sentence, and then spending his last years between Austria and Germany.
With Austria secured during April and early May without particular resistance, the Italians started to plan the future of Austria. At Kiev, it was generally decided that Austria, to be separated again from Germany, would fall under Italian sphere of influence for security reasons and compensation, so to do what Rome preferred best. Mussolini, who was rather burned by the neutralization of Hungary, but believing in case of monarchic restoration could still work with Otto of Hapsburg, was already oriented to restore the pre-Anchsluss Austrian republic. That possibility was soon possible when at Dachau the Italians found Kurt Schuschnigg in overall good condition. Brought immediately to Rome, he was greeted by Mussolini, who offered him the possibility to become the head of government of the Austrian provisional government. Schuschnigg, who certainly wasn’t an idiot, realized almost immediately that regardless of his decision, Austria would become an Italian puppet. He was grateful for being liberated, but he also remembered that in 1938, Italy allowed the Anchsluss – albeit in prospect an intervention at the time could have caused a conflict which would have ravaged Austria worse than in 1944. Schuschnigg wasn’t even sure that he wanted to return in the political and international scene, but in the end he would agree to lead again Austria on the Italian terms. Brought immediately back in Vienna, on the 4th of August 1944 Schuschnigg would declare the independence of Austria from the German Reich and set up back a provisional government which would have worked with the Italian occupation regime. To reassert his role, by express Italian suggestion the Patriotic Front was established as the only legitimate political party of Austria, even if initially put under Italian observation in order to build an organization that would exclude Nazi or pro-German supporters and allow friendly pro-Italian ones. In doing that, Schuschnigg would turn back over his 1938 promises to eventually restore the Austrian Social Democratic party.
To ensure the local opposition would be kept at bay, an OVRA detachment was installed in Austria, to arrest or dispose over whatever form of protest. As in the middle 1940’s any form of internal opposition, whenever being real or virtual in Italy was practically destroyed, the Fascist secret police started to operate beyond the Alps, assuming the role of an effective as ruthless foreign intelligence service. The contribution of OVRA in the anti-Pavelic Operation Brutus would mark their role in the Cold War period and beyond, even after when the service would be reformed, working often in collaboration with other allied services, especially the Mossad. They would soon begin covert operations, from abductions to assassinations, insurgency, and anti-terrorism.
The return of the Austrian republic was sanctioned with the conference held in Vienna the 10th of August, as a clear proof the country was safe and independent under Italian rule. Schuschnigg was no more than the role of the dignified host, as the Italians handled the conference since the beginning. Here, the Austrian Chancellor wouldn’t have more than platitudes for the Roman Alliance and the Italians for freeing Austria and promising that Austria would entertain friendly relations with all the attendees. Schuschnigg would then leave Austria for the second time since his liberation to represent his nation at Potsdam. He wasn’t in a very enviable position, as Austria came as a defeated power –when the 1st September 1945 came and Rome celebrated the victory with jubilant crowds on the streets, Vienna was sombre and quietly patrolled by Italian soldiers.
In Potsdam, Schuschnigg tried to convince the Allies to avoid giving Austria the humiliation of a peace where his country was “guilty by association”, both for war crimes as for crimes against the humanity, but the Americans and the Soviets proved inflexible, and Mussolini didn’t have real reason to assuage Austrian responsibility – the Allies may have conceded Schuschnigg’s decision to step down in 1938 to be fair in order to avoid a bloody invasion of Austria, but the Austrians generally approved the plebiscite of Seyss-Inquart over the Anchsluss and therefore accepting to share the fate of the Germans. The peace in itself wasn’t overly punitive and generally expected by the Austrians. No territorial cessions and respect of the 1938 borders, ten-year military occupation by Italian forces with the obligation to let them establish bases whenever wanted, war reparations to Italy and additional commercial privileges even in form of monopolies for the latter, compensation for the Jews of Austria, new confirmation of the division between Austria and Germany if necessary by constitutional enforcement and so on.
The Italian military occupation would endure until 1955. The choice of the first commander of the Italian armed forces in the Alpine country caused some debate within the Fascist Great Council. It was considered to give it to Rodolfo Graziani – his ruthless character would have plenty kept the Austrians in line, maybe even too much. As Balbo wasn’t interested to return again into a position of governor of any sort, in the end it was found a compromise in the figure of the Marshal Pietro Badoglio, old and reassuring enough as being at his end stretch of his career as well, so not an issue for the Fascist elite nor the rising new generation of high officials who forged themselves in the war and would become even more important and relevant in the successive conflicts of the late 40’s and the early 50’s. Through the Badoglio administration, Austria would start to anchor itself to the Italian economy – not that would have done otherwise with Germany in complete disarray. While the country would start its reconstruction, it wasn’t initially supposed to field an army until the end of the period of occupation; but the Polish-Soviet War and the nuking of Warsaw would force Mussolini to review his plans. With Italian consensus, Austria in 1948 would establish a “reserve police force” which in 1952 would be expanded into a “National Force of Self-Defence”, to then become the new Austrian national army when the 1st November of 1955 Austria’s occupation would end, and the nation officially became a member of the Roman Alliance. Austrian troops were no strangers to the conflict in the Second Arabian War, joining the international coalition in Turkey.
The end of the occupation age was hailed at the end of 1955 with a movie,
Sissi, which was inspired by the youth of Elizabeth of Baviera and her life-changing meeting and marriage with Emperor Franz Joseph. Interpreted by very young Austrian actress Romy Schneider, the movie would have such a resounding success at home and aboard – especially in France, Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and Italy, leading to a sequel in 1956 and then in 1957. Today, it is generally assumed the first three Sissi movies were the seed of the post-war Austrian cultural rebirth and also the beginning of the “New Mittleuropean” social, artistic and cultural movement, from Bohemia to Hungary, even influencing Communist Slovakia as well. But in 1956 Austria, as well as the rest of the world, had other concerns than to predict the impact of the Sissi movies. In Italy there were indeed those who believed the success of the first movie and the news of the planned sequel could indicate resurging pro-Hapsburg sentiments and even pro-unionist (with Hungary) ones. But those concerns, added with attempts of censorship or curtail the sequels were washed away by the success of the movies in Italy as well, to the point several Italian producers arrived to propose the promotion of a fourth movie. However, the precondition for such movie was Schneider still being the main female protagonist; but in 1957 she wasn’t interested to bond her actress career just over the role of Elizabeth; it would pass almost a decades until she would accept to play the fourth movie of the series,
The Fate of Three Kingdoms (
Schicksal der drei Königreiche, 1966, for the centennial of the Austro-Prussian war, Third War of Independence in Italy), to be considered the more mature and less idyllic of the series.
Set from 1859 to 1867, the movie would focus over the new struggles of Elizabeth and Franz Joseph while Austria faced defeat in the Second and Third wars of Italian independence: being resigned over the loss and the unification of Italy, the fallout of the Empress with her sister Marie Sophie, last queen of the Two Sicilies, a new conflict with the Mother Empress Sophie this time over the education of the crown prince Rudolph, leading her to travel again across Europe and causing a fallout between her husband and her mother-in-law as Sophie, being tired of Franz Ferdinand’s conciliatory stance towards Elizabeth, would confess her younger son Maxilimian, soon to become Emperor of Mexico, was since always her favourite, passing through the Ausgleith leading to the formation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the movie ending with Sissi returning in time from one of her voyages at the news of the death of Maxilimian of Mexico, standing with his husband on the deathbed of the Mother Empress (even if Sophie will die in 1872), with the three reconciling with each other. With generally positive reviews over Schneider playing a more realistic and tormented Elizabeth as it was in her own wishes and a new resounding audience success aboard, the movie would win the 1966 Leone d’Oro in Venice, leading the path to three academy awards in 1967, with Schneider winning the best actress. While Fate of Three Kingdoms would be the last proper movie of the Sissi series, Schneider would play the role of the Empress twice again - in
Ludwig of Visconti in 1973, then in ORF-RAI 1988
Rudolf, centred on the Mayerling tragedy even if such movie ended with Sissi's assassination. "I suggested personally to end the movie with such a scene and the producers reluctantly agreed on this" Schneider recalled in one interview. "I think it was a fitting way and a great chance to end a role which followed me my entire life. It was sad but also relieving to finally say goodbye to Sissi." The triumph of Fate of Three Kingdoms was even more resounding for Austrian culture and pride in light of the success of
The Sound of Music the previous year, inspired by the story of the Von Trapp family – even if American produced, it was performed in the Alpine country, therefore promoting a wider touristic boost for Austria. It would open also a small contentious between Austria and Hungary – as the former would grant posthumous pardon to Georg von Trapp for his escape and full military honour restored, the latter through King Otto would reaffirm the noble status of the family with the same King commending Von Trapp’s loyalty “to Austria and its former ruling family” – a not subtle jab which didn’t pass unobserved in Vienna (and neither in Rome). Such diplomatic squabbles between Vienna and Hungary were often recurrent even if both Austria and Hungary were, after Italy, their first mutual trade partners.
In truth, more so than pro-Hapsburg sentiments in Austria, the Italians would have to worry more over lingering anti-Italian sentiments. Deep inside, the shock of the Italian occupation would be a hard pill for the Austrians to swallow, producing undesired effects. While through peace enforcement the Austrians would publicly condemn the Nazi regime and ideology and anti-Semitism, in the shadows of the Alps neo-Nazi extremists would soon start to emerge and organize – leading later to episodes of violence and then terrorism against the Fascist Austrian government, and then Italy. The Austrian neo-Nazism would be much stronger and determined than in other countries – Germany included – for a series of reasons. Ideologically, the Austrian neo-Nazi would believe that Hitler, an Austrian, kept the Reich strong and survival may have ensured victory, attributing the fall of Nazi ideals to Himmler, blaming the Holocaust on him while absolving Hitler or stating he was tricked by the head of the SS. This would lead to a split among Holocaust Deniers between those who thought that both Hitler and Himmler were innocent (with Himmler’s Nuremberg speech due to his either being tortured or paid off, the latter being impressive if he was about to get the noose anyway), and those who believed Himmler had done it (at the behest of everyone from the Zionist movement to the Soviets) and left Hitler in the dark. Naturally, they were all still virulent anti-Semites, as they were anti-Italians and the Jews were Italy’s main ally, resenting the government for sending Austrian soldiers to die for ‘Italy and Israel’s wars’. They dreamed of a “Greater Austria” (the Austrian neo-Nazis were decisively more nationalistic and not desirous at all of a new Anschluss that encompassed the Sudetes, all of Tyrol and Trentin, Trieste, former Slovenia and other borderlands with Germany, Bohemia (regarded as a mere protectorate) and Hungary. Especially in South Tyrol, victory against Germany and Austria would allow the Fascist regime to enforce laws against the German-speaking minority. This would make the area more fertile ground for Austrian neo-Nazis activism, which would start to take a terrorist angle at the end of the 1960’s. This would force the OVRA to fight them actively, after ignoring such issue for years as their focus was so far the Austrian social democratic and leftist opposition in general within Austria, and their own focus on Islamist terrorism across the Middle East.
Regardless, Austria would stand as a stable autocratic republic, remaining quiet by the visible Italian military presence and the shady OVRA one, its economy growing yet essentially bonded to the Italian one, and where Italy retained a strong final say in her decisions.
