Austria, 1945-1995

Fifty Years of the Second Republic

Kurt Richard Luther, Peter Pulzer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429872198
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998. This is the only up to date English language work which seeks to assess the whole of the post war Austrian experience in the light of the latest research, using a multi-disciplinary approach by historians, political scientists, economists, international relations specialists and literary historians. It is addressed not only to specialists in Austrian affairs, but also to studies and scholars concerned with the evaluation of small democracies, their place in an integrated continent and the shape of post-Communist Central Europe.

The formative first few decades of the Second Republic are reassessed in four contributions: analysis of the key actors and events involved in the genesis of post war state; of the activities of Karl Renner's first coalition government; of how tensions regarding Austrian identity were played out in post-war literature and of the competing domestic and superpower perceptions of Austria's fledging neutrality.

PART I
THE GENESIS OF THE SECOND REPUBLIC

1 The Origins of the Second Republic: A Retrospective View

Erika Weinzierl

Adolf Schärf and Lois Weinberger, prominent and influential representatives of the two parties to the 1945–66 Grand Coalition, affirmed the independence of the new Austria long before the Allies’ Moscow Declaration of November 1943. Agreements to work together after the war were made from 1943 onwards, particularly in the talks conducted by Dr Felix Hurdes and Lois Weinberger with Dr Adolf Schärf and Dr Alfred Migsch. All four had been prisoners during the Nazi regime. Migsch had founded his own resistance group (Wahrheit) and had good connections with the communists and Catholic circles (Stadler, 1982, p.174). Hurdes, formerly in the youth league of the Vaterländische Front (Reichhold, 1984, p.366) and a member of the Carinthian provincial government from 1936 to 1938, was imprisoned longest and under the direst conditions. Plans for post-war Austria were also being made prior to the Moscow Declaration by Austrian exile groups. In Paris and then in London, Moscow and New York, they had not just been concerned to help fellow refugees, but had also disseminated anti-Nazi propaganda, directed at Austria through journals and radio, and had debated plans for the period ‘afterwards’. Helene Maimann is right in stating that the Austrian emigrant movement ‘can certainly be placed alongside the domestic struggle for liberation’, as she is in concluding that, given the animosity between socialists and communists, the émigré community in Great Britain did not achieve the ‘political impact’ it could have attained (Maimann, 1975 p.236). Unfortunately, this also holds true for the other exile nations.

At the risk of oversimplification, the politically active exile groups can be characterized along geographical lines as follows. In London the strongest organizations were the ‘Free Austrian Movement’, which included both socialists and bourgeois-conservative activists, but was clearly dominated by communists and the socialist ‘London Office’. Until at least 1943, both were unable to attain any real official backing from the British. That Moscow was the centre of communist exile needs no further elaboration. In Sweden Bruno Kreisky headed a very active socialist emigrants’ group which would have also been willing to collaborate with the communists. After the Moscow Declaration, it developed very concrete concepts for rebuilding post-war Austria. In the USA, especially in New York, all groups were, of course, represented. There, the monarchist movement under Otto Habsburg – or ‘Otto of Austria’ as he later called himself – made itself particularly noticeable with its hopes for restoring at least a Danubian confederation. Yet the only tangible result of their efforts was rather inconsequential. In the autumn of 1942, President Roosevelt let Otto persuade him to establish in the US army a separate Austrian unit, the so-called Autonomous Infantry Battalion No. 101. However, on 3 May 1943 the battalion – which on 2 April had consisted of only 193 men, many of whom were not Austrians – was disbanded. This was largely a result of resistance to the battalion from American government circles, from representatives of the former successor states and, in particular, from within the Austrian exile groups, which did not cooperate with each other. The symbolic impact which the initiators had intended the battalion to have on the restoration of an independent Austria was not achieved. On the contrary, it had made all the more apparent the division among Austrian exiles, who had been unable to generate an exile government recognized by all groups. Be that as it may, one cannot deny that allowing this battalion to be created marked the ‘only requisite attempt of a political emigration group from Austria to effect, in some kind of way, the recognition of Austria’s independence’ (Goldner, 1977, p.236).

Even more decisive in bringing about a change of mood within the Austrian resistance and among Austrian exiles was, however, the ‘Moscow Declaration’. It dates back to a memorandum on ‘The Future of Austria’, written in the spring of 1943 by the British Foreign Office diplomat Geoffrey W. Harrison. In it, he explored four possible ‘solutions’ to the Austrian issue:

1 Linking Austria with Germany, either via full integration, or on the basis of a federation;

2 Austria’s inclusion in a Southern German confederation;

3 the restoration of Austria as a free and autonomous state;

4 Austria’s inclusion in a Central or Eastern European confederation.

Harrison weighed up the advantages and disadvantages of the various solutions and finally opted for the restoration of Austrian state autonomy as a first, necessary step, ultimately to be followed by an association with a Central, or Southern European confederation. On 16 June 1943 Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet decided, on the basis of Harrison’s memorandum, to prioritize preparations for the fourth solution and Foreign Minister Eden was put in charge. Acting on this decision, Harrison a few days later drew up the first draft for a declaration on Austria, to be published after consultations with the USA and USSR. Because it was intended to strengthen Austrian resistance, it referred to the inescapable responsibility of the Austrians and specified that their war-time position would be taken into account (Stourzh, 1988, pp. 1–3). After the British-American agreement at the Moscow Conference at the end of October 1943, this point became more crucial since, in compliance with Soviet wishes, the text now spoke of Austria’s responsibility, which meant a possibility of ‘moving the issue of Austrian responsibility from the moral level … to the legal level of international law’ (Stourzh, 1988, p.3). Moreover, responsibility was defined in more precise terms: participation in the war on the German side. Even though the British and the Americans were not very satisfied with these modifications, they agreed to them. The conference of foreign ministers deleted a reference to the spirit of the ‘Atlantic Charter’, replaced ‘union’ with Germany with ‘annexation’ and referred specifically to the war as that of ‘Hitler Germany’. The reference to Austria’s association with its successor states had been deleted long before that.

The final formulation of the ‘Moscow Declaration’, signed and published on 1 November 1943 as Appendix 6 of the protocol of the Moscow Conference had thus been decided upon and was later to be integrated ad verbatim into the Declaration of Independence of 27 April 1945 by the responsible Austrian politicians ‘of the first hour’. On 16 November 1945 the French Committee for National Liberation under Charles de Gaulle had also accepted this declaration. Indeed as early as December 1941, in an exchange of ideas at a conference in Moscow on the post-war order of Europe, Anthony Eden had reported on the British considerations regarding a division of Germany, stating that the British government in any case favoured a separation of Austria from Germany. At the same time he conceded that he had no concrete ideas on how this was to take place. Stalin answered in writing, suggesting that Austria be restored as an autonomous state within its pre-war boundaries (Aichinger, 1977, pp.22ff). It is worth stressing that this document, so crucial for the establishment of the Second Republic, was dealt with belatedly and marginally in Moscow in 1943.¹ This shows both the limited significance which the Austrian issue had for the Allies at the time (Fellner, 1972) and the extent to which the Austrians’ use of the Moscow Declaration in 1945 was tactically shrewd.

Another resolution of the Moscow Conference in 1943 extended far beyond Austria – the appointment of a committee of diplomats to discuss measures to be taken after victory over Germany, the European Advisory Commission (EAC), based in London. It began its work at the beginning of 1944 and finished in July 1945. The main issue was the delineation of the occupation zones, with regard to which the Western Allies showed only little interest as far as Austria was concerned. It was the USSR which finally suggested a division of zones at the end of 1944; this provided for ‘a strong participation of the Americans’, amounting essentially to the occupation as carried out in the summer of 1945 – with the exception of the French zone. The head of the Soviet commission for issues related to a ceasefire had on 25 May 1944 sent to Foreign Minister Molotov a statement of the commission pointing out that:

… the Soviet zone is connected, through train lines, to the north with Czechoslovakia, to the south with Yugoslavia, and to the east with Hungary. The commission does not consider it appropriate to mark the borders between the British and the American occupation zones. Since, in their first memorandum, the British had suggested handing over their territory in Austria to the Americans, while they (the British) in principle accepted our suggestion to have Austria occupied by troops of all three powers, it seems expedient to let the British and the Americans decide themselves who will occupy what part.

We have suggested that the City of Vienna be occupied by troops of all three powers, with the Eastern part of the city being occupied as far as the Danube Canal by troops of the Soviet Union and the rest of the city creating the Anglo-American zone. The commission did not suggest any lines of demarcation between the British and the American zone in the Vienna region, assuming that the British and Americans would settle this themselves.

The demarcation line which marks the Soviet zone on Austrian territory was drawn so that the Anglo-American zone in Austria bordered directly onto the area of Vienna that was to be occupied by British and American troops.²

President Roosevelt, who in September 1943 was still sure that Austria would become a Soviet protectorate like Hungary and Croatia, did not agree to the creation of an American occupation zone in Austria, bordering on Bavaria, until 9 December 1944 (Stourzh, 1988, pp.6ff). On 23 January 1943 the Deputy People’s Commissar A. Lozovsky outlined the plans then existing for a post-war order in Austria, in which the intervention of the Vatican is mentioned, and summed up the possibilities of Soviet decisions in five points:

1. We basically declare ourselves in favour of changing the borders at the expense of German Territory. 2. We can also endorse the annexation to Austria of Tyrolean areas in which German is spoken. 3. We must resolutely oppose the slightest attempt to create a Danubian confederation, a Danubian state, an economic bloc, etc. since the Catholic Danubian bloc would be an instrument of anti-Soviet policy. 4. The administration of Austria should be modelled after Romania and Hungary. Only when British and American troops advance into German and Austrian territory can the necessary changes be effected in the administrative system. 5. We must categorically oppose the re-establishment of the Habsburg Monarchy. The issues regarding a domestic order of Austria must be solved by the Austrians themselves under the supervision of the Allied (Soviet) command.³

At the beginning of 1945 the situation was that Austria was to become a sovereign nation again and to be denazified and democratized under the protectorate of the occupation forces. The Austrian exile organizations had also agreed to regaining sovereignty (Molden, 1970, pp.205–10; Luza, 1984 pp.227ff). Since early 1944 the resistance group 05 (code name for Austria), founded by Hans Becker, had been seeking to create an all-Austrian resistance organization. An initiative by Fritz Molden in Vienna brought this about on 18 December 1944 when the Provisorisches Österreichisches Nationalkommitee (POEN – Provisional Austrian National Committee) was created (Molden, 1976, p.299). It initially consisted of Catholic conservatives, but had, from the outset, maintained contacts with the socialists, primarily with Dr Adolf Schärf, and with the communists. It was also able to form links with the military and political leaders of the Allies. Fritz Molden was charged with these tasks (Thalberg, 1984, pp.l36ff). The illegal Arbeiter-Zeitung, printed in Zürich, made an appeal in its first 1945 issue for support for 05 as a supraparty Austrian resistance movement. As early as November 1944, the so-called Siebenerausschuß (Committee of Seven) comprising representatives of all political movements within the 05 was set up. It was at first directed by Becker. After he was arrested in March 1945, Raoul Bumballa headed the committee, which during the struggle for Vienna in April 1945 assumed the political leadership of the resistance (Rathkolb, 1985, pp.295ff).

The course of military operations in Austria can only be alluded to here, even though it was of great significance for the early history of the Second Republic (Rauchensteiner, 1970; Jedlicka, 1972, pp. 129-45). After the fall of Budapest in February 1945, it was clear that the next goal of the Russian troops would be to occupy Vienna. Even though SS divisions tried to stop the Russian troops from adv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Series foreword
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Part I The Genesis of the Second Republic
• Part II Society and Politics
• Part III External Relations
• Part IV Whither Austria?
• Index