Black Earth(35)

Yet for Erika M., a Jewish girl whose whole life had been spent in independent Austria, and whose whole world was changed forever on March 11, 1938, Austria was real. Over the course of the two decades after the First World War, an Austrian state was constructed, despite everything. Austria inherited from the old empire major political parties with experience in mass politics. The Social Democrats, the largest party when Austria was established after the war, were discredited immediately by their failed attempt to join the new republic to Germany. Yet the Social Democrats ruled without interruption in the Viennese metropolis, the first socialist party to govern a city of a million people or more on its own. They built a miniature welfare state known as “Red Vienna,” which proved to be both popular and successful.

Beyond Vienna, the leading party was the Christian Socials, who, like their socialist rivals, had a rich history in democratic competition dating back to the monarchy. Unlike the Social Democrats, however, they had never believed in unification with some idealized Germany. They identified with the Roman Catholic religion, the one trait that distinguished most Austrians from most Germans. Some of them were monarchists, fondly recalling the old multinational empire.

Jews were relatively more numerous in Austria than in Germany, and functioned in both of the main Austrian political movements. Most Austrian Jews lived in Vienna, where most voted for the Social Democrats. Yet Jews were also to be found in conservative organizations. The leader of the Austrian monarchist movement, for example, was Jewish.

Austria’s major political conflict was between these two native traditions, the Right and the Left. In 1927, the Social Democrats, who had just won elections, organized a general strike in the capital, but were unwilling to try to seize total power. In 1934, the Christian Socials backed right-wing paramilitaries in conflicts with left-wing paramilitaries, leading to clashes that became a brief civil war. The Austrian regular army backed the Right, and the Left was crushed. The symbolic end came as army artillery shelled the great public housing complexes, the pride of Red Vienna, from the hills beyond the city. The Social Democrats were then banned, and the Christian Socials reformed themselves as the largest part of a right-wing coalition known as the Fatherland Front. Austrian politicians and journalists associated with the Social Democrats fled the country, among them a considerable number of Jews.

The Nazis were never the largest party in Austria, and never won an election. They were a significant but distant third in popularity. But with the socialists humiliated and Hitler’s model in display across the border after 1933, the Nazis could challenge the Austrian authoritarian regime. Austrian Nazis assassinated the Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfu? on July 25, 1934, but their coup did not lead to the national revolt they expected. On the contrary, the murderers were arrested and executed. Austrian Jews saw the Dollfu? regime as a barrier to National Socialism. Although the Fatherland Front looked very much like a fascist organization, complete with its own uniforms and salutes—and even its own version of a cross meant to compete with the Nazi Hakenkreuz—its politics were quite different. It identified Austria as “the better Germany” and Austrians as Germans, but did not identify Germans as a race. Although there were certainly antisemites in the movement, the Fatherland Front instituted no antisemitic policies on the model of Hitler. Despite considerable antisemitism on the Right and even on the Left, Jews continued to serve in Austrian ministries and to live more or less unhindered lives as Austrian citizens.

The rise of Hitler to power in Germany in 1933 raised the Austrian question in a new economic form. Germany’s recovery from the Great Depression created an attraction that could not be reduced to tradition or nationalism. Austrians who found jobs in Germany were impressed. Like its east European neighbors, Austria was an agrarian country and as such had been wracked by the Great Depression. The Fatherland Front, despite its radical iconography, was among the most conservative European governments in its economic policy. Whereas Germany under the Nazis accumulated huge budget deficits, Austria under the Fatherland Front pursued a tight fiscal and monetary policy, jealously hoarding its foreign currency and gold reserves. From Hitler’s perspective, this was one more reason, and an increasingly pressing one, why Austria needed Anschluss with the Reich. Germany needed the money.

As Germany asserted its place in Europe, Austria lost its allies. In 1934, during the failed Nazi coup in Austria, fascist Italy rallied to Austria’s defense. Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist Duce, was still hoping to create an Italian sphere of influence in the Balkans, Hungary, and Austria. Two years later, after Hitler had begun to rearm Germany, Mussolini had to accept the role of partner (and soon junior partner). He washed his hands of the Austrian question, leaving the matter to Hitler. Thus in 1936, in what was known as the “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” members of the Nazi party in Austria were amnestied, and some of them brought into government. Austrian Nazis used their access to the public sphere to press the case for an Anschluss. That October, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy announced their “Axis.” For Vienna this meant political isolation. As the saying at the time went, the Axis was the spit upon which Austria was roasted.