Austria's Complicated Wwii Alliance: Friend Or Foe?

Austria was part of Nazi Germany from 1938 until 1945, when it was declared independent by the Allies. During World War II, 950,000 Austrians fought for the Nazi German armed forces, and many others participated in the Nazi administration, from death camp personnel to senior Nazi leadership. However, a small minority of Austrians actively participated in the resistance against Nazism.

After the war, the Allies occupied Austria and divided it into four zones jointly occupied by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and France. Vienna was similarly subdivided, with the central district collectively administered by the Allied Control Council.

In 1943, the Allies agreed in the Declaration of Moscow that Austria would be regarded as the first victim of Nazi aggression and treated as a liberated and independent country after the war. This became the ideological basis for Austrian national self-consciousness during the Allied occupation of 1945-1955.

Austria remained under joint occupation of the Western Allies and the Soviet Union until 1955, when it was granted full independence.

The Anschluss: Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany

The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, known as the Anschluss, was the culmination of years of political tension and intrigue, and it set the stage for the Second World War.

The Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint Germain

The idea of a union between Austria and Germany, creating a "Greater Germany", was not new. In fact, it dated back to the 19th century. However, the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint Germain, which ended the First World War, expressly forbade the unification of the two countries.

The Rise of Nazism in Austria and Germany

Despite these treaties, support for unification remained strong in both Austria and Germany, particularly among Austrian citizens of the political left and centre. The idea gained even more traction after the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany. For Hitler, an Austrian himself, the unification of all Germans in a "Greater Germany" was a central tenet of his ideology.

The Austrian Nazi Movement

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Austrian Nazi Party was weak and divided. However, by 1931, the bulk of Austrian Nazis recognised Hitler as their leader. The Austrian Nazi Party gained supporters as Hitler's popularity in Germany increased, especially after he became chancellor in 1933.

The Austrian Civil War and the Rise of Austrofascism

In 1934, Austrian Nazis attempted a coup, assassinating Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. This failed coup prompted many leading Austrian Nazis to flee to Germany, where they continued to push for unification. Back in Austria, the remaining Nazis continued terrorist attacks against the government, causing a death toll of over 800 between 1934 and 1938.

Dollfuss's successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, followed a similar political course, allying with Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy to preserve Austrian independence. However, Mussolini's support for Austria waned as he drew closer to Hitler.

The Berchtesgaden Agreement and the Plebiscite

In February 1938, Hitler invited Schuschnigg to Germany and forced him to agree to a series of demands, including the appointment of Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Minister of Public Security. Despite this concession, Schuschnigg attempted to assert Austrian independence by calling for a plebiscite on the issue, to be held on March 13, 1938.

The German Invasion and Annexation

Hitler was infuriated by the planned plebiscite and decided to act. On March 11, he gave the Austrian government a series of ultimatums, demanding that Schuschnigg cancel the plebiscite, resign, and appoint Seyss-Inquart as the new chancellor. Faced with the threat of invasion, Schuschnigg conceded, announcing his resignation on the evening of March 11.

Just after midnight on March 12, Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas reluctantly appointed Seyss-Inquart as chancellor. A few hours later, German troops crossed the border and were greeted by cheering Austrians with Nazi salutes, flags, and flowers. The invasion, dubbed the ""Flower War", was bloodless, as Schuschnigg had ordered the Austrian Army not to resist.

On March 13, Seyss-Inquart signed the "Reunification of Austria with Germany" law, formally incorporating Austria into Nazi Germany. A new plebiscite was held on April 10, with a reported 99.7% approval for the annexation.

Aftermath and Impact

The Anschluss was the first act of territorial aggression committed by Nazi Germany, and it went unpunished by the international community. This was a significant act of appeasement, allowing Hitler to continue his expansionist policies unchecked. The annexation of Austria also transformed Austrian society, as Austrian Nazis carried out the Nazification of all aspects of Austrian life. Many Austrians participated enthusiastically in this endeavour, persecuting the country's Jewish population and fighting for Nazi Germany during World War II.

Austria's role in the Holocaust and Nazi armed forces

Austria was part of Nazi Germany from 13 March 1938 until 27 April 1945, when Allied-occupied Austria declared independence from Nazi Germany. During 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.

The Holocaust in Austria was the systematic persecution, plunder and extermination of Jews by German and Austrian Nazis from 1938 to 1945. An estimated 70,000 Jews were murdered and 125,000 were forced to flee Austria as refugees.

The Mauthausen-Gusen complex was the largest concentration camp in Austria, with more than 50 subcamps. Mass murder was also practised in Hartheim Castle near Linz, and in Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna, where more than 700 handicapped children were murdered.

During the war, 800,000 Austrians volunteered for Nazi Germany in the Wehrmacht and a further 150,000 Austrians joined the Nazi party's military wing, the Waffen-SS.

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.

The Anschluss saw the extension of anti-Jewish legislation to Austria. The Mauthausen concentration camp was established in the summer of 1938, after the German incorporation of Austria. Mauthausen became the main Nazi camp in Austria. During the war, forced labour using concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important to German armaments production. In the summer and fall of 1944, subcamps under the administration of Mauthausen were established near armaments factories throughout northern Austria. The staff at Mauthausen administered more than 60 subcamps, including Gusen, Gunskirchen, Melk, Ebensee, and Amstetten. Thousands of prisoners were worked to death.

In addition to Mauthausen and its subcamps, other camps in Austria extended from Lochau in the west to Strasshof in the east.

The November 1938 Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogroms were particularly brutal in Austria. Most of the synagogues in Vienna were destroyed, burned in full view of fire departments and the public. Jewish businesses were also vandalized and ransacked. Thousands of Jews were arrested and deported to the Dachau or Buchenwald concentration camps.

Following the Anschluss, the Nazis quickly extended anti-Jewish legislation to Austria. Jews were disenfranchised, and according to German racial laws, 220,000 people were now considered Jews in Austria, larger than the previously accepted figure of 182,000. A forced reorganization of Jewish communities was carried out, led by Adolf Eichmann. All Jewish organizations and newspapers were closed and their leaders and management imprisoned. Jews were no longer allowed on public transport. Many regular Austrians joined the Nazis in terrorizing Jews. In acts of public humiliation, Jews were forced to wash sidewalks and public toilets, at times with toothbrushes or their bare hands. In one instance, a number of Jews were rounded up on the Sabbath and forced to eat grass at the Prater, a popular Viennese amusement park.

The Anschluss was met with the enthusiastic support of most of the Austrian population. Austrian society adhered to the First Victim narrative, which portrayed Austria as a victim, not an enthusiastic supporter of, Nazi Germany and therefore sidestepped responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich.

Austria's status as a victim of Nazi aggression

The Annexation of Austria

Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany on March 11-13, 1938, in an event known as the Anschluss. This act of territorial aggression was the first of its kind by Nazi Germany and was widely popular in both Germany and Austria. The annexation was a significant breach of the post-World War I international order, as it violated the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain, which expressly forbade the unification of Austria and Germany. The other European powers did not intervene or punish the Nazis for these violations, which was a significant act of appeasement.

The Role of Austrians in the Nazi Regime

Many Austrians actively participated in the Nazification of their country and the persecution of its Jewish population. Austrians held prominent positions in the Nazi regime, with Adolf Hitler himself being Austrian-born. Austrians made up a significant proportion of the SS and concentration camp personnel, and the majority of the bureaucrats who implemented the Final Solution were Austrian. Additionally, 950,000 Austrians fought for the Nazi German armed forces during World War II, and many more participated in the Nazi administration.

The "Victim Theory"

After World War II, the "victim theory" emerged, which posited that all Austrians, including those who strongly supported Hitler, were unwilling victims of the Nazi regime. This theory allowed former Nazis to be reintegrated into society and became a fundamental myth of Austrian society, uniting previously bitter political opponents. However, this view has been challenged, and in the 1990s, there was a shift towards acknowledging collective responsibility for the crimes committed during the Nazi occupation.

Allied Occupation and Independence

After World War II, Austria was occupied by the Allies and divided into four zones controlled by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and France. In 1943, the Allies agreed in the Declaration of Moscow that Austria would be regarded as the first victim of Nazi aggression and treated as a liberated and independent country after the war. On April 27, 1945, Allied-occupied Austria declared independence from Nazi Germany, and in 1955, after a period of joint occupation, Austria regained full independence and neutrality.

The Allies' occupation of Austria

Austria was a part of Nazi Germany from 1938 until 27 April 1945, when it was declared independent from Nazi Germany by the Allies. The Allies had agreed in the 1943 Declaration of Moscow that Austria would be regarded as the first victim of Nazi aggression and treated as a liberated and independent country after the war.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Austria was divided into four occupation zones and jointly occupied by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and France. Vienna was similarly subdivided, but the central district was collectively administered by the Allied Control Council.

The first year of occupation, 1945-1946, saw the reestablishment of the Austrian government under the leadership of Karl Renner, who was instructed by the Soviets to form a provisional government. Renner's cabinet took office, declared Austria's independence from Nazi Germany, and called for the creation of a democratic state. The Western allies were suspicious of Renner, suspecting the establishment of a puppet state, and refused to recognize his government.

During this period, the Soviets, the French, the British, and the Americans all had troops in Austria. The Soviets had entered Austria in March 1945, followed by the Americans in April, the French in late April, and the British in May. The Western allies had no first-hand intelligence from Eastern Austria, and Renner's cabinet knew very little about conditions in the West.

The Allied Council of four military governors, representing the four occupying powers, convened for the first time in Vienna on September 12, 1945. They refused to recognize Renner's claim of a national government but did not prevent him from extending his influence into the Western zones.

On July 9, 1945, the Allies agreed on the borders of their occupation zones. The French and American zones bordered their countries' zones in Germany, and the Soviet zone bordered future Warsaw Pact states. The occupation ended when the Austrian State Treaty came into force on July 27, 1955, and the last occupation troops left on October 25, 1955.

Austria's independence from Nazi Germany

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. The Anschluss (German: [ˈʔanʃlʊs] ⓘ, or Anschluß, lit. 'joining' or 'connection'), also known as the Anschluß Österreichs (pronunciationⓘ, English: Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 12 March 1938.

The idea of an Anschluss (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "Greater Germany") arose after the 1871 unification of Germany excluded Austria and the German Austrians from the Prussian-dominated German Empire. It gained support after the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell in 1918. The new Republic of German-Austria attempted to form a union with Germany, but the 1919 Treaty of Saint Germain and Treaty of Versailles forbade both the union and the continued use of the name "German-Austria" (Deutschösterreich); they also stripped Austria of some of its territories, such as the Sudetenland. This left Austria without most of the territories it had ruled for centuries and amid economic crisis.

By the 1920s, the Anschluss proposal had strong support in both Austria and Germany, particularly to many Austrian citizens of the political left and center. One vehement supporter was Otto Bauer, the prominent Social Democrat leader who served as Austria's Foreign Minister after the war. Support for unification with Germany came mainly from the belief that Austria, stripped of its imperial land, was not viable economically. Popular support for the unification faded with time, although it remained as a concept in the contemporary Austrian political discourse.

After 1933, when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, desire for unification could be identified with the Nazis, for whom it was an integral part of the Nazi "Heim ins Reich" ("back home to the realm") concept, which sought to incorporate as many Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans outside Germany) as possible into a "Greater Germany". Nazi Germany's agents cultivated pro-unification tendencies in Austria, and sought to undermine the Austrian government, which was controlled by the Austrofascist Fatherland Front, which opposed unification. During an attempted coup in 1934, Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated by Austrian Nazis. The defeat of the coup prompted many leading Austrian Nazis to go into exile in Germany, where they continued their efforts to unify the two countries.

In early 1938, under increasing pressure from pro-unification activists, Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg announced that there would be a referendum on a possible union with Germany versus maintaining Austria's sovereignty to be held on 13 March. Portraying this as defying the popular will in Austria and Germany, Hitler threatened an invasion and secretly pressured Schuschnigg to resign. A day before the planned referendum, the German Army crossed the border into Austria on 12 March, unopposed by the Austrian military. A plebiscite was held on 10 April, in which the ballot was not secret, and threats and coercion were employed to manipulate the vote, resulting in 99.7% approval for the Anschluss. While the population's true opinions are unknown, it has been estimated that about 70% of Austrians would have voted to preserve Austrian independence.

On 27 April 1945, the Allies declared Austria independent from Nazi Germany. This was confirmed by the Berlin Declaration for Germany on 5 June 1945.

Frequently asked questions