Austria

J

Alliance with Germany

The establishment of the German Empire in 1871 led to the reorientation of Habsburg foreign policy towards the Balkan Peninsula. The intention of the foreign minister, Hungarian Count Gyula Andrássy, was to preserve the status quo. Adopting a policy of friendship with Germany, Andrássy promised that Austria-Hungary would not interfere in German internal affairs; in return, Germany backed Austro-Hungarian attempts to limit Russian influence in south-eastern Europe. When Russia defeated the Turks in 1878, Austria-Hungary, supported by Germany and Great Britain, intervened to prevent the Russians from seizing all of European Turkey. The Congress of Berlin (1878) restricted Russian acquisitions; it also permitted Austria-Hungary to administer the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1879 Germany and Austria-Hungary signed a formal alliance; with the addition of Italy in 1882 it became known as the Triple Alliance. From its inception, this alliance—the mainstay of Austria-Hungary’s international position—was dominated by Germany, which subordinated Austria-Hungary’s foreign policy interests to its own.

Serbia, made independent of Turkey by the Congress of Berlin, was a satellite of Austria-Hungary until 1903, when new leaders came to power intent on unifying all the southern Slavs in the Habsburg monarchy, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, into an enlarged Serbian state. In 1908, after a revolution in Turkey, Austria-Hungary annexed the two provinces. The Serbs, backed by Russia, protested vehemently. Only Germany’s support of Austria-Hungary prevented war. By the time Serbia emerged from the Balkan Wars victorious and territorially enlarged, Austro-Hungarian leaders were convinced that war with Serbia was inevitable.

K

World War I

On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife were assassinated in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Serb nationalist. After receiving German assurances of support, the Austro-Hungarian foreign office sent a harsh ultimatum to the Serbian government, holding it responsible for the assassination and requiring its total acceptance of Austria-Hungary’s demands within three days. Despite a conciliatory reply that accepted all but two of the demands, and mediation efforts by the European powers, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28. Germany’s declaration of war on Russia and France in early August transformed the conflict into World War I.

Austro-Hungarian military activity during the first year of the war was concentrated against Russia and Serbia. In May 1915, Italy, which had declared its neutrality in 1914, left the Triple Alliance and entered the war on the side of the Allies. The Austro-Hungarian army suffered many setbacks, and the monarchy, weakened by decades of internal dissension, began to disintegrate after the death of Francis Joseph I in 1916. He was succeeded by his grand-nephew, Charles I of Austria. In 1917 the new Emperor failed in several secret attempts to achieve a separate peace with the Allies, angering the Germans in the process. At the same time representatives of the Czechs, Poles, and Southern Slavs set up organizations in the Allied countries to gain sympathy and recognition. By late 1917 nationalist activities made the monarchy increasingly untenable.

During the spring and summer of 1918 Austro-Hungarian forces were defeated on every military front; shortages of food and other necessities triggered strikes and demonstrations at home and mutinies in the army and navy. Recognizing that the collapse of the monarchy was inevitable, the nationalist groups within the empire organized national councils that acted like separate governments. The Southern Slavs, meeting in Zagreb on October 7, 1918, advocated union with Serbia, and on October 28 the Czechs proclaimed an independent republic in Prague. The Hungarian government announced its complete separation from Austria on November 3. That same day Austria and Hungary each signed an armistice with the Allies. On November 12 Charles relinquished all part in the administration of the state and left Austria. Within days Austria and Hungary declared themselves republics.

L

First Austrian Republic

The Austrian Republic came into being as a disorganized and impoverished state of some seven million people. The dissolution of the monarchy deprived Austria of the industrial areas of Bohemia and Moravia and ended the large internal market created by the union between Austria and Hungary. German Austrians desired union with the new German Republic, but this was forbidden by the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain. The new constitution (1920) created a federal state, with a bicameral legislature and a democratic suffrage.

Economic reconstruction took place with the aid of outside agencies. In 1919-1920 United States, British, and Swedish organizations provided food to relieve the desperate situation. Rising inflation heightened the country’s distress, and in 1922 Austria appealed for help to the League of Nations. The league arranged for a large loan to prevent economic collapse. In return, Austria pledged to remain independent for at least 20 years. The deflationary policies that were a condition of the loan caused much economic hardship and unemployment, but Austrian finances slowly stabilized.

The internal political situation remained uneasy because of antagonisms between Socialist-dominated Vienna and the conservative provinces. On July 15, 1927, the Socialists organized mass demonstrations in Vienna to protest at the acquittal of three members of a right-wing group, who were on trial for killing two people during a clash with the Socialist Schutzbund (Defence League). The Palace of Justice was burned, and about 100 people were killed when police fired on the demonstrators.

M

Fascism and Anschluss

A succession of federal governments, dominated by the conservative Christian Social Party, could not overcome either the continuous unrest or the economic misery of the Great Depression. The rise of Austrian Nazism became a new destabilizing factor. Faced with his party’s declining electoral strength and growing opposition from the left and the extreme right, the chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, dissolved parliament in 1933 and ruled by decree. Backed by the army and the Heimwehr (Home Defence League), a Fascist paramilitary organization, in February 1934 the government crushed the Socialist opposition. Later all political parties were abolished except the Fatherland Front, which Dollfuss had created to unite the conservative forces. In April he introduced a constitution that did away with parliamentary government and vested control in the executive. Dollfuss was killed in July during an attempted Nazi putsch (takeover). Under the new chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, the regime drifted on, weakened by internal rivalries but sustained by promises of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to maintain the status quo. His guarantee lasted only until the Rome-Berlin Axis was established in 1936. Schuschnigg soon reached an agreement with Adolf Hitler that acknowledged Austria as “a German state”.

When Schuschnigg called for a plebiscite on Austrian independence in 1938, Hitler demanded and received his resignation. The Anschluss (annexation) was accomplished when German troops entered Austria on March 12, and a Nazi government was formed, headed by Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Austria, now called the Ostmark (Eastern March), was divided into seven administrative districts under the central authority of the German Third Reich.

N

World War II

In October 1943 the chiefs of state of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) signed the Moscow Declaration, which proclaimed the re-establishment of an independent Austria as one of the Allied war aims. Soviet troops liberated the eastern part of Austria, including Vienna, in April 1945. A provisional government headed by the Socialist leader Karl Renner was recognized by the Western occupation powers in October. National parliamentary elections were held in November, with ten parties participating. The Austrian People’s Party (similar to the pre-war Christian Social Party) won 85 of a total of 165 seats in the National Assembly, the Socialists won 76 seats, and the Communists won four seats. In December both houses of parliament elected Renner President of the Republic. A coalition government, with the People’s Party leader Leopold Figl as Chancellor, was then formed.