At the midpoint of the twentieth century, renowned journalist William L. Shirer returned to Europe. Witness to history and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer’s foreign correspondent days were over by mid-century. This trip, then, was an opportunity for him to observe and contemplate . . . to notice what had changed and what had endured.
Shirer’s first stop was the Austrian capital of Vienna, a city with which he had strong emotional bonds. Married to Viennese photographer Theresa Stiberitz, Shirer was connected through his in-laws to Vienna’s artistic and cultural circles; his tie to the city was strengthened when he witnessed the Nazi invasion of Austria in March 1938. After the Anschluss, Shirer reported from Berlin for CBS until he and his family were forced to flee the Nazis. On his 1950 return visit, Shirer mused that . . .
[T]his time I would not, as in the fateful summer of 1939, run into the beginning of a world war, I was free to roam through a great city that I had long loved and to ponder the indestructibility of a civilized people who in a brief lifetime—thirty-two years, to be exact—had seen one world after another come crumbling down upon them amid revolution, invasion, Nazi savagery, Fascist oppression, Russian occupation, starvation, bombing and bombardment, and who yet survived, their spirit unbroken, their dignity as human beings preserved, their lust for life after such hardship and sorrow still magnificently strong.
—William L. Shirer, Midcentury Journey*
Last week, in Maybe We Could Learn from History?, we learned of Shirer’s experiences in Austria as a foreign correspondent: at the peak of the nation’s democratic hopefulness (1925), when democracy was under assault by the clerico-fascists (Christian Socialist Party—CSP) (1931), and when democracy was dismantled and replaced by authoritarianism (1934). After CSP Chancellor Dollfuss dissolved the parliament, he ruled by decree, using violence to enforce his dictates. We pick up the story in 1934 . . .
Austria was politically polarized — power was evenly divided between the forward-looking Social Democrats and the conservative ultramontane Catholics of the Christian Socialist Party.
The two political camps held different visions for Austria. Social Democrats (SD) wanted a democratic, equitable, secular government, and a meritocratic society. Acting on this vision, they enacted policies to benefit society as a whole, and not to satisfy the narrow interests of powerful elites. For example, Vienna’s Social Democratic majority reformed municipal government, improved sanitation, and built apartment buildings for workers.
For Christian Socialists, parliamentary democracy was a dead end. Theirs was a nationalist vision grounded in Catholic traditions, preferring hierarchy over equality. The Christian Socialist Party was guided by conservative Catholic social doctrine and aligned with the rural clergy.
(Sidebar: Austria’s interwar political parties are dissimilar from ours. In a sense, the Social Democrats were the left-wing party and the Christian Socialist Party were the right-wingers. But this generalization misses important nuances. Austria’s Social Democrats pursued liberal democratic policy goals—but they were not particularly ideological. The Christian Socialists were ideological and coercive; they wanted the state to reshape society following Catholic principles. The CSP most resembled Christian nationalism in the US. There is one big difference. Austria’s Christian Socialists were fanatically devoted to the Pope—Evangelical Protestants would never share this commitment.)
Chancellor Dollfuss and his rightwing supporters believed Austria needed an authoritative leader guided by Catholic social doctrine. Dollfuss was close to Benito Mussolini and wanted to create, in Austria, an authoritarian system modeled on Fascist Italy. But the popularity of Social Democrats’ policies posed a problem.
Dollfuss and the Christian Socialists felt threatened by the modern views of the Social Democrats and by political competition. So the Chancellor used deception and force to impose authoritarian rule and stamp out the vestiges of democracy.
Shirer:
For four bitterly cold February days and nights a government force of 19,000 regular troops, police, and [paramilitary forces] laid siege to the working class districts of [Vienna], blasting the laborers’ model apartment houses with howitzers and killing more than a thousand men, women, and children and wounding three or four thousand more. Entrenched in public parks, in the gardens of their homes, and behind sand-bagged windows in their flats, the Social Democrat forces resisted desperately with a few rifles and machine guns. They, and later the Spaniards, were the only democratic people in Europe who went down fighting before the assault of fascism. (39)
The Austrian Nazis remained on the sidelines and let homegrown clerico-fascists remove the remaining impediment to German Nazi conquest: the Social Democrats and their base. Dollfuss quashed the left but he ignored the existential enemy to his right.
Five months later . . . Austrian Nazis and German SS troops attacked the Chancellery intending to depose Dollfuss and install a pro-Nazi regime. They managed to kill Chancellor Dollfuss but then the coup plan went awry; Austrian forces rounded up the plotters, and the so-called July putsch collapsed in less than a week. Austrian Nazis and their collaborators were prosecuted and more than a dozen were sentenced to death. Dollfuss’ deputy Schuschnigg succeeded him as chancellor and leader of the Fatherland Front, the successor to the Christian Socialists. Opposition political parties were banned.
Despite his total political power, Chancellor Schuschnigg couldn’t prevent Austria’s economic decline. The threat from Germany was also increasing. Schuschnigg tried to strengthen his relationship with Mussolini but Il Duce allied with Hitler instead. Schussnigg then approached Hitler, trying to make a deal to preserve Austrian sovereignty. He finally approached the political opponents he had oppressed, seeking the support of the Social Democrats.
Too late. Hitler’s Anschluss—the annexation of Austria—was already in the works. Shirer witnessed the debacle:
Few Austrians foresaw what lay ahead of them. On the evening of March 11, 1938 when the Nazis took over the government and waited for Hitler’s triumphant arrival, there was hysterical rejoicing in the Vienna streets . . . . It would be short-lived, I knew. There would soon be a rude awakening, even for the enthusiastic, deluded minority. Anyone who had lived in Berlin under Hitler could tell these people that. But for the moment they were in no mood to listen. They were riding, they thought, the wave of the future.
Bill Shirer left Vienna the next day. The swastika was flying over St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the bells were ringing in the great church, presumably with Cardinal Innitzer’s approval. Less than a year later, the Nazis had confiscated the Cardinal’s palace and His Eminence was on the run. Baldur von Schirach, Gauleiter for the Vienna district shipped off former Chancellor Schuschnigg to Dachau.
Austria disappeared. Ingested into the Hitlerian empire, the former sovereign nation became just another collection of districts under Nazi administration.
What Hitler achieved by annexing Austria was revenge.
Hitler had always hated the old Austria, and particularly its capital, for not appreciating him when he went to Vienna in his youth seeking, without success, a career in the arts. Now his revenge was complete. He had wiped the very name of his native land off the map and deprived its once glittering capital of its last shred of glory and importance.
An authoritarian strongman motivated by vengeance . . . who glorifies failed coup leaders as heroes . . . gives grievance-filled speeches attacking his enemies . . . foments violence . . . humiliates his lackeys . . . encourages in-fighting among his sycophants and . . . revels in the resulting chaos.
Sound familiar?
To be continued . . .
*All quotations in this essay are from William L. Shirer, Midcentury Journey: The Western World Through Its Years of Conflict.
And now, your moment of . . . badass cats.
Writing—and reading—about serious subjects can be fairly depressing. Grounded concludes each week with an upbeat piece so you may leave with a bit of joy in your heart.
The world’s deadliest cat, the black-footed cat of the African savanna, is on the Red List of Endangered Species. Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City is helping revive the species.
Bob Cisneros is the associate director of Animal Care at Utah’s Hogle Zoo. . . . He says that Gaia the black-footed cat’s adorable looks are deceiving. In the grassland savannas of Southern Africa, black-footed cats are impressive predators.
‘Am I allowed to say they’re the badass of the Botswana?’ Cisneros asked.
Most carnivores have a 25% success rate when hunting. Black-footed cats, on the other hand?
‘They’re successful more than 60% of the time,’ he says.
Related Grounded articles:
Maybe We Could Learn from History? (March 5, 2024)
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Notes:
William L. Shirer, Midcentury Journey: The Western World Through its Years of Conflict
I notice many of your upbeat features are about animals - non- human ones. Probably reading too much into that, however . . .
Sadly, too many people do not even KNOW history, much less have learned from it. We HAVE to shake people awake and MAKE them pay attention to what is happening. People cannot be saddened and resigned to this madman.