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The Unloved Democracy of the Inter-War Period |
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Page 5 of 11
The Dark Years of Reflection
The Nazi regime quickly took root in Austria, with the system reaching heights of perfection hitherto unknown in the German Reich. The terror machinery set up by the SS and the security service was lent further support by the formerly illegal National Socialists of Austria. Particularly the liquidation of regime opponents and the hideous persecution inflicted upon the Jewish population throughout the German Reich through deliberate or tolerated acts of cruelty reached new, untold dimensions. The Austrian Jews were robbed of their very existence and, by the beginning of World War II alone, 250 anti-Jewish ordinances had been issued.
On 1 April 1938, in a special transportation unit, Austria's political élite were deported to the concentration camps. In the following months, some 130,000 Austrians left their homeland in order to find a secure place of exile, mainly in other Western countries. Those who were subject to the Nuremberg Laws were first divested of almost all their possessions. For Austria, the expulsion of these citizens meant a loss of intellectual substance that was to leave its mark on the country for decades to come. After the end of the Second World War, hardly any of the exiled persons wanted to return to the country that had driven them out.
Shortly after the Anschluss, resistance reared its head within the different political groups; Communists and legitimists, one-time Social Democrats and members of the Heimwehr were unwilling to accept the new regime. However, since a single national resistance group as such was never formed, it was easy for the Nazi rulers to unmask their adversaries and to persecute them relent-lessly. Because of the deep rifts that existed between the different political groups, it was also not possible to build an effective and recognized exile government abroad. The individual resistance movements formulated different political objectives, some of which appeared almost utopian. It was only the Moscow Declaration of 1943 that defined a clear direction, when the Allies declared the restoration of a sovereign Austrian state as being one of their war goals.
It was only during the last months of the war that resistance took on a more active form when members of the resistance movement in Tyrol established contact with American intelligence services. While the Austrians did not succeed in securing military support, they at least managed to provide the Western Allies with information concerning the course of the war. In the autumn of 1944 the "Provisional National Committee of Austria" (POEN) was established, which for the first time united groups with different political aims. The military resistance movement maintained contact with these groups-or at least those which had survived the inferno of persecution following the assassination attempt on Hitler of 20 July 1944. It was also members of the military resistance movement who first established contact with the advancing Soviet troops and informed them about German military plans. Nevertheless, the battle for Vienna raged until 13 April 1945.
For Austria, the consequences of the Nazi regime and the Second World War were disastrous: during this period 2,700 Austrians had been executed and more than 16,000 citizens murdered in the concentration camps. 16,000 Austrians perished in prison, while over 67,000 Austrian Jews were deported to death camps, only 2,000 of them living to see the end of the war. In addition, 247,000 Austrians lost their lives serving in the army of the Third Reich or were reported missing, and 24,000 civilians were killed during bombing raids.
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