Austrian Civil War
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The Austrian Civil War, also known as the February Uprising, is a term sometimes used for a few days of skirmishes between socialist and fascist forces between 12 February and 16 February 1934 in Austria. The clashes took place principally in the cities of Vienna and Linz.
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[edit] Origins of the conflict
After the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (following World War I), the state of Austria - comprising, by and large, the German-speaking parts of the former empire - became constituted as a parliamentary democracy. Two major factions dominated politics in the new nation: socialists (represented politically by the Social Democratic Party of Austria) and conservatives (politically represented by the Christian Social Party). The socialists found their strongholds in the working-class districts of the cities, while the conservatives could build on the support of the rural population and of most of the upper classes. The conservatives also maintained close alliances with the Roman Catholic Church, and could count among their ranks some leading clerics.
As in most of the nascent European democracies of the time, politics in Austria took on a highly ideological flavour. Both the socialist and the conservative camp did not merely consist of political parties, but possessed far-ranging power structures, including their own paramilitary forces. The conservatives began organizing the Heimwehr ('home guard') in 1921-1923; the Social Democrats organized paramilitaries called the Schutzbund ('protection league') after 1923 when members of the fascist Heimwehr shot an elderly man and a child in Schattendorf Minor. Altercations and clashes between these forces (at political rallies, etc.) occurred not infrequently.
A first major incident ensued early in 1927, when members of the Frontkämpfervereinigung ("Front Combat Union" - a paramilitary association likewise affiliated with the conservative camp) shot and killed an eight-year-old boy and a war-veteran marching with the Schutzbund in a counter-demonstration. In July a jury acquitted three defendants in the case, which led to outrage in the leftist camp and to the so-called July Revolt of 1927. On 15 July 1927 a general strike occurred, and demonstrations took place in the capital. After the storming of a police station, security forces started shooting at demonstrators. An angry mob then set fire to the Palace of Justice (Justizpalast), seen as a symbol of a flawed and partial judicial system. Altogether, 89 people (85 of them demonstrators) lost their lives in the conflict, and many hundreds suffered injury. Surprisingly, the violence soon died down and the factions took their battle from the streets back into the political institutions.
However, the travails of the First Republic only got worse in the following years. The Great Depression also showed its effects in Austria, resulting in high unemployment and massive inflation. In addition, from 1933 - the year Hitler became Chancellor of Germany - National Socialist sympathizers (who wanted a unification of Austria with Hitler's Germany) threatened the Austrian state from within.
[edit] The conflict
On March 4, 1933, Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss suspended the Austrian Parliament. In a close vote (on railway workers' wages) in the National Council, each of the three presidents of parliament resigned their position in order to cast a ballot, leaving nobody to preside over the meeting. Even though the bylaws could have resolved this situation, Dollfuss used this opportunity to declare that parliament had ceased to function, and blocked all attempts to reconvene it. The Social Democratic Party had thus lost its major platform for political action. The conservatives, who had lost some local elections recently and feared that they soon would lose power on the national level, could now rule by decree on the basis of a 1917 emergency law, without checks on their power, and began to suspend civil liberties. They banned the Schutzbund - the socialist paramilitary organization - and imprisoned many of its members.
On 12 February 1934, a forced search in the city of Linz of premises belonging to the Social Democratic Party sparked off armed conflict between government forces (police and paramilitaries) and the outlawed, but still existent, socialist paramilitaries. Skirmishes between the two camps spread to other cities and towns in Austria, with the heat of the action occurring in Vienna. There, members of the Schutzbund barricaded themselves in city council housing estates (Gemeindebauten), the symbols and strongholds for the socialist movement in Austria. Police and paramilitaries took up positions outside these complexes and opened fire. Fighting also occurred in industrial towns such as Steyr, Sankt Pölten, Weiz, Eggenberg bei Graz, Kapfenberg, Bruck an der Mur and Wörgl.
An apparently decisive moment in the events came with the entry of the Austrian military into the conflict. Though the army remained still a comparatively independent institution, the military leadership decided to follow the government’s calls to assist the police in its actions against the socialist paramilitaries. Under fire now by the army's light artillery, the socialist fighters soon surrendered. By 16 February 1934 the Austrian Civil War had ended.
[edit] The fallout
Several hundred people (including paramilitaries, members of the security forces and civilians) died in the armed conflict; more than a thousand suffered wounds. The authorities tried several ringleaders under the provisions of martial law and executed them. Leading socialist politicians managed to escape the country. The incidents of February 1934 were taken as a pretext by the government to prohibit the Social Democratic Party and its affiliated trade unions altogether. In May, the conservatives broke with any pretence of still working inside of the constitutional framework. They declared the democratic constitution invalid and put in its place a corporatist constitution modeled along the lines of Mussolini's fascist Italy. The authoritarian regime in place was called Austrofascism or Ständestaat. The Patriotic Front (Vaterländische Front), into which the Heimwehr and the Christian Social Party were merged, became the only legal political party.
[edit] Long-term effects
Though small in scale in an international comparison (and small in scale indeed in the light of the horrible events of World War II which soon followed), the Austrian Civil War nevertheless proved a decisive moment in the history of the Republic. After World War II, when Austria re-emerged on the political landscape as a sovereign nation, politics again fell under the domination of the Social Democrats and the conservatives, who now formed a party called the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). However, so as to avoid a repeat of the bitter divisions of the First Republic, the leaders of the Second Republic were determined to put the idea of broad consensus at the heart of the new political system. The concept of the 'Grand Coalition' was introduced, in which the two major parties (Social Democrats and People's Party) shared in the government and avoided open confrontation. This system brought with it stability and continuity, but ultimately lead to other political repercussions (also see Proporz). But the events of the Austrian Civil War had persuaded many in the political establishment (and, indeed, the population at large) that a slow pace of political reform was a small price to pay for social calm.
However, Austrian political parties often stand accused of having done little to come to terms with the past. In particular, representatives of the Austrian People's Party sometimes argue the necessity of the abolition of democracy in order to fight Nazism, and the party's parliamentary faction still has a picture of Dollfuss, the chancellor who suspended parliament, in its office rooms.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Strohal, Eberhard (1988). Die Erste Republik (series title: kurz & bündig). Vienna: hpt-Verlag.
