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Austria victim theory
The victim theory (German: Opferthese), encapsulated in the slogan "Austria – the Nazis' first victim" (Österreich – das erste Opfer der Nazis), was the 1949–1988 Austrian ideological basis formed by Austrians themselves under Allied occupation and the independent Second Austrian Republic. According to the founders of the Second Austrian Republic, the 1938 Anschluss was an act of military aggression by the Third Reich. Austrian statehood had been interrupted and therefore the newly revived Austria of 1945 could not be considered responsible for the Nazis' crimes in any way. The "victim theory" that had formed by 1949 insisted that all of the Austrians, including those who strongly supported Adolf Hitler, had been unwilling victims of the Nazi regime and were therefore not responsible for its crimes.
The "victim theory" became a fundamental myth in Austrian society which allowed previously bitter political opponents – e.g. the Social Democrats and the conservative Catholics – to unite and bring former Nazis back into social and political life. For almost half a century, the Austrian state denied the existence of any continuity between it and the political regime that had existed in Austria from 1938 to 1945, actively kept up the myth of Austrian self-sacrificing statehood, and cultivated an image of national unity. Postwar denazification was quickly wound up; veterans of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS took an honorable place in society. The struggle for justice by the actual victims of Nazism – primarily Jews – was deprecated as an attempt to obtain illicit enrichment at the expense of the rest of the Austrian nation.
In 1986, the election of a former Wehrmacht intelligence officer, Kurt Waldheim, as federal president put Austria on the verge of international isolation. Powerful external pressure and an internal political discussion forced Austrians to reconsider their attitude to the past. Starting with the political administration in 1988 and then followed by most of the Austrian people, the nation admitted its collective responsibility for the crimes committed during the Nazi occupation and officially abandoned the "victim theory". Some historians also call the "victim theory" the "big lie".
The idea of grouping all Germans into one nation-state had been the subject of debate in the 19th century from the ending of the Holy Roman Empire until the ending of the German Confederation. The Habsburgs and the Austrian Empire favored the Großdeutsche Lösung ("Greater German solution") idea of uniting all German-speaking peoples into one state. On the other hand, the Kleindeutsche Lösung ("Lesser German solution") sought only to unify the northern German states and not include Austria; this proposal was largely advocated by the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Prussia. The Prussians defeated the Austrians in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, which ultimately excluded Austria from Germany. Otto von Bismarck established the North German Confederation, which sought to prevent the Austrian and Bavarian Catholics from forming any sort of force against the predominantly Protestant Prussian and northern German states. He used the Franco-Prussian War to convince other German states, including the Kingdom of Bavaria, to fight against the Second French Empire. After Prussia's victory in that war, Bismarck unified Germany into a nation-state in 1871 and proclaimed the German Empire, without Austria.
After its defeat by Prussia in 1866, the following year Austria sided with Hungary and formed the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. During its existence, the German-speaking Austrians hoped the empire would dissolve and advocated an Anschluss with Germany. Following the dissolution of the empire in 1918, the rump state of German-Austria was created. Immediately following the publication of the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919) a drive for unification with Germany emerged, but its practical actions were strictly suppressed by the victorious states. The short-lived state of "German-Austria" ceased to exist and the concept of union with Germany was rejected by the victors, thus leading to the establishment of the First Austrian Republic. The independent Austrian Republic turned out, however, not to be viable.
After a short period of unity (1918–1920), people did not recognize themselves as a nation but divided into three armed enemy camps: the working class, led by the social democrats; the conservative Catholics, led by the governing Christian Social Party and the Catholic Church; and supporters of unification with Germany. In 1933, the conservative leader Engelbert Dollfuss dissolved parliament, drove social democrats from power structures, banned communists and Nazis, and installed a one-party authoritarian rule with a right-wing trend. In February 1934 the conflict developed into a civil war, which resulted in the defeat of the left-wing forces. In July, National Socialist sympathisers rebelled and killed Dollfuss but failed in their attempt to seize power. From March 11 to 13, 1938, the Austrian state fell under the pressure of Nazi Germany and Austrian National Socialists. The vast majority of Austrians supported annexation by Germany. Only some solitary pieces of evidence show public rejection or even indifference to the Anschluss, mainly in rural areas. Although there were about half-a-million people in the capital, including thousands of Jews, Mischlings and political opponents, with reasons to fear Nazi repressions, there was no active resistance to the Anschluss.
Austrian Germans favored the advent of strong power capable of preventing another civil war and negating the humiliating Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, rather than the specific unification with the northern neighbor. Nearly all Austrians expected that the new regime would quickly restore a standard of living like that before the Great Depression. Most of the population also awaited a "solution" of the odious Jewish question. Antisemitism, as one of the national strains, flourished in Austria more than in any other German-speaking land: since 1920, parties with openly antisemitic manifestos had been ruling the country. Pogroms starting in Vienna and Innsbruck during the Anschluss were organized not by Hitler's agents but by the Austrians themselves. According to eyewitness accounts, they exceeded similar acts in Germany in the level of cruelty and the scale of involvement of local townspeople. In May 1938, spontaneous violence changed into an organized "Aryanization", the planned confiscation of Jewish assets in favor of the German government and manufacturers.[citation needed] For instance, no Jews owned any property in Linz after riots and "Aryanization". The primary goal at that time was not to create a Holocaust in Austria but to force Jews to emigrate from Germany. From 1938 to 1941, about 126,000 or 135,000 Jews escaped from Austria, nearly 15,000 of whom perished in German-occupied countries. Starting with the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg regime and after that wave of emigration, Austria forever lost its scientific schools of physics, law, economy, Viennese school of psychoanalysis and Werkbund architects. However, apart from emigration, there was from 1933 to 1937 an influx of refugees from Germany.
The Holocaust started in Austria in July 1941 and had mostly finished by the end of 1942. The arrestees were taken to ghettos and concentration camps in Belarus, Latvia and Poland via Theresienstadt and were ultimately killed. Toward the end of the war, the slaughter resumed in Austria, where thousands of Hungarian Jews worked on the construction of defense lines. The extermination of Jews, treated as slaves "privatized" by the local Nazis, continued for several weeks after Germany had surrendered in the rural areas of Styria. The case of slaveowners from Graz reached the court of the British occupation power. The British field investigations resulted in 30 death sentences for Styrian Nazis, 24 of whom were executed. In total, one third of Austrian Jews perished just in 7 years (nearly 65,000 people). As few as 5,816 Jews, including 2,142 camp prisoners, survived until the end of the war in Austria.
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Austria victim theory
The victim theory (German: Opferthese), encapsulated in the slogan "Austria – the Nazis' first victim" (Österreich – das erste Opfer der Nazis), was the 1949–1988 Austrian ideological basis formed by Austrians themselves under Allied occupation and the independent Second Austrian Republic. According to the founders of the Second Austrian Republic, the 1938 Anschluss was an act of military aggression by the Third Reich. Austrian statehood had been interrupted and therefore the newly revived Austria of 1945 could not be considered responsible for the Nazis' crimes in any way. The "victim theory" that had formed by 1949 insisted that all of the Austrians, including those who strongly supported Adolf Hitler, had been unwilling victims of the Nazi regime and were therefore not responsible for its crimes.
The "victim theory" became a fundamental myth in Austrian society which allowed previously bitter political opponents – e.g. the Social Democrats and the conservative Catholics – to unite and bring former Nazis back into social and political life. For almost half a century, the Austrian state denied the existence of any continuity between it and the political regime that had existed in Austria from 1938 to 1945, actively kept up the myth of Austrian self-sacrificing statehood, and cultivated an image of national unity. Postwar denazification was quickly wound up; veterans of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS took an honorable place in society. The struggle for justice by the actual victims of Nazism – primarily Jews – was deprecated as an attempt to obtain illicit enrichment at the expense of the rest of the Austrian nation.
In 1986, the election of a former Wehrmacht intelligence officer, Kurt Waldheim, as federal president put Austria on the verge of international isolation. Powerful external pressure and an internal political discussion forced Austrians to reconsider their attitude to the past. Starting with the political administration in 1988 and then followed by most of the Austrian people, the nation admitted its collective responsibility for the crimes committed during the Nazi occupation and officially abandoned the "victim theory". Some historians also call the "victim theory" the "big lie".
The idea of grouping all Germans into one nation-state had been the subject of debate in the 19th century from the ending of the Holy Roman Empire until the ending of the German Confederation. The Habsburgs and the Austrian Empire favored the Großdeutsche Lösung ("Greater German solution") idea of uniting all German-speaking peoples into one state. On the other hand, the Kleindeutsche Lösung ("Lesser German solution") sought only to unify the northern German states and not include Austria; this proposal was largely advocated by the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Prussia. The Prussians defeated the Austrians in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, which ultimately excluded Austria from Germany. Otto von Bismarck established the North German Confederation, which sought to prevent the Austrian and Bavarian Catholics from forming any sort of force against the predominantly Protestant Prussian and northern German states. He used the Franco-Prussian War to convince other German states, including the Kingdom of Bavaria, to fight against the Second French Empire. After Prussia's victory in that war, Bismarck unified Germany into a nation-state in 1871 and proclaimed the German Empire, without Austria.
After its defeat by Prussia in 1866, the following year Austria sided with Hungary and formed the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. During its existence, the German-speaking Austrians hoped the empire would dissolve and advocated an Anschluss with Germany. Following the dissolution of the empire in 1918, the rump state of German-Austria was created. Immediately following the publication of the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919) a drive for unification with Germany emerged, but its practical actions were strictly suppressed by the victorious states. The short-lived state of "German-Austria" ceased to exist and the concept of union with Germany was rejected by the victors, thus leading to the establishment of the First Austrian Republic. The independent Austrian Republic turned out, however, not to be viable.
After a short period of unity (1918–1920), people did not recognize themselves as a nation but divided into three armed enemy camps: the working class, led by the social democrats; the conservative Catholics, led by the governing Christian Social Party and the Catholic Church; and supporters of unification with Germany. In 1933, the conservative leader Engelbert Dollfuss dissolved parliament, drove social democrats from power structures, banned communists and Nazis, and installed a one-party authoritarian rule with a right-wing trend. In February 1934 the conflict developed into a civil war, which resulted in the defeat of the left-wing forces. In July, National Socialist sympathisers rebelled and killed Dollfuss but failed in their attempt to seize power. From March 11 to 13, 1938, the Austrian state fell under the pressure of Nazi Germany and Austrian National Socialists. The vast majority of Austrians supported annexation by Germany. Only some solitary pieces of evidence show public rejection or even indifference to the Anschluss, mainly in rural areas. Although there were about half-a-million people in the capital, including thousands of Jews, Mischlings and political opponents, with reasons to fear Nazi repressions, there was no active resistance to the Anschluss.
Austrian Germans favored the advent of strong power capable of preventing another civil war and negating the humiliating Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, rather than the specific unification with the northern neighbor. Nearly all Austrians expected that the new regime would quickly restore a standard of living like that before the Great Depression. Most of the population also awaited a "solution" of the odious Jewish question. Antisemitism, as one of the national strains, flourished in Austria more than in any other German-speaking land: since 1920, parties with openly antisemitic manifestos had been ruling the country. Pogroms starting in Vienna and Innsbruck during the Anschluss were organized not by Hitler's agents but by the Austrians themselves. According to eyewitness accounts, they exceeded similar acts in Germany in the level of cruelty and the scale of involvement of local townspeople. In May 1938, spontaneous violence changed into an organized "Aryanization", the planned confiscation of Jewish assets in favor of the German government and manufacturers.[citation needed] For instance, no Jews owned any property in Linz after riots and "Aryanization". The primary goal at that time was not to create a Holocaust in Austria but to force Jews to emigrate from Germany. From 1938 to 1941, about 126,000 or 135,000 Jews escaped from Austria, nearly 15,000 of whom perished in German-occupied countries. Starting with the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg regime and after that wave of emigration, Austria forever lost its scientific schools of physics, law, economy, Viennese school of psychoanalysis and Werkbund architects. However, apart from emigration, there was from 1933 to 1937 an influx of refugees from Germany.
The Holocaust started in Austria in July 1941 and had mostly finished by the end of 1942. The arrestees were taken to ghettos and concentration camps in Belarus, Latvia and Poland via Theresienstadt and were ultimately killed. Toward the end of the war, the slaughter resumed in Austria, where thousands of Hungarian Jews worked on the construction of defense lines. The extermination of Jews, treated as slaves "privatized" by the local Nazis, continued for several weeks after Germany had surrendered in the rural areas of Styria. The case of slaveowners from Graz reached the court of the British occupation power. The British field investigations resulted in 30 death sentences for Styrian Nazis, 24 of whom were executed. In total, one third of Austrian Jews perished just in 7 years (nearly 65,000 people). As few as 5,816 Jews, including 2,142 camp prisoners, survived until the end of the war in Austria.
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