The years of Chancellors Dollfuss and Schuschnigg's authoritarian governments (1933/34-1938) have been denounced as "Austrofascism" from the left, or defended as a Christian corporate state ("Stndestaat") from the right. During this period, Austria was in a desperate struggle to maintain its national independence vis--vis Hitler's Germany, a struggle that ultimately failed. In the end, the Nais invaded and annexed Austria (Anschluss").
Volume 11 of the Contemporary Austrian Studies series stays away from these heated historiographical debates and looks at economic, domestic, and international politics sine ira et studio. Timothy Kirk opens with an assessment of "Austrofascism" in light of recent discourse on interwar European fascism. Three scholars from the Economics University of Vienna analye the macroeconomic climate of the 1930s: Hansjrg Klausinger the "Vienna School's" theoretical contributions to end the "Great Depression"; Gerhard Senft the economic policies of the Stndestaat; and Peter Berger the financial aid from the League of Nations. Jens Wessels delves into the microeconomic arena and presents case studies of leading Austrian businesses and their performance during the depression. Jim Miller looks at Dollfuss, the agrarian reformer. Alexander Lassner and Erwin Schmidl deal with the context of the international arena and Austria's desperate search for protection against Nai Anschluss-pressure and military preparedness against foreign aggression.
In a comparativist essay Megan Greene compares the policies of Austria's Haider and Italy's Berlusconi and recent EU responses to threats from the Right. The "FORUM" looks at various recent historical commissions in Austria dealing with Holocaust-era assets and their efforts to provide restitution to victims of Naism. Two review essays, by Evan Burr Bukey and Hermann Freudenberger, survey recent scholarly literature on Austria(ns) during World War II. This addition to the Contemporary Austrian Studies series will be welcomed by political scientists, historians and scholars with a strong interest in European affairs.
Gnter Bischof is professor of history and executive director of Center Austria at the University of New Orleans. Anton Pelinka is professor of political science at the University of Innsbruck and a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan in 2001/02. Alexander Lassner completed his Ph.D. at Ohio State University with his dissertation, "Peace at Hitler's Price," on Austria's international position before the "Anschluss."
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This collection of eight essays seeks, in the words of the editors, "to shed new light on the domestic, economic, foreign, and security policy of the Dollfuss and Schuschnigg governments" (p. 4). A reassessment is needed, they argue, because previous scholarly work on the years 1934-38 has been highly politicied: "in the wake of the disastrous Anschlu? and the world war, those employing the words "Stndestaat" and "Austrofascism" have sought, too often, to defend or to accuse the Dollfuss and Schuschnigg governments, rather than to uncover evidence in as objective a manner as possible" (p. 1). Previous historians are also taken to task for having relied on faulty and fragmentary evidence and for having failed to be sufficiently critical of that evidence. "Numerous historians," the editors assert, "have been blind to the enormous degree of deceit present in the European diplomatic record and, above all, to the perversion of language and of argument in the German documentary record" (p. 3). These are serious allegations, and if true, would certainly justify a reassessment; unfortunately, apart from the concluding essay by Alexander Lassner, they are not directly addressed or amplified in the other seven essays in the collection. So we are left with assertions about previous scholarly shortcomings but not a sustained and well-grounded critique. As the editors point out, how to define the Dollfuss/Schuschnigg period has remained a perplexing issue in the historiography of interwar fascism. The title of a 1976 essay by R. John Rath conveys the nature of the problem quite neatly: "The First Austrian Republic--Totalitarian, Fascist, Authoritarian, or What?"[1] Emmerich Tlos is perhaps the most prominent proponent of the view that the system which Dollfuss and Schuschnigg headed in the mid-1930s qualifies as fascist; in his view, its specific Austrian features justify the use of the term Austrofascism.[2] In contrast, Stanley Payne in his typology of authoritarian nationalism in interwar Europe regards Dollfuss and Schuschnigg as representatives of the Conservative Right and the Heimwehr, which served as a coalition partner for Dollfuss, as part of the Radical Right rather than as fascist.[3] Between 1934-1938 Austria was ruled by what Payne categories as "a preemptive nonfascist authoritarian regime."[4] Roger Griffin provides a slightly different reading in his influential work on the nature of fascism, labeling the Dollfuss/Schuschnigg regimes as examples of parafascism ("a form of authoritarian and ultra-nationalist conservatism which adopts the external trappings of fascism while rejecting its call for genuine social and ethical revolution").[5] According to his typology, the Heimwehr is best seen as proto-fascist; only the Austrian Nais qualify as genuine representatives of fascism in Austria (a view shared by Payne).[6] Using a broader definition of fascism, Philip Morgan places the Heimwehr within the ranks of the first wave of European fascism, with the Austrian Nais belonging to the second wave. The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg system of rule is considered a form of authoritarianism, which succeeded in co-opting one of the key strands of Austrian fascism, the Heimwehr.[7] In the opening essay Tim Kirk takes up this historiographical debate, providing a brief overview of recent work on fascism before turning to the specific issue of Austrofascism. In line with Morgan, he identifies two native fascisms in Austria: Heimwehr fascists (rural, pro-clerical, corporatist, inspired by Mussolini's fascism) and Austrian Nais (urban, secular, vlkisch, and looking for unity with the German Reich). In his analysis of these two strands of Austrian fascism, Kirk utilies Robert Paxton's recently elaborated "functional" approach to understanding fascism.[8] Kirk is willing to grant some usefulness to the term "Austrofascism" as a way of describing the specifically Austrian system of rule established by Dollfuss and Schuschnigg. The core of Austrofascism was "an alliance of avowedly fascist Heimwehr leaders and fascisant authoritarian conservatives" (p. 26). Kirk argues that Austrofascism was squeeed by its fascist rival, the Nai party, and that the Heimwehr was in reality little more than a junior partner in the fascist-authoritarian alliance of the Dollfuss/Schuschnigg years. Ultimately, Kirk's interpretation of Austrofascism brings the term closely in line with what other historians of fascism have labelled as "parafascism" or "semifascism." The next four essays examine various economic aspects of 1930s Austria in order to provide a clearer context for judging the nature and policies of the Dollfuss/Schusschigg period. Gerhard Senft sets out to examine key features of the coporatist state and its economic policies between 1934-1938. He provides a succinct overview of Austria's economic development in the 1920s and 1930s and sketches the drastic impact of the Great Depression. Following the lines of previous interpretations, he acknowledges that orthodox economic thinking placed Austrian economic policy in a straitjacket that prevented any effective response to the crises of the 1930s. Yet he also emphasies the importance of understanding the Austrian situation within a broader international context and recogniing the limitations of Austria's ability to shape its own economic fate. He stresses the fundamental economic weakness of Austria and argues that this was the main reason that resistance against German Naism was so ineffectual. Senft is more inclined to place the Dolffuss/Schuschnigg governments under the rubric of the Stndestaat than within any of the various categories of fascism, while also admitting that "the Austrian Stndestaat was indeed a contradictory and incomplete project" (p. 36). Hansjrg Klausinger compares the Vienna and Chicago schools of economics and their responses to the Great Depression. His essay begins with an overview of the two schools' respective views on business cycle theories and policies, then moves on to sketch the debates of the 1930s within the two schools over the issues of deflation, pump priming, wage cutting and monetary policy. The Chicago school (Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, Henry Simons and Lloyd Mints) advocated a more activist policy as the proper remedy for the ills of the Great Depression in contrast to the "extreme policy advice of doing nothing" endorsed by the Vienna school as represented by Friedrich August Hayek, Gottfried Haberler, Frit Machlup and Ludwig von Mises (p. 68). Klausinger concludes that the Chicago school offered a more reasonable and potentially more effective approach than did its Viennese counterpart. But he also notes that neither school had any discernible impact on the actual policies adopted in Washington or Vienna to combat the depression. As he notes, there is "no convincing evidence for a direct link between the policy advice of the Austrian school and the actual economic policy of the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg era" (p. 67). Given the lack of such a link it is not clear how the analysis offered by Klausinger fits into the overall debate about reassessing the economic policies of Austrofascism. Peter Berger undertakes an assessment of the role of the League of Nations in the interwar Austrian economy. The League oversaw two large reconstruction loans in interwar Austria, one in 1923, and the other in 1931. Post-1945 views have tended to cast Austria as a victim of "finance dictatorship" by the League. The reality, Berger argues, was more complicated. He draws attention to several cases in which the League, rather than imposing policy on Austria, yielded to Austrian pressure to endorse policies which ran counter to the fiscal and monetary strategies favored by the League. The League, Berger concludes, "became a tool for purely political ends of the Austrian government" (p. 77). A key role was played by the League's acting representative in Austria, Meinoud M. Rost von Tonningen.[9] As a close personal friend and political confidante of Dollfuss, Rost pushed for the establishment of a "semi-Fascist dictatorship" under Dollfuss in place of Austria's parliamentary democracy. Rost was able to persuade League officials to deviate from their orthodox financial strategies as a way of aiding and stabiliing Dollfuss's regime against the dual threats of socialism and Naism. After the assassination of Dollfuss in July 1934, Rost's views and preferences shifted dramatically; he no longer advocated policies to defend Austrian independence. He developed instead "a strange taste for the National Socialist economic policies employed in Germany" (p. 89) and became convinced that Anschlu? with Hitler's Germany would serve Austria's interests better than a continuing partnership with the League. Berger's article underlines the necessity of carefully examining the broader international context of Austrian economic responses to the Depression as well as the roles of key individuals. Previous assumptions about the League's dominant position in its "partnership" with Austria clearly need to be revised in light of the careful analysis of the actual decision-making process provided by Berger. Jens-Wilhelm Wessels argues that the global structural transformations associated with the Second Industrial Revolution and "the accelerating expansion of industrialiation in the world economic periphery" created conditions inimical to Austrian economic growth (p. 95). Austria, with its small domestic market and heavy dependence on export trade, found itself in an especially vulnerable position in the hostile trade environment of the Depression years. Wessels provides detailed surveys of the mining, electrical engineering, and automobile industries in order to demonstrate the difficult constraints faced by both traditional and modern enterprises in the 1930s. He draws the conclusion that "the economic performance of the majority of Austrian industrial joint-stock companies was not primarily determined by economic policy" (p. 114). While the highly orthodox and unimaginative economic policies of the Dollfuss/Schuschnigg governments were unhelpful in spurring economic recovery, Wessels implies that they...
Language Notes
Text: English, German
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