Historian's New Book Examines Nazi Sympathies In Austria

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - For more than half a century, Austria has characterized itself as the first nation to fall victim to Nazi Germany. But a University of Arkansas historian’s new book rips away the victim’s veil to reveal a people who welcomed Hitler’s troops and acclaimed many of his most deplorable social policies.

"Austria claims it was forcefully annexed, and history seems to support this. German troops marched into the country in 1938, carrying live ammunition," said Dr. Evan Bukey, professor of history. But what ensued was no valiant resistance or struggle for freedom. "In actuality, these troops were met with rapturous enthusiasm," said Bukey.

In Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-45, Bukey contests Austria’s plea of victimization, recasting its people as active participants in the Nazi agenda. The book reveals that Austrian citizens comprised 14 percent of the SS and 40 percent of those involved in Hitler’s extermination projects. Austrians who did not work alongside the Nazis generally offered political and moral support to their cause.

It was this incongruity that led Bukey on a 15-year search through archives in Germany, Austria, England and the United States. His perseverance paid off - he unearthed records that had lain hidden since the end of the war, never before seen by historians or the general public.

These records, compiled by the German Security Service after Germany’s annexation of Austria, provided detailed information about public opinion and morale. Relying on a network of informers, agents and spies, the SS prepared weekly reports on the "mood and bearing" of the Austrian people, Bukey said.

Each week, these reports were forwarded to Berlin, where SS officials compiled them with reports from all other regions of the Third Reich. They delivered the resulting digest to Nazi leaders, who scanned the reports for evidence of organized resistance and for information about popular attitudes.

"The Nazis were interested in morale, and they wanted an unvarnished view of what people actually thought," said Bukey. "If officials thought a certain criticism was reasonable, they tried to accommodate. If they thought it bordered on treason, they shipped the critic to a concentration camp."

For the Nazis, these reports acted as a lifeline to the general public, enabling them to tailor their propaganda and policies to maintain the highest possible morale. For Bukey, they represented a similar lifeline to the Austrian people - a portrait of their opinions and attitudes, unsullied by subsequent decades of denial.

The reports confirmed that, despite small bands of resistance, the majority of the Austrian populace welcomed the Nazi regime and embraced its anti-Semitic policies. In fact, the Nazi government may have met far less resistance in Austria than it did in Germany itself, Bukey said.

When the Nazis came to power in the mid-1930s, they had to struggle against a strong Socialist Party already popular among the German working class. In Austria, however, an authoritarian government had already smothered the Socialist movement.

Bukey believes that many Austrian workers rejoiced at the Nazi invasion as a means of settling accounts with the Austrian government. The Nazis gained additional favor by building factories and providing more jobs for the Austrian people.

"Somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the Austrian workforce was unemployed in 1938. The Nazis wiped that out in six months," said Bukey.

Austria entered the Second World War as a dilapidated region of Central Europe, but it emerged a modern, industrialized nation. Remarkably, it managed to maintain that status despite defeat and occupation.

After surrender, Allied powers arrested Nazi officials and carved Germany into pieces, but they allowed Austria to remain intact. Rather than viewing Austria as an integral part of the Third Reich, the Allies considered it a victimized nation that they had liberated from oppressing forces. The restored Austrian government seized this opportunity and escaped the ravages of retribution.

While Germany worked for decades to rebuild itself and to heal the scars of its past, Austria grew into one of the most prosperous nations in Europe. But Bukey believes this has left the Austrian people with dark legacy.

Even generations after the war, German people express shame and remorse for the Nazi regime. But until recently, pockets of Nazi sympathy persisted among the Austrian population.

"We assumed the Austrians were victims when they were actually accomplices, and because of that, the nation went unpunished," Bukey said. "Favorable attitudes about the Nazis persist in Austria because the people were never forced to confront their past the way the Germans were."

In writing Hitler’s Austria, Bukey’s intent is not to vilify contemporary Austria but to provide a more accurate picture of the nation’s Nazi past. By understanding history and by learning from it, we may be able to prevent future atrocities.

"I think the central problem of German history - and perhaps the central problem of human history - is how such a brutal and murderous dictatorship could become so popular," Bukey said. "That’s what we have to understand before we can expect to keep it from happening again."