Situating Austria and Romania Within the Context of Clerical Fascism

Few words in history or political science have had definitions as intensely debated as fascism. An enormous volume of ink has been spilled attempting to define the term since 1945, with a consensus remaining elusive beyond general agreement about ultranationalism and anti-Marxism. The controversy only increases when attempting to subcategorize the field: one such subcategory, clerical fascism, has been applied to cases as disparate as the Croatian Ustashi, on the one hand, and the German Christian movement in Nazi Germany, on the other. One of the states commonly identified with clerical fascism is Austria between 1934 and 1938, during which it adopted an authoritarian constitution modeled on Catholic corporatist ideology. However, when so-called Austrofascism is compared with Romania’s League of the Archangel Michael (LAM), which combined hypernationalist anti-Semitism, Orthodox Christian mysticism, and a totalitarian form of monarchism, little resemblance can be seen. Nevertheless, such a comparison might help to elucidate what both fascism and its clerical variant are.

According to John Pollard, the concept of clerical fascism dates to 1922, when Luigi Sturzo, an Italian priest and founder of the Italian People’s Party, used the term “clerico-fascism” to describe former members of his own party who left for Benito Mussolini’s fascists.[1] Much of the usage of the term, however, was applied to Austria under the rule first of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss and then his successor Kurt Schuschnigg, as well as their political party, the Fatherland Front (VF). Discussion of the topic of fascism picked up in the 1960s, with extension of the term from Austria to Spain under Francisco Franco and Portugal under Antonio Salazar[2] and then to Slovakia under Josef Tiso.[3] The significant expansion of the study of fascism beginning in the 1990s found most major figures in the field at least commenting on clerical fascism, if not dedicating studies to the topic. Many of these scholars focused on Romania, including Stanley Payne, who famously wrote that “[t]he Legion was arguably the most unusual mass movement of interwar Europe.”[4] One current controversy regards whether clerical fascism is best understood as fascism with religious tendencies or as a fundamentally religious movement with fascist tendencies. In addition to Pollard’s study and a 2008 collection of essays,[5] recent work by Eliot Assoudeh has sought to fully taxonomize the term.[6]

If we choose to tentatively view clerical fascism as the infusion of fascism with religious qualities, we can begin by assessing the cases of Romania and Austria for their religious aspects. Austria was more than 90% Catholic in 1934, with the remainder of the country’s 6.75 million people in 1934 divided among Protestant and Orthodox Christians and 200,000 Jews concentrated in Vienna. With the Catholic faith so closely tied to Austrian national identity, it is unsurprising that political Catholicism lay at the heart of the ideology of the VF and the philosophy of the corporate state. In a speech in Vienna in September 1933, after the dissolution of the legislature but before the declaration of the new constitution, Dollfuss said, “We intend to take as the foundation of our constitutional life the corporative principle [...] as proclaimed in the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. It is our ambition to be the first country to give a practical response in political life to the appeal of this noble Encyclical.”[7] The aforementioned encyclical had been issued by Pius XI on the 40th anniversary of Leo XIII’s encyclical on the rights and duties of capital and labor, Rerum Novarum. Quadragesimo Anno explicitly counseled the creation of a corporative society to accomplish class collaboration.

Dollfuss’s pledge was honored when the constitution was promulgated the following spring. Beyond the addition of a Basmala-style incipit (“In the name of God the Almighty, from whom all right emanates, the Austrian people receives this constitution for its Christian, German federal state on a corporative basis” [8]), perhaps surprisingly, the constitution only explicitly mentions the Catholic Church twice: first, identifying it specifically along with the “other legally recognized churches and religious societies”[9]; and second, stipulating that religious organizations’ relationships with the state, while regulated by the state in all other cases, are to be “made in principle by agreement between the federation and the Holy See.”[10] This clause is significant in that it indicates the specific role to be played in the corporate state by the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, the government of Austria and the Catholic Church were to remain distinct. However, even within civil society, the role of the Vatican would remain limited. Instead, as Laura Gellott has detailed, the role of the Church was largely played by Catholic Action -- one of several similarly named lay organizations emerging in response to increased secularization in Europe. Having deemed the Christian Social Party (CSP) of the post-World War I years as deploying Catholicism overly politically, Catholic Action sought to place religious jurisdiction “squarely in the hands of the bishops, and one which would work on behalf of confessional, not partisan, interests.”[11] Thus, the Austrian corporate state sought to maintain a prominent role for the Catholic Church within society, albeit one separate from the state.

The relationship of the LAM with the Romanian Orthodox Church was, in contrast, far more complicated. For the LAM itself, Orthodox Christianity was essential to Romanian national identity, and this principle was repeatedly enunciated by the LAM’s founder, C.Z. Codreanu. The very name of the organization aside, Codreanu’s biography often positions the Orthodox Church as under attack by non-Romanians, chiefly Jews. Recalling a meeting in September 1923 of the National Christian Defense League (LANC), from which Codreanu broke off the LAM in 1927, Codreanu recalls viewing the newly acquired territory of Bukovina, in which “all those mountains laden with first belonging to the Orthodox Church, which was now infused with politics” had fallen “under the Jewish axe.”[12] This passage is significant both for its positioning of Orthodoxy against Jewry but also because of the implication that the official Orthodox Church had been compromised by politics.

Years later, while visiting Bessarabia as leader of the LAM, Codreanu recalls hearing of trouble in yet another newly acquired territory, the Carpathian region of Maramures. The news is brought to Codreanu by two priests, one Greek Catholic and one Romanian Orthodox.[13] Notably when the Romanian Orthodox seek help in defending themselves against the Jewish enemy, they call on the LAM and not the official church, which is seen as wrapped up in political matters, if not already infiltrated by Jews.

The intertwining of Orthodox Christianity into Legionnaire ideology ran deeper than merely providing an alternative to government intervention where the Orthodox Church could not act, however. The foremost scholar of the LAM, Radu Ioanid, writes, “The Legionary movement willingly inserted strong elements of the Orthodox Christianity into its political doctrine. Thus the Legionary movement is one of the rare modern European political movements with a religious structure.”[14] According to Ioanid, the LAM syncretized Orthodox mysticism with Romanian peasant superstition[15]; in this way, the LAM deviated from the lower-case orthodoxy of the state church.

Nevertheless, many Orthodox priests joined the LAM and preached its philosophy of violence and anti-Semitic hatred. That there was already deep-seated hatred of Jews within the ranks of the Romanian Orthodox Church is attested at length in accounts of the Patriarch Miron Cristea, who led the church during the Legionary period. Despite Cristea being a man who “saw the Jews as a threat to the very existence of Romanian people, as parasites, as promoters of decadence, as invaders,”[16] he officially forbade clergy from joining the LAM in 1937, and the following year, when he was named prime minister by King Carol II, Cristea formed a government that specifically excluded Codreanu and the LAM.

Therefore, while the relationships of Austrofascism and the LAM with their respective churches were different, there is no denying that both movements were deeply infused with aspects of clericalism. Regarding whether both were fascist is more complex. Roger Griffin established four preconditions for fascism to emerge and take over a country. Regarding the first, native currents of ultranationalism or fascist role models,[17] Austria was largely lacking. Although some rabid nationalism could be found within pan-German circles, the majority of the political mainstream was nationalistic but not jingoistic or expansionist. Nor were the right-wing political leaders, favoring national conservatism, inspiring as fascist role models; only Hitler offered that type of inspiration after 1932. As a result, Austria lacked the “adequate political space”[18] of which Griffin speaks as a second precondition.

It is worth noting as well that Griffin’s “fascist minimum” of palingenetic ultranationalism, i.e., nationalism that seeks to recover a glorious past, is absent from Austria. Whereas Nazi Germany could evoke a Third Reich based on the First (Holy Roman Empire) and Second (Wilhelmine Empire), and Fascist Italy recalled the Roman Empire, Austrian interwar politics did not seek to reconstitute the imperial past. With the end of WWI and the dissolution of its empire via the Treaty of Saint Germain, Austria was a rump state that was highly ethnically homogenous, giving rise to an Austrian identity of German ethnicity and Catholic faith that would have been diluted by expansion.

Griffin’s third precondition of “an inadequate consensus on liberal values”[19] certainly obtained in interwar Austria as well as in most of Europe but seems insufficient alone to justify a fascist takeover. Finally, regarding the fourth precondition of “favorable contingency,”[20] Austria under Dollfuss instead presents a case where authoritarian rule was largely used to ward off fascist takeover (here by the Austrian Nazis). Whereas weak liberal democracies like Weimar Germany and Italy in the early 1920s were too weak to oppose the Nazis and Mussolini’s fascists, respectively, Dollfuss’s construction of an authoritarian corporate state was well equipped to ward off the attempted Nazi coup of July 1934.

Only when the geopolitical situation in Europe and the wages of the economic crisis -- not to mention Dollfuss’s assassination -- had eroded confidence in the corporate state could the Nazis successfully absorb Austria, reversing their fortunes from four years earlier. However, even here, the triumph of fascism in Austria meant its extinction as a separate state, rather than the abolition of Dollfuss’s corporative model in favor of fascist totalitarianism.

In contrast, Romania had among the ripest environments in Europe for fascism to emerge, which is perhaps why so many fascist parties and movements proliferated there, among which the LAM was only the most historically important. First was the rabid ultranationalism within Romanian society, evoked in part by the country finding itself, with the end of WWI, vastly increased in both territory and numbers of ethnic minorities, most of whom were more economically prominent than the Romanians, who remained a largely peasant population. With ultranationalism, palingenesis appeared in the form of the identification of Romanians with the ancient Dacians. Dmitry Tartakovsky writes, “the established Romanian national mythology of the connection to the ancient Romans through the Dacians, became translated into new language based on blood superiority: only an inherently superior nation could survive for centuries of foreign domination as the Romanians had.”[21]

Beyond Griffin’s fascist minimum, Griffin’s preconditions were also present in interwar Romania. Specifically, A.C. Cuza, the firebrand anti-Semite who inspired Codreanu, offered a concrete example of a fascist role model. The weakness of the postwar Romanian state, which struggled to manage the country’s poor development compared to the remainder of Europe and its deep-seated ethnic tensions, provided a fertile ground on which extremism could flourish. The subsequent erosion of the liberal political system, with the regency of King Michael overthrown in 1930 by his uncle Carol II in the wake of the global financial crisis, and the failing consensus on liberalism were favorable contingencies that culminated in accession to power by the LAM in 1937.

Thus, the LAM seems more qualified as fascist, at least according to Griffin’s paradigm If we further consider the nature of fascism as a mass movement, we find further evidence of this contrast. In Austria, the VF emerged from the CSP from which Dollfuss emerged. According to the so-called Lager theory of Austrian politics, introduced in the 1950s by Adam Wandruszka, three parties dominated the political scene in Austria: the Social-democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ); the pan-German Greater German People’s Party (GDVP); and the CSP.[22] The Marxist roots of the SPÖ and its working-class base contributed to its emergence as a mass movement; the ethnic populism of the GDVP had the same mobilizing quality, and its co-optation by the Nazis upon their emergence in Austria capitalized on this quality.

In contrast, the CSP drew from an elite, religious, and conservative base. Thus, when it was created, the VF was not a mass movement; that it was created by Dollfuss and not “from below” by the people is proof. Even scholars categorizing the Austrian corporate state as fascist acknowledge this fact; e.g., Julie Thorpe, an opponent of the Lager theory, commenting on the lack of consensus on whether regimes other than those of Italy and Germany were fascist (including Austria), noted that these cases “lack the mass movement, charismatic leader and popular consent.”[23]

In addition, the CSP was the only major party, including the SPÖ, specifically opposed to union with Germany. As a result, it could not draw on feelings of ethnic solidarity, as the other parties, particularly the GDVP and the Nazis, could. Paradoxically, the CSP made repeated references to the German identity of the Austrian people. For her own part, Thorpe maintains that the CSP and subsequent corporate state were pan-German, but in a sense of civic nationalism rather than ethnic nationalism. She writes, “pan-German identity was a state-based nationalism that combined civic features (citizenship, state borders and assimilation of minorities to the state language) with ethnic features (language, religion and ancestry).”[24] This description stands in contrast to the racial nationalism of the Nazis.

If there was a national conservative mass movement in interwar Austria, it was the Heimwehr, which began in much the same manner as the Freikorps in post-WWI Germany. Beginning with the 1930 election, Heimwehr members participated with the CSP, as well as maintaining its own parliamentary bloc, the Heimatblock, which was brought into the government with the appointment of Dollfuss as chancellor. However, as the Heimwehr was brought into the political establishment, its status as a mass movement declined until its formal absorption by the VF in 1936 under Schuschnigg. With the formal suppression of the SPÖ in 1934, the Nazis remained the only mass movement in Austria.

In contrast, the LAM was conceived of and existed as a mass movement. Codreanu himself describes the LANC, the predecessor of the LAM, as a mass movement drawing specifically from the right-wing nationalist student movement emerging across Romania in the 1920s. Recounting in his autobiography the founding of the LANC, Codreanu describes Cuza as already characterizing the party as a mass movement, with the LANC chief saying, “We do not need to organize, our movement is based on a formidable mass current."[25] With the splitting off of the LAM, followed by the extension of the appeal of the movement from the students to the peasantry and Codreanu’s embrace of Orthodox mysticism, the base of the movement spread even further.

If we consider the characteristics of mass movements set out by Eric Hoffer in the 1950s, we can identify more of these traits in the LAM. Hoffer writes, for example, that “religious, revolutionary and nationalist movements are such generating plants of general enthusiasm”[26]; the LAM combines all three of the streams. Hoffer also identifies self-sacrifice as a key characteristic of mass movements. Much of his discussion of self-sacrifice addresses matters closely related to fascism, including the supremacy of the group over the individual, dissatisfaction with the present, glorification of the past, etc., but it is with Hoffer’s discussion of the “readiness to fight and to die”[27] that the LAM is more closely evoked.

Valentin Sandulescu’s treatment of a 1937 Legionnaire funeral is instructive in this regard. Like many other far-rightists during the Spanish Civil War, some LAM members volunteered to fight with Franco; two of these men, Ion Mota and Vasile Marin, were killed in action. When the bodies were returned to Romania (via Berlin, where they were honored by a Nazi color guard), the LAM staged a mass funeral, which included Legionnaires pronouncing the following oath: “I swear before God, before your holy sacrifice, for Christ and the Legion, to tear from me the earthly happiness, to render myself from humanly love and, for the resurrection of my People, to be ready for death at any time!”[28] The martyrdom of the fallen men, as well as of Codreanu by assassination a year later, contributed to the mass movement status that drove the LAM to become enshrined within the National Legionary State three years later -- until the LAM’s failed rebellion against Ion Antonescu in early 1941 and subsequent dissolution of the Legionary State.

In conclusion, while both Austria during Austrofascism and the LAM of interwar Romania have been cited as examples of clerical fascism, only Romania truly fits the moniker. Although Austria undoubtedly had strongly clerical aspects specifically contributed by the Catholic Church and its corporatist ideology, it lacked most of the basic requirements of a fascist government, and the VF was not a fascist movement. Conversely, the LAM had both an ideology deeply infused with Orthodox Christian faith and mysticism and a form of palingenetic ultranationalism characterized by anti-Semitism and totalitarianism. In some ways, the LAM is the quintessential example of clerical fascism, emerging sui generis in Romania before Spain’s Falange, Slovakia’s Hlinka Guard, and Croatia’s Ustasha. Austrofascism, in contrast, much more closely resembled the other authoritarian regimes of central and eastern Europe. It was clerical but not fascist.

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[1] John Pollard, “’Clerical Fascism’: Context, Overview and Conclusion,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, no. 2 (2007): 433.

[2] Paul Blanshard, Freedom and Catholic Power in Spain and Portugal: An American Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962.

[3] Yeshayahu Jelínek, “Slovakia's Internal Policy and the Third Reich, August 1940-February 1941,” Central European History 4, no. 3 (1971): 242-270.

[4] Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 279-280.

[5] Clerical Fascism in Interwar Europe, edited by Matthew Feldman and Marius Turda with Tudor Georgescu (New York: Routledge, 2008).

[6] Eliot Assoudeh, “Between Political Religion and Politicized Religion: Interwar Fascism and Religion Revisited,” Religion Compass 9, no. 1 (2015): 13-33.

[7] Quoted in Johannes Messner, Dollfuss: An Austrian Patriot (Norfolk, Va.: Gates of Vienna Books, 2004), 107.

[8] Verfassung Des Bundesstaates Österreich Vom 24. April / 1. Mai 1934," Verfassungen der Welt, accessed December 5, 2010, http://www.verfassungen.at/at34-38/index34.htm, all translations mine.

[9] Ibid, Article 29.1.

[10] Ibid, Article 30.3.

[11] Laura Gellott, "Defending Catholic Interests in the Christian State: The Role of Catholic Action in Austria, 1933-1938." The Catholic History Review 74, no. 4 (1988): 575.

[12] Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, For My Legionaires [sic], translator unknown (Madrid: Editura “Libertatea,” 1976), 63.

[13] Ibid, 145.

[14] Radu Ioanid, "The Sacralised Politics of the Romanian Iron Guard,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 5, no. 3 (2004): 435.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ion Popa, The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2017), 33.

[17] Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (Philadelphia: Routledge, 2013), 8.2.

[18] Ibid, 8.7.

[19] Ibid, 8.12.

[20] Ibid, 8.15.

[21] Dmitry Tartakovsky, “Parallel Ruptures: Jews of Bessarabia and Transnistria between Romanian Nationalism and Soviet Communism, 1918-1940," Ph.D. diss. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009), 72 footnote 120.

[22] K.R. Luther, “Dimensions of Party System Change: The Case of Austria” in Understanding Party System Change in Western Europe, edited by Peter Mair and Gordon Smith (New York: Routledge, 2013), 26 footnote 3.

[23] Julie Thorpe, "Population Politics in the Fascist Era: Austria's 1935 Population Index," Humanities Research 15, no. 1 (2009): 45.

[24] Julie Thorpe, "Austrofascism: Revisiting the 'Authoritarian State' 40 Years On," Journal of Contemporary History 45, no. 2 (2010): 319

[25] Codreanu, ibid, 43.

[26] Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: HarperColllins, 2011), 16.

[27] Ibid, 79.

[28] Quoted in Valentin Sandulescu, "Sacralised Politics in Action: the February 1937 Burial of the Romanian Legionary Leaders Ion Mota and Vasile Marin," Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, no. 2 (2007): 265.

Austria and Appeasement

First discussion post for HIS-241: World War II -- several to follow.

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I've been lucky to have come into this course having just finished HIS-240: World War I and HIS-220: Modern Europe before that. Therefore, I've considered the matters of WWI and appeasement fairly intensively and quite recently. Much of the discussion of appeasement begins with the Rhineland remilitarization or even focuses solely on the Munich conference on the Sudetenland, but arguably, appeasement began with the failed 1934 coup in Austria. Here, the failure of the United Kingdom and France to sanction Hitler and Nazi Germany after a clear act of aggression against a neighboring country was an indication that further aggression would not be countered in any significant way. The situation itself -- Austria falling prey to an attempt by Germany to overthrow its government in a coup led by Austria's Nazi party -- was a legacy of WWI.

Almost immediately upon taking power in 1933, Hitler sought to annex Austria. Despite widespread desire of Austrians for union with Germany, maintaining the existence of a weak rump Austrian state was a policy devised at the Paris Peace Conference to which the victorious allies adhered. As a result, despite a concerted terror campaign by the Austrian Nazis against the government of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss that was clearly being orchestrated from Berlin, the U.K. and France failed to address the attack decisively. They did, however, along with Italy, complain through their ambassadors in Berlin. Hitler responded to this complaint by referring to dispute between Germany and Austria as "an internal German affair and of no concern to others."[1] One diplomat in the British foreign office presciently stated that he believed that Hitler's attack on Austria would be the first of many.[2] Nazi terrorist violence continued into the following year, at which point the three powers issued a more stern warning to Germany.

However, the U.K. and France ultimately expected Mussolini, by now leader of Italy, to protect Austria's territorial integrity.[3] This action had the ultimately undesirable effect of pushing Austria into alliance with authoritarian states in central and eastern Europe, including Italy, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Already operating under an authoritarian system for the previous year, Dollfuss began to implement a corporate state on the model of fascist Italy. Had the U.K. and particularly France taken a stronger stand against Hitler at that time, the Nazi coup of July 1934 and the assassination of Dollfuss during the coup attempt might not have occurred; Hitler's military was still weak at that time and not a match for France. Although Italy ultimately threatened military force in July, which helped to cause the coup to fail and guaranteed Austrian independence for almost four more years, Austria remained under authoritarian rule and became increasingly conducive to being annexed by Germany.

The failure of the U.K. and France to issue stronger warnings to Germany over the issue of Austria in 1933 and 1934, particularly with the threat of the use of force, resulted in the subsequent aggressive actions undertaken by Germany. Although Hitler was chastened to some extent by his failure in July 1934, he nevertheless knew that the U.K. and France would not take military action. When Italy invaded Ethiopia two years later and was expelled from the League of Nations, it found a friend in Germany, and Austria was ultimately abandoned. Despite having won WWI, the reluctance of the U.K. and France to engage Germany militarily -- a likely result of the heavy casualties suffered in the war. Whether this strategy was logical is certainly open to debate. One of the key points of history to bear in mind is that historians look at it with the benefit of knowing how things ended. I don't think anyone can blame the U.K. and France for being wary of military action given the relatively recent experience of WWI. However, I do think that, once it was clear that Hitler had no intention of abiding by international agreement with the Rhineland remilitarization, it was time for the U.K. and France to take concrete action.

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     [1]  Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, Hitler’s Defeat in Austria, 1933-1934: Europe’s First Containment of Nazi Expansion, translated by Sonia Brough (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 38.
     [2] Ibid, 38-39.
     [3] Ibid, 41.

Austrian Coup of 1934

Conventional wisdom has tended to see the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938 as inevitable, given the strong historical, cultural, and political ties between Germany and Austria. Indeed, the Anschluss was welcomed by many Austrians, who had desired union with Germany since the end of World War I and who shared the Nazis' pan-German, authoritarian, and anti-Semitic beliefs. However, less than four years earlier, on July 25, 1934, an attempted National Socialist coup against the government of Austria was an abysmal failure. Why the so-called July Putsch failed can be understood as the result of Nazi Germany's inability to appreciate the complexities of Austria's authoritarian right wing and its resistance to key aspects of the Nazi Weltanschauung (world view). Examining the coup in its three stages demonstrates some of these complexities.

Background to the Coup

Almost from the moment that Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, he indicated the desire to annex Austria.[1] However, several factors worked against this desire. Perhaps most importantly, Austria and Germany had been forbidden to unite politically under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In addition, loans extended to Austria from the League of Nations, which had been instrumental in keeping the country economically viable during the 1920s, had similarly stipulated that Anschluss would continue to be forbidden. Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss had reiterated the agreement not to unite with Germany under the terms of a second loan from the League, which he managed to push through the Austrian legislature by two votes in the summer of 1933.[2]

Nevertheless, not all of the forces were against Anschluss. Most importantly, as noted, a significant proportion of the Austrian population desired annexation by Germany and had since the end of World War I. On October 1, 1921, the National Assembly had voted for Anschluss, only to be rebuked by the League of Nations. Moreover, of the three major political parties in Austria at the time, two of them -- the left-wing Social-democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the right-wing German-nationalist Greater German People’s Party -- viewed union favorably, albeit the former with certain stipulations. In addition, the small but growing National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) was pro-Anschluss. Only the right-wing Christian Social Party of Chancellor Dollfuss opposed annexation by Germany.[3]

For the first three months of Hitler’s term in office, however, the matter did not reach a crucial level. The NSDAP in Austria had logged significant gains in regional elections in 1932, and the belief grew among the party in both Germany and Austria that power could be gained by the NSDAP in Austria through electoral means, in much the same manner as it had in Germany. Dollfuss, for a variety of reasons, wanted desperately to prevent such a turn of events. Therefore, when a constitutional opportunity to dissolve the legislature arose in May 1933, Dollfuss exploited it and, on May 4, expressed his intention to rule by decree. Over the course of the following year, Dollfuss would fashion an authoritarian state based largely on the model supplied by Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy.[4]

Hitler’s reaction to Dollfuss’s decision to suspend the legislature was to adopt a three-pronged attack on Austria, combining economic sanctions (principally a thousand-mark fee imposed on travel to Austria, which crippled Austria’s major tourism industry), broad use of pro-Nazi, anti-Dollfuss propaganda by radio, and terrorism committed by members of the NSDAP in Austria.[5] The country had already been facing political violence for years: Helmut Konrad of the University of Graz (Austria) has estimated that a political murder occurred in interwar Austria every two weeks.[6] With the Nazi terror campaign, the problem compounded significantly. Fearing for his country, Dollfuss banned the NSDAP in Austria and undertook a diplomatic campaign to support Austrian independence, finding that his most vehement supporter was Mussolini, who feared Nazi irredentist claims on the South Tyrol, the formerly Austrian territory that had been awarded to Italy at the Paris Peace Conference.[7]

Mussolini, for his own part, assured Dollfuss at a meeting in Riccione, Italy, on August 19, 1933, that Italy would intervene on Austria’s behalf. In return, Mussolini asked that Dollfuss eliminate the political left in Austria. This opportunity presented itself on February 12 of the following year, when the SPÖ militia, the Republikaner Schutzbund, launched an armed uprising against Dollfuss’s rule. The uprising was brutally crushed, and the SPÖ was subsequently banned, leaving Dollfuss free to combat the NSDAP and consolidate his own authoritarian rule. A formal alliance with Italy and Hungary was entered in March. Hitler and Mussolini discussed the situation in Austria at their first meeting on June 14 but came to no agreements. Hitler admired Mussolini and wanted to avoid conflict with him. Plus, the German military was still weak.[8]

Consequently, Hitler opted to allow for an NSDAP coup in Austria. The coup leaders, seeing Dollfuss as weak and unpopular and believing strongly in growing support for their movement in the Austrian populace at large, elected to decapitate the government in Vienna and replace Dollfuss with one of their own. Any resistance, they imagined, would be easily crushed by armed Sturmabteilung (SA) units throughout the country, which had been arming despite being forced underground. Mussolini would accept the NSDAP coup once it was too late to roll it back, they believed.

Assault on the Chancellery

We know the intentions of the July Putsch in part because of the so-called Kollerschlag Document, which was found on an Austrian SA member attempting to cross the border back into Germany after the coup attempt failed. Although it was coded, the SA member was carrying the key as well, which was also found during the search. Although tactics on the first stage of the putsch are lacking, the strategy is clear: Dollfuss was to be deposed as Chancellor and the "period of inertia" that followed his resignation would be used for the SA to seize power.[9]

Ultimately, the tactic chosen to force Dollfuss's resignation was an armed attack on the Chancellery in Vienna. This attack was carried out by a special unit of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the SS-Standarte 89, which itself had been an Austrian SA unit until a couple of months earlier.[10] The coup leaders had believed that, in striking in the particular time and date chosen, they would seize not only the chancellor but also his entire cabinet, which was scheduled to meet at the time. In addition, it was known that the vice chancellor, Ernst Starhemberg, who was also a prominent figure in the Heimwehr independent right-wing militia, was in Italy on a state visit, so he would not be able to take over the government in his absence.[11]

While we will never know whether the coup against Dollfuss as planned would have been successful without the chancellor being killed, events did not unfold as intended. A large proportion of the responsibility for this failure in planning falls to Johann Dobler, a Vienna police inspector and member of the Austrian NSDAP, who developed pangs of conscience on the morning of July 25 and reached out to Emil Fey, the previous vice chancellor under Dollfuss and a current minister without portfolio, as well as a prominent Heimwehr leader. Although Dobler was not able to reach Fey, he met with Karl Wrabel, an aide to Fey, at a Vienna café later that morning and alerted him to the coup to take place that day. Wrabel subsequently made contact with Fey, who warned Dollfuss, who in turn dismissed the cabinet and tried to mobilize police to beat back the coming attack.[12]

When the assault team arrived at the Chancellery between noon and one in the afternoon, Dollfuss was shot twice almost immediately at close range and bled to death over the course of the next two hours. Angry at having been foiled in seizing the whole cabinet and specifically mad at Dollfuss, who refused to resign, the SS men with him refused to call a priest to administer the late rites of the church. As these events unfolded, elsewhere in the city, the President of the Republic, Wilhelm Miklas, named as chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, then serving as Foreign Minister, because Starhemberg was not in the country. At the same time, Fey mobilized the Heimwehr and police against the coup leaders, who surrendered before seven that evening.[13]

Dollfuss's assassination notwithstanding, the first stage of the coup -- the attempt to decapitate the government -- failed. Understanding why it failed offers some insight into how the Nazis had misjudged the nature of Austria's authoritarian right wing. Julie Thorpe of the University of Western Sydney (Australia) has offered a sort of taxonomy of the authoritarian right in interwar Austria. Opposing the traditional Lager (camp) theory of interwar Austrian politics, Thorpe instead characterizes the Dollfuss movement as explicitly fascist and pan-German, with the latter ideology distinguished among the Christian Socials as a Danubian pan-German imperialism based in Vienna, rather than a strictly völkisch (i.e., ethnic) pan-Germanism based in Berlin. Thorpe writes, "Austrian proponents of a pan-German identity claimed that the Austrian state was the fullest expression of German hegemony over non-German nationalities and of a German historical mission in Central Europe."[14] Consequently, while the Nazis might have seen the Christian Social electorate as sympathetic on the basis of its fascist authoritarianism and pan-Germanism, they misjudged the specifically Austrian-Viennese nature of this ideology.

Moreover, the loyalty of the Heimwehr, to whom Dobler as informant reached out, was emblematic of this erroneous assessment of the Nazis. Bruce Pauley of the University of Central Florida, in elucidating the history of Austrian National Socialism, has also treated the history of the Heimwehr at some length. In May 1930, the Heimwehr had publicly sworn the so-called Korneuburg Oath, which included explicitly fascist and pan-German expressions of ideology.[15] The following year, the Austrian Nazis and the Heimwehr organization in the federal state of Styria formed a Kampfgemeinschaft (fighting alliance).[16] Here, the Nazis seem to have misjudged the Heimwehr as a whole on the basis of the actions of its Styrian wing. Nazi ideology in Austria was always more popular in regions of Austria bordering non-German nations, including Styria, Burgenland, Carinthia, and parts of Tyrol. Believing that the sympathies of the Styrian Heimwehr existed in the Heimwehr in, e.g., Vienna or Salzburg was a fatal miscalculation.

Finally, there was a miscalculation on the Nazis' part with regard to their own organizations. As noted above, while the SA was the primary armed organization executing the coup nationwide, it was a former SA unit now subordinated to the SS that began the assault in Vienna. Importantly, less than one month before the July Putsch, the SA had been violently purged in Germany on the famous "Night of the Long Knives" of June 30, 1934. Anger about the purge spread to the SA in Austria, and as noted by prominent German historian Peter Longerich, "Although the Austrian SA had promised the plotters its support in principle, the Viennese SA failed to come to the assistance of their unpopular SS comrades."[17]

The Uprising in the Provinces

We know that the coup leaders in Vienna attempted and failed to seize a radio station in Vienna on July 25, from which they would have broadcast Dollfuss's removal from office as a signal for SA units throughout Austria to seize power on a local basis. On this point, the Kollerschlag document states, "On news of Dollfuss' resignation, the entire SA will immediately and without further instructions undertake 'unarmed propaganda marches' … for the purpose immediately occupying public offices and buildings in the provincial capitals and local administrative centres [sic] and of seizing power."[18] Elsewhere, it is stipulated, "Armed confrontation with the police or gendarmerie is preferably to be avoided for as long as possible. Where it proves necessary, however, it is to be carried out with the utmost vigour [sic] and maximum forces. Clashes with the Federal Army are to be avoided if at all possible."[19]

This stage of the coup failed as well. Part of this failure can be attributed to Nazi misjudgment of the sympathies of the Heimwehr, which was mobilized with the Austrian army nationwide against the Nazis. However, the reasons for the failure of the coup in the provinces ran deeper. Writing to the German foreign ministry on July 31, just one day after the coup was put down finally, Hans Steinacher, head of Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland, a Berlin-based government organization dedicated to engendering German unity outside of Germany's borders, laid out the reasons for the coup's failure. After indicating the mistakes of staging the coup while the vice chancellor was out of the country and of not preparing an option to abort the plan, Steinacher remarks, "The 'masses' are lacking. We are unable to prove that they exist and, at the moment when the matter was becoming really dangerous Italy intervened."[20] Clearly, there was no popular support for the Nazi coup beyond the Nazi party itself.

Here, the assassination of the chancellor itself seems have been a key mobilizing factor. As noted above, Dollfuss had been refused a priest for last rites by the SS. According to Philip Scheriau, in his Master's thesis written at the University of Vienna, this information was transmitted to the deeply Catholic Austrian population via newspapers both domestically and internationally before the coup attempt was even completed. The core of Scheriau's thesis states that "Dollfuss is represented in the [newspaper] coverage as a martyr in two primary ways. On the one hand, he is a hero who fell in the fight for his country, and on the other hand, he is represented as a hero and martyr in the Christian tradition."[21]

Beyond this, Dollfuss had enjoyed the support of the Austrian Catholic Church for his authoritarian policies. Not only was one of Dollfuss's most popular predecessors as chancellor, Ignaz Seipel, a Catholic priest, but Seipel had actually contributed to the creation of the Heimwehr that defended the Austrian state against the Nazis. Moreover, Dollfuss's funeral mass, held on July 28, before the coup was over, was said by the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, and was attended by half a million faithful. Those Austrians not already put off by the Nazis' anti-clericalism were surely disgusted by the reports of how Dollfuss had died, and if their sense of being Austrian was not offended, their Catholicism was.

Italian Intervention

As indicated in Steinacher's letter to the German foreign ministry, the final reason the July Putsch failed was the threat of Italian intervention.  Misjudgment of how Mussolini would react to the coup attempt was the final miscalculation of the Nazis in June 1934. Not only was Vice Chancellor Starhemberg in Italy at the time of the putsch, but likely unbeknownst to the coup leaders at the time, so were Dollfuss's wife and children. Mussolini's reaction to the putsch was deeply personal, and he mobilized Italian army troops to the Brenner Pass and Italy's border with Carinthia, in a clear threat of intervention if the Nazis did not stand down.[22] It was largely on the basis of this threat that Hitler withdrew support for the coup, and it collapsed.

However, it also seems that there was a miscalculation by the Nazis of the Austrian position on Italy as well. There was a not insignificant number of right-wing Austrians who resented Italy's annexation of South Tyrol at the end of World War I. Hitler, for his own part, had recognized Italy's claims to the territory as a way of appeasing Mussolini, for whom he had great respect. In June 1934, Hitler and Mussolini had met for the first time in person in Venice, and at this meeting, Mussolini had made clear his support for Dollfuss and for Austria's independence from Germany. That the coup went forward six weeks later would seem to be a grave error on Hitler's part.

The irredentist positions of the Austrian far right undoubtedly played a role in this error. Given the resentment about South Tyrol both in the Nazi Party and in the Heimwehr, it could have been believed that a Nazi seizure of power in Austria would create sufficient momentum for the reclamation of South Tyrol, or at least provide enough of a show of force at the Italian border that Mussolini would think twice before intervening. Here, the Nazis seem to have misjudged Dollfuss, himself initially an irredentist on South Tyrol, and his own willingness to compromise on the matter in exchange for Mussolini's support. As Gottfried-Karl Kindermann of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich notes, this guarantee of independence was stipulated in a secret attachment to the Rome Protocol of 1934, signed among Italy, Austria, and Hungary as a hedge against German aspirations of continental hegemony.[23] In essence, Dollfuss had conceded South Tyrol in exchange for Italian military protection. While this concession did not save his life, it did save Austria -- at least for the time being.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the complexity of the authoritarian right wing in Austria and the extent to which its ideals were different from those of Nazi Germany explains why the Nazis failed to seize control in Austria in July 1934. At the core of Dollfuss’s authoritarian lay Austrian nationalism that was deeply Catholic, and the loyalty of the people and state institutions to this ideology was fatally misjudged. It would require another four years and a vastly changed international landscape before Anschluss could be carried out successfully. The reasons why the Anschluss of 1938 succeeded, however, are beyond the scope of this paper.

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[1] Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris (New York: Norton, 2000), 522-23.

[2] Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, Hitler’s Defeat in Austria, 1933-1934, trans. Sonia Brough and David Taylor (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 32-33.

[3] Steve Beller, A Concise History of Austria (New York: Cambridge UP, 2007), 209-10.

[4] Kindermann, ibid, 78-79.

[5] Ibid, 33-35.

[6] Helmut Konrad, “The Significance of February 1934 in Austria, in Both National and International Context,” in Routes Into the Abyss: Coping With Crises in the 1930s, ed. Helmut Konrad and Wolfgang Maderthaner (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 22.

[7] Kindermann, ibid, 39.

[8] Ibid, 95,

[9] “The ‘Kollerschlag Document,’” in Hitler’s Defeat in Austria, 1933-34, ed. Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, trans. Sonia Brough and David Taylor (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 196.

[10] Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, trans. Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe (New York: Oxford UP, 2012), 177.

[11] “The ‘Kollerschlag Document,’” ibid, 196-98.

[12] Kindermann, ibid, 101-02.

[13] Ibid, 102-03.

[14] Julie Thorpe, "Revisiting the 'Authoritarian State' 40 Years on," Journal of Contemporary History 45, no. 2 (April 2010): 319.

[15] Bruce F. Pauley, Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 74.

[16] Ibid, 76.

[17] Longerich, ibid, 178.

[18] “The ‘Kollerschlag Document,’” ibid, 196.

[19] Ibid, 197.

[20] Hans Steinacher, Head of the Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland to the Foreign Ministry, 31 July 1934, in Hitler's Defeat in Austria, 1933-1934, ed. Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, trans. by Sonia Brough and David Taylor (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 205-06.

[21] Philip Scheriau, "Mediale Reaktionen auf den Juliputsch 1934 in In- und Ausland" (Masterarbeit, University of Vienna, 2014), 71, translation mine.

[22] Kindermann, ibid, 116.

[23] Ibid, 43.