Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Into this situation the Social Democrats came in 1918. By 1933 they had built almost 60,000 dwellings, mostly in huge apartment houses. These were constructed with hardwood floors, outside windows, gas, electricity, and sanitary facilities. In these large apartment buildings more than half the ground space was left free for parks and playgrounds, and central laundries, kindergartens, libraries, clinics, post offices, and other conveniences were provided. One of the largest of these buildings, the Karl Marx Hof, covered only 18 percent of its lot, yet held 1,400 apartments with 5,000 inhabitants. These were built so efficiently that the average cost per apartment was only about $1,650 each; since rent was expected to cover only upkeep and not construction cost (which came from taxes), the average rent was less than $2.00 a month. Thus the poor of Vienna spend only a fraction of their income for rent, less than 3 percent, compared to 25 percent in Berlin and about 20 percent in Vienna before the war. In addition, all kinds of free or cheap medical care, dental care, education, libraries, amusements, sports, school lunches, and maternity care were provided by the city.

While this was going on in Vienna, the Christian Socialist-Pan-German federal government was sinking deeper into corruption. The diversion of public funds to banks and industries controlled by Seipel’s supporters was revealed by parliamentary investigations in spite of the government’s efforts to conceal the facts. When the federal government struck back with its own investigation of the finances of the city of Vienna, it had to report that they were in admirable condition. All this served to increase the appeal of the Social Democrats throughout Austria, in spite of their antireligious and materialist orientation. This can be seen from the fact that the Socialist electoral vote increased steadily, rising from 35 percent of the total vote in 1920 to 39.6 percent in 1923 to 42 percent in 1927. At the same time, the number of Christian Socialist seats in Parliament fell from 85 in 1920 to 82 in 1923 to 73 in 1927 to 66 in 1930.

In 1927 Monsignor Seipel formed a “Unity List” of all the anti-Socialist groups he could muster, but he could not turn the tide. The election gave his party only 73 seats compared to 71 for the Social Democrats, 12 for the Pan-Germans, and 9 for the Agrarian League. Accordingly, Seipel embarked on a very dangerous project. He sought to change the Austrian constitution into a presidential dictatorship as the first step on the road to a Habsburg restoration within a corporative Fascist state. Since any change in the constitution required a two-thirds vote in a Parliament where the Social-Democratic opposition held 43 percent of the seats, Monsignor Seipel sought to break this opposition by encouraging the growth of an armed reactionary militia, the Heimwehr (Home Guard). This project failed in 1929, when Seipel’s constitutional changes were largely rejected by the Parliament. As a result, it became necessary to use illegal methods, a task which was carried out by Seipel’s successor, Engelbert Dollfuss, in 1932-1934.

The Heimwehr first appeared in 1918-1919 as bands of armed peasants and soldiers formed on the fringes of Austrian territory to resist incursions of Italians, South Slavs, and Bolsheviks. After this danger passed, it continued in existence as a loose organization of armed reactionary bands, financed at first by the same German Army groups which were financing the Nazis in Bavaria at the same time (1919-1924). Later these bands were financed by industrialists and bankers as a weapon against the trade unions, and after 1927 by Mussolini as part of his projects of revisionism in the Danube area. At first, these Heimwehr units were fairly independent with their own leaders in different provinces. After 1927 they tended to coalesce, although rivalry between leaders remained bitter. These leaders were members of the Christian Socialist or Pan-German parties and sometimes had Habsburg sympathies. The leaders were Anton Rintelen and Walter Pfrimer in Styria, Richard Steidle in Tyrol, Prince Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg in Upper Austria, and Emil Fey in Vienna. The “chief of the general staff” of the movement as it became unified was a multi-murderer fugitive from German justice, Waldemar Pabst, who had been involved in numerous political murders ordered by the nationalists in Germany in the period 1919-192 3.

These organizations openly drilled in military formations, made weekly provocative marches into industrial areas of the cities, openly declared their determination to destroy democracy, labor unions, and the Socialists and to change the constitution by force, and assaulted and murdered their critics.

Seipel’s efforts to amend the constitution by using Heimwehr pressure against the Social Democrats failed in 1929, although he did succeed in increasing the powers of the Christian Democratic President Wilhelm Miklas somewhat. About the same time, Seipel rejected an offer from the Social Democrats to disarm and disband both the Heimwehr and the Social Democratic militia, the Schutzbund.

Seipel’s tactics alienated his supporters in the Pan-German and Agrarian League so that his party no longer commanded a majority in the chamber. It resigned in September 1930. Using the new constitutional reforms which had been passed the year before, Seipel formed a “presidential” Cabinet, a minority government, of Christian Socialists and Heimwehr. For the first time this latter group obtained Cabinet posts, and these the most threatening, since Starhemberg became minister of interior (which controlled the police), and Franz Hüber, another Heimwehr leader, became minister of justice. This was done in spite of the fact that the Heimwehr had just introduced into its organization an oath which bound its members to reject parliamentary democracy in favor of the one-party, cooperative, “leadership” state. From this point on, the constitution was steadily violated by the Christian Socialists.

New elections were called for November 1930. Starhemberg promised Pfrimer that they would carry out a Putsch to prevent the elections, and Starhemberg publicly announced, “Now we are here, and we will not drop the reins, whatever the result of the elections.” Chancellor Karl Vaugoin, however, was convinced his group would win the elections; accordingly he vetoed the Putsch. Minister of Justice Hüber confiscated the papers of the Pan-Germans, the Agrarians, and dissident Christian Socialists, as well as of the Social Democrats, during the campaign on the ground that they were “Bolshevik.” In this confusion of cross-purposes the election was held, the last election held in prewar Austria. The Christian Socialists lost 7 seats, while the Social Democrats gained 1. The former had 66, the latter 72, the Heimwehr had 8, and the Pan-German-Agrarian bloc had 19. The minority Seipel government tamely resigned, replaced by a more moderate Christian Socialist government under Otto Ender with Pan-German-Agrarian support.

In June 1931, though Seipel tried again to form a government, he could not obtain sufficient support, and the weak coalitions of moderate Christian Socialists and Pan-Germans continued in spite of a Heimwehr revolt led by Pfrimer in September 1931. Pfrimer and his followers were brought to trial for treason, and acquitted. No effort was made to collect their arms, and it soon became clear that the Christian Socialist coalition, moved by their own sympathies and fear of Heimwehr violence, were opening an attack on the Social Democrats and the labor unions. These attacks were intensified after May 1932, when a new Cabinet, with Dollfuss as chancellor and Kurt Schuschnigg as minister of justice, took office. This Cabinet had only a one-vote majority in the Parliament, 83 for and 82 against, and was completely dependent on the 8 Heimwehr deputies which provided its majority. It would not call an election, because the Christian Socialists knew they would be overwhelmed. Since they were determined to rule, they continued to rule, illegally and eventually unconstitutionally.