Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Austrian fascisms, ‘Austrofascism’ and the working class
- 2 Economic integration and political opposition between the Anschluss and the war
- 3 The war economy and the changing workforce 1939–1945
- 4 Work discipline in the war economy
- 5 Popular opinion and political protest in working-class communities
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
2 - Economic integration and political opposition between the Anschluss and the war
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Austrian fascisms, ‘Austrofascism’ and the working class
- 2 Economic integration and political opposition between the Anschluss and the war
- 3 The war economy and the changing workforce 1939–1945
- 4 Work discipline in the war economy
- 5 Popular opinion and political protest in working-class communities
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
The German annexation of Austria constituted the third major upheaval in the country's political system in twenty years. During the eighteen months between the invasion and the outbreak of war the new regime overturned both the remaining republican structures and the newer ‘corporate’ arrangements and laid the foundations for the permanent administrative, political and economic integration of Austria into the German Reich.
There was no military resistance to the annexation: quite apart from the Chancellor's reluctance to order the army to open fire on German soldiers there was no shortage of sound reasons for failing to resist the German occupation. Austria's international isolation, and the indifference of the western democracies to the annexation were important external factors influencing Schuschnigg's decision. Among domestic reasons perhaps most important was the ambivalent national identity of many Austrians, and the strength of pro-Anschluss feeling that had followed the end of the First World War. Even by 1938 the sense of being an Austrian citizen was by no means always incompatible with a sense of German national identity, particularly for the German nationalist constituency, of course, but also – if in different senses – for other Austrians. Austro-Marxist thinking had accepted ‘national unification’ as a necessary precondition for the socialist transformation of a greater Germany, and the SDAP had been in favour of Anschluss immediately after the First World War, when the prospects for a socialist ‘greater Germany’ had seemed particularly auspicious.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nazism and the Working Class in AustriaIndustrial Unrest and Political Dissent in the 'National Community', pp. 48 - 67Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996