a gang of heavies barged into a newspaper’s offices demanding the supplication of the journalists, with unforeseen results: The journalists called in some printers for support and ‘a free fight developed in which the anti-Semites used beer glasses and walking sticks, but after some minutes were put to flight by the printers. Schönerer was put on trial for public violence and forcible entry’.2 It is tempting to view this incident as the first successful militant anti-fascist action.
Previously, in 1887, Schönerer took his followers to the streets to protest a bill that institutionalised the Czech language, thus equating the Teutonic with the Slav. There were violent confrontations between Schönerer’s supporters and the police, and in Graz, one student protester died. When parliament accepted the bill, further violence erupted in the chamber and demonstrations and riots broke out in several cities. By 1913, Schönerer’s political career had passed, but his anti-big business, anti-Semitic, anti-Slavic nationalism preceded Hitler’s by several decades, as did the use—albeit more spontaneously in Austria—of political violence to push forward their programme.
In 1918, Austria was no more exempt from the fear of ‘Red Revolution’ than any other country in Europe. Following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the rise of traditional nationalism, anti-clericalism (i.e., Rome) and anti-Semitism, there was also resentment over the Social Democrats’ ‘Red Vienna’ and their political reforms. Following the uprising in Munich in 1919, Bavarian defence units were set up, which forwarded large amounts of weapons to the Austrian Heimwehr, ‘the paramilitary force of the extreme right’,3 to bolster protection from the possible spread of malign Viennese and Hungarian Bolshevism which could link up with the north and Berlin in particular. This was all fuelled by the fear of ‘Asiatic hordes in the form of Bolshevism under Jewish leadership, against German culture’.4
The Heimwehr
The Heimwehr were the Austrian version of the German Freikorps, anti-communist authoritarians who lacked the organizational rigidity of their German counterparts, and in 1920 they announced a ‘shooting festival’ in the Tyrol, which the Viennese Social Democrats (SD) opposed. A strike was called and the SD and armed workers prevented support from Bavarian units crossing the border. The rally still took place with speakers issuing dire warnings to Vienna. Thus the Heimwehr, a German-funded and heavily armed militia also supported by sympathetic industrialists, grew relatively unopposed under a Social Democratic government and were vocal over armed resistance should the ‘Red Revolution’ occur. Which it didn’t. The SD and Independents kept a curb on the growth of the communists, who remained small.
Elements of the Heimwehr were becoming even more provocative, and they not only advocated a coup but also organized ‘terror groups’ that were to be used as strike-breakers. Clearly things threatened to escalate and catch the socialists unprepared. In Styria in 1922, socialists confiscated the weapons of the Heimwehr, which they retaliated by arresting the SD leaders. In protest, three thousand steel workers came out on strike and confronted ‘a large-scale mobilization of the Styrian Heimwehren’ operating in a strike-breaking capacity for one of the first (but by no means last) times.5 In 1923, the Viennese SD ordered the formation of a Republican Defence Corps ( RDC), which drew on socialists and workers and led to the inevitable clashes. In October, a Heimwehr squad attacked a socialist in Klagenfurt. A forty-strong group of RDC arrived to confront them but the Heimwehr had gone, only to return the following day to conduct intimidating house searches of workers. The RDC arrived again in greater numbers and the Heimwehr swiftly exited. Humiliated, the local Heimwehr then demanded the arrests of the leading RDC involved and threatened retribution against a workers’ demonstration, to no avail. Shortly after, the Heimwehr took over an inn and began firing at police, who subsequently disbanded them.
Despite its funding and materiel, the regional Heimwehr were too disputatious and remained a potentially powerful but disunited force. As the threat of ‘Red Revolution’ receded, they became less active—although in 1926 at a rally of right-wing paramilitaries, one speaker described the SD as ‘the representative of the most radical socialism of a Marxist colour outside Soviet Russia’, proving that paranoia and bluster were just as prevalent as anti-working-class activity. The speaker was convinced that the socialists could only be stopped by armed resistance or, echoing Hitler, ‘national revolution’. Clearly some of the Heimwehr leadership harboured grander ambitions despite their declining influence. The right-wing Frontkampferbund had also begun to organize in some socialist strongholds; these socialists responded by mobilising the previously dormant RDC.6
In 1927, Styrian unions called a general strike and, aware of the right-wing militias’ strike-breaking history, called in the RDC to protect the workers. Superior numbers of Heimwehr surrounded the area to cut off food supplies and force the strikers to back down. The Heimwehr was being used as a political paramilitary force, but so was the RDC. The RDC was only strong in certain areas, most notably Vienna and other centres of industry, and although it was up against the far right Heimwehr, it was answerable to the SD and sent in against rioting Viennese workers. At one point in 1928, nineteen thousand Heimwehr marched, and the SD mobilised the RDC and its socialist supporters, although violent conflict was ultimately avoided. By 1929, the Heimwehr had started holding provocative demonstrations in socialist-dominated areas in a show of strength. In 1929, ten thousand right-wing paramilitaries marched in Vienna. Not only was the Heimwehr involved in physical strike-breaking, but they also organized ‘independent’ trade unions to undermine the working-class movement with the backing of certain employers. This reduced the ability of the general strike to be an effective political weapon. The Heimwehr were being manipulated by political and industrial figures in a virulently anti-socialist direction.
The Rise of Austrian Fascism
The main pre-conditions for Austrian fascism were the resentment of the Social Democrats’ ‘Red Vienna’, a popular desire for Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Germany), a tendency for authoritarian government, and a predominant and institutionalised anti-Semitism. The two fascist parties vying for electoral respectability were the Heimwehr and the National Socialists. The Heimwehr had benefited and grown when the ‘conflict between the right and the Socialists first peaked in 1927, enabling the Heimwehr to gain recruits as an alternative to the party systems’.7 They were indirectly funded by Mussolini who, in his later ‘anti-German phase of 1934–35’,8 wanted to curb German influence by curtailing the Anschluss. The Austrian Nazis were backed by Hitler but initially lacked a powerbase because voting loyalties were fairly intractable in many communities; the workers tended towards socialism, and voters in the rural areas tended towards the Christian Social Party. The Nazis agitated strongly for the Anschluss, in addition to propagating their usual anti-Semitism in order to gain favour. The Nazis attempted a putsch in 1934, which failed and led to their temporary suppression.
Jewish Resistance in Austria
Austrian working-class resistance was weakened due to their smaller infrastructures and organizations and a lack of militant leadership, whereas the Jewish militant resistance was small if not determined. After the 1925 anti-Semitic riots, newspapers wrote that ‘the violence was the work of “Jewish and Communist provocateurs” who tried to provoke the crowds’.9 Anti-Semitic right-wing students attacked Jewish and socialist meetings. The fact that socialist student groups, as well as the Social Democrats, all featured prominent Jewish figures meant that the two were unified, which fomented hostility from the right and anxiety amongst bourgeois and orthodox Jews: ‘The more Jews there are among the leaders of Social Democracy, the stronger the desire will become to square accounts through
