Austria and Nazism: Owning Up to the Past

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• 1. The Historical Commission
• 2. Targets of aggression
• 3. Austria as victim?
• 4. The Waldheim controversy
• 5. The 'politics of sensibility'
• 6. Settling claims
• 7. The interests of the victims
• 8. Find out more
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The Historical Commission

In 1998 the Austrian Historikerkommission (Historical Commission) was set up to examine Austria's role in the expropriation of Jewish assets during the period of Nazi rule in World War Two, and in returning those assets afterwards. On 24 February 2003 it presented its findings to the public. The Commission has spent nearly five million pounds, and employed over 150 researchers, in its mission to comb archives inside and outside the country, concerning events that happened over 50 years ago.

'When the Wehrmacht marched into Austria in 1938 they fulfilled one of Hitler's life-long ambitions ...'

The precise remit given by the government in 1998 was to investigate 'the expropriation of property in the period of Nazi rule (1938-1945), restitution and compensation in the Second Austrian republic and attendant welfare issues'. This may seem narrow in its focus on property issues, but in fact it affected nearly all aspects of Nazi rule and Austrian society. Last but not least, it was also concerned with the image and legitimacy of post-war Austria itself, as a collective victim of a foreign (German-Nazi) occupation.

When the Wehrmacht marched into Austria in 1938 (and Austrian Nazis took over the country 'from below') they fulfilled one of Hitler's life-long ambitions, the 'return' of German-Austria to the Greater German Reich. The pictures of an ecstatic Führer announcing the event in Vienna, and the equally ecstatic crowds who were listening to him, went all round the world at the time. The contemporary impression that the vast majority of Austrians supported the Anschluss (the union of Austria and Germany in 1938) was reinforced by the overwhelming endorsement it got in the plebiscite held in April 1938.

How much support the Nazi regime actually enjoyed at the time, and over the following seven years, has been much debated by historians, politicians and journalists ever since. Some suggest that the newsreels were misleading - who, after all, had filmed the people who were silently weeping at home? - and also that the plebiscite result was distorted, due to the attendant propaganda, intimidation and manipulation.

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Published: 2003-02-28