Austrian Civil War

The Austrian Civil War (German: Österreichischer Bürgerkrieg), also known as the February Uprising (Februarkämpfe), was a series of skirmishes between the right-wing government and socialist forces between 12 and 16 February 1934 in the First Austrian Republic. The clashes started in Linz and primarily took place in Vienna, Graz, Bruck an der Mur, Judenburg, Wiener Neustadt, and Steyr, as well as in other industrial cities of eastern and central Austria.[6]

This article is about the February 1934 violence between the right-wing government and socialist forces. For the July 1934 Nazi violence, see July Putsch.
Austrian Civil War
Part of the interwar period

Soldiers of the Austrian Federal Army in Vienna, 12 February 1934
Date12–16 February 1934
(4 days)
Location
Various cities in Austria
Result Fatherland Front victory
Demise of multi-party system
Creation of the Federal State of Austria
Belligerents

SDAPÖ

KPÖ

First Austrian Republic

Commanders and leaders
Richard Bernaschek
Ludwig Bernaschek		 Engelbert Dollfuss
Emil Fey
Strength
80,000 in all of Austria,[1]
thereof 17,500 soldiers in Vienna[2]
Floridsdorf cache:
over 2,500 rifles
250 revolvers
1,500 grenades
10,000 rounds of ammunition[3]		 Entire Federal Army, police, gendarmeries, and paramilitary Heimwehr forces
Casualties and losses
Estimated 137[2]
196[4]–1,000 possibly killed[5]
399 wounded[2]
9 executed[4]		 Estimated between 105[2]–118 killed in action[4]
319 wounded[2]

Background
The Schlingerhof in Floridsdorf, where a large cache of weapons was based, used in 1934 by the Republikanischer Schutzbund
Part of a series on the
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After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in October 1918, the Republic of Austria formed as a parliamentary democracy. Two major factions dominated politics in the new country: socialists (politically represented by the Social Democratic Workers' Party) and conservatives (politically represented by the Christian Social Party). The socialists found their strongholds in the working-class districts of the cities, while the conservatives built on support from the rural population and most of the upper class. The conservatives also maintained a close alliance with the Catholic Church.

As in most other newly formed European democracies of the time, politics in Austria took on a highly-ideological flavor. Both the socialist and the conservative camps consisted of political parties as well as associated paramilitary forces. The conservatives began organising the Home Guard (German: Heimwehr) in 1920. In response, the Social Democrats organised paramilitaries called the Republican Protection Association (German: Republikanischer Schutzbund) in 1923. Altercations and clashes between those forces (such as at political rallies) occurred frequently.

The July Revolt

A major incident known as the July Revolt ensued early in 1927, after members of Hermann Hiltl's Frontkämpfervereinigung ("Front Fighters Union", a paramilitary association affiliated with the conservative camp) shot and killed an eight-year-old boy and a war veteran marching with the Schutzbund in a counter-demonstration in Schattendorf (Burgenland).[7] In July, three defendants in the case were acquitted, which led to outrage among the left. On 15 July 1927, a general strike occurred, and demonstrations took place in Vienna. After a police station was stormed, security forces fired upon demonstrators. An angry group of people then set fire to the Palace of Justice (Justizpalast), which was seen as a symbol of a flawed and partial judicial system. Altogether, 89 people (85 of them demonstrators) lost their lives and many hundreds suffered injury. However, the violence soon died down, and the factions took their battle from the streets back into the political institutions.

However, the struggles of the First Republic only worsened in the following years. The Great Depression resulted in high unemployment and massive inflation. Additionally, after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Nazi sympathisers, who wanted unification of Austria with Germany, threatened the Austrian state from within.

Civil war

On 4 March 1933, Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss suspended the Austrian Parliament. In a close vote (on railway workers' wages) in the National Council, each of the three presidents of parliament resigned from their positions to cast a ballot, which left nobody to preside over the meeting. Even though the bylaws could have resolved this situation, Dollfuss used that opportunity to declare that Parliament had ceased to function, before blocking all attempts to reconvene it. He also threatened to use military force against the parliamentarians if they tried to reconvene. The Social Democratic Party thus lost its primary platform for political action. The Christian Socialists, facing pressure and violence not only from the left but also from Nazis infiltrating from Germany, could now rule by decree on the basis of a 1917 emergency law, without checks on their power. They began to suspend civil liberties and imprisoning many members of the Social Democratic Party.[8]

February fights: Federal Army soldiers take position in front of the Vienna State Opera

On 12 February 1934, a force, led by Heimwehr commander Emil Fey in Vienna, searched Hotel Schiff in Linz, a property belonging to the Social Democratic Party. Linz' Schutzbund Commander Richard Bernaschek actively resisted the search, which sparked armed conflict between a conglomeration of the Heimwehr, the police, the gendarmerie, and the regular Federal Army against the Schutzbund, which had been banned several years earlier.[9]

Skirmishes between the two camps spread to other cities and towns in Austria. In Vienna, members of the Schutzbund barricaded themselves in city council housing estates (Gemeindebauten), which served as symbols and as strongholds for the socialist movement in Austria. Police and paramilitaries took up positions outside the fortified complexes, and the parties exchanged small arms fire. Fighting also occurred in industrial towns such as Steyr, Sankt Pölten, Weiz, Eggenberg (Graz), Kapfenberg, Bruck an der Mur, Graz, Ebensee, and Wörgl.

A decisive moment in the conflict came with the entry of the Austrian armed forces, on the side of the conservatives. Though the army remained still a comparatively independent institution, Dollfuß ordered Karl-Marx-Hof, an occupied city council housing estate, to be shelled with light artillery, which endangered the lives of thousands of civilians and destroyed many flats before the socialist fighters surrendered.[10] The fighting ended in Vienna and Upper Austria by 13 February, but continued heavily in Styrian cities, especially in Bruck an der Mur and Judenburg, until 14 or 25 February. Afterward, only small groups of socialists continued fighting against the armed forces. By 16 February 1934, the Austrian Civil War had ended.

Aftermath

Short term
Memorial stone for a police officer killed on 12 February 1934 in Linz during the war

Several hundred people (including paramilitaries, members of the security forces and civilians) died in the armed conflict, and more than 1,000 suffered wounds. The authorities held mass trials and later executed nine Schutzbund leaders under the provisions of martial law. In addition, over 1,500 people were arrested. Leading socialist politicians, such as Otto Bauer, were forced into exile.[11] John Gunther reported that Schutzbund members received "mercilessly severe" sentences.[12]

The incidents of February 1934 were taken as a pretext by the government to prohibit the Social Democratic Party and its affiliated trade unions altogether. In May, the conservatives replaced the democratic constitution by a corporatist constitution modelled along the lines of Benito Mussolini's fascist Italy, with the socialists coining the term "Austrofascism". However, the underlying ideology was essentially that of the most conservative elements in the Austrian Catholic clergy, a feature inconsistent with both Italian fascism and Nazism. The Patriotic Front, into which the Heimwehr and the Christian Social Party were merged, became the only legal political party in the resulting authoritarian regime, the Federal State of Austria (Ständestaat).

Long term
Memorial to the victims and fighters at the place where the civil war started, in the courtyard of the Hotel Schiff in Linz.

The Austrian Civil War proved a decisive moment in the history of Austria. After the Second World War, when Austria reemerged on the political landscape as a sovereign nation, politics again fell under the domination of the Social Democrats and the conservatives, the latter now forming the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP).

To avoid repeating the bitter divisions of the First Republic, leaders of the Second Republic of Austria were determined to promote the principle of a broad consensus as a core element of the new political system. The concept of the Grand Coalition was introduced, in which the two major parties (Social Democrats and People's Party) shared the government and avoided open confrontation. The new system brought with it stability and continuity but ultimately led to other political repercussions, such as Proporz.

See also

References
  1. Jelavich 183.
  2. Brook-Shepherd 281.
  3. Brook-Shepherd 282.
  4. Jelavich 202.
  5. Lehne 136.
  6. Frederick L. Schuman, Europe On The Eve 1933-1939 (1939) pp 55-92 online.
  7. Organisationen, Institutionen, Bewegungen, page 269 - "Januar 1927 waren es drei Mitglieder der Frontkämpfer-Ortsgruppe Schattendorf im Burgenland, die auf eine die Präsenz der Frontkampfer in Burgenland protestierende Menge von Mitgliedern des sozialdemokratischen Republikanisheen Schutzbandes shossen und dabei den Kriegsinvaliden Matthias Zmarisch und den achtjahrigen Josef Grossing toteten."
  8. Barbara Jelavich, Modern Austria: Empire & Republic 1800-1980 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 199.
  9. Brook-Shepherd 280–81; Lothar Höbelt, Die Erste Republik Österreich (1918-1938): Das Provisorium (Vienna: Böhlau, 2018), 312.
  10. Reppe 79.
  11. Brook-Shepherd 283.
  12. Gunther, John (1940). Inside Europe. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 416.

Further reading
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