Why didn't Hitler advocate Austrian nationalist ideas?

[ljadw]

Sid,

Are you actually going to cite some sources to support your statement that the popularity of the Anschluss dwindled during the 1920s and early 1930s?

You claim the Nazis "massively rigged in multiple ways" the referendum. Can you please elaborate on this statement?

I've not read a single book that claims the referendum was "massively rigged". On the contrary, occasional rigging is certainly plausible to believe but it wasn't necessary because the vast majority of Austrians supported the Anschluss. The exclusion of certain groups totaled only a tiny amount of Austria's population in 1938 and even if every single Jew, Gypsy, etc, had voted "No", it would have made very little difference to the overall result. The Nazi campaign leading up to the Anschluss referendum was nothing out of the ordinary, all political parties and governments use propaganda and coercion when trying to get people to believe in their beliefs. As ljadw rightly pointed out, in 1938 Hitler had the image of doing a lot of good for Germany, why would the Austrians not be in favour of a native Austrian offering the union between their country and Germany? It's a no-brainer really. During the Anschluss, Hitler's Austrian origin was used as an advantage, along with the concept of Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer – "One People, One Empire, One Leader".

I've already presented you with evidence that the Schuschnigg plausible support of two-thirds of the Austrians support was quickly changed to two-thirds of the Austrian support for the Nazis since Hitler had managed to quickly make thee Catholics and socialists endorse the Anschluss. Read the quote I have posted on this page. The two-thirds support was also more rigged than the Nazi referendum result.

You claim that ljadw is not interested in "dispassionate analysis of the evidence", yet when you are presented with evidence that proves your assertions to be wrong you either ignore it or dismiss it. Practice what you preach!

Stop going around in circles over the Anschluss.

Firstly, the Nazis had the support of a guaranteed two-thirds of the Austrian support because the Catholics and socialists had quickly changed their minds and were persuaded by Hitler to endorse the Anschluss. Therefore, the Nazis had 66% of the Austrians support before anything else is to be taken into consideration. Secondly, the Nazis excluded from the referendum roughly 8% of the population which the average Austrian did not actually care about since Jews made up the most that were excluded because antisemitism was widely spread in Austria and was more ferocious than in the German Reich. Thirdly, there is no evidence that any sort of mass rigging took place, it is certainly reasonable to accept that occasional rigging took place. Lastly, since 66% of the support was made up by Catholics and socialists, include the Austrian Nazis, the average Austrian and others that supported the Anschluss, then it is not unreasonable to place the figure of around 80% of the Austrians supported the Anschluss in 1938. In this thread I have already posted about several historians that state a clear majority of Austrians would have supported the Anschluss with or without Hitler and the Nazis.

Even Richard J. Evans statement about a Gestapo report about the lack of support for the Anschluss in 1938 does not really change a thing.

If you have any problems with this analysis, feel free to criticise and provide evidence.

About the claim that the support for the Anschluss was going down,claim without proof,I found 2 examples that it was not going down :
In 1927 the 80th anniversary of Hindenburg was celebrated in Vienna by 75000 people who used the opportunity for a parade for Anschluss .
A year later (1928) there was the Schubert festival and 200000 people marched through Vienna for Anschluss.
Source = Disjoined partners Austria and Germany since 1815 P 144

[ljadw]

And an other one : during the Schubert celebrations in Vienna (november 1928) the mayor of Vienna (Seitz ,SPÖ) welcomed delegations of the 13 greatest German cities and talked about unity,tribal brotherhood, reverence for the great common treasure of German culture ,on which the mayor of Berlin answered in the same sense .
Source :Imagining a Greater Germany :Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss (P 180) by Erin R.Hochman

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

Nope, Hitler's referendum was not less rigged than Schussnigg's. We have discussed this at length above. Unlike the Nazi referendum, Schussnigg's proposed referendum, for all its flaws, was an all-Austrian affair, not requiring a foreign army of occupation, tens of thousands of arrests or the occasional murder to conduct.

You write, "Salzburg is not Tirol....." Nobody, and certainly not me, claimed it was.

Organizing a referendum was pefectly possible in four days, though such a tight schedule certainly invited some problems. The only reason why Schussnigg's referendum did not take place in four days was because the Germans invaded, not because it was logistically impossible.

Schussnigg probably had the same doubts about his ability to win a fair referendum convincingly as did the Nazis, which was why the conduct of both plebiscites was questionable. This indicates that both believed that Austrian public will was biddable, not fixed.

Interestingly you conclude, "The Austrians had the choice between a failed dictator and an successful dictator, it is not surprising that they chose the successful dictator. They voted as much against Doklfuss as for Hitler." What is significant about this, is that you nowhere mention Anschluss as a motivating factor!

You also write, "The number of Yes votes in the workers districts of Vienna was surprsingly high." How right you are - surprisingly high! Indeed, the entire Nazi plebiscite result was surprisingly, not to say implausibly, high - and the major reason for its surprising nature was that the Nazi plebiscite was massively rigged on the many levels discussed at length above in this thread. (I will happily cut and paste them yet again, if you wish.)

What is surprising about the Czech and Slovak speakers voting in favour of Anschluss? Have you ever wondered how you could know exactly to the last ballot paper how Czech-speakers voted if there had been a secret ballot? If they had any other opinion they were taking a risk in expressing it if the ballot was not secret! The same goes for any other opponents who had not already been intimidated, barred from voting, arrested or occasionally murdered.

So, there were reportedly 75,000 people marching in favour of Anschluss in 1927 and 200,000 in 1928? Given that the population of Vienna was 1,700,000, this makes them quite a small minority of between about 5% and 12%. Compare this with estimates for the numbers at Dolfuss's funeral in Vienna, which range from 500,000 to 1,000,000!

If one only looks for facts in favour of one's hypotheses, that is necessarily all one will find. One has to dig deeper, or broaden the scope of one's researches, to gain a fuller, more ballanced overview of events.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

1) You said that the result of the vote in Salzburg in 1921 was influenced by the loss of South Tirol : there is no evidence for this .

2) It is IMPOSSIBLE to organize in 4 days a fair referendum : this has never been done . The fact that Schuschnig wanted a referendum in 4 days proves that he wanted to organize a falsified referendum.
It is impossible today, and it was even more impossible 80 years ago in a country of small villages,without modern means of communication .

3) Of course the Anschluss was a motivating factor , but if there would be 6 million people without work in Germany and 60000 in Austria, the support for the Anschluss would be much weaker .

4 ) Surprisingly is not implausibly :it means that even for the Nazis the vote vote for the Anschluss by the Austrian socialists in Vienna was higher than they expected,they expected it to be high, as the SPÖ had always been a partisan of the Anshluss, but it was even higher .

5) For the Czechs : they voted in separate polling stations, and that's was the reason why their voting result was known . They were also (with the Slovenes) the group who were the least threatened by the nazis ,as their persecution would result in strong negative reactions in Czechoslowakia and Yugoslavia ,something the Nazis could not afford .

6) About the 75000 /200000 people who marched for Anschluss : your use of "reportedly " is dishonest ,as I have given a source , your source OTOH is ridiculous (probably a propaganda figure from the Dolfuss dictatorship) : 500000 or 1 million means : I don't know .
Besides, Dollfuss was a bloody dictator hated by the overwhelming majority of the Austrians:the civil war had resulted in more than 1000 victims, 10 people were later executed, more than 1000 were locked up in camps .A year later, the same happened again : hundreds of victims, 13 people hanged, thousands in camps .

There is also a very big difference between looking at a passing funeral (for a lot of people to be sure that the man in the coffin was dead ) and marching though the streets of a city .

If in 1935 tens of thousands of people were marching in London th o celebrate the 75 th anniversary of general Pershing, no one would say that this was meaningless .
If there was a Shakespeare festival in NY in 1928 and 200000 people would parade through the streets singing "Rule Britannia " no one would say that this was meaningless .
7 ) Last point : Hitler's referendum was much less rigged than is claimed, otherwise the nazis would not have published the results of 3 villages in Ost Tirol where 25 %+ of the voters said no .

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

So, the loss of South Tirol, you believe, had no influence on Austrians who were not Tirolean? You believe that there was no sense of Austrian solidarity?

Schussnigg's referendum, like that of the Nazis, was flawed regardless of how long it took to organise. Indeed, the Nazis spent a month organising a plebiscite process that was, if anything, more flawed than that of Schussnigg!

I don't fully understand your points 4 and 5. Can you express them more clearly for me?

Exactly. The Czech-speakers were made to vote in separate polling stations! This made them even more exposed to undue collective pressure than other Austrians.

The Nazis could not afford to persecute the Czechs? Within one month of the Nazi plebiscite in Austria, Hitler ordered action prepared for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia! Clearly this claimed concern for Czech opinion was very short-lived!

No, my use of "reportedly" was honest. It is your failure to use either source or qualifiction regarding the claimed number of marchers for Anschluss in 1927 and 1928 that is questionable.

You can grumble all you want about Dolfuss's character, but the claimed number for those attending Dolfuss's funeral are real. For instance, see p.215 of Howard Sachar's, The Assassination of Europe, 1918-1942 (University of Toronto Press, 2014) for "not less than a million" passing Dolfuss's bier during his lying-in-state, including veteran Social Dermocrats. Time Magazine (6 August 1934) put those attending the actual funeral at approximately half a million.

Yes, there is a difference between looking at a passing funeral and marching through the streets of a city. However, both require individuals to bestir themselves from their normal activities enough to attend. It even looks as though a dead Dolfuss may have been a bigger draw in Vienna in 1934 than a live Hitler was in 1938!

So, you think that the Nazis apparently (I use the word advisedly) not rigging 0.001% of the total votes in three villages, absolves them of any of the multiple accusations of rigging the other 99.999% of votes? You seem to be holding the Nazis to a chronically low standard of evidence, as well as behaviour!

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

I knew that you would use an American professor who tried to write a political history of Europe by using some irrelevant political assassinations and finishing with the irrelevant suicide of Zweig and his wife .
The lying-in-state of Dolfuss lasted a week (July 25/August 2 ): if 1 million people were parading ,that means 140000 a day ,or 14000 perhour or 4 per second ! Thus impossible .
Most of them would come from outside Vienna,as Vienna was a red fortress where the name of Dolfuss was despised since the civil war from 1933.
If 700000 people came from outside Vienna, some 100000 a day, that would mean some 500 trains extra per day!
Some 5 million people lived outside Vienna,if one subtracts the old people, the children , the women, that would mean that more than half of the male adult population outside Vienna would be absent from their work for at least 2 days: the economy would collaps ;all those farmers would not leave their farm to go to Vienna, a city where most of them never had been,besides, given the general poverty, they could not afford to go to and return from Vienna and to sleep in a hotel, and there would not be enough place for 100000 additional visitors in Vienna .
To summarize: 1 million people parading at the lying-in-state of Dolfuss ,means 25 + million people parading at the lying-in-state of John Kennedy . !!!!
Do you think that it was possible that 25 million people could go to Washington to parade before the coffin of JFK ????

[Lamarck]

Sid,

1) I have proven without any doubt that Schuschnigg's proposed plebiscite would have been more rigged and unfair than the Nazi's plebiscite. Schuschnigg was not even going to allow "Yes" and "No" to appear on the same ballot paper for crying out loud!

2) You constantly keep posting that the Nazis "massively" rigged the plebiscite but you never actually answer how precisely.

3) I have already exposed your flawed so-called rebuttal of using the overall population to the turnout of people in a certain area. In fact, you used the exact same argument against me and I demonstrated with a similar analogy how flawed it was and you never even bothered to respond. ljadw has proven with a few sources that the desire for an Anschluss remained still popular during the 1920s and early 1930s. It was you who made the claim that support for the Anschluss dwindled during the 1920s and early 1930s, can you provide any evidence to support this statement? This is the third time I have asked you.

Use Google books and read Peter J. Katzenstein's Disjoined Partners: Austria and Germany Since 1815 pages 143-162 for information about the popularity of the Anschluss during 1918-1938. I await your response with the acknowledgement that you were wrong when you claimed support for the Anschluss dwindled during the 1920s and early 1930s.

[ljadw]

[quote="Sid Guttridge]

I don't fully understand your points 4 and 5. Can you express them more clearly for me?



The Nazis could not afford to persecute the Czechs? Within one month of the Nazi plebiscite in Austria, Hitler ordered action prepared for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia! Clearly this claimed concern for Czech opinion was very short-lived!



Yes, there is a difference between looking at a passing funeral and marching through the streets of a city. However, both require individuals to bestir themselves from their normal activities enough to attend. It even looks as though a dead Dolfuss may have been a bigger draw in Vienna in 1934 than a live Hitler was in 1938!



Cheers,

Sid.[/quote]
1) About the persecution of the people who had as common language Czech: as long as CZ existed,Hitler had to spare them:their persecution started AFTER the fall of CZ,it was the same with the Slovenes :their persecution started in 1941.

2)About the number of those who defiled at the coffin of Dollfuss ; 80% of the population of Vienna and 65% of all Austrians jubilated at the news of the death of Dollfuss :at the last elections ,his party got only 20% in Vienna and 35% in the whole of Austria :his party got only 1,315,000 votes,how could 1 milion of them defile at his coffin?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

Not to vote for someone is quite different from being jubilant at their brutal and callous murder at the hands of political thugs. I don't recall US Republicans dancing on the grave of John F. Kennedy, do you?

140,000 people a day is perfectly manageable.

Thereafter you seem to enter a statistical fantasy world of ten-hour days and assumptions about who attended from where, how many could pass the body simultaneously, how many trains would have to be laid on for them, how many men would have to miss work for how long to attend, how farmers could not afford hotel fees, consequent national economic collapse and some sort of undefined knock on effect on the funeral of John F. Kennedy decades later!

This sort of stream-of-consciousness fantasy and does not help your (or any other) case!!!!!

I am sorry, but unless you come back down to earth, I may have to return to addressing lamarck.

Incidentally, the assassination of Dollfuss seems to have had a significant, if not necessarily permanent, influence on attitudes to Anschluss. John Gunther opined that in 1932 Austria was probably at least 80% pro-Anschluss but by the end of 1933 was at least 60% against. Now we can quibble over the details of the exact percentages, but he seems to be describing a genuine phenomenon. Most Austrians seem to have disapproved of the cruel murder by the Nazis of Dollfuss and this seems to have dented support for Anschluss with Nazi Germany significantly.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

Your post proves only your ignorence about Austrian history : Austria was not the US and JFK was not a dictator ,what Dolfuss was ;Dolfuss was held responsible by 65% of the Austrians for the death of hundreds of people .And, I am not interested in the opinion of an American journalist (John Gunther ) who arrived in Europe without any knowledge of Europe and left Europe with even less knowledge ;the opinion of a double of William Shirer has no value .

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

So, you're "not interested" in contrary opinions to your own, even if the holder of that opinion was on site to witness the events described, which you were not?

I would suggest that your complete unwillingness to include in the mix any opinion that contradicts your preconceptions, pretty much invalidates your opinion from serious consideration.

Lamarck, you're on next.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

Hi ljadw,

So, you're "not interested" in contrary opinions to your own, even if the holder of that opinion was on site to witness the events described, which you were not?

I would suggest that your complete unwillingness to include in the mix any opinion that contradicts your preconceptions, pretty much invalidates your opinion from serious consideration.

Lamarck, you're on next.

Cheers,

Sid.

I gave FACTS,you dismissed them because they debunked your bias and you countered with the opinion of an unreliable journalist who was called the Marco Polo of the Books of the Month Club .
There were No /no reliable opinion polls in Austria during the Dollfuss dictatorship,thus how could Gunther , of whom I doubt that he spoke German,know that the support for the Anschluss dropped from 80 to 60 % ?
As he could not know it ,he invented it .
Why do you use as source someone who wrote'' Inside Russia'',after 'visiting '' Russia during 50 days and after having seen what the regime wanted him to see ? Because you were looking desperatedly for someome who would confirm your eccentric theories.

[ljadw]

The result of the Dollfuss/Schuschnigg dictatorship was the following :

1929: unemployed : 192000 8,8% of whom 164000 received a small social security benefit

1933 : 557000 unemployed 26% of whom 328000 with a benefit
1937 : 464000 unemployed 231000 with a benefit

On 1 February 1934 the minister of commerce (Stockinger ) said at the meeting of the cabinet :
'' die Idee des Nationalsozialismus hat weisteste Kreise der Gewerbe ergriffen."

In English : National Socialism has penetrated the farthest sectors of industry and trade .

Source : Die Wirtschftspolitik des Standesstaates Oesterreich.
Thus, why shoould we believe the opinion of an American journalist that the support for the dictatorship was going up ? (less support for the Anschluss = more support for the regime )

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Guys,

I think we have all been a little too trusting in accepting the provincial votes in Tyrol and Salzburg in 1921 as reliable. The following from pp.62-66, Austria at the Crossroads: The Anschluss and its Opponents by Jody Manning puts them in a rather different light:

On 24 April 1921, 97 per cent of the votes cast in an unofficial plebiscite in North Tyrol – a vote held against the wishes of the federal government – were in favour of union with Germany.206 A few weeks later Salzburg also went to the polls, again yielding a large majority in favour of a union with Germany.207 These results are often invoked as proof of overwhelming Anschluss sentiment, yet they are not quite the reliable indicators that they appear. The plebiscite in North Tyrol is a case in point. North Tyrol’s overriding concern was not Anschluss, but ending the Italian occupation of South Tyrol and restoring the unity of the province. For this reason, Tyrolean elites remained intentionally irresolute, willing to pursue any policy that would achieve this aim. Although they had provisionally ‘joined’ the Republic in November 1918, they vehemently asserted their autonomy vis-à-vis any decisions that could aversely affect this primary goal. Up until mid-1919, the policy of the dominant Tiroler Volkspartei, was not Anschluss with Germany, which would have put paid to any hope of reinstating Tyrolean unity, but the creation of an independent Tyrolean state. 208 Thus, when Vienna declared the Anschluss of Deutschösterreich with Germany in 1918, Tyrol, which had only provisionally joined the Republic, responded by threatening to withdraw from the state because of the question of German South Tyrol.209 Tyrolean elites unequivocally rejected the Anschluss policy of the central government, contemplating every conceivable alternative, including the possibility of an independent Tyrol linked in a loose union with Switzerland or Italy, or of a fusion of the ‘western provinces’.210 Some in the conservative camp supported the idea of a union between Tyrol and Bavaria, or even the creation of a south German state. Ultimately, and as Seipel correctly observed, in early 1919 at least, Vorarlberg and Tyrol would rather remain small, neutral states, or better still, unite with Switzerland, than be mutilated and join Germany.

In late 1919, with the Anschlussverbot confirmed, Tyrolean tactics were deliberately reversed. Now Anschluss with Germany – or rather Bavaria – appeared to the majority of the Tyrolean leadership to be their only hope of ever regaining South Tyrol and at the same time, escaping the prevailing economic misery. Yet, this still does not wholly explain the statistics. The voter returns appear conclusive, yet, as Bielka points out, the plebiscite was accompanied by severe electoral fraud and voter manipulation and an accurate percentage figure of voter eligibility is, therefore, impossible to attain. In addition to the massive propaganda campaign and not insignificant Reich German influence, ‘Ja’ ballot papers were pre-printed and provided at the polling stations and ballots were to be handed to an election official, undermining voter confidentiality. In addition, voter eligibility rules were liberally conceived and, therefore, open to abuse. Not only were those registered for the Nationalrat elections of October 1920 permitted to vote, but also those who registered themselves as living in Tyrol before April 1921, that is, less than a fortnight before going to the polls, as were all those Tyroleans who lived outside of the state; a train was even chartered from Bavaria to mitigate the financial burden of travelling ‘home’.

As Bielka concludes, the question of whether the overwhelming majority of Tyroleans wanted Anschluss cannot be definitively proven, and, considering the circumstances surrounding the plebiscite it appears ‘very doubtful’ that this was the case.215 The situation was similar in Salzburg province, where democratic principles were also liberally violated.216 Again, the majority of the ruling elite supported Anschluss, but the circumstances surrounding the ballot make it an unreliable indicator of public sentiment, let alone pan-German attitudes.217 What is more, Salzburg can in no way be considered paradigmatic for the rest of Austria. Salzburg, which had been independent until the early nineteenth century, had spent the shortest time under Habsburg rule; when it finally fell to Austria in 1816, part of the province, the Rupertiwinkel, had remained with Bavaria, which had ruled Salzburg during the Napoleonic years. Therefore, for Salzburg, union with Bavaria was an entirely logical step that might actually restore the provinces historic borders. Vorarlberg went to the polls on 11 May 1919, although here 80 per cent voted for union with Switzerland, towards which the province had always gravitated, both economically and culturally.218 The provincial movements do tell us that Germany – or rather, Bavaria – was the ‘obvious’ solution for some, but it was by no means the only one. They also tell us that Anschluss meant different things to different people, and that those who talked of Anschluss did not necessarily mean full political union.

Despite the initially compelling statistics, overall, it appears doubtful that a qualified majority of Austrians would have supported Anschluss with Germany.221 From the sparse evidence available, it appears that the pro-Anschluss movement could only hope for a slim majority in the event of a plebiscite, and not the 75 per cent necessary, and that the number of Anschluss supporters in 1919 was not more than 50 per cent of the population.222 Even Otto Bauer, leader of the Social Democratic party had to admit that both the bourgeoisie and the peasantry wanted ‘an independent Austria fully capable of a national life of its own’.223 More telling is Bauer’s admission that, because of the strength of the conservative opposition to Anschluss and the real possibility that the majority would have voted against the Anschluss, the Socialists did not dare to hold a referendum in 1919.

So, there we have it:
1) The conduct of the plebiscites was flawed.
2) Tyrol was interested in any way of getting South Tirol back, not in Anschluss with Germany, per se.
3) Salzburg cannot be held as typical of wider Austrian opinion.
4) Vorarlberg apparently wanted Anschluss with Switzerland, not Germany.
5) It was touch and go whether there was any majority in favour of Anschluss with Germany in 1919.

So it rather looks as though the plebiscite votes of 1921 are unreliable and their results therefore cannot be called in aid of any proposition that Austria was in favour of Anschluss without severe provisos.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Lamarck]

I have only ever posted that the the plebiscite results in Tyrol and Salzburg after the end of WWI show that there were certain areas in German-Austria that hoped for an Anschluss with Germany. The conduction of the plebiscites were still less flawed than the proposed Schuschnigg's plebiscite which you have time and time again referred to as proof that 66% of Austrians in 1938 were in favour of an independent Austria; even though Bukey stated that the Catholics and socialists soon changed their mind and supported the Anschluss which gave Hitler and the Nazis and unquestionable 66% in favour of the Anschluss.

Your last point is definitely valid, it was questionable at times between 1918-1938 whether a majority of Austrians would have actually voted for the Anschluss. I don't think any posts have ever said there was a concrete percentage that remained the same for a period of time. People's opinions change on things and various things need to be taken into account.

Nevertheless, your interesting find of "Austria at the Crossroads: The Anschluss and its Opponents" by Jody Abigail Manning does not provide any proof that support for the Anschluss became incredibly less popular between 1918-1934 which you have claimed. On the contrary, throughout the 1920s there were at times an increasing amount of support for the Anschluss from different sections of the Austrian population.

With regards to the Anschluss in 1938:

"It is an incontrovertible fact that many Austrians welcomed regime change and approved of the ‘Anschluss’ with Nazi Germany."

However, I find that she can also be very misleading, for example:

"Most reliable estimates concur that, held under free and democratic circumstances, it would have yielded at most thirty-five to forty per cent in favour of union with Nazi Germany; as it was the result was over 99 per cent."

The sources given are See: Erich Bielka, 'Wie viele Österreicher', 50. At any rate, only about a third of the population could be considered dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. See: Evan Burr Bukey, Hitlers Österreich, 58.

She seems to make the claim that one must have had to support the Nazis in order to support the Anschluss.