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JULIUS DEUTSCH Dr. Deutsch, commander of the Austrian Schutz­ bund (republican guard), lost his left eye in the revolt herein described. .... THE CIVIL WAR IN AUSTRIA A First-Hanel Account from Eye-Witnesses anel Participants By JULIUS DEUTSCH Commander, the Austrian Republican Guard Translated by David P. Berenberg The Socialist Party, National Headquarters Chicago, 1934 Copyright, 1934 by the Socialist Parry of the United States of America PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. ~:;)212 Julius Deutsch: "Der Buergerkrieg in Oesterreich," was first published in the German language as the eighth volume of the series, "Problems of Socialism." Copyright, 1934, by Druckund Verlag­ sanstalt "Graphia," G. m. b. H., Karls- bad, Czechoslovakia. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE I. POLITICAL CURRENTS AND CROSS CURRENTS. ............. .. 9 II. THE RULERS ........................................ .. 11 III. THE MILITARY LINE-UP. .............................. .. 14 IV. TENSE DAYS ........................................ .. 18 V. THE STORM BREAKS. ................................. .. 22 VI. THE FIRST BATTLES: Margareten and Meidiing :..... .. 25 VII. FAVORITEN AND SIMMERING 28 VIII. OTTAKRING 31 IX. THE BATTLE AT THE KARL MARX HOF 33 X. FLORIDSDORF.......................... 39 XI. TREASON WITHIN THE SCHUTZBUND: Resistance Wanes .:. 47 XII. LOWER AUSTRIA REMAINS QUIET. ...................... .. 50 XIII. THE FIGHTING IN UPPER AUSTRIA. ..................... .. 52 XIV. THE FIGHTING IN STYRIA 58 XV. THE VENGEANCE OF THE VICTORS 64 XVI. COURT MARTIAL .67 XVII. FLIGHT ' 73 XVIII.. EPILOGUE 78 FOREWORD As this translation of Julius Deutsch's stirring description of the civil war in Austria was in preparation, the news flashed across the sea that Engelbert Dollfuss, the red-handed murderer of February, was dead. He had been shot by the Nazis, who had after all attempted a "putsch." All his backing and filing, all his catering to Austrian chauvinism, to the Church, to the Austrian industrialists, to Mussolini, had been in vain. In vain, too, his determination to sacrifice the Socialist workers in his gamble for power. He who had lived by the sword, had died by the sword. The death of Dollfuss has not profited the Nazis. Their "putsch" proved abortive. The four thousand lives it wasted have brought nothing. Its secret sponsor, Hitler, stands convicted before the world as the criminal he is. He stands alone. F@r the moment no one dares, by showing him friendship, to assume even remote responsi­ bility for his deeds. In Austria Schuschnigg, Starhemberg and Fey are in power now, as they were before. Or rather, the sinister alliance of the black clericals, the junkers, the industrialists and Mussolini, which is back of them as it was back of Dollfuss, is in power. But Austria is on the brink of a volcano. Perhaps before these words are printed the picture will have changed, and the evil forces let loose in the world in 1914 will have claimed more victims. Austria is to-day the focus of world politics. Not since Sarajevo has there been so delicate a balance between the forces of war and peace. Italy, Germany, Jugoslavia fiover over Austria like vultures waiting for a man to die. They look suspiciously at each other, as ready to spring at each other as at prostrate Austria. In the background stand France and England, fearful of the issue if the smaller powers let greed lead them to war, doubtful of their ability to localize the war if war comes. Within Austria there is desolation. The February battles and the Nazi "putsch" have accounted for 10,000 lives-and the end is not yet. There may be other revo­ lutions and counter revolts. Economic life is at low ebb. Poverty and misery and fear are masters on the Danube. And there is little to hope for. The forces that produced this chaos are the same in Austria as the world over. It is nothing new that the "haves" should defend their property with bitter violence against the "have-nots." This struggle-the class-struggle-is not the work of one man or of groups of men. But it can be shaped by men. In Austria the struggle takes its present bloody form because one man who had power used it for self­ aggrandizement. What MussoHni had done, what Hitler succeeded in doing, that Dollfuss tried to do, and failed. History would smile at his failure if it could forget the 10,000 that are dead. There is only one force that can rescue Austria from disaster. The workers' move­ ment, seemingly crushed now and forced underground, will one day re-assert its power. Then Austria will once more be reckoned among the civilized nations. -DAVID P. BERENBERG. 7 L PoliticaJ Currents and Cross-Currents The day on which Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, raised the question of the fate of Austria. The question whether the little Danubian Republic would follow in the footsteps of its big brother, or whether it would go its own way, had to be decided. Fascism or democracy-that was the question. Organized labor in Austria was in the front ranks of the fight for the democratic solution. In a bitter struggle that extended over more than a decade, the Social Democratic Party and the free trades unions had exerted all their powers to save democracy. Nothing is more ridiculous than the assertion that the Austrian Social Democrats were "Bolshevists" who aimed at a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Only by twisting and distorting in the most brazen fashion the statements expressing adherence to democracy, con­ tained in the Linz Program (1926), could the reaction find the shadow of an excuse for this assertion. The fascist agitators wandered up hill and down dale, in their efforts to frighten peasants and bourgeoisie with the specter of an allegedly threat­ ening bolshevist revolution. When, then, a clash between demonstrating workers and the police, on July 15, 1927, in Vienna, caused the death of ninety people, this shocking accidental occurrence was misrepresented as a preconceived and planned attempt at insurrection. The incompetence and brutality of the Viennese police, who in their blind rage shot at defenseless people, was charged not to the police who did the shooting but to the workers who were shot. In spite of the fact that the government, after this fatal day, ever more clearly placed itself on the side of the fascists, the workers remained calm and restrained. In a bitter guerilla warfare they fought with democratic methods against the growing power of fascism. The Republican Schutzbund (League of Defense), the defensive organization of the proletariat, was in no way intended to be an offensive weapon against other classes. It was, and was meant to be, nothing but a means of defense for the working class. It was founded only to ward off the danger of fascism, and in the ten years of its effectiveness it stood the test of political responsibility, and proved its . reliability as a democratic force. Aside from the organized working class there were only a few resolute champions of democracy. Among the peasants, who for the most part were in the camp of the "Christian Socialists," several leaders, among them the agrarian chieftains Reither, Schlegel and Rehrl, were engaged in serving democracy. But their behavior at critical moments was always too feeble to carry any weight. The other peasant party in Austria, the Landbund 9 (Agrarian Federation) kept vacilating between democracy and the fascist ideology. The democrats among the peasants, Franz Winkler and the engi­ neer Schumy, were as little to be relied upon as were the very few repre­ sentatives of the petty bourgeois (Kollmann) and the proletarian secrions (Kunschak) within the Christian Social Party, who in their hearts favored democracy, but only rarely plucked up enough courage to take an open stand in its favor. The bourgeois classes of Austria and their political parties were com­ bined in the united front against Marxism. God knows what the low-browed respectables of small Alpine towns and market-places imagined Marxism to be. None of them had ever seen a single line of the writings of Karl Marx, but perhaps for that very reason they were anti-Marxists, body and soul. Consciousness of their own low level of civilization, and envy of the rising cultural level of the working class, fused in a synthesis of hate against which no appeal to reason could make headway. Under these circumstances it was not strange that the fascist ideology made rapid progress in these circles. For all that, the fascist organizations remained relatively weak. The Heimwehr (Home Defense Corps), the true agents of Austrian fascism, had never achieved any great significance numer­ ically, and in the first months of 1933, when Hitler rose to power in Germany, they showed definite signs of decline. What the Heimwehr lacked in organ­ ized strength was fully made good by the confusion that seized broad strata of the bourgeoisie, which, animated by a petty but venomous hatred for the workers, became overnight the prey of fascist word-weavings. Behind the Heimwehr stood the great landed proprietors, who even under the republic had remained an influential class, and the former officers of the Hapsburg armies. The Heimwehr also received money from the indus­ trialists. In foreign politics the Heimwehr was an adherent of Italy. Just as the Austrian National Socialists received their orders from Berlin, so the Heim­ wehr took its orders from Rome. These different attitudes in foreign affairs led to a conflict between the Heimwehr and the National Socialists, although both tendencies were in other matters united by a common fascist ideology. The two fascist groups of Austria served for cold cash as mercenaries of Berlin or Rome. \ Since Hitler could not reach an agreement with Mussolini over the fate of Austria, the two fascist groups had to wage war on one another.

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