887 X . FINAL CONCLUSION 1 . THE LONG ROAD TO BRUSSELS: ATTEMPTS, FAILURES AND SUCCESSES – EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL FACTORS In the wake of World War I, four great European empires collapsed, and specifically, in chronological order, the Russian Tsarist Empire (1917), the German Empire of the Kaiser (1918), the Habsburg Monarchy (1918), and the Ottoman Empire (1922–23). The political, economic, and psychological consequences for those generations of people who were accustomed to living in those great empires over centuries proved to be catastrophics. That was true in particular for the empire on the Danube. It was not by chance that the “Paneurope” construct of ideas and the movement accompanied by it which had been initiated by Count Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi found very fertile ground in Vienna, where the collapse and end of the Habsburg empire was felt especially bitterly in its capital. Added to this was the forced Treaty of Saint-Germain (1919) as a foiled Austrian state treaty, which had to be painfully perceived as the outcome of the bankrupt assets of the empire on the Danube. The new republican order was a founding of a state against its will (see chapter I). It was not “Europe”, but rather the German Reich that was regarded as provid- ing room for hope and a future, as was expressed in the Anschluss movement of the 1920s. The victorious powers attempted to suppress this both with the Geneva Protocols (1922) and through the Lausanne Loans (1932) and to cover it with a prohibition against Anschluss of, in each case, twenty years (up to 1942 and 1952, respectively). As a result of these dictates, the idea of “Europe” was not much more popular in Vienna (see chapter II, subchapters 3 and 8). While Ignaz Seipel flirted with the idea of Central Europe (Mitteleuropa), Johannes Schober was more oriented towards the German Reich. “Paneurope” remained a pipe dream. In contrast to that, the Central Europe project already had something of a more realistic effect. It was, however, likewise doomed to failure as a result of differences of opinion between the neighbor countries in the Danube region that came into question with it in the area of conflict between a broad reaching dependency of Austria upon the League of Nations and only restricted sovereignty with a view towards Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The loss of the Central Europe idea for Austria was also tied to Seipel’s departure from the political stage in 1931–32. Interestingly enough, this also corresponded 888 X. Final Conclusion with the German-Austrian customs union project that was advocated by Schober through the process of secret diplomacy (see chapter II, subchapter 7). The German Reich also continued to remain a fixed point for Austria’s foreign policy in the 1930s. While Berlin pushed for a bilateral customs union, Vienna vacillated and remained undecided until an indiscretion there in the matter which had been kept secret provoked international condemnation and caused the plan’s downfall. France and Czechoslovakia immediately lodged a protest against the customs union project. After the Briand Plan of 1930 was received by both Germany and Austria with comments ranging from reservations to rejection, the Tardieu Plan of 1932 for the formation of a confederation of all of the states neighboring the Danube came too late to still have any chance at realization. Aus- tria was already too closely tied to Rome, and it was then willing to move forward in a consistent manner with the “Rome Protocols”, an alliance with both Fascist Italy and revisionist Hungary. Italy’s Abyssinian War starting in 1935 put Austria completely on the defensive, and the July Agreement with Nazi Germany (1936) turned it into a satellite with only a limited lifespan (chapter II, subchapters 8, 9). The Austrian exile comprised both the period of the authoritarian corporative state (Ständestaat) (1934–1938) and Hitler’s totalitarian dictatorship (1938–45). It gathered in Brno, Brussels, Paris, London, New York, and Moscow and was correspondingly dispersed, disparate, ideologically heterogeneous, and politically disunited, such that during all these years, no unified government-in-exile was achieved. The debates revolved around greater German solutions and small Aus- trian constructs. For one group, and specifically the socialists, Austria should still belong to a (socialist) German nation that had been freed of fascism in order to realize the all-German revolution within a socialist Europe that had already been hoped for back in 1918–19. For the other group, christian socials and monarchists, a Danube federation, the Habsburg restoration, or a “Southern German league of states” were topics, while the communists were the first to speak out for a separate and independent Austria. But for all of the exile groups involved, Europe as a topic was on the whole only a subordinate theme and consequently a second-class one (chapter II, subchapters 11 and 12). During the period from 1945–47 through 1953, decisions were made that would set the course for the future. The first steps were taken in the direction of cooperation with Western European governments. With the formulation and propagation of the victim thesis in 1945–46, not only could the demand for the return of South Tyrol be justified, good legitimization could also be found for re- ceiving foreign aid (funds by UNRRA, GARIOA, Interim and Extended Interim Aid, and the ERP). The integral South Tyrol matter could not, however, be pushed through. Rather, there was only a questionable autonomy solution in 1948 which was followed by decades of strife. The victim status of Austria that was success- fully asserted also supported the special case thesis in terms of Western orienta- tion policy. Its participation in the Marshall Plan had priority and in 1947–48, that 1. The Long Road to Brussels: Attempts, Failures and Successes 889 was more important than the concluding of the State Treaty. The preservation of a unified state in a divided Europe through the validity of the ERP for the entire country ranked in significance ahead of the conclusive resolution of Austria’s in- ternational status. A search for balance that was always a difficult one along with a tightrope act between East and West were necessary in order to maintain the Four Powers consensus in Austria or not to threaten it. That also led to that fact that membership in NATO had to in no way come into question and in the best case, only a ‟secret” (pseudo) partnership with the West could exist in terms of security policy (chapter III, subchapters 3, 4, 5, 6). Towards the end of the war, Coudenhove-Kalergi returned from exile in the US and settled at first in Gstaad in the Berner Oberland in Switzerland, where he advocated for the idea of a European Parliamentary Union. In a sort of pincer movement between American reconstruction aid and parliamentary involvement, he hoped for the creation of a movement for a European constitution, which was not to be fulfilled. In the meantime, the ERP mutated from a welfare and aid program into a reconstruction and modernization program for Austria. Its West- ern orientation took place through the process of trade liberalization within the framework of the OEEC starting from 1948 and of GATT from 1951. But the ERP was also effective through the counterpart funds. Through its membership in the European Payment’s Union (EPU), Austria had participated early on in a multilateral balance of payments in Western Europe. Within that context, a clear reorientation took place of Austrian foreign trade in the direction of the West and the more or less secret handling of the US embargo policy against the East. What was conspicuous and considered by France and the Soviet Union in an increasing- ly critical manner was also the interweaving of trade and economic policy with the Federal Republic of Germany that was becoming closer and closer, which was a result of the cessation of trade with Central and Eastern parts of Europe and which threatened to turn Austria into an appendage of West Germany (chap- ter III, subchapters 7, 8, 9). Against the background of the German question that had remained open (1952–55), Austria, with the maintaining of the Four Powers administration, appeared in contrast to be a good example for its solution. An initial cautious ap- proach with the Council of Europe began early on: there was an Austrian observer status in the Consultative Assembly by the Nationalrat starting in 1949 and then by the Federal Government from 1953 with Eduard Ludwig (ÖVP) and Bruno Pittermann (SPÖ). Austria also occupied the same position with the High Author- ity of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) when with Carl Bobleter (ÖVP) and Fritz Kolb (SPÖ), coalition representation that was proportionally bal- anced was also established in Luxembourg (chapter III, subchapters 10, 11). During the period between 1953 and 1960, decisions were once again made by the Austrian side that would set the course for the future and which would carry significance up to the end of the 1980s. In contrast to later years, there 890 X. Final Conclusion was a party consensus on Europe policy that only diversified in the following period. After the end of the Marshall Plan program in 1953, when new options emerged for a concluding of the State Treaty, Austria stopped further steps to- wards integration with the ECSC in 1954. In the spring of 1955, Austria made use of the window of opportunity for the finalizing and signing of the State Treaty through a “ One-Plus-Four” solution with the four occupying powers. The Austria solution with the State Treaty and neutrality also triggered a multifaceted inter- nal and international debate about the possibility of a model case for Germany with which, however, Vienna behaved in a restrained manner: new complica- tions were to be avoided, but before 1955 movement was in many cases in the shadow of the German question, which was more important to the victorious powers than Austria was.