AUSTRIA - 1949
Gedye, G. E. R.
AUSTRIA - 1949 Part 1: The Road to Democracy By G. E, R. Gedye New Leader Correspondent in Central and South-Eastern Europe This U the first of two articles on Austria by G. E. H. Gedye. As...
...Promoters of Nazi ideology and profiteers of Nazi brutality, the Socialists undeviatingly proclaim, have forfeited forever the right to play the smallest part :n public life...
...There is, of course, no doubt that the Communists will make good use of the interval to pursue their campaign of slander against their Public Enemy Number One — the Austrian SocialDemocratic Party...
...Tins could have been done by a simple legislative measure, had it not been for the question of the boundaries of the two Provinces of Vienna and Lower Austria...
...In the case of a third bestial Gestapo chief, Sanitzer, who richly deserved the death sentence for his sickening brutalities, got off with life imprisonment...
...is of greater importance than might first appear...
...One of the objects(of this policy, the Communists continue, is to curry favor with the British and Americans, who despise the Socialists and give all their support to the reactionary Volkspartei...
...Such strong evidence of Trnka's brutalities was brought forward, despite his earlier acquittal, that there is to be a re-trial...
...Further, there is still a faint hope that the thousands of Austrians held as war prisoners in Russia may be released in time to be put on the voting roll...
...Nor will the country suffer if, when this now inevitable partnership dissolves, it leaves behind it the legacy of some measure of urbanity in ideological conflict such as so many Austrians And and envy in Britain...
...The Socialist Party, it is said, has moved so far to the right that it differs from its Volkspartei ally in the Coalition in little more than name and joins with it in oppressing the workers and encouraging the Nazis...
...Last month the same State Attorney a specialist in Nazi cases - conducted the charge against another of the Gestapo high-up...
...The;, do i„,t, f course, speak as "Nazis," but •'National-minded" individuals - ti:>' camouflage used by Seyss-Inquui t up to the invasion l>( Austria...
...But the Volkspartei (the Catholic Party) was in no hurry to face the electors and stood out for a trial of strength in the Autumn...
...Not so many years ago, he was expelled from Vienna by the Basis when they took over Austria, and shortly after that fled from them a second time when they marched Into Csechoslovakia...
...The Socialist Party will enter the elections, not only with a full Socialist program, but with its own complete Cabinet list as well...
...The official organ of its Catholic Youth section, the "Ruf der Jugend," has been silly enough to attempt indirect propaganda for that almost medieval anchronism, the Hapsburg Monarchy, in a lick-splittle notice thanking "Her Majesty," ex-Empress Zita, for a gift of Ameiican blankets for Catholic Youth...
...It is now possible to reveal that in Austrian Socialist circles, grave fears were entertained up to a fortnight ago that Russia might exercise the power she possesses to hinder, if not entirely prevent, such elections...
...As a result of conversations between the Russians and the Austrian Government, a compromise has been reached, the Austrians insuring that all measures affecting the elections will be embodied in a Constitutional law, thus submitting everything connected with the elections for the approval of the Allies...
...Resulting articles in the foreign press arc, of course, eagerly reproduced in the Communist ihcss here or in the obscure fellow-traveling weekly which the Austiian l'latts-Mills, Erwin Schai\f, euiinusly enough found the money to start immediately on his expulsion from the Socialist Party a couple of months ago...
...The workers have to slave at overtime and even work seven days a week, they continue, to obtain the bare necessities of life...
...The Socialists would be the first to admit that reactionaries, Austrofascists and incurable Nazis are not without any influence...
...Second, it is because, djstttl* their time* diaawirtcrieaJly areboth -sULatt^te^ - parties wfeoa#as* cosAmon psjt#ete ie the preservation of the State...
...Her shop windows present a false picture of prosperity, but they remain filed because nobody can buy the items on display...
...That the party is in a coalition with the Volkspartei — to which the Communists also belonged until a year ago—is due to the fact that with such a narrow margin of strength between the two parties, the country could not otherwise be governed...
...As head of the Vienna Bureau of the London Daitg HrraU...
...Gad re covers all of Southeastern Europe for that newspaper...
...This is particularly the case with the Americans, who started out with no contacts except in the Volkspartei, Disturbed by the Volkspartei's ineptitude in the economic field, and rudely shocked last year by the revelation of secret talks between Chancellor Figl, a member of that party, and the Communist Ernst Fischer, the Americans now attach at least as much, if not more, value to Socialist opinion and intentions...
...stupidity, sheer untruths and distorted half-truths...
...t. That is a typical fellow-traveler's version, compounded in roughly equal parts of...
...Even the Chamber of Commerce and the Industrialists' Association, traditionally bastions of reaction, have Socialist members for the first time — a Socialist Vice-Chairman in the one and a full Socialist section in the other...
...There you have our so-called 'Volks' Party the party of apologetic, yet shameless monorchism, of barely concealed leanings towards Fascism, the party of clericalism, of 'C.V.' favoritism and corruption...
...Another Volkspartei organ tried to present the Catholic dictatorship of Salazar in Portugal an ideal system...
...But a constitutional measure, unlike other laws, requires under the Control Agreement between the Allies and Austria the unanimous approval of the Allied Council before coming into effect, and (up to a fortnight ago) the Russians had let the Austrians know that they were not prepared to give theirs...
...Trnka...
...Although it can hardly bring them any great advantage in Austria, it may succeed in its real objective — damaging the name of that Party, and of Austria, abroad...
...What are the facts...
...it is osM wajpawrylo paint to the) fact that 45jfcfcent of Cabinet poets ate held by Socialists...
...This, with a largely peasant electorate, means that they cannot be held until the harvest is in...
...Agreement with the Russians took so long to achieve (there is still only a rough draft of the necessary electoral law in existence), that the Socialists have now had to admit that it is too late to hold elections in the Spring...
...Recriminations are bound to increase steadily throughout this electoral year, for — make no mistake about it - - the Socialists are out to win against the Volkspartei as much as against the Communists...
...THE EAGERNESS of influential sections of the Volkspartei to appease leading ex-Nazis has led to some disquieting results, especially in the law courts...
...The ideal of the Volkspartei," writes the official Socialist organ, "is a one-party State which differs from a Peoples' Democracy' dictatorship only in having a 'Christian - Corporative' instead of a Communist basis...
...This would KBble those who are anti-Clerical as mu as anti-Socialist to gather in their kn political party, without artificially Welling the number of the Volkspartei iutuch, at the moment, is given a monopoly of the bourgeois vote, while 'tile Communists compete with the Socialists for that of the workers...
...Greater Vienna, as established by Hitler, embraced so much of Lower Austria as to make Vienna unwieldy and the rump of Lower Austria too restricted as electoral districts...
...While the policy of the Socialists, precisely like that of the Communists, is to extend the hand of reconciliation towards rank and file exNazis (none of the three parties, of course, forgets that these will form a large proportion of the 40p,000 new voters), no prominent Nazi can expect anything but bitter hostility from the Socialists...
...The \ew Leader Is pleased to announce that Mr...
...THE COMMUNISTS paint Austi;ia_as u country masquerading as a democracy, but actually reactionary and fascist—in which, according to one recent version, the reactionaries "hold greater power and are more firmly entrenched than under Dollfuss and Schuschnigg...
...His books include "The Revolver Republic," "Heirs to the Hapaburgs," and "Betrayal in Central Europe...
...THE SOCIALISTS were for Spring elections (as were also the Communists) mainly in order to avoid the unsettling effect of electoral campaigns over a longer period...
...Their Socialist press continually warns its uneasy bedfellow in the present coalition, the Volkspartei, of the dangers of their coquetting with leading ex-Nazis, just as they denounce the Volkspartei'a backroom boys: ex-Heimwehrmen, reactionary bankers and industrialists...
...Anyone with the least inside knowledge of Socialist activities and thought in Austria knows how baseless the propaganda is which talks about a "move to the Right...
...Thus, .is the Socialists warn them, the Vol/'.-.-;£1b*r Unton *rt rk*ing both an Bp fcraah-ap of the eoalitton, and Kalian demand far a '•purge** on the EpJUsr Hungarian Uvea...
...No opportunity is missed by fellow-traveling writers and politicians visiting Austria to support this campaign, and more than une gullible short-term visitor has fallen into the Communist trap...
...VIENNA...
...Economically, Austria is equally double-faced, according to the Communist propagandists...
...Not so the Volkspartei who, tic-pde the fact that many of its leadc: , knew Nazi concentration camps fioni the inside, have in several province--, notably Styria, admitted un;epent1114 Nazis to influential posts...
...To alter such boundaries involves a change in the Constitution, although the necessary administrative changes already have been made in practice...
...The Socialists, if they have ne certain prospect of being able to form a strong government against the VolJcgpartet after the elections, although that is their aim, they have hope of becoming the stronger^ party and of receiving correspondingly more key Mir,isteries in any new coalition...
...Lassmann, actually had to be removed from the ease because of his deliberate efforts to minimize the guilt of the accused...
...An essential preliminary was the passing of a new electoral law...
...Ebner, the State Attorney, Dr...
...the Russians in return promising not to be obstructive about it...
...This man was actually acquitted of charges of brutality, despite the long array of witnesses with, harrowing stories of the agonies they, had suffered in Trnka's section...
...The Marshall Plan is breaking down, they argue, because manufacturers refuse to pay for imports which they expected to get for nothing, Austria's trade with the West, from whom she needs machines, is falling off...
...The elections of November 1945 were hold by virtue of a special law which established procedure for that occasion only, and provided that the next elections must bp held within four years...
...Although completely defenseless, she is pictured as the spearhead of warmongering Britain and America against the peace-loving (yet heavily armed) Peoples' Democracies by whom she is surrounded...
...And so forth...
...The publicity given in the Socialist press to the scandals of these and other Nazi trials was largely responsible for the countermeasures eventualy taken...
...Nor is there any longer any truth that the influence of the British <hd Aasa^rfcue aut^ttos will be wtos' Heimwehr oaronsv Mast Western representatives in Austria, whether or no< they are opposed—as most of them are —to socialism at home, believe that the strongest bulwarks against the Communist peril are to be found not in the Volkspartei, but among the Socialists...
...To dispose of |he absurd statement that reaction is fDOre powerfully entrenched than it Iras under the semi-fascist, totalitarian jtgimes of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, ¦ tin jar which Jyth4Paru\antont and the U4^H&wSe wmmi...
...In abolishing all Hitler's measures at one swoop in 1945, the Allies excepted only the redrawing of the internal provincial boundaries...
...It may therefore be useful to indicate what is the usual "Party Line" on Austria and the democratic Socialists, and to compare it with a few facts...
...SOCIALISTS have pointed out other attempts to introduce the thin edge of reaction into the less prominent part of the Volkspartei press...
...THESE ARE the facts...
...Gedye will serve as correspondent for Southeast Europe...
...Austria—The announcement on January 16 by the Socialist Minister of Social Welfare, Karl Maisel, that general elections will be held in October 1949...
...At a recent trial of a notorious Gestapo tortuie chambers director...
...Hence Sofijct insistence — to which for some ¦pen the British authorities here turn ffjjiaf ear—that a fourth Party should ^sanctioned by the Allies...
...One advantage in the delay is that the results of the long overdue census to be held in February will now form the basis for the new electoral rolls...
Vol. 32 • March 1949 • No. 10
