Nazi Party Ban of 1933 and The Waldheim Affair 1986

Nazi Party Ban of 1933

“After the elimination of parliament Austria’s conservative government soon banned political parties. The Nazis’ successes at local elections and Nazi terrorist attacks meant that their party was forced to disband as early as 1933. Fanatical supporters went to Germany, where the Nazi Party had taken power (and where SA men founded the Austrian Legion). Nazi Germany increased diplomatic and economic pressure. Additionally, Nazi organization within Austria, which were actually banned, became more powerful due to a lack of counter-strategies and failure of the authorities. Nazis continued to organize within secret associations, especially in gymnastics clubs. Also the state considered women virtually incapable of political activism, meaning that Nazi women were able to maintain important structures in spite of the ban. Constant terrorist attacks, the open use of violence, and propaganda showed that the state was losing control. In 1934, the attempted putsch by Nazi supporters soon failed but they had murdered Chancellor Dollfuss. Within Austria, therefore, preparations for the Anschluss (annexation) in 1938 had been going on for a long time. In some places, particularly in Styria and Carinthia, local Nazis took control even before the arrival of the German troops.”

The Waldheim Affair 1986

“In 1986 a debate during the presidential election campaign would change Austria. Kurt Waldheim, the presidential candidate for the Austrian People’s Party and the former Secretary General of the United Nations, was confronted with his membership in a Nazi organization and his wartime deployment in the Balkans. In response to the suspicions that he had participated in war crimes as an officer of the Wehrmacht (the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935-1945), Waldheim defended himself by saying that he had been doing ‘his duty as a soldier’. At a stroke, this statement brought to light the contradictions inherent in the official victim thesis. Waldheim’s concealed wartime past in the Wehrmacht became a symbol of how Austria had dealt with its National Socialist past.

Later it became clear that Waldheim himself was not directly responsible for any war crimes, but must have known about the terror and deportations. His evasive behavior made the ‘Waldheim Affair’ a turning point in how Nazi crimes were remembered.

The ‘Waldheim Affair’ motivated an entire generation to fight against the suppression and downplaying of the crimes committed by Austrians during the years of Nazi rule and to campaign for the memory of the victims of National Socialism. This provided the impetus for the first Holocaust memorials.”

 

Disposing of Hitler exhibition at the Vorarlberg Museum, Bregenz, Austria.