World War One Veterans in Austria and Czechoslovakia [1 ed.] 9783737011341, 9783847111344

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ZEITGESCHICHTE 47. Jahrgang, Heft 1 (2020) Herausgeber: Univ.-Prof. DDr. Oliver Rathkolb (Geschäftsführung), Verein zur wissenschaftlichen Aufarbeitung der Zeitgeschichte, c/ o Institut für Zeitgeschichte der Universität Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4/ Hof 1, A-1090 Wien, Tel.: 0043 1 4277 41205, E-Mail Redaktion: [email protected], [email protected]; E-Mail Rezensionen: [email protected] Diese Zeitschrift ist peer-reviewed. Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in HISTORICAL ABSTRACTS, AMERICA: HISTORY AND LIFE, CURRENT CONTENTS-ARTS & HUMANITIES, and ARTS & HUMANITIES CITATION INDEX. Bezugsbedingungen Erscheinungsweise: viermal jährlich Erhältlich in jeder Buchhandlung oder bei der HGV Hanseatische Gesellschaft für Verlagsservice mbH. Ein Abonnement verlängert sich automatisch um ein Jahr, wenn die Kündigung nicht bis zum 1. Oktober erfolgt ist. Die Kündigung ist schriftlich zu richten an: HGV Hanseatische Gesellschaft für Verlagsservice mbH, Holzwiesenstr. 2, D-72127 Kusterdingen, E-Mail: [email protected], Tel.: 07071 / 9353-16, Fax: -93. Preise und weitere Informationen unter www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com. Offene Beiträge sind jederzeit willkommen. Bitte richten Sie diese und andere redaktionelle Anfragen an die Redaktionsadresse. Für unverlangt eingesandte Manuskripte übernehmen Redaktion und Verlag keine Haftung. Die in den einzelnen Beiträgen ausgedrückten Meinungen sind ausschließlich die Meinungen der Autorinnen. Sie decken sich nicht immer mit den Meinungen von Herausgeberinnen und Redaktion.

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ZEITGESCHICHTE

Ehrenpräsidentin: em. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Erika Weinzierl († 2014) Herausgeber : Univ.-Prof. DDr. Oliver Rathkolb Redaktion: em. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Rudolf Ardelt (Linz), ao. Univ.-Prof.in Mag.a Dr.in Ingrid Bauer (Salzburg/ Wien), SSc Mag.a Dr.in Ingrid Böhler (Innsbruck), Dr.in Lucile Dreidemy (Wien), Prof. Dr. Michael Gehler (Hildesheim), ao. Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. Robert Hoffmann (Salzburg), ao. Univ.Prof. Dr. Michael John / Koordination (Linz), Assoz. Prof.in Dr.in Birgit Kirchmayr (Linz), Dr. Oliver Kühschelm (Wien), Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ernst Langthaler (Linz), Dr.in Ina Markova (Wien), Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Wolfgang Mueller (Wien), Univ.-Prof. Dr. Bertrand Perz (Wien), Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dieter Pohl (Klagenfurt), Dr.in Lisa Rettl (Wien), Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Dirk Rupnow (Innsbruck), Mag.a Adina Seeger (Wien), Ass.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Valentin Sima (Klagenfurt), Prof.in Dr.in Sybille Steinbacher (Frankfurt am Main), Dr. Christian H. Stifter / Rezensionsteil (Wien), Priv.Doz.in Mag.a Dr.in Heidemarie Uhl (Wien), Gastprof. (FH) Priv.-Doz. Mag. Dr. Wolfgang Weber, MA, MAS (Vorarlberg), Mag. Dr. Florian Wenninger (Wien), Assoz.-Prof.in Mag.a Dr.in Heidrun Zettelbauer (Graz). Peer-Review Committee (2018–2020): Ass.-Prof.in Mag.a Dr.in Tina Bahovec (Institut für Geschichte, Universität Klagenfurt), Prof. Dr. Arnd Bauerkämper (Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin), Günter Bischof, Ph.D. (Center Austria, University of New Orleans), Dr.in Regina Fritz (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Universität Wien/Historisches Institut, Universität Bern), ao. Univ.Prof.in Mag.a Dr.in Johanna Gehmacher (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Universität Wien), Univ.Prof. i. R. Dr. Hanns Haas (Universität Salzburg), Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. Ernst Hanisch (Salzburg), Univ.-Prof.in Mag.a Dr.in Gabriella Hauch (Institut für Geschichte, Universität Wien), Univ.-Doz. Dr. Hans Heiss (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Universität Innsbruck), Robert G. Knight, Ph.D. (Department of Politics, History and International Relations, Loughborough University), Dr.in Jill Lewis (University of Wales, Swansea), Prof. Dr. Oto Luthar (Slowenische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Ljubljana), Hon.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Neugebauer (Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, Wien), Mag. Dr. Peter Pirker (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Universität Innsbruck), Prof. Dr. Markus Reisenleitner (Department of Humanities, York University, Toronto), Dr.in Elisabeth Röhrlich (Institut für Geschichte, Universität Wien), ao. Univ.Prof.in Dr.in Karin M. Schmidlechner-Lienhart (Institut für Geschichte/Zeitgeschichte, Universität Graz), Univ.-Prof. i. R. Mag. Dr. Friedrich Stadler (Wien), Assoc.-Prof. Dr. Gerald Steinacher (University of Nebraska), Assoz.-Prof. DDr. Werner Suppanz (Institut für Geschichte/Zeitgeschichte, Universität Graz), Univ.-Prof. Dr. Philipp Ther, MA (Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte, Universität Wien), Prof. Dr. Stefan Troebst (Leibniz-Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa, Universität Leipzig), Prof. Dr. Michael Wildt (Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

zeitgeschichte 47. Jg., Heft 1 (2020)

World War One Veterans in Austria and Czechoslovakia Edited by Laurence Cole, Rudolf Kucˇera, Hannes Leidinger and Ina Markova

V& R unipress Vienna University Press

Contents

Laurence Cole / Rudolf Kucˇera Editorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Articles Rudolf Kucˇera / Hannes Leidinger Challenges for Science, Threats to the Nation. Austrian and Czech War Neurotics as Examples of a Transnational History of Trauma (1914–1938)

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Verena Moritz Half-hearted Reconciliation: The “Federal Association of former Austrian POWs” and the Question of Veterans’ Internationalism in Interwar Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Julia Walleczek-Fritz Staying Mobilized: Veterans’ Associations in Austria’s Border Regions Carinthia and Styria during the Interwar Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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V#clav Sˇmidrkal The Defeated in a Victorious State: Veterans of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the Bohemian Lands and Their (Re)mobilization in the 1930s

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Radka Sˇustrov# The Struggle for Respect: The State, World War One Veterans, and Social Welfare Policy in Interwar Czechoslovakia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Abstracts

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

6

Contents

Reviews Linda Erker Emmerich T#los, unter Mitarbeit von Florian Wenninger, Das austrofaschistische Österreich 1933–1938 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Andreas Huber Lisa Rettl, Jüdische Studierende und Absolventen der Wiener Tierärztlichen Hochschule 1930–1947 / Lisa Rettl, Die Wiener Tierärztliche Hochschule und der Nationalsozialismus. Eine Universitätsgeschichte zwischen dynamischer Antizipation und willfähriger Anpassung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Nathalie Patricia Soursos Johannes Hürter/Hermann Wentker (Hg.), Diktaturen. Perspektiven der zeithistorischen Forschung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Authors

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Laurence Cole / Rudolf Kucˇera

Editorial

Of the many novels written in interwar Europe about World War One, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues, 1929) achieved world- wide fame in a way that few – if any – others could match. Just as interesting, but subsequently less noticed, is his second, follow-up novel, The Way Back (Der Weg zurück), which recounts the journey home of a group of young German soldiers after the armistice on the Western Front. The soldiers had been recruited young and some of them faced the prospect of having to finish their schooling on their return, while others returned to wife and family or the parental home. With great skill and insight, Remarque depicts the start of demobilization and the soldiers’ difficult reintegration into civilian life. In doing so, he addresses a whole panorama of themes that have been of great interest to historical scholarship: the psychological damage caused by the war, the potential for violence, altered authority relationships, the distance between those who had experienced combat and the civilians at home, the nature of personal relationships, the political turmoil of the immediate post-war months, and conflicts over the meaning of the war.1 One key scene towards the end of the book sees Georg Rahe leaving his flat in uniform, to the astonishment of some of his former comrades, in order to re-enlist in the German army. Seemingly, Georg had given up the struggle to return to “normal life” and saw no alternative but to go back to being a soldier. Taking leave from his close friend, Ernst Birkholz, Georg speaks in a staccato stream of consciousness, pointing to the houses in the street: “All trenches, Ernst […] nothing but dugouts – the war goes on – but a mean war – each against the other.”2 In many respects, therefore, Remarque’s work encapsulates precisely the numerous issues bound up with demobilization and the

1 Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (eds.), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 2 Erich Maria Remarque, Der Weg zurück (Berlin: Licensed edition Axel Springer AG, 2013; original 1931), 183.

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socio-political transition accompanying the end of the fighting, while showing that the war was not over in 1918 – either at the individual or the societal level. The question of what became of former soldiers in Central Europe after 1918 lies at the centre of this special issue. Returning soldiers were, of course, known throughout Europe’s history from the ancient era onwards, but the veteran as a cultural and political actor and the object of state policy is a comparatively recent phenomenon, deriving above all from the nineteenth century. The large-scale battles of the Napoleonic Wars left numerous veterans across the continent after 1815 and they subsequently formed part of the social question, as the first veterans’ associations arose in Britain, France, the German states, and the Habsburg Monarchy.3 However, it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that veterans’ associations developed into large scale organizations, mainly on a self-help, mutual insurance basis. As such, they formed important lobby groups in a period of mass politicization, growing nationalism and societal militarization, and state governments became increasingly concerned to channel and control their activities.4 While these developments meant that the “military veteran” was already a recognizable figure at the start of the twentieth century, the First World War massively changed the scale and nature of the “veteran question.” The enormous impact of mass deaths and destruction, the demise of old empires, and the rise of new nation states resulting from total war made the fate of ex-soldiers into a key issue that shaped all societies in interwar Europe. The unprecedented number of combatants, together with the severity and frequency of injuries incurred in industrialized warfare, meant that the relationship between ex-soldiers and the state became a crucial issue for all governments. In short, every belligerent state, as well as the new states emerging from the ruins of the fallen Empires, had to come to terms with hundreds of thousands of war veterans. With most states having become more interventionist during the course of the war, as well as having raised popular expectations or offered incentives through propaganda, war veterans and their dependents raised major questions for welfare provisions, social policy, party politics and national memory cultures.5 3 See, for example, the contributions in Alan Forrest, Karen Hagemann and Jane Rendall (eds.), Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790–1820 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 4 See, among others, Harm-Peer Zimmermann, “Der feste Wall gegen die rote Flut”: Kriegervereine in Schleswig-Holstein 1864–1914 (Neumünster: Wachholtz Verlag, 1989); Thomas Rohkrämer, Der Militarismus der “kleinen Leute”: Die Kriegervereine im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1871–1914 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1990); Laurence Cole, Military Culture and Popular Patriotism in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 5 Cf. Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 2001); Chris Millington, From Victory to Vichy : Veterans in Inter-War France (Manchester – New York:

Editorial

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While there has been much recent research on war veterans in Germany and other European countries, other regions of Central and East-Central Europe have attracted noticeably less attention. For this reason, this special issue presents research on the comparative history of the World War One veterans in Austria and Czechoslovakia. This transnational investigation breaks new ground by comparing two neighbouring states that showed distinct patterns of immediate post-war reconstruction, as well as of subsequent development. While the social and discursive environment formed by a prima facie hegemonic “culture of victory” shaped developments in Czechoslovakia, Austria, on the contrary, was seemingly shaped by a “culture of defeat.” As the articles in this special issue show, however, there are good reasons for questioning the validity of this usual dichotomy between victory and defeat cultures, given that most of the “successor states” of the Habsburg Monarchy contained a mix of both. The articles focus on First World War veterans in Czechoslovakia and Austria as distinct social actors as well as the object of state policies and broader public discourse. The first contribution, by Rudolf Kucˇera and Hannes Leidinger, looks at psychologically damaged war returnees, their position in the new republics post-1918, and the policies and attitudes employed by the state and broader society to integrate or exclude them from the state-building process. It follows the psychiatric discussions about war-related mental illness, as well as more general discussions about interwar social provisioning for the war disabled. Despite the different situations in the two states regarding the war’s outcome, the article points to the prevailing similarities between the two countries. In general, medical experts observed neurotic soldiers with suspicion and did not view them within a medical framework, but rather in terms of financial constraints in the era of post-war reconstruction. Hence, war-related neurotic disorders became the object of exclusionary welfare provisions rather than of psychiatric care. The second article, by Verena Moritz, scrutinizes the only POW association that lasted throughout the interwar period in Austria. The Federal Association of former Austrian POWs (B.e.ö.K.) accepted the division between vanquished and victorious states in terms of its self-perception and its stated public mission. The article shows how the association’s attitudes mirrored the heterogeneous development of war remembrance in interwar Austria. Although the association Manchester University Press, 2012); Barbara Bracco, La patria ferita: I corpi dei soldati italiani e la Grande Guerra (Florence: Giunti Editore, 2012); Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman (eds.), The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (New York – Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin, Die Wunden des Staates: Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat in Österreich 1914–1938 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2015); John Paul Newman, Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building, 1903–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

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struggled to overturn the stigma of surrender attached to POWs in public perception, among its membership it nevertheless managed to convey the experience of captivity in terms of a victory of true humanity and mental vigour. On balance, however, the association participated in strengthening the authoritarian right in interwar Austria, not least because its leadership – dominated by former members of the Austro-Hungarian officer corps – enthusiastically supported the idea of “Anschluss”. Julia Walleczek-Fritz’s piece examines similar issues, but does so from an indepth, regional historical perspective. Based on a close reading of sources and literature connected to the predominantly right-wing war veterans’ scene in Carinthia and Styria, Walleczek-Fritz argues that a considerable proportion of local veterans never properly demobilized. Instead, veterans followed a path from military to political (re-)mobilization, which was caused by borderland conflicts and continuing social and political friction. Before coming under government control in the 1930s, however, the Styrian and Carinthian veterans’ associations in the 1920s cannot be characterized as paramilitary formations, despite interconnections at the individual level. Nevertheless, their support for right-wing ideological demands bolstered the burgeoning right-wing political space in Austria’s South, much as the B.e.ö.K. did at the state level. V#clav Sˇmidrkal then investigates World War One veterans from the Habsburg army and their (re)mobilization in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. While the state allowed “defeated” veterans to organize themselves into various associations that expressed different interpretations of wartime experiences, it was not willing to include them within its veterans’ policy, which gave preference to veterans who had volunteered for the victorious pro-Entente armies. However, in the late 1930s, the state additionally recognized volunteers from the post-1918 borderland wars as a new group of veterans and unified Czech veterans from the Austro-Hungarian Army into a group known as “Reservists and Ex-Soldiers” of the Czechoslovak Army. The problem with integrating German-speaking veterans became internationalized by the fascist-dominated Comit8 International Permanent (CIP), which repeatedly thematicized the unequal treatment of Czech and German veterans and instrumentalized the myth of the frontline soldier in order to criticize Czechoslovak statehood. Hence, Sˇmidrkal illustrates the complexities behind the attempts to unite the highly diverse spectrum of war veterans’ associations in Czechoslovakia. Finally, Radka Sˇustrov# takes this argument further by scrutinizing welfare policies towards war veterans in interwar Czechoslovakia, which aimed not only at easing their complicated material situation but also at binding them closer to the democratic republic. Czechoslovakia developed its social welfare legislation for veterans immediately after the war, but the government only viewed legionnaires, invalids, professional soldiers, their relatives, and surviving family

Editorial

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members as worthy recipients of social welfare. The ideological basis for this policy was “politically desired heroism,” which defined what constituted a “rightful” entitlement to social provisions. While the state strove to find a balance between veterans’ wartime deeds and social welfare benefits, the veterans themselves formulated numerous criticisms of the existing welfare system and repeatedly expressed their dissatisfaction with it. Once again, therefore, the article lays bare the complicated relationship between a large number of former Austro-Hungarian soldiers and the newly established Czechoslovak nation state.

Articles

Rudolf Kucˇera / Hannes Leidinger

Challenges for Science, Threats to the Nation. Austrian and Czech War Neurotics as Examples of a Transnational History of Trauma (1914–1938)1

I.

Introduction

In March 1922, the Czechoslovak public was in uproar. The young republic was shaken by the murder of Prague goldsmith and clockmaker Josef Ledecky´ and his family, which stood out from other crimes in early postwar Czechoslovakia due to its brutality and the number of victims involved. The brothers Jan and Josef Kol&nsky´ sought out the Prague shopkeeper as their victim and broke into his house, where they brutally beat to death, not only Ledecky´, but his wife and daughter as well. They stole a large sum of money, several watches, and valuables, before leaving the scene of the crime.2 Four days later, police arrested the Kol&nsky´ brothers based on eyewitness statements and other evidence; shortly thereafter, they both confessed to the multiple murders. The investigating detectives later remembered the case as the “crime of the century – the first time in decades that a whole family was murdered in Prague […] the public was going crazy […] there was panic everywhere, people locked their doors at night and installed nine locks, and were afraid to go outside after dark.”3 Public attention grew even more intense after the brothers’ trial in the autumn of 1922, when the criminal court in Prague publicly heard the circumstances of the crime and sentenced the older brother, Josef, to death. Although both brothers soon confessed due to the mounting evidence against them, before the trial a conflict arose between the prosecutor and the lawyers for the defense about the wider context and motive for the crime. Both brothers stated that they murdered for the money and valuables, with the result that the murders were quickly classified as an aggravated burglary. During the inves1 This paper was written as part of the bilateral Austrian-Czech project funded by the Austrian ˇ R), No. I 3125-G28 and GF Science Fund (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GA C 17–33831 L. We are most grateful for this generous support. 2 For more on the case, see Miloslav Mart&nek, Jak si smrt dosˇla pro kata a dalsˇ& mordy z dob c. k. a prvn& republiky (Prague: Cosmopolis, 2015), 114–62. 3 Zdene˘k Bubn&k, Detektiv vzpom&n# (Prague: Nasˇe vojsko, 1969), 61–63.

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tigation, however, the perpetrators’ traumatic wartime experiences had emerged, and this helped the two lawyers, Frantisˇek Sˇtern and Jan Drasˇar, to come up with a specific defense strategy. In his testimony before the court, Josef Kol&nsky´ defended himself by stating that, while he was serving in the Austro-Hungarian army in June 1917, a grenade exploded close to him during an attack on the Italian front and he was knocked unconscious. He came to in the hospital and began spewing blood. Having suffered severe concussion, he remained in hospital for nine to ten months before being discharged. However, due to his injuries at the front, even after his release from hospital Josef Kol&nsky´ suffered from “[…] nausea, his hands shook, and he could not think and make decisions in the same way that he could before his concussion. […] after his discharge […], he was sent to a machine plant, where he would fix motors damaged by grenades and perform similar tasks. When his commanding lieutenant Korner […] got mad and made to strike him with a whip, he swung a hammer at him. For this offense he was charged with insurrection and sent before the military court, which acquitted him due to his health condition.”4

Similarly, his younger brother Jan related before the court his long military service and the trauma he had suffered serving Austria-Hungary on the Russian front. When the new Czechoslovak Republic was declared, he volunteered immediately for the army, with which he fought in the short war against Hungary in 1919. Witnesses who had known the brothers before the war testified to the changes in their personalities and their frequent seizures. Based on their testimony, the older brother’s lawyer, Frantisˇek Sˇtern, suggested in court that his client be psychiatrically evaluated, “because there are objective and subjective doubts that Josef Kol&nsky´ is non compos mentis.”5 Jan Drasˇar, the younger brother’s lawyer, agreed to this proposal for the same reasons.6 Declaring both defendants non compos mentis due to their wartime injuries would potentially have constituted a significant turning point in the trial, because – according to the criminal code then valid – the defendants could not be sentenced to a prison sentence, but only sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.7 However, the Prague court ultimately rejected the request to evaluate the defendants’ mental state. In sum, the main strategy for the defense, which sought to connect the 4 Prague Provincial Penal Court, box. 1631, sign. VR XXX 3912/22, Josef Kol&nsky´, fol. 262, Prague Provincial Archives/St#tn& oblastn& archiv v Praze. 5 Ibid., fol. 265. 6 Ibid. 7 Throughout the interwar period, Czechoslovakia applied the Habsburg Criminal Code of 1852, albeit with some slight modifications. For the issue of mental responsibility, see especially Law No. 117/1852 from 27 May 1852 (Criminal Code), par. 2, a) and b).

Rudolf Kucˇ era / Hannes Leidinger, Challenges for Science, Threats to the Nation

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violent crime to wartime trauma, quickly fell apart and the trial continued until the final sentences were handed down. This multiple murder case reveals the significance of war veterans’ mental trauma not just in the young Czechoslovak republic. The problems connected to these new types of war-related disorders posed a challenge throughout postwar Europe for medical professionals as well as the state. A growing number of hitherto unknown symptoms related to wartime mental suffering sparked intense debates about the essence of war trauma, its social and cultural costs in the postwar era, and ultimately about new forms of post-World War I subjectivities. These issues have also become the topic of a large body of work dealing with various European countries. Generally, the relevant scholarship resists the temptation to speculate about the “reality” or “authenticity” of traumatic pathologies and is interested instead in the ways individual suffering is constructed by various experts and public actors. As Paul Lerner explains at the outset of his landmark study : “This book responds to hysteria’s methodological challenges by embedding it in economic, military, and political contexts […] rather than judging its validity by today’s diagnostic standards as both real and constructed.”8 For Austria-Hungary, Hans-Georg Hofer follows Lerner in his analysis of “war neurosis” and also criticizes the search for what was “right” or “wrong” in theory and in practice.9 Especially since the 1990s, the growing literature on “shell shock” and “war neurosis,” has paved the way for a more comparative approach, both synchronic and diachronic.10 In particular, Peter Leese has examined the differences and 8 Paul Lerner, Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry, and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890–1930 (Ithaca – London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 6. 9 Hans-Georg Hofer, “Was waren ‘Kriegsneurosen’? Zur Kulturgeschichte psychischer Erkrankungen im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum: Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung/La Grande Guerra nell‘arco alpino: Esperienze e memoria, edited by Hermann J. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger (Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2006), 311–21, here 312. 10 When Robert Weldon Whalen reviewed Peter Leese’s “Shell Shock” in June 2003, he was still obliged to ask: “All good history generates more questions than answers, and certainly this is true of Leese’s work. Anyone interested in the issue longs for comparative studies. Did shell shock vary from nation to nation?” Robert Weldon Whalen, review of Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and British Soldiers of the First World War, by Peter Leese, The American Historical Review 108 (2003) 3: 916. Apart from Leese’s book, compare (among others): Hans Binneveld, From Shell Shock to Combat Stress: A Comparative History of Military Psychology (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997); Gregory M. Thomas, Treating the Trauma of the Great War: Soldiers, Civilians and Psychiatry in France 1914–1940 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009); Mark S. Micale and Paul Lerner (eds.), Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Fiona Reid, Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain 1914–1930 (London: Continuum, 2010); Louis Crocq, Les Bless8s psychiques de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2014); Jason Crouthamel and Peter Leese (eds.), Psy-

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similarities in a number of countries. Concentrating on World War I and its aftermath, the ensuing medical debate, and support for “ex-servicemen”, Leese refers to relevant studies by Fiona Reid and Gregory Thomas, stating that the French “situation contrasts starkly with the persistent attitudes in other countries during the interwar period: a charity ethos in Britain and a search for scapegoats in Germany. The 1919 pension laws in France brought in, as it turned out, a generous system of benefits.”11 Following Leese, this article explores further the transnational cultural history of World War I trauma and its subsequent treatment. However, it differs from current scholarship on how the destructive experience of World War I was variously dealt with in interwar Europe. Much recent historiography tends to draw a dividing line between the states that were defeated in the war and those that were treated as war victors. Within this schema, while the defeated states suffered long past 1918 from a war that “failed to end”12, many of the winning states enjoyed a faster recovery and postwar stabilization, paving the way for subsequent economic prosperity and social stability.13 However, new work suggests that postwar reconstruction could also be problematic in some of the victorious states. These, too, were obliged to cope with similar problems stemming from the war, which made simple narratives of victory potentially problematic.14

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chological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Peter Leese, review of Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain 1914–30, by Fiona Reid, and Treating the Trauma of the Great War : Soldiers, Civilians and Psychiatry in France 1914–1940, by Gregory M. Thomas, and The Politics of War Trauma: The Aftermath of World War II in Eleven European Countries, edited by Jolande Withuis and Annet Mooij, Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature 96 (2013) 1: 89–92, https://doi-org.uaccess.univie.ac. at/10.1111/1467–8314.12034. Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London: Penguin Books, 2016). Robert Gerwarth, “The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War,” Past & Present 200 (2008) 1: 175–209; Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, “Vectors of Violence: Paramilitarism in Europe after the Great War, 1917–1923,” Journal of Modern History 83 (2011) 3: 489–512; Ian Kershaw, “War and Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe,” Contemporary European History 14 (2005) 1: 107–23; John Horne, “Kulturelle Demobilmachung 1919–1939: Ein sinnvoller historischer Begriff ?,” in Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1919–1939, edited by Wolfgang Hardtwig (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 129–50; Dirk Schumann, “Europa, der Erste Weltkrieg und die Nachkriegszeit: Eine Kontinuität der Gewalt?,” Journal of Modern European History 1 (2003) 1: 24–43. Jakub Benesˇ, “The Green Cadres and the Collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918,” Past & Present 236 (2017) 1: 207–41; John Paul Newman, “Post-imperial and Post-war Violence in the South Slav Lands, 1917–1923,” Contemporary European History 19 (2010) 3: 249–65; G#bor Egry, “The World between Us: State Security and the Negotiation of Social Categories in Interwar Romania,” East Central Europe 44 (2017) 1: 17–46; Rudolf Kucˇera, “Exploiting

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Hence, this article examines two case studies, Czechoslovakia and Austria, which are usually seen as standing for victorious and defeated states respectively. It asks questions about the cultural production of war-related mental trauma in the relevant expert medical circles, as well as in the public realm. Czechoslovakia and Austria are well suited for comparison, firstly because both states emerged from the Habsburg Empire and thus shared a common historical experience that shaped public as well as expert discourses. Yet, at the same time, they parted ways significantly following 1918. Czechoslovakia stood officially on the side of the war winners and its political elites defined the new state in stark contrast to the fallen empire. Politics, culture, science, and all other human activities were expected to depart from the old traditions and to find new forms and practices that would better suit the needs of the democratic republic.15 In Austria, by contrast, the defeat in war did not bring a similar shared view of the future. The interwar Austrian republic was not built upon a narrative of worthwhile sacrifice, but, rather, the war was seen as a period of enormous and needless suffering.16 Visions of the future were organically intertwined with the ghosts of the imperial past and were more a source of anxiety than optimism.17 By closely following debates on the meanings of mental trauma in both states and how these discussions were influenced by the shared wartime past, as well as the common challenges of the interwar period, we aim to unravel some of the similarities and differences between the two states beyond the hitherto emphasized dividing line of defeat and victory.

Victory, Sinking into Defeat: Uniformed Violence in the Creation of the New Order in Czechoslovakia and Austria 1918–1922,” The Journal of Modern History 88 (2016) 4: 827–55; Michal Frankl and Miloslav Szabj, Budov#n& st#tu bez antisemitismu? N#sil&, diskurz loaˇ eskoslovenska (Prague: Lidov8 noviny, 2015). jality a vznik C 15 Nancy M. Wingfield, “National Sacrifice and Regeneration: Commemoration of the Battle of Zborov in Multinational Czechoslovakia,” in Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, edited by Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016), 129–50; Dagmar H#jkov# and Pavel Hor#k, “Oslavy narozenin prezidentu˚ v ˇ eskoslovensku,” Strˇed/Centre 7 (2015) 2: 32–58; Nancy M. Wingfield and meziv#lecˇn8m C Dagmar H#jkov#, “Czech(-oslovak) National Commemorations during the Interwar Period: Tom#sˇ G. Masaryk and the Battle of White Mountain Avenged,” Acta Histriae 18 (2010) 3: 425–52. 16 Catherine Edgecombe and Maureen Healy, “Competing Interpretations of Sacrifice in the Postwar Austrian Republic,” in Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, edited by Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016), 15–34. 17 The only exception is the city of Vienna, where Social Democratic dominance between 1919 and 1934 led to the assertion of a different, future-oriented narrative. See: Helmut Gruber, Red Vienna: Experiment in Working-Class Culture, 1919–1934 (New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Alfred Georg Frei, Rotes Wien: Austromarxismus und Arbeiterkultur ; Sozialdemokratische Wohnungs- und Kommunalpolitik 1919–1934 (Berlin: DKV-Verlag, 1984).

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Secondly, the very topic of war-related mental trauma is seriously underresearched in both cases. In Czechoslovakia, attention has traditionally been paid either to those World War I veterans who served as a pillar of the interwar state (the legionnaires)18 or to the vast numbers of war invalids suffering from physical impairment.19 To date, there has been no single study on the social and cultural challenges posed by the mental illnesses stemming from the war and the repercussions of these challenges for the Czechoslovak republic’s self-definition as a triumphant winner of the war. For Austria too, only a few publications have focused on the consequences of war neuroses in the post-1918 period. Furthermore, recent studies of World War I ex-servicemen have focused mainly on two perspectives: first, the reactions and activities of state institutions towards war veterans; second, veterans with physical disabilities (in a way comparable to research on the Czechoslovak situation).20

II.

Comparative Case Studies: Austria and Czechoslovakia

Shortly after the end of war, the National Assembly of the newly constituted Austrian Republic decided to establish a “Commission for the investigation of derelictions of military duty.” The famous psychiatrist, and later Nobel Prize laureate, Julius Wagner-Jauregg became one of the members of the new board. However, within a few weeks he was accused of being responsible for questionable treatments, torture, and even the suicides of his patients due to the allegedly brutal nature of his therapies. Subsequently, Sigmund Freud was chosen to serve as an expert witness. In this capacity, Freud placed psychoanalysis in stark contrast to the cruel form of war psychiatry represented by Wagner-Jauregg, although he never openly condemned his colleague, who was

18 For the most recent scholarship on the Bohemian Lands in WWI and interwar Czechoslovakia, see Ota Konr#d, “Von der Kulisse der Nationalstaatsgründung zur Europäisierung der Forschung: Die tschechische Historiographie zum Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. XII, Bewältigte Vergangenheit? Die nationale und internationale Historiographie zum Untergang der Habsburgermonarchie als ideelle Grundlage für die Neuordnung Europas, edited by Helmut Rumpler and Ulrike Harmat (Vienna: Verlag der ÖAW, 2018), 201–26; Ines Koeltzsch and Ota Konr#d, “From ‘Islands of Democracy’ to ‘Transnational Border Spaces’: State of the Art and Perspectives of the Historiography on the First Czechoslovak Republic since 1989,” Bohemia 56 (2016) 2: 285–327. 19 Natali Stegmann, Kriegsdeutungen – Staatsgründungen – Sozialpolitik: Der Helden- und Opferdiskurs in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1948 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010); Natali Stegmann, “Deutsche Kriegsgeschädigte in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1938,” Bohemia 48 (2008) 2: 440–63. 20 In this regard, see the publications mentioned in footnotes no. 22, 25, and 38.

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eventually cleared of all charges.21 In particular, Freud opposed the wartime practice of treating various war-related mental disorders with extensive electrotherapy (so-called faradization). He stated that soldiers exposed to shock therapy by faradic current were victims of sadistic attacks that caused patients to scream with pain.22 According to him, some doctors did not possess the necessary psychiatric or neurological training and carried out faradization in a way that was regarded even then as unprofessional, unacceptable, and brutal.23 For his part, Wagner-Jauregg viewed the use of electric shocks in his therapy for wartime psychological disorders not just within a medical, but also a national and political context. After the war, he used every available opportunity to stress that “nervous disorders” and a tendency toward simulation were typical symptoms of the Austro-Hungarian army’s “northern Slavic” and, above all, Czech soldiers. As Wagner-Jauregg wrote in 1919, in accordance with the stance taken by the predominantly German-Austrian political and military elites during the war : “Now we can talk openly about these things, especially since some of these nations represented by their leaders in parliament promulgated publicly that, in their hearts, they stood on the side of the enemy. It is obvious that such an attitude towards the war must foster psychogenic symptoms, including simulation, and the tenacity of the individual will to cling to the disease.”24 After 1918, wartime neuroses, their causes, and their treatment, thus very quickly became a hot topic of discussion among experts, as well as of public debates about wartime loyalty and the newly developing relations between Czechoslovakia and Austria as post-Habsburg successor states. The situation proved somewhat paradoxical, because – prior to 1918 – members of these medical communities had been part of the same state and, in many cases, of the same professional milieu as well. Although wartime military psychiatric care came to be centered on hospitals in Graz and Vienna from 1916 onwards, with a clear predominance of German and Hungarian-speaking doctors, guidelines for the extensive electric treatment of mental disorders were binding for the whole Austro-Hungarian military and were followed also by Czech-speaking colleagues

21 Anton Kaes, Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 48. 22 Kurt R. Eissler, Freud as an Expert Witness: The Discussion of War Neuroses Between Freud and Wagner-Jauregg (Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press, 1986), 304 and 310. 23 Maciej Gjrny, Wielka Wojna profesorjw: Nauki o człowieku (1912–1923) (Warsaw: IH PAN, 2014), 220–54. 24 Julius Wagner-Jauregg, “Kriegsneurologisches und Kriegspsychiatrisches,” Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift 68 (1918) 43: 1877–84, here 1883.

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during the war.25 Hence, faradization took place in hospitals in predominantly Czech-speaking areas, just as in all other military medical establishments in the Habsburg Monarchy. Moreover, it was frequently used to treat all kinds of mental symptoms, including those that were already well known from the prewar period. Already in 1915, that is to say, before the centralization of Austro-Hungarian military psychiatry, Czech doctors were regularly using electric current to treat typical forms of shell shock caused by sudden or repeated explosions, as well as for a much wider range of neurological diagnoses. As one of the Prague military doctors, Milosˇ Netousˇek, reported in 1916, his use of faradization on cases of Brown-Sequard Syndrome (spinal paralysis caused by a tumor or physical trauma) yielded satisfactory results, even in those cases in which there was “[…] no relation to any trauma caused by explosions […] [and] […] no signs of visible injury.”26 Faradization supposedly helped the patients to get rid of their paralytic symptoms very quickly and thus significantly shortened their stay in medical facilities. Even after the end of the war, Czech doctors did not see any problem in the widespread use of the Wagner-Jauregg electric treatment protocol during their military careers. When, in 1919, the most prominent Czechoslovak psychiatrist of the interwar period, Anton&n Heveroch, recounted his service in the military, he mentioned many cases of faradized patients, thereby publicly suggesting the therapy’s usefulness. In fact, as he reported to his Czech-speaking colleagues shortly after the war, the faradization kit was almost the only thing at his disposal during his wartime deployment in a military hospital in Galicia during 1917: “On the 4th of May, I arrived at field hospital 49, south of the town of Stryj. There was no ward dedicated to the treatment of nervous diseases – I was supposed to create it. I received tenement No. 33, with 24 beds. The neighboring hospital gave me a faradization kit, a few pieces of paper, some ink pens – and that was my ward.”27 Even after 1918, occasional use of faradaic current did not disappear from the Czechoslovak army. Although its widespread usage was severely limited after the war, as late as 1936, Czech military doctors were sometimes still using faradaic kits to treat various kinds of paralysis among rank-and-file soldiers.28 The vast use of faradization during wartime, and sometimes after the war too, stemmed partly from the unclear etiology of the mental disorders caused by war 25 Hans-Georg Hofer, Nervenschwäche und Krieg: Modernitätskritik und Krisenbewältigung in der österreichischen Psychiatrie (1880–1920) (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2004), 243–52. 26 Milosˇ Netousˇek, “Prˇ&pad obrny Brown-S8quardovy vznikl8 spont#nn& traumatickou haeˇ asopis l8karˇu˚v cˇesky´ch 55 (1916) 1: 8–12, here 8. matomyeli&,” C ˇ asopis l8karˇu˚v ˇcesky´ch 58 (1919) 1: 1–8, here 1. 27 Anton&n Heveroch, Prˇ&pady z bar#ku cˇ. 33, C 28 Vladim&r Volcˇanecky´, “Pozn#mky k hodnocen& funkcion#ln&ch poruch nervovy´ch,” Vojensk8 zdravotnick8 listy 12 (1936) 1: 25–28, here 27.

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trauma. Both Czech and German-speaking doctors engaged in discussions about how and why a mental disorder emerged during combat or immediately after it, as well as when and why it faded away. In general, Czech doctors were inclined to see the disorders as directly relatable to the suffering caused by war, even though many of them did not attribute any new quality to the disorders observed and treated during peacetime. As one of the Czech doctors summarized in the leading Czech-language scholarly journal: “We can see cases of neurasthenia or hysteria or a combination of both. Due to exhaustion the soldiers get depressed, anxious, they easily cry, are unable to work, have suicidal thoughts […]. However, the war does not itself create specific disorders, but rather gives special symptoms to those we already know.”29 Hence, it appeared to many that treatment of war disorders need not differ that much from established guidelines; at best, both the individual and the damage to society could be remedied by the simple factor of time. “Next to internal diseases every war sees an aggravation of mental and nervous disorders. This aggravation peaks during the immediate aftermath of the war and typically ends a few years after […]. Treatment of these conditions needs to rely on long periods of rest and good nutrition”, concluded the same author in 1916.30 Although sometimes in practice subscribing to Wagner-Jauregg’s faradaic treatment protocols, Czech doctors were already starting to reject his assertion that wartime mental disorders were ethnically defined and moving closer to the postwar arguments put forward by Wagner-Jauregg’s critics, with Sigmund Freud at the forefront. The latter criticized Wagner-Jauregg’s notion that Slavic nations were more prone to malinger and, like the Czech doctors, viewed the frequently occurring mental disorders as something emerging from and fading away with the war, regardless of nationality. In his expert report on WagnerJauregg, Freud reiterated: “The immediate cause of all war neuroses was an unconscious inclination in the soldier to withdraw from the demands, dangerous or outrageous to his feelings, made upon him by active service. Fear of losing his own life, opposition to the command to kill other people, rebellion against the ruthless suppression of his own personality by his superiors – these were the most important affective sources on which the inclination to escape from war was nourished. A soldier in whom these affective motives were very powerful and clearly conscious would, if he was a healthy man, have been obliged to desert or pretend to be ill. Only the smallest proportion of war neurotics, however, were malingerers; the emotional impulses that drove them against active service and towards illness were operative in them without becoming conscious to them. However, with the

ˇ asopis l8karˇu˚v ˇces29 MUDr. [Jan] Sˇimsa, “O v#lecˇny´ch chorob#ch nervovy´ch a dusˇevn&ch,” C ky´ch 55 (1916) 11: 299–303, here 301. 30 Ibid., 299 and 302.

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end of the war the war neurotics, too, disappeared – a final but impressive proof of the psychical causation of their illness.”31

“It is very curious,” Freud continued, “that such neuroses do not occur during captivity. There are two reasons for this. First, the motive for extricating oneself from danger does not exist, and, second, the neuroses would do no good: one would not thereby escape from captivity. Thus, the motivation is missing.”32 Freud’s interpretation actually found many adherents outside the circle of the pioneers of psychoanalysis. Emil Raimann, a former assistant to Wagner-Jauregg, likewise referred to the fact that most wartime mental disorders gradually disappear when the hostilities are over : “From out of the hell of terrible artillery battles, thousands of soldiers – wounded or not, but at any rate shell-shocked – came into captivity. Amongst friends and foes, the absence of war neurosis has caught every observer’s attention. The obvious harmfulness of life in captivity, which should normally cause mental disorders, was superseded by the security against further terror or war.”33 The upheavals of 1918/19 at first reinforced these impressions, for the dramatic events seemed to cure the overwhelming majority of debilitated neurotics throughout the post-Habsburg region, regardless of defeat or victory. The effect of the armistice and revolution was “[…] to clear out neurosis stations and make most hysterical symptoms vanish with stunning speed.”34 Paralytics and shakers who had hobbled around on crutches for several years “[…] at once found their strength again and could suddenly walk around remarkably well,” reported several doctors.35 Their testimonies seemed to herald an end to the neurosis problem and to provide proof of the psychogenic nature of the respective mental diseases. However, the situation was complicated by the uncertainty among medical scholars in the whole question. As previously mentioned, nobody could clearly determine if war trauma directly caused neurotic symptoms. The very notion of ‘shock’ was not yet established and doctors were confronted with a plethora of bodily and mental symptoms, where precise causality was often hard to confirm. Could war-related tuberculosis, heart, and kidney problems, metabolic diseases, gunshot wounds, and amputations cause nervous suffering? And was the latter responsible for paralysis and stiffening, impairments of the sense organs, and a multitude of other “somatic shortcomings”? Already during the war, Czech and 31 Quoted in Eissler, Freud as an Expert Witness, 25 and 28. 32 Ibid., 59. 33 Emil Raimann, “Traumatische Neurosen,” Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 72 (1922) 42: 1702–8, here 1708. 34 Quoted in Lerner, Hysterical Men, 210–11. 35 Ibid.

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Austrian doctors alike had dismissed the well-known argument proposed by German neurologist Hermann Oppenheim that proximity to large explosions caused physical damage to the brain, thereby affecting behavior, but there was still no alternative explanation of how war neuroses actually emerged.36 As late as 1937, the Czechoslovak military psychiatrist Oswald Vymeˇtal had to concede that diagnosis of combat-related neurosis was “scientifically very complicated and thus more a matter of an individual doctor’s capability to observe the souls of others and sometimes almost to use clairvoyance skills rather than knowledge compiled in scholarly books.”37 Statistics did not help much either. In March 1918, the official Austrian list of “war injuries” only mentioned neuroses among the so-called marginal phenomena, accounting for a mere of 2.5 percent of total injuries. In 1920, nervous diseases were not specifically mentioned in Austria, just “mental illnesses” (making up 2 percent of injuries). Perhaps not surprisingly, the interpretation of such statistical tables created many difficulties, because the categories were incomparable and at the same time difficult to delineate. Thus, in 1920 experts concentrated on “causes of death,” whereas in the last year of the war, doctors looked primarily for “afflictions of the living.”38 Moreover, neurotics were not specially recorded after 1918 in either Czechoslovakia or Austria. In 1925, for ˇ eneˇk Sˇimerka example, prominent Czech neurologists Ladislav Hasˇkovec and C concluded in their comprehensive study of more than a hundred cases of neurotic disorders that not even a single one of them could be directly related to the war.39 In 1937, Czechoslovak military medicine still recorded combat-related neurotic disorders together with all other injuries of the brain and spinal cord.40 Nevertheless, very shortly after the armistice, mental disorders reappeared as a burning issue. Returning prisoners of war were often reported to suffer from “neurotic” or “hysterical” symptoms characterized by fluctuations between lethargy and extreme irritability. At the same time, so-called barbed wire disease [Stacheldrahtkrankheit]41 contradicted experts’ assumptions (including 36 Raimann, “Traumatische Neurosen,” 1708; Leo Taussig, “Z nasˇich zkusˇenost& o v#lecˇny´ch ˇ asopis l8karˇu˚v cˇesky´ch 58 (1919) 19: 422–26, here 423. psychoneuros#ch,” C 37 Oswald Vymeˇtal, “Prˇ&speˇvek k rozpozn#v#n& a posuzov#n& fflkonovy´ch poruch a chorob nervovy´ch,” Vojensk8 zdravotnick8 listy 13 (1937) 1: 25–35, here 29. 38 Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin, Die Wunden des Staates: Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat in Österreich 1914–1938 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2015), 479 and 494. ˇ eneˇk Sˇimerka, O stavech obsedantn&ch (Prag: N#kladem vlastn&m, 39 Ladislav Hasˇkovec and C 1925). 40 Vladim&r Volcˇanecky´, “V#lecˇn# poraneˇn& lbi a nervov8ho syst8mu,” Vojensk8 zdravotnick8 listy 13 (1937) 2: 68–74. 41 Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr : Die Bedeutung der Kriegsgefangenenproblematik für die Geschichte des Kommunismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa 1917–1920 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2003), 185.

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Freud’s) about the disappearance of war neurosis as well as many other symptoms of “nervousness” among former servicemen. Quite to the contrary, neurologist Kurt Singer noted in 1920, “the streets have filled up with hysterical shakers and paralytics.”42 The question of wartime related mental damage thus became part of a larger debate connected to the war’s social and financial costs. Some reports about the “nervous ones” indicated a tendency of neurotics towards aggression, in a similar fashion to how the Kol&nsky´ brothers’ attorneys had argued before the Prague penal court. As the Czechoslovak authorities warned in November 1918, returning invalid veterans were “a very tempered element, the poverty and suffering they were forced to endure in the trenches and hospitals has left permanent marks on their souls.”43 Suicide and attempted suicide were also connected to war-related mental illnesses. This intimated that self-inflicted violence represented a kind of blackmail, in so far as certain individuals tried to enforce their wishes on themselves or others, otherwise they would kill themselves.44 All of these symptoms were potentially dangerous and fed into a general debate about “psychopathic” soldiers longing for self-protection during the war and financial support from the state when peace came. The issue of war-related mental disorders thus became part of a complex question related to pensions for wartime veterans. Significantly, compared to physically impaired invalids, mentally damaged soldiers or ex-servicemen were often considered to be frauds or inferiors. Experts warned that pensions should never be granted to threatening or paranoid patients.45 In Czechoslovakia, simulating a mental disorder and thus longing for an undeserved pension was seen as directly opposing the state-building effort. As the prominent Czech psychiatrist, Leo Taussig, moralized: “It is noteworthy how fast all these disorders disappear after the invalid status and regular pension are granted. In those states that do not have permanent invalid pensions, neurotic traumas are far less common […] immediately after the war many healed by themselves. However, after some time, ideas about entitlements took over and war neurosis became pension neurosis […]. But we should reach for the state’s pocket just as seldom as we reach for our own.”46

42 Quoted in Lerner, Hysterical Men, 226. ˇ eskoslovensku v letech 1918–1938,” 43 Quoted in Marek Ru˚zˇicˇka, “P8cˇe o v#lecˇn8 invalidy v C unpublished doctoral dissertation, Charles University Prague, 2011, 126. 44 Hannes Leidinger, Die BeDeutung der SelbstAuslöschung: Aspekte der Suizidproblematik in Österreich von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Zweiten Republik (Innsbruck – Vienna – Bolzano: StudienVerlag, 2012), 208–9. 45 Lerner, Hysterical Men, 236. 46 Taussig, “Z nasˇich zkusˇenost& o v#lecˇny´ch psychoneuros#ch,” 423–25.

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His colleague, V#clav Michl, who was regarded as one of the leading Czech experts on wartime invalidity and was the author of the subsequent state provisions for invalids expressed this notion even more sharply.47 When recounting the ways of estimating pension rates according to particular kinds of disability, he summed up by stating that cases of war neurosis typically “vanish after obtaining the invalidity pension.” Hence, every doctor should be aware that “it is in the interest of our young republic, with its finances still undergoing consolidation, to motivate every single man to embrace his own activity, energy and work.”48 For Michl, ex-servicemen suffering from mental disorders were to be prevented from obtaining any kind of permanent material benefits. During the interwar period, many more experts followed the line taken by Wagner-Jauregg or even adopted a sharper stance.49 For instance, physician Julius Bauer scornfully wrote in the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift: “Shortly after an earthquake in Messina all those who affected were mentally ill. But only a few days later most of them were healthy again. […] What obviously was missing was the fermento cerebrale, the desire and fight for pensions.”50 The same magazine went still further nearly two decades later, in 1937, when it characterized “war neurosis” as a “mental and social deficiency disease.” From this point of view, the supposed longing for pensions was no longer the focal point of discussion. Instead, what now came to the fore was the idea of an “affective impoverishment of emotional connectedness with the national community.”51 In very similar fashion, the above-mentioned proponent of Czechoslovak military medicine, Oswald Vyme˘tal, in 1937 defined as a central prerequisite for the mental health of soldiers the “incorporation of the individual into a higher whole – into society. The better the moral support an individual has in his environment, the better he feels part of the whole, the more he identifies himself with the interests of this whole […], the stronger is his personality and with it also his resistance to neuroses.”52 This, of course, implied that war neuroses signaled the opposite of integration into a collective and reliable military unit, 47 On the Czechoslovak system of provision for war invalids, see Jan Svoboda, Prˇ&rucˇka v#lecˇn8ho posˇkozence cˇeskoslovensk8ho: Soubor z#konu˚, narˇ&zen& a vy´nosu˚ v p8cˇi o v#lecˇn8 posˇkozence se vzorci pod#n& a zˇ#dost& (Brno: Obzor soci#ln& p8cˇe, 1923). ˇ asopis l8karˇu˚v 48 V#clav Michl, “Oceneˇn& neschopnosti ku povol#n& prˇi prˇehl&dk#ch invalidu˚,” C ˇcesky´ch 58 (1919) 33: 697–9. 49 For example, see Neues Wiener Abendblatt, 23 November, 1922, 4. 50 Julius Bauer, “Kriegsneurosen und Konstitution,” Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 69 (1919) 46: 2242–5, here 2243. 51 Alexander Pilcz, “Literarische Anzeigen: Kriegsneurose als psychisch-soziale Mangelkrankheit; Von H. Wietfeldt,” Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 87 (1937) 43: 1118. 52 Vymeˇtal, “Prˇ&speˇvek k rozpozn#v#n& a posuzov#n& fflkonovy´ch poruch a chorob nervovy´ch,” 31.

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and opened up the possibility of there being not only mentally, but also socially and – potentially – ethnically ‘deficient’ soldiers. Such remarks constituted an obvious allusion to the German-speaking soldiers in the Czechoslovak army and the question of their reliability in the event of a conflict with Nazi Germany.53 Interestingly, however, when looking at similar tendencies towards the exclusion of neurotics from the national “whole” in Austria, we can say that in both countries mentally afflicted former soldiers were frequently seen as standing in the way of postwar reconstruction and nation-building. Over time, legal provisions gradually deteriorated even for physically impaired war veterans, let alone the mentally damaged, who were quickly pushed to the very margins of the respective welfare systems. Austria granted hardly any pensions or other financial benefits to war veterans from the mid-1920s onwards.54 In Czechoslovakia, the various governments after 1918 also tended systematically to cut pensions, as well as to alter the very definition of a war invalid, which effectively stripped a large part of those hitherto supported of any further financial benefits.55 Hence, the impoverished, shaking war veteran quickly became a visible phenomenon shaping everyday experience on the streets of both Czechoslovak and Austrian towns. Civil servants were alarmed by the enormous increases in peddling and begging. Nonetheless, the media, medical experts, and many veterans groups did not consider these men as war casualties, but peacetime beggars who did not want to integrate into civil society. Mirroring the scientific discourse on war-related mental disorders, articles frequently described the beggars as simulating and trying to deceive the passing pedestrians with “feigned shaking.”56 In Czechoslovakia, provincial offices responsible for war invalids’ benefits were formally reminded that their core duties included preventing such individuals from begging and displaying their misery in public. As a result, many invalids filed complaints against the officials’ rude behavior.57 In Austria, even social democratic newspapers such as the Salzburger Wacht termed war neurosis not a disease but an “instinctive,” albeit “unconscious pretense.”58 More particularly, the Austrian conservative and rightist press often viewed these ex-servicemen as “frail creatures” or as “genetically predisposed

53 On the Czechoslovak army and the national conflict in the interwar period, see Martin Zückert, Zwischen Nationsidee und staatlicher Realität: Die tschechoslowakische Armee und ihre Nationalitätenpolitik 1918–1938 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006). 54 Kaes, Shell Shock Cinema, 48. ˇ eskoslovensku v letech 1918–1938,” 333–45. 55 Ru˚zˇicˇka, “P8cˇe o v#lecˇn8 invalidy v C 56 Quoted in Hofer, Nervenschwäche und Krieg, 372–3. ˇ eskoslovensku v letech 1918–1938,” 126. 57 Ru˚zˇicˇka, “P8cˇe o v#lecˇn8 invalidy v C 58 Salzburger Wacht, 4 February, 1922, 12.

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weaklings” with “degenerate physical conditions.”59 Corresponding to the widespread prevalence of eugenicist and Social-Darwinist ideas, war neurotics before and after 1918 came to be seen not only as frauds or lawbreakers, but also as “unmanly apparitions.” Against the backdrop of psychoanalytical notions of a “fatherless society” and the “disappearance of the monarch” resulting from the 1918 revolution,60 “neurotic men” appeared to be typical examples of an “endangered masculinity.”61 In September 1918, leading Hungarian psychoanalyst S#ndor Ferenczi had indicated the importance of sexuality for Freud and his adherents when speaking about traumatized neurotics and their “impaired genital libido and potency.”62 However, aside from anchoring these opinions in specialist schools of thought, other expert commentators adopted a much more contemptuous tone and referred to “signs of degeneration,” such as hair anomalies, “physiological cowardice,” “partial infantilism,” “eunuchoidism,” or homosexuality.63 While the vocabulary of degeneration and the Social-Darwinist paradigm had a long-established tradition in the German-speaking parts of the Habsburg Empire,64 this discourse gained ground in Czechoslovakia, too, during the interwar period.65 For example, the already mentioned Leo Taussig bluntly de59 Reichspost, 6 October, 1921, 7; ibid., 23 April, 1922, 8; See also the critical or neutral comments on this assessment in Arbeiter-Zeitung, 21 August, 1927, 3; ibid., 22 August, 1928, 6. 60 Paul Federn, Zur Psychologie der Revolution: Die vaterlose Gesellschaft (Leipzig – Vienna: Anzengruber-Verlag, 1919); cf. Elisabeth Brainin, “Über Kriegsneurosen,” in “So ist der Mensch …” 80 Jahre Erster Weltkrieg. 195. Sonderausstellung Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, edited by Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien (Vienna: Eigenverlag der Museen der Stadt Wien, 1994), 101–16, here 110. 61 On the First World War and the reshaping of masculinity, see most recently Jirˇ& Hutecˇka, Men Under Fire: Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918 (New York – Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019). 62 S. Ferenczi, “Die Psychoanalyse der Kriegsneurosen,” in Zur Psychoanalyse der Kriegsneurosen. Diskussion gehalten auf dem V. Internationalen Psychoanalytischen Kongreß in Budapest, 28. und 29. September 1918, edited by Sigmund Freud (Leipzig – Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1919), 9–30, here 26 (Internationale Psychoanalytische Bibliothek 1). 63 Bauer, “Kriegsneurosen und Konstitution,” 2242–4. 64 Scott Spector, Violent Sensations: Sex, Crime and Utopia in Vienna and Berlin 1860–1914 (Chicago – London: The University of Chicago Press, 2016), 46–50; Edward Ross Dickinson, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy : Some Reflections on Our Discourse about ‘Modernity’,” Central European History 37 (2004) 1: 1–48; more generally, see Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848 – c. 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Edward J. Chamberlin and Sander L. Gilman, Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 65 Michal V. Sˇimu˚nek, “Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia),” in The History of East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945: Sources and Commentaries, edited by Marius Turda (London – New Delhi – New York – Sydney : Bloomsbury 2015), 127–90; Michal Sˇimu˚nek, “Eugenics, Social Genetics and Racial Hygiene: Plans for the Scientific Regulation of Human Heredity in the Czech Lands, 1900–1925,” in Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in

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scribed all those suffering from mental disorders after the end of the war as “inferiors.”66 Hence, alongside the challenges they posed to the emerging new systems of welfare provisioning, mental problems were seen as part of the even more serious issue of the gradual degeneration of men, ultimately endangering the whole nation. This degeneration pertained to physically weakening bodies, just as much to disordered minds; indeed, for many doctors, the two were inseparable. In reviewing the most recent psychological scholarship on fear and anger in 1926, for example, the Czech military doctor Vil8m Forster concluded in relation to war neurosis, that “[…] neuroses stemming from paralysis, that unsubstantiated feeling of utter fatigue and incapacity to perform any work do not come from the nerve system, but are the sign of a failing vegetative system.”67 Placing mental war disorders within the prevailing framework of Social Darwinism and the concept of degeneration logically meant referring to the issues of reproduction and sexuality. Contemporary diagnoses thus reflected a general discourse about combatants returning home sexually dysfunctional. Wilhelm Stekel, a physician closely linked with Freud, dedicated a whole book to the theme, entitled Impotence in the Male, in which he claimed to demonstrate “the derangement of sexual life in the male” by means of “innumerable examples.” According to Stekel, soldiers returned “effeminate, weak, and impotent.” This included married men “who had longed for a wife and child and who could hardly await the hour of meeting them again. To their horror, they were impotent upon the first intimacy with their wives – it usually concerned married men. This war-impotency either subsided rapidly or became permanently established; and, as a result of autosuggestion, it developed into fear of impotence, whose pernicious effect is already familiar to us.”68 Interestingly, Stekel’s works were not confined to Austria, but enjoyed a positive reception in Czechoslovakia as well. Stekel himself gave public lectures there and became an acknowledged reference point for the local scholarly community.69 In 1934, for example, Czech neurologist Josef Hynie cited Stekel when describing new possibilities for treating male impotence. For Hynie, just as for Stekel, male impotence was a clear sign of the neurotic disorders of his patients.70

66 67 68 69 70

Central and Southeastern Europe, 1900–1940, edited by Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007), 145–66. Taussig, “Z nasˇich zkusˇenost& o v#lecˇny´ch psychoneuros#ch,” 424. Vil8m Forster, “Emoce strachu a hneˇvu, jich fysiologie a vojensky´ vy´znam,” Vojensk8 zdravotnick8 listy 2 (1926) 2: 55–63, here 60. Wilhelm Stekel, Impotence in the Male: The Psychic Disorders of Sexual Function in the Male, translated by Oswald H. Boltz (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927), 175. ˇ SR 39 (1930), 7; Lidov8 See, for example Rud# Rovnost. Ty´denn&k komunistick8 oposice v C Noviny 26 September, 1930, 11. ˇ asopis l8karˇu˚v ˇcesky´ch Josef Hynie, “Nov# objektivn& metoda vysˇetrˇov#n& muzˇsk8 potence,” C 73 (1934) 2, 185–8.

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In both countries, therefore, mentally disordered soldiers and ex-servicemen were often stigmatized, in contrast to the widespread appreciation shown for “military strength,” “heroism,” “willpower,” “physical or emotional hardness,” and “masculinity.”71 The discussions on war-impotency also indicated the longlasting effects of war-related stress factors even in Czechoslovakia, where World War I was seen above all as a mere prelude to the successful establishment of the independent republic.

III.

Conclusion

In looking at the scholarly as well as public treatment of war-related mental disorders in Czechoslovakia and Austria between 1918 and 1938, we can certainly identify some crucial differences. For example, Julius Wagner-Jauregg’s disrespectful description of (northern) Slavic “nervousness” and “malingering” was firmly rejected by his colleagues in Prague and elsewhere. Yet, beneath the surface of nationalistic disputes, something else proves more revealing: while in both countries neurotic (ex-)servicemen were viewed with suspicion or even criminalized, the respective accusations, stereotypes, and prejudices meant something different, at least in part. As a representative of the “vanquished” Austro-German and largely pro-Habsburg elite, Wagner-Jauregg ultimately looked back to the past and, at the same time, searched for scapegoats, considering “nervous soldiers” to be traitors and destroyers of the old monarchical order. By way of contrast, the stigmatization of (war-related) psychic disorders among the “victorious” Czech soldiers occurred within a discourse oriented towards the future, national objectives, and the maintenance of military strength in the new republican state. At the same time, both countries, nevertheless, displayed some fundamental and striking similarities. In view of the common political framework up until 1918, it is no great surprise that many scholars in Austria and Czechoslovakia shared the same values and opinions. They considered most of the shakers or war-neurotics to be frauds or even criminals. In many ways, medical experts described this specific nervousness as a threat to their community, and, above all, to the nation, the ideal of masculinity, and the military capability of the state. This resolute attitude – combined with the harsh treatments of the patients – stood in contradiction to the lack of terminological clarity and the uncertain findings of scientific research. Controversial standpoints drew on incompatible explanations for the interaction between the body and the psyche. What is more, neurologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists could not even agree upon the fact 71 Lerner, Hysterical Men, 248.

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that a phenomenon like “war neurosis” or something akin to “post-traumatic stress disorder” – as later generations of physicians would call it – continued to exist after the combatants left the battlefield. In many instances, the media adopted the negative framing of neurotic disorders, with the press tending not only to presume the widespread nature of simulation, but also to exclude mentally impaired soldiers from the national collective. War neurosis was transformed into a “pension neurosis” and soldiers were thus seen as an unwanted burden hindering postwar reconstruction and, in the 1930s, endangering military preparedness. Concern with the patriotic community and its “defensive capacity” marginalized debates about trauma on both sides of the border. Ex-combatants’ neuroses remained an unpopular topic in public discourse and the prevailing culture of masculinity – whether “unshaken” or radicalized by the war – made it difficult for veterans to speak about their weaknesses, fears, and nightmares.

Verena Moritz

Half-hearted Reconciliation: The “Federal Association of former Austrian POWs” and the Question of Veterans’ Internationalism in Interwar Austria1

I.

The legacy of war

Out of “Austria-Hungary’s ashes,” as Mark Cornwall has written, “arose six successor states. Two – Austria and Hungary – were now treated as defeated countries, responsible for provoking the war and its traumatic impact; they suffered huge losses of their ‘national’ territory as well as economic reparations and other restrictions of their sovereignty. Four successor states, however, posed as victor states in the New Europe – Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland […].”2 Yet, as Cornwall and other scholars have suggested, the previously accepted clear dividing line between cultures of victory and defeat needs to be questioned. Certainly, historians accept the validity of constructing paradigms in order to examine the development of different post-war societies,3 but they increasingly argue for a critical assessment of previous understandings of post1918 Europe.4 In doing so, however, historians must still take account of the fact that a significant proportion of the population in post-war societies, including war veterans,5 categorized themselves as either ‘victorious’ or ‘vanquished’. 1 This paper was written as part of the bilateral, joint Austrian-Czech project funded by the ˇ R), No. I 3125-G28. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GA C author is grateful for this generous support. 2 Mark Cornwall, “A Conflicted and Divided Habsburg Memory,” in Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, edited by Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016), 1–12, here 2. 3 See Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London: Penguin Books, 2016). 4 Cf. Timothy M. Roberts, review of The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning and Recovery, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, History : Reviews of New Books 31 (2003) 4: 177, DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2003.10527539. 5 On the term “veteran” see Christian Weiß, “‘Soldaten des Friedens’: Die pazifistischen Veteranen und Kriegsopfer des Reichsbundes und ihre Kontakte zu den französischen anciens combattants 1919–1933,” in Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939, edited by Wolfgang Hardtwig, special issue, Geschichte und Gesellschaft: Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft 21 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 183–204, here

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Many ex-servicemens’ associations thought in these terms, reflecting a basic division in interwar Europe and more or less coinciding with contemporary diplomatic practices. Yet, while many veterans deliberately excluded vanquished enemies from their activities, some tried to overcome the still existing ‘trenches’ between groups of former combatants, and others even fluctuated between identifying themselves as victorious and vanquished. In practice, therefore, it seems that most ‘successor states’ of the Habsburg Monarchy contained a mix of both cultures, with varying self-perceptions and permutations of victory and defeat cultures, at different periods in time.6 Even in the Austrian Republic, where the experience of shrinking to a small state combined with unfulfilled territorial claims after the end of war, there was no simple, homogenous picture of a ‘defeat culture’.7 Indeed, there were noticeably different approaches to questions about the purpose and outcome of the war. Particularly in militarily defeated states, there was an urgent need to give meaning to the sacrifices that had been made and to transform the futility of the lost war into an experience of far-reaching importance. In Austria, the answers given mirrored respective political positions and, as a result, underwent various modifications and sometimes differed starkly. Catherine Edgecombe and Maureen Healy have argued that Austrians “interpreted wartime sacrifice in five discernible ways: for the fatherland, for God, for the Emperor, for the Republic, and for the spirit of comradeship.”8 Further motives and attitudes might be added to these, but nor should it be forgotten that many ex-servicemen had simply fought because they had to, and they subsequently remained indifferent to debates about what the war was for, preferring to try and put it behind them.9 After the war, veterans at different levels claimed compensation and welfare benefits, as well as seeking public recognition for their status and activities.

6 7

8 9

184; Benjamin Ziemann, “Die Konstruktion der Kriegsveteranen und die Symbolik seiner Erinnerung 1918–1933,” in Der verlorene Frieden: Politik und Kriegskultur nach 1918, edited by Jost Dülffer and Gerd Krumeich (Essen: Klartext, 2002), 101–18. Cf. the contributions in Cornwall and Newman (eds.), Sacrifice and Rebirth. John Horne, “Defeat and Memory in Modern History,” in Defeat and Memory : Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era, edited by Jenny Macleod (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 11–29. See also Laurence Cole’s characterisation of a multifaceted defeat culture in Austrian Tyrol and South Tyrol: Laurence Cole, “Divided Land, Diverging Narratives: Memory Cultures of the Great War in the Successor Regions of Tyrol,” in Sacrifice and Rebirth, edited by Cornwall and Newman, 258–86, here 259. Cf. Robert Gerwarth, Die Besiegten: Das blutige Erbe des Ersten Weltkriegs (Munich: Siedler, 2017), 27–29. Catherine Edgecombe and Maureen Healy, “Competing Interpretations of Sacrifice in the Postwar Austrian Republic”, in Sacrifice and Rebirth, edited by Cornwall and Newman, 15–34. On the “obsession” with analysing the reasons for defeat among former Habsburg officers, see, for example Martin Schmitz, “Als ob die Welt aus den Fugen ginge”: Kriegserfahrungen österreichisch-ungarischer Offiziere 1914–18 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016), 339–65. (Krieg in der Geschichte 86).

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Veterans’ associations “formed an influential social movement during the interwar period” and “provided the platform for former soldiers to commemorate the war and their fallen comrades and to discuss their post-war problems.”10 In view of the many diverse influences exerted by former combatants on post-war societies and politics, as well as the extent of government efforts towards their reintegration, it is not surprising that international scholarship continues to show considerable interest in the history of World War One veterans. Nevertheless, despite the notable increase in specialist publications in recent years,11 the specific group of veterans constituted by prisoners of war (hereafter, POWs) are usually left out of the picture. Yet, the fact that one in eight returning soldiers were former POWs underlines the purely numerical significance of this type of veteran. During the course of the First World War, approximately 2.8 million soldiers and officers of the Austro-Hungarian Army became POWs,12 more than two million of whom were imprisoned in Russia.13 In other words, although becoming a POW was a mass phenomenon, the history of the associations set up by or on behalf of former POWs has – for the most part – barely been addressed by historians.14 10 Julia Eichenberg, “Veterans’ Associations,” in 1914–1918–Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 8 October 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10270 (27 March 2019). 11 See, among the numerous publications, Cornwall and Newman (eds.), Sacrifice and Rebirth; Julia Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge: Polnische Veteranen des Ersten Weltkriegs und ihre internationalen Kontakte, 1918–1939 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011). (Studien zur internationalen Geschichte 27); Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley – Los Angels – London: University of California Press, 2001); Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman (eds.), The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (New York – Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Nils Löffelbein, Ehrenbürger der Nation: Die Kriegsbeschädigten des Ersten Weltkriegs in Politik und Propaganda des Nationalsozialismus (Essen: Klartext, 2013); Sabine Kienitz, Beschädigte Helden: Kriegsinvalidität und Körperbilder 1914–1923, (Paderborn – Munich – Vienna – Zurich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008). (Krieg in der Geschichte 41); Pierluigi Pironti, Kriegsopfer und Staat: Sozialpolitik für Invaliden, Witwen und Waisen des Ersten Weltkrieges in Deutschland und Italien (1914–1924) (Cologne – Weimar – Vienna: Böhlau, 2015); Natali Stegmann, Kriegsdeutungen – Staatsgründungen – Sozialpolitik: Der Helden- und Opferdiskurs in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1948 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010). 12 Tables from Hans Weiland (ed.), In Feindeshand: Die Gefangenschaft im Weltkriege in Einzeldarstellungen, vol. 2 (Vienna: Amon Franz Göth, 1931). 13 For discussion of the problem regarding the numbers of prisoners of war in the First World War, see Reinhard Nachtigal, “Zur Anzahl der Kriegsgefangenen im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 67 (2008) 2: 345–84, here 359. 14 For Germany, see Rainer Pöppinghege, “‘Kriegsteilnehmer zweiter Klasse’? Die Reichsvereinigung ehemaliger Kriegsgefangener 1919–1933,” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 64 (2005) 2: 391–423; on POW associations in Austria cf. Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr : Die Bedeutung der Kriegsgefangenenproblematik für die Geschichte des Kommunismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa 1917–1920 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2003), 93–98; Verena Moritz and Hannes Leidinger, “Der Sinn der Erfah-

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The article in hand aims to fill this gap in research, given that – especially in the early period of the young Austrian republic – POW associations exercised a great attraction, above all because they addressed the interests of former rankand-file soldiers. Despite this emphasis, leftist associations of former POWs nonetheless could not meaningfully assert themselves in this period. Communist associations gained brief importance in 1918/19, provoking an increase in commitment to veterans’ concerns by the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SDAP). However, the latter sought to avoid focusing its activities too particularly on former POWs and instead concentrated on speaking up for war victims in general.15 Hence, the interests of POWs came to be articulated mainly by the most important POW association in Austria, the Federal Association of Former POWs (Bundesvereinigung ehemaliger österreichischer Kriegsgefangener, hereafter B.e.ö.K.),16 which forms the main subject of this piece. In particular, the chief focus is on the association’s understanding of internationalism and its efforts to establish contacts with veterans abroad. To place this issue in context, it is necessary to examine the association’s position within the Austrian political landscape as well. The article argues that the B.e.ö.K. claimed for itself a special moral mission, which inspired it to advocate POWrelated concerns beyond the usual national framework or the limitation of foreign relations to fellow former POWs in Germany. Indeed, the B.e.ö.K. was keenly engaged in creating new international regulations for the treatment of POWs during future conflicts. In this context, the B.e.ö.K. was ready to find common ground with former enemies, but it ultimately failed to recognize the contrarung: Gedanken über den Umgang mit Selbstzeugnissen ehemaliger Kriegsgefangener des Ersten Weltkrieg,” in In russischer Gefangenschaft: Erlebnisse österreichischer Soldaten im Ersten Weltkrieg, edited by Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar, Böhlau, 2008), 7–35 (Damit es nicht verloren geht … 56). 15 The Reichsverband ehemaliger Kriegsgefangener des Mannschaftsstandes Österreichs (Imperial Association of Former POWs from Austria’s Rank-and-File Soldiery) was an association, which ambitiously tried to differentiate itself from other veterans’ associations that emphasized the experiences of the front line and comradeship. Nevertheless, it too failed to appeal to a large number of former POWs and struggled to retain support in the long run. Notwithstanding its obvious overlaps with Social Democratic ideas, the Reichsverband did not succeed in arousing sufficient interest on the part of the SDAP. On the Reichsverband, see further the association’s periodical, which was originally called Der Kriegsgefangene als Erzähler (The POW as Narrator) and later, from 1927, Der ehemalige Kriegsgefangene als Erzähler (The Former POW as Narrator). 16 The precise number of B.e.ö.K. members is unknown. Although Der Plenny, the association’s journal, published annual reports, relevant data are missing. For comparison, the German R.e.K. initially had four hundred thousand members (see Pöppinghege, “‘Kriegsteilnehmer zweiter Klasse’?,” 401). Despite the lack of data regarding the B.e.ö.K.’s members, the association’s importance is evident from its broad range of activities, its dense network across Austria’s provinces, and its public relations activities, which are well documented in the Austrian press.

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diction between its own nationalist stance and the repeatedly expressed desire for reconciliation and sustainable peace. My research is based primarily on the association’s periodical Der Plenny,17 supplemented by other press reports and archival documents.

II.

The self-perception of the B.e.ö.K.

With the exception of leftist groupings, ex-POWassociations usually stressed the importance of loyalty and the fulfilment of their honourable duty to their country in a way similar to that of other veterans’ associations. The B.e.ö.K. was no exception, but it also focused on a completely different set of virtues. The association interpreted the suffering endured in captivity – for the benefit of the fatherland – as a process of maturation towards an exemplary kind of humanity. According to this view, the sacrifices made had not been in vain, but created the preconditions for a more peaceful future. Indeed, as Julia Eichenberg has argued, all veterans’ organizations claimed a form of moral authority, “based on their previous sufferance” and “expanded beyond their immediate material interests to more abstract ideas.”18 In stressing the time spent in wartime captivity, the B.e.ö.K. even linked this specific experience to religious messages of salvation, thus lending it the character of a true sacrifice not only for the fatherland, but also for the benefit of all mankind. In line with their aim of overcoming the “stigma of surrender”19 through founding an association exclusively for former POWs, the B.e.ö.K. initially kept its distance from the commemorational culture of “normal” veterans and their images of soldierly heroism. Simultaneously, the association pointed to experiences common to all servicemen who had fought on the front line: “There was heroism on the front, loyal performance of duty and sacrifice. The POWs have their share in this, since one did not get captured from the hinterland!” Yet, “heroism in captivity” was declared to be of a “nobler and more sublime kind” than heroism at the front.20 The association’s newspaper presented captivity as another type of “battlefield” with completely defenceless victims, although these men were nonetheless “heroes” who had kept a stiffer upper lip and proven their inner strength.21

17 “Plenny” refers to the Russian word for “prisoner”. 18 Julia Eichenberg, “Veterans’ Associations”. 19 See Brian K. Feltman, The Stigma of Surrender : German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 20 Der Plenny 3 (1926) 2/3: 4. 21 Der Penny 10 (1933) 4: 34.

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Mirroring the “mental legacy” of captivity, the B.e.ö.K. adopted the rather religious sounding slogan, “Through suffering to light, from light to love,” as its guiding principle. Thus, the B.e.ö.K. accepted the role of outsider in the landscape of veterans’ associations, conveying a sense of self-perception that elevated ex-POWs above other veterans and thereby cultivating a special kind of Plennykultur, as it was known (the culture and identity of POWs). In this way, the B.e.ö.K. sought to convert the perceived experience of multiple defeat into a more positively connoted sense of destiny and a true victory for humanity. In particular, Austro-Hungarian POWs had more than one defeat to cope with and to (re)interpret: they had been vanquished in combat by the enemy, in many cases being captured in the course of encirclement manoeuvres without the opportunity to fight back; and they were often suspected of cowardice or treason by Austria-Hungary’s military and civilian authorities. Moreover, after the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, thousands of POWs were oppressed by various forces involved in the Russian civil war, including former comrades who joined the Czechoslovak Legion22 (which sometimes deliberately attacked POWs). Upon repatriation, home-comers from Russia were commonly suspected of being adherents of Bolshevism and they were marginalized within veterans’ circles, as well as by state authorities and the public, who tended to focus on other war victims and the services that had been rendered by other combatants.23 The authoritarian regime that came to power in Austria in 1933/34 after outlawing the Social Democratic party not only aimed to bring order “to the messy story of Austrian sacrifice”24 in the First World War, but also sought to determine an awareness of once having been part of an Empire (or at least, to ensure its respectful commemoration). Thus, official representations of Austrian identity were connected with the Habsburg past, implying a continuation of the Empire’s so-called special civilizing mission in Central and East-Central Europe. In addition, the Austro-Fascist authorities attempted to “clean up apocryphal versions of who had sacrificed what for whom” during the war and to define the Habsburg Monarchy as part of a positively connoted “Austrian past.”25 They strove to amalgamate diverging cultures of memory and to reconcile the claims of regular veterans’ associations as well as of former POWs who felt neglected and less recognized than front-line fighters. This process was accompanied by the unification of veterans’ associations in order to centralize and thus to control what the regime saw as an undesirable diversity of ex-combatant groups and 22 Legionnaires fought on three fronts under the command of foreign armies in Russia, Italy and France. 23 See Verena Moritz and Hannes Leidinger, “Kommunismusbekämpfung: Das Wiener Beispiel 1918–1921,” Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung (2008): 46–57. 24 Edgecombe and Healy, “Competing Interpretations,” 16. 25 Ibid.

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interests. Associations that were considered as Social Democratic, such as for example the “Central Union of German-Austrian War Victims” (Zentralverband der deutschösterreichischen Kriegsbeschädigten) were dissolved after February 1934 and their leaders arrested. Even the Christian-Social “Imperial Union of Austria’s War Victims” (Reichsbund der Kriegsopfer Österreichs), which had been engaged in a strong rivalry with the Zentralverband, opposed the predominantly military character of the newly established veterans’ associations, but it was eventually forced into the “United Federation of War Victims” (Einheitsverband der Kriegsopfer).26

III.

The difficult dialogue between veterans

In general, war veterans looked back on different war experiences and adopted distinct characterizations of the Habsburg Empire, as well as having varying views on the reasons for its dissolution. In turn, these perceptions affected the way former soldiers looked upon the neighbour states and former compatriots. Czechoslovakia, for instance, was termed a “war profiteer,” because the Danube Monarchy was destroyed and Czechoslovakia enjoyed a privileged status at the Paris Peace Conference (something much resented in Austria). From the very beginning, the relationship between the two states was characterized mostly by antagonism and distrust. Moreover, the way former soldiers were treated in their home countries depended on the question of victory and defeat, as well as the issue of whether the fatherland was ‘grateful’ or ‘ungrateful’. In Czechoslovakia, for instance, legionnaires occupied a privileged position in society and were presented as exemplary citizens and democrats. The memory of the Czechoslovak Legion became a “central point of reference for the new official tradition” in Czechoslovakia.27 In particular, those former Austro-German POWs who had been prevented from undergoing repatriation because of the Legion’s involvement in the Russian Civil War and therefore only returned home months or even years after the end of the conflict, must have looked upon the special status attained by their former comrades with a good deal of incomprehension.28 Yet, 26 Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin, Die Wunden des Staates: Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat in Österreich 1914–1938 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2015), 451–74. 27 Martin Zückert, “Memory of War and National State Integration: Czech and German Veterans in Czechoslovakia after 1918,” Central Europe 4 (2006) 2: 111–21, here 112. See also Natali Stegmann, “Soldaten und Bürger: Selbstbilder tschechoslowakischer Legionäre in der Ersten Republik,” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 61 (2002) 1: 25–48; Stegmann, Kriegsdeutungen, Staatsgründungen, Sozialpolitik. 28 Rudolf Kucˇera, “Exploiting Victory, Sinking into Defeat: Uniformed Violence in the Creation of the New Order in Czechoslovakia and Austria 1918–1922,” The Journal of Modern History 88 (2016) 4: 827–55, here 837.

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nor was the relationship with their former ‘brothers-in-arms’ from Germany completely unclouded. During the war, soldiers and officers from Imperial Germany had questioned Austro-Hungarian soldiers’ military virtues, such as steadfastness, courage, and stamina, not least because of the supposed ‘unreliability’ of Slavic soldiers. Their assessments of their fellow alliance partner in many cases turned out to be “unflattering” and disparaging, with all soldiers in the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian army often being lumped together, irrespective of their nationality. Many German soldiers did not view “Comrade LaceUp Shoe” (Kamerad Schnürschuh)29 as a fully-fledged serviceman and consequently blamed the Habsburg troops for setbacks and defeats.30 How did Austrian veterans of the Austro-Hungarian army, whose return elicited “not the slightest public reaction,”31 reflect upon their former comrades and adversaries? Did the aspects mentioned above really matter after the end of war? Was there an attempt to overcome old and new oppositions or to refresh and strengthen previously established ties? Could the pacifist attitudes that were contained in the statutes of many veterans’ associations help put the past aside and the question of being vanquisher or vanquished? In general, research on veterans’ internationalism after 1918 has already shown that there were various attempts at cooperation between former servicemen of the Entente powers and their opponents. Veterans’ internationalism proved to be a very powerful tool for raising awareness of social needs on a wider scale and across national frontiers. Although veterans’ internationalism cannot just be equated with purely “altruistic transnational activism, international cooperation and pacifism,” a number of relevant initiatives, above all in the 1920s, indicated the seriousness of efforts at working towards common goals.32 Veterans’ politics thus comprised different practices and they reflected a variety of political affiliations or, at least, sympathies towards particular ideologies. Recent studies have underlined the significance of veterans’ impact on interwar politics, as well as their instrumentalization in support of fascism.33 Indeed, the complex and varied process of cautious rapprochement between veterans and

29 So called because the lace-up boots worn by Austro-Hungarian soldiers differed from the German jackboots. 30 Martin Schmitz, “Verrat am Waffenbruder? Die Siedlice-Kontroverse im Spannungsfeld von Kriegsgeschichte und Geschichtspolitik,” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 67 (2008) 2: 385–407. 31 Wolfgang Doppelbauer, Zum Elend noch die Schande: Das altösterreichische Offizierskorps am Beginn der Republik (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1988), 5. 32 ]ngel Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors: Politics, Alliances and Networks in the Interwar Period,” European Review of History 25 (2018) 3/4: 492–511, here 492. 33 ]ngel Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

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war victims among the former Entente and Central Powers was followed by increasing alienation in the latter part of the interwar period. Nonetheless, the links between Austrian veterans’ associations and the CIAMAC (Conf8rence Internationale des Associations de Mutil8s et Anciens Combattants) and the FIDAC (F8d8ration Interalli8e des Anciens Combattants)34 constitute an obvious gap in current research. Scholars have shown surprisingly little interest in the role of Austrians veterans’ in these international organizations,35 despite the fact that, in 1927 and again in 1932, the Austrian capital Vienna hosted the Congress of the CIAMAC and that the Austrian politician, Maximilian Brandeisz, headed the association for a certain period of time.36

IV.

The Federal Association of Former POWs and its mission

The Federal Association of Former POWs (B.e.ö.K.) was founded in 1922.37 It grew out of the German-based “Imperial Association of Former POWs of Krasnoyarsk” (Reichsvereinigung der ehemaligen Krasnojarsker Kriegsgefangenen, hereafter R.e.K.), thus indicating its main focus as being on the experience of captivity in the realm of the collapsed Romanov Empire. Thousands of prisoners had been interned in the Krasnoyarsk camps, some for up to six years. Nonetheless, long-term internment in camps reflected more the experience of captive officers rather than that of rank-and-file soldiers.38 Indeed, the leftist 34 On FIDAC and CIAMAC see Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge, 88–91. 35 One notable exception is Verena Pawlowksy and Harald Wendelin, “Mobilisierung der Immobilen: Die Kriegsbeschädigten des Ersten Weltkriegs organisieren sich,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 22 (2011) 1: 185–98. 36 The CIAMAC held its “third conference in Vienna […] as a gesture to ‘a country that has been cruelly touched by the war’.” Cited in John Horne, “Beyond Cultures of Victory and Cultures of Defeat? Inter-War Veteran’s Internationalism,” in The Great War and Veteran’s Internationalism, edited by Eichenberg and Newman, 207–22, here 218. 37 Der Plenny 8 (1931) 5/6: 55. However, there were different dates circulating regarding the exact “birth” of the B.e.ö.K. 38 Rank-and-file soldiers were usually deployed for labour outside the camps and consequently worked in agriculture, industry, and the public sector, whereas – in line with pre-war agreements – officers were exempt from this obligation. For the most part, the exploitation of POW labour did not accord with the sentiments embodied in the Hague Convention and significantly contributed to mass mortality among POWs. Moreover, forced labour by POWs was accompanied by punitive measures, which formed part of a system of mutual reprisals and accusations of ill-treatment of POWs. Considering the diversity of employment and working conditions, the experiences of captive servicemen differed fundamentally, even without taking their rank into account. Nevertheless, the basic distinction between officer and common soldier was already decisive for the fate of prisoners. Cf. Verena Moritz and Julia Walleczek-Fritz, “Prisoners of War (Austria-Hungary),” in 1914–1918–Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 8 October 2014, DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10374 (27 March 2019).

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Reichsverband never got tired of emphasizing the privileged status of former officers, even in captivity. Starting in 1924, the B.e.ö.K. published its own association periodical, called Der Plenny. This Russian word, which means “prisoner,” embodied both the journal’s thematic focus and that of the association in general. Undoubtedly, the shared experiences in the Russian POW camps were of considerable importance for association members, above all for former Austro-Hungarian officers. Although the association sought to address the entire group of former POWs, Hans Weiland, Honorary President of the B.e.ö.K., repeatedly emphasized how the common experience of need, illness and violence had formed a close bond between prisoners, thus creating the raison d’Þtre for the B.e.ö.K.39 In contrast to the short-lived, leftist POW associations, the B.e.ö.K. did not view the question of financial compensation as being its core agenda. The association sometimes voiced severe criticism of the “fatherland’s” unwillingness to grant satisfactory financial support for former POWs,40 but did not overemphasize this issue, most probably due to the B.e.ö.K.’s links to conservative groups close to the Austrian government. In general, it did not view social problems such as unemployment among veterans or their straitened circumstances as matters that could be solved by political decisions and governmental intervention. Instead, the question of the fatherland being “ungrateful” towards POWs was understood more in terms of veterans’ “spiritual” needs and desire for recognition of the sacrifices they had made.41 In this respect, the B.e.ö.K. did not differ greatly from other POW veterans’ associations, but the main distinction was the emphasis placed on this issue when compared to financial claims. Thus, the B.e.ö.K. concentrated – especially in the 1920s – on a wide range of self-help and cultural activities, supported by former high-ranking officers, who up until the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy had been responsible for different aspects of the POWs’ agenda.42 39 Cited in Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr, 28. 40 Der Plenny 8 (1931) 5/6: 55. 41 See Edgecombe and Healy, “Competing Interpretations,” 25–26. Compare also Shannon Monaghan, “Whose Country, Whose Soldiers, Whose Responsibility? First World War ExServicemen and the Development of the Irish Free State, 1923–1939,” Contemporary European History 23 (2014) 1: 75–94. 42 The B.e.ö.K. set up an impressive network of social initiatives. It operated a welfare fund to provide financial support to needy “comrades” and their families and assisted members through their “job placement service” (which was much needed due to the high rate of unemployment), as well as helping members looking for living quarters. The association also served as a point of information for invalids and people in need of medical advice, while it also set up a “burial fund” to cover at least some of the funeral costs incurred after death. Furthermore, the B.e.ö.K. investigated the whereabouts of still missing POWs and set up an extra department for the Russian wives of returned POWs. Finally, the association was highly active culturally. Both a theatre and a music department were created; so-called “Plenny

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Moreover, the B.e.ö.K. laid exclusive claim to represent the true meaning of what war captivity had really involved. The association wished to keep its solemn promise to begin a scientifically based investigation of war captivity and to provide proper evidence of the prisoners’ “own experiences” for posterity, in particular by expanding the association’s own Archive of Captivity, which had grown in size over the course of the years. Another aim was the establishment of a permanent exhibition, which was achieved in June 1934, when a small POW Museum opened in Vienna.43 The association also invested much energy in gathering together an exhaustive compendium of individual portrayals of various aspects of war captivity. In 1931, a two-volume work, entitled In Feindeshand (In the Hands of the Enemy), was published.44 Approximately 900 pages in length, it was an impressive collection of commemorative texts, written primarily by former officers. There were also contributions from those involved in prisoner welfare. In Feindeshand dealt with captivity during the world war in various countries, but the section about Russia was particularly comprehensive. By contrast, the chapter on POW captivity within the Habsburg Monarchy turned out to be comparatively meagre, glossing over the extent of mass mortality among POWs in Austro-Hungarian camps.45 The publication of In Feindeshand reflected a kind of caesura with regard to the B.e.ö.K.’s work, its positioning within the Austrian political landscape and its relationship to Austria’s place in international affairs. Since the start of the 1930s, the role of internationalism had become increasingly marginalized within the association’s agenda, with cooperation now limited to POW associations in Germany and Sudeten German associations in Czechoslovakia.

Actors” performed various works, thus continuing the tradition started in the theatres established in POW camps; there was a “Plenny Band”, a “Plenny Choir”, as well as several socalled “Plenny Coffeehouses;” and even “Plenny Balls” were organized, at which a “Miss Plenny” was selected. 43 Der Plenny 11 (1934) 6/7: 46–7; On the museum’s history, see also Hannes Leidinger, Archiv und Museum der Kriegsgefangenschaft (Plennymuseum) der Bundesvereinigung ehemaliger österreichischer Kriegsgefangener (B.e.ö.K.): Materialien aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1939 zur Dokumentation von Gefangenschaft und Heimkehr während und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg im Heeresgeschichtlichen Museum Wien, unpublished Ms. 1998 in possession of the author. 44 Heinrich Raabl-Werner, “In Feindeshand: Ein Sammelwerk über die Kriegsgefangenschaft im Weltkriege,” Reichspost, 13 October, 1931, 7. 45 Verena Moritz, Zwischen Nutzen und Bedrohung: Die russischen Kriegsgefangenen in Österreich 1914–1921 (Bonn: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 2005), 330; Verena Moritz, “‘… Treulos in den Rücken gefallen.’: Zur Frage der Behandlung italienischer Kriegsgefangener in Österreich-Ungarn 1915–1918,” in Politik und Militär im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Österreichische und europäische Aspekte; Festschrift für Manfried Rauchensteiner, edited by Robert Kriechbaumer et al. (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2017), 185–208; Robert Pollatschek, “Das Kriegsgefangenenlager in Freistadt,” in In Feindeshand, vol. 2, edited by Weiland, 224–5.

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Right from the beginning, the B.e.ö.K. professed its belief in “the spirit of the German Volk.” Hans Weiland claimed that the connection to the “German Volk” had been strengthened in captivity, simultaneously overcoming “all selfish, nationalist parochialism and narrow-minded prejudice.”46 The B.e.ö.K.’s allegedly politically “neutral” pro-“Anschluss” stance gradually gained centre-stage in its public activities and statements as the association openly adopted the views of the Österreichisch-Deutscher Volksbund (Austrian-German People’s Union), a group dedicated to agitation for “Anschluss” between Austria and Germany. In the early years of its existence, however, the B.e.ö.K. had regularly emphasized the non-political character of its activities.47 For example, B.e.ö.K. members were requested not to join paramilitary associations, which were often directly linked to particular parties, such as the (Social Democratic) Schutzbund or the (Christian Social) Heimwehr.48 In its rather rare commentaries on politics, the B.e.ö.K. genuinely remained fairly non-committal for many years, mainly emphasizing the desirability of political consensus. Yet, at the same time, the association cultivated a specific interpretation of this supposedly apolitical attitude, seeing no contradiction between these guiding principles and its support for the “Anschluss” idea or its clear statements with regard to the so-called Kriegsschuldlüge (the war guilt lie). In the former instance, the B.e.ö.K. to an extent followed the trajectory of the Österreichisch-Deutscher Volksbund, which had initially been established across party lines and only “diverted to right-wing radicalism” in the course of the 1930s.49 With regard to the Kriegsschuldlüge, however, the B.e.ö.K. already mirrored official endeavours by the Austrian government in the 1920s to contradict accusations about Austria-Hungary’s responsibility for the outbreak of the war.50 The B.e.ö.K.’s attempt to avoid dividing POWs according to class, party or level of educational attainment thus implied a true sense of community, which in some ways favoured its strong emphasis on the German Volksgemeinschaft (literally : community of the people) as constituting the most important bond between ex-POWs. The B.e.ö.K., like its German opposite number, the R.e.K., 46 Der Plenny 1 (1924) 1: 3. 47 Der Plenny 4 (1927) 1: 44. 48 B.e.ö.K. letter from 11 August 1927, in “Plenny” Archive. I would like to thank Hannes Leidinger for providing me with information on material in the “Plenny-Archive”, to which he was given access in 1998. 49 Johannes Koll, “Sudeten Germans in Austria after the First World War,” in From Empire to Republic: Post-World War I Austria, edited by Günter Bischof et al. (Innsbruck – New Orleans: Innsbruck University Press, 2010), 273–92, here 280. (Contemporary Austrian Studies 19). 50 Hermann J. W. Kuprian, “Die Pariser Friedensverträge und die österreichische Geschichtswissenschaft während der Zwischenkriegszeit,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 114 (2006) 1, 123–42, here 137.

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referred again and again to the “mantra” of the strong ties between all Germans, irrespective of their state citizenship.51 Notwithstanding the B.e.ö.K.’s obvious focus on officers and their experience in captivity, Der Plenny in practice addressed “comrades” from “all political camps,” while avoiding altogether the topic of confessional allegiance.52 Nevertheless, Social Democratic functionaries kept their distance from the B.e.ö.K., while Christian Socials acted cautiously towards the association until the late 1920s. Clearly, the B.e.ö.K.’s support for the idea of “Anschluss”, which it presented as a natural necessity for all Germans, initially prevented the Christian Socials from developing an unreserved commitment to the association. At the annual commemorative festivities and memorial unveiling ceremonies held by the B.e.ö.K., there were initially only representatives from the Christian Social party present, but these were mainly representatives from the party’s second rank.53 Gradually, however, the relationship between the B.e.ö.K. and the Christian Social leadership became closer and led to a genuine partnership with the Austrian government, which also continued after the caesura of 1933/34, when the authoritarian dictatorship was established.

V.

Internationalism

In 1927, Der Plenny announced a number of promising joint initiatives with international veterans’ associations.54 In Luxemburg, the FIDAC even invited POW veterans from vanquished countries to participate in meetings to discuss the creation of a new international agreement on the treatment of POWs.55 By this time, the project could already look back on numerous conferences and draft statements published by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which had initially called for the drawing up of a new POW code.56 According to ]ngel Alcalde, the FIDAC was nonetheless primarily “an expression of the victorious powers and an anti-left coalition.”57 Julia Eichenberg 51 52 53 54 55

Der Plenny 5 (1928) 5: 2. Der Plenny 5 (1928) 11: 1. Der Plenny 3 (1926) 12: 1; Der Plenny 4 (1927) 12: 136–8. Der Plenny 4 (1927) 7: 77–79. “Noch immer Kriegsgefangene in Rußland: Mitteilungen von der Internationalen Kriegsgefangenenkonferenz in Luxemburg,” Reichspost, 3 June, 1927, 7. The Reichspost reported on the “first international conference of POWs”. 56 Timothy L. Schroer, “The Emergence and Early Demise of Codified Racial Segregation of Prisoners of War under the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and 1949,” Journal of the History of International Law 15 (2013) 1: 53–76; Heather Jones, “Revising the Laws of War on Prisoners of War in the Twentieth Century : Introduction,” War in History 23 (2016) 4: 408–15. 57 Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors,” 494.

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has likewise stressed the difference between the FIDAC and CIAMAC: “While CIAMAC promoted international reconciliation to an extent that eventually led it close to appeasement, FIDAC was based on the belief in the continuity of wartime alliances into peacetime.”58 Moreover, the latter clearly wanted to distance itself from veterans’ associations in the countries of the vanquished powers.59 Although FIDAC finally began to open up to veterans from Germany and Austria by abandoning their previous practice of ignoring them, its meetings still “echoed the old diplomacy and the pre-war system of alliances.”60 Der Plenny reported extensively on the international meetings that took place in 1927 in Luxemburg, as well as on further negotiations there and in Geneva. Its general resum8 was positive. In the course of the meetings in Luxemburg and the subsequent talks in Switzerland, the B.e.ö.K. put forward its idea of the “Blue Cross” (Blaues Kreuz). The intention was to establish this organization as a neutral instrument exclusively dedicated to ensuring the rights of prisoners of war during a future conflict. According to B.e.ö.K. delegate Hans Baumgartner’s report, this initiative gained wide approval and the establishment of an international “Blue Cross” seemed to be merely a matter of time.61 Before travelling on to Luxemburg, Hans Baumgartner, had met with representatives from German and Sudeten German POW associations in order to discuss a coordinated approach to the preliminary talks. The core discussions in Luxemburg were supposed to deal with the fate and repatriation of still existing POWs, along with the tending of war graves and POWs’ legal status.62 For example, the latter issue concerned the concept of reciprocity upon which the POW regime had ultimately relied. However, the principle of reciprocity had in practice ended up sustaining policies of reprisal, in many cases to the disadvantage of POWs. After the war, accusations of exaggerated retaliatory measures, mistreatment of POWs, and violation of the Hague Convention had mainly been directed against Germany.63 Interestingly, the invitation to Luxemburg triggered a closer collaboration between German and Sudeten German POW associations in order to enter the international arena as a joint force for attracting greater attention to POWs’ demands. At the same time, one of the B.e.ö.K.’s greatest concerns was to modify the existing POW code, which it considered deficient and in need of improve58 59 60 61 62 63

Eichenberg, “Veterans’ Associations”. Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors,” 497. Ibid. Ibid. Der Plenny 4 (1927) 6: 66. See Neville Wylie, “The 1929 Prisoner of War Convention and the Building of the Inter-war Prisoner of War Regime,” in Prisoners in War, edited by Sibylle Scheipers (Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 91–108 and 93–94.

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ment. Against this background, the Austrian, German and Sudeten German POW associations established permanent working groups, starting in 1927.64 This initiative led in 1928/29 to the establishment of the German POW League (Deutsche Kriegsgefangenenliga), a union of the B.e.ö.K., the R.e.K., POW associations in Reichenberg/Liberec (Czechoslovakia) and Danzig/Gdan´sk (Poland), and a certain “interest group” in Hamburg.65 In May 1928, Baron Wilhelm von Lersner from the R.e.K.66 used the occasion of the B.e.ö.K.’s annual conference to underline the significance of the new league, as well as the close ties between the newly conjoined partners.67 Der Plenny also published the statutes of the new association, which contained a clear statement in favour of “Anschluss.”68 In October of the same year, Hans Baumgartner again reported on a meeting of former combatants in Luxemburg. He stressed that the true desire for peace expressed in the course of this conference were not merely “hollow phrases” of pacifism.69 Baumgartner also welcomed the possibility for more than 16 million veterans to express their opinions, through their delegates, on the obstacles to a European peace without restrictions and “diplomatic insidiousness.” Furthermore, he emphasized the conference organizers’ willingness to treat all participants on a fully equal basis. Evidently, the B.e.ö.K. on this occasion was present as part of the above-mentioned Deutsche Kriegsgefangenenliga and was assigned to the POW commission as one of four entities.70 According to Baumgartner’s report, the Austrian delegates used the opportunity to provide an impression of the deplorable post-war situation in Austria and its economic needs, while also speaking of the fervent wish of the “whole Austrian people,” “irrespective of party belonging,” to unite with the German “motherland.” Current-day Austria was depicted as an “over-dimensioned POW camp,” limited by its state borders, defenceless, and lacking freedom.71 Not surprisingly, the presence and attitude of the German POW League at the Luxemburg conference did not meet with universal approval. A French newspaper entitled its report on the meetings “dangerous internationalism,” suggesting that the German POW League already represented Greater Germany 64 Der Plenny 6 (1929) 4/5: 49. 65 Tellingly, leftist organizations such as the German “Reichsbanner,” which had also sought to address former POWs’ concerns, did not belong to the Liga’s members. See Der Plenny 5 (1928) 5: 60; Der Plenny 5 (1928) 11: 130. 66 For details on the R.e.K., its aims and political development, see Feltman, The Stigma of Surrender, 136–64. 67 Der Plenny 5 (1928) 5: 61. 68 Der Plenny 5 (1928) 10: 128–9. 69 Ibid., 111. 70 Ibid., 112. 71 Ibid.

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(Großdeutschland).72 However, this reaction did not stop the B.e.ö.K. and its German colleagues from affirming their commitment to “Anschluss” and stating that union with Germany was a precondition for a lasting peace.73 Simultaneously, the B.e.ö.K. stressed that former front-line fighters and, even more so, ex-POWs were predestined to work towards an enduring peace and to overcome mistrust and hate.74 Despite this apparent commitment to peace and reconciliation, this time the association paper’s report on the B.e.ö.K.’s internationalism voiced noticeable doubts about the former enemies’ actual willingness to approach German delegates without any reservations.75 Right from the very beginning, the report suggested, one Sudeten German delegate from the German POW League had had little faith in a dialogue free of prejudices. He claimed to have noticed the continued existence of familiar patterns of perception during the meetings in Luxemburg: French, British and American veterans had met with German and Austrian ex-servicemen, yet still saw them as enemies. Ultimately, he concluded, there were – as usual – the victorious on one side and the vanquished on the other.76 In autumn 1927, the international CIAMAC conference took place in Vienna – only a few weeks after the bloody events in July that year and the catastrophic fire in the Palace of Justice in the Austrian capital, following protests against the exoneration of right-wing veterans in the Schattendorf trial. These events decisively impaired the political climate and widened the gaps between the Social Democratic and Christian Social parties. Indeed, the Austrian Social Democrat Maximilian Brandeisz, head of the CIAMAC, did not hesitate to remind participants about the victims of the recent incidents, repeating the polemics printed in the Social Democratic Arbeiter-Zeitung against the Christian Social Federal Chancellor Ignaz Seipel.77 Interestingly, Hans Baumgartner, as delegate of the B.e.ö.K, gave a speech at the congress, having accepted a personal invitation from the CIAMAC itself. He stressed that “many members of the B.e.ö.K.,” both former POWs and disabled ex-servicemen, were members in both organizations, and he even promised on behalf of the B.e.ö.K. to support CIAMAC’s work in support of disabled veterans.78 Yet, judging by the editorial policy of Der Plenny, 72 73 74 75 76

Der Plenny 5 (1928) 11: 128. Der Plenny 6 (1929) 4/5: 49. Ibid., 50. Ibid. Der Plenny 5 (1928) 5: 58; cf. William Mulligan, “German Veterans’ Associations and the Culture of Peace: The Case of the Reichsbanner,” in The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism, edited by Eichenberg and Newman, 139–61, here 153. 77 Polizeidirektion Wien, Pr. Zl. IV-4749/27, Wien 28 October 1927, an das BKA (Abt. 8), BKA Inneres, 15–3, 1926–27, Kt. 2437, Archive of the Republic/Archiv der Republik (AdR), Austrian State Archive/Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖStA). 78 Der Plenny 4 (1927) 11: 126–7.

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the B.e.ö.K. clearly neglected to report specifically on disabled POWs and instead focused on the general social needs of its members. This implied a certain amount of distance towards the CIAMAC, as well as towards the Zentralverband, which advocated the interests of “war-damaged” men, widows and orphans. Considering the ideological background of the B.e.ö.K.’s leadership and the fact that most of its supporters came from the aristocracy and/or had been civil servants under the Habsburg monarchy, this willingness to cooperate with CIAMAC – dominated, as it was, by leftist functionaries – was a striking example of the B.e.ö.K.’s apolitical credo. Nevertheless, this obviously contradicted the association’s anti-Marxist and increasingly nationalist and right-wing stance. In fact, Der Plenny subsequently did not report on any further cooperation between CIAMAC and the B.e.ö.K. For example, the paper did not even mention the CIAMAC conference held in Vienna in 1932.79 Moreover, there is no evidence that the B.e.ö.K. cooperated at any time with the Austrian Zentralverband. On the contrary, the association obviously possessed firm contacts to the Christian Social Reichsbund der Kriegsopfer Österreichs, headed by Karl Drexel. The latter was a priest, who had been a prisoner of war in Russia, regularly participated in the work of the B.e.ö.K., and in 1940 published his memoirs on his time in captivity.80 Moreover, he was a bitter enemy of Maximilian Brandeisz.81 After 1929, when the new convention on treatment of POWs was issued, Der Plenny more or less stopped reporting on the B.e.ö.K.’s internationalism, when compared to the numerous detailed articles over the preceding years.82 Although the B.e.ö.K. was proud of its contribution to the Geneva convention, Der Plenny only referred to this issue again in connection with the convention’s pending ratification by the Austrian government, something that only occurred in 1936.83

79 See also Polizeidirektion Wien, Pr. Zl. IV-4749/32, Wien 8 September 1932, an die Generaldirektion für die öffentliche Sicherheit, Abt. GD 1, BKA Inneres, 15–3, 1932, Kt. 2437, AdR, ÖStA. 80 Karl Drexel, Feldkurat in Sibirien: 1914–1920 (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1940). 81 Pawlowsky and Wendelin, Die Wunden des Staates, 438–45. 82 However, Austrian newspapers did report on the B.e.ö.K.’s contribution to a new convention on POWs. For example, an undated newspaper clipping in Heinrich von Raabl-Werner’s archival bequest in the Austrian State Archive details the association’s efforts in this regard, as well as reporting on the participation of German, Czech, Polish and Hungarian POW associations at the B.e.ö.K.’s annual meeting. See “Wiener Neueste Nachrichten”, n. p., KA, NL B/141 (Raabl-Werner), Mappe 2, ÖStA. Interestingly, the Plenny did not report on any contacts with Hungarian and Polish POW associations. 83 See also Text of the ratification by the Federal Government of Austria in 1936: https://www. ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=bundesnormen& Gesetzesnummer=10000191 (2 October 2018).

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Reports on the Disarmament World Conference in Geneva84 or cooperation between CIAMAC and FIDAC85 during the 1930s were completely lacking in the paper.

VI.

Towards a partnership with the Austrian government

The two volumes of In Feindeshand, released by the B.e.ö.K. in 1931, were accompanied by a widespread obsession with the recent past and the association’s strong desire to leave its imprint on historical narratives of the Great War. For Hans Weiland personally, however, the publication was designed to address the need to explain the fate of POWs to a wider public and to banish prejudices and ignorance about the POWs’ fate.86 In Feindeshand referred in detail to pre-war internationalism when discussing improvements to the stipulations regarding POWs’ treatment. Regarding the implementation of the new POW code in 1929, the B.e.ö.K. was above all content to stress the merits of its own contribution.87 Although the B.e.ö.K. presented the “Blue Cross” as a proposal of great importance, the initial hope of transforming it into an international organization to monitor and protect POW rights was not realized. The “Blue Cross” remained a purely Austrian creation and only came into being as a branch of the B.e.ö.K (it was intended over the long term as a replacement for the association).88 At the same time as In Feindeshand was released, ongoing discussions about a customs union89 between Germany and Austria in 1930/31 deepened the conflicts between Germany and Austria on the one side, and France on the other.90 In France, the plan for a customs union was equated with preparations for a new war 84 Thomas Richard Davies, “International Veterans’ Organizations and the Promotion of Disarmament between the Two World Wars,” in The Great War and Veteran’s Internationalism, edited by Eichenberg and Newman, 187–206. 85 International Assembly of Ex-Service Men and War Victims, Geneva 1933, Official Report published by the CIAMAC and the FIDAC, R 4224, 1933–1937, Section 7B, Dossier 664, 2001–400, United Nations Archives at Geneva/Archives de la Soci8t8 des Nations / GenHve. 86 Hans Weiland, “Zum Geleite”, in In Feindeshand, vol. 1, edited by Weiland, 9–12. 87 Cf. various articles on this issue in In Feindeshand, vol. 2, edited by Weiland, 425–37. 88 Der Plenny 10 (1933) 11/12: 97. 89 Rolf Steininger, “‘…Der Angelegenheit ein paneuropäisches Mäntelchen umhängen…’: Das deutsch-österreichische Zollunionsprojekt von 1931,” in Ungleiche Partner? Österreich und Deutschland in ihrer gegenseitigen Wahrnehmung: Historische Analysen und Vergleiche aus dem 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Michael Gehler et al. (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996), 441–78. 90 In 1933, no German delegates participated at a joint meeting of CIAMAC and FIDAC in Geneva, as the country was already in the “throes of the Nazi takeover”. It remains an open question as to whether delegates from the B.e.ö.K. also stayed away. See Davies, “International Veterans’ Organizations,” 200–2.

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and provoked a storm of protest. The issue not only led to a deterioration in the relationship between Vienna and Paris, but also between Austria and the states of the so-called Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania). The B.e.ö.K. seemingly remained unimpressed by this international reaction. On the contrary, the association enthusiastically supported its German counterparts in their struggle against the “unjustified separation” from their “national comrades” in neighbouring countries, also reminding the public of similar “injustices” in “Carinthia, South Tyrol and Burgenland” and denouncing the disintegration of the “German nation.”91 The B.e.ö.K.’s clear statements in favour of a union with Germany chimed in with the foreign policy of Federal Chancellor Johann Schober, who had promoted the idea of the customs union. Schober assumed the patronage of several events organized by the B.e.ö.K. and prominent Christian Social politicians followed his example and became members of the “Honorary Committee” of various “festivities.”92 While prestigious Social Democrats were totally absent from involvement in the association, the B.e.ö.K. started to attract a “Who is who” of the Christian Social Party. Reflecting on the ultimate failure of the customs union, Der Plenny fiercely denounced the behaviour of the victorious powers and their treatment of the vanquished. In 1931/32, Hans Weiland voiced the opinion that the war was still going on and commitment to peace was nothing more than an empty shell.93 He expressed his firm disappointment with previous international peace initiatives and once more stressed the significance of veterans’ ability to pave the way for a genuine and worthwhile internationalism.94 Moreover, the B.e.ö.K. elevated veterans above diplomats or politicians as actors capable of working towards peace and simultaneously placed veterans from vanquished states on a higher plane than those from victorious countries, due to their “ethical superiority.”95 Around the same time, Social Democrats noted with growing pessimism a general mood of forgetfulness regarding the painful and traumatic experience of war and the omnipresence of hero worship and “monarchist militarism.”96 Indeed, an assertive, confrontational nationalism proved ever more appealing and many were increasingly aware of the undeniable shift towards authoritarianism. Austrian Social Democrats monitored this development with great concern, but 91 Der Plenny 8 (1931) 9: 86–87. 92 Oesterreichische Wehrzeitung, 17 October, 1930, 6. 93 In 1938, Der Plenny reprinted a respective statement by Hans Weiland: Der Plenny 15 (1938) 4/5: 34–35. 94 Ibid. 95 Der Plenny 9 (1933) 1: 2. 96 Cited in Oswald Überegger, Erinnerungskriege: Der Erste Weltkrieg, Österreich und die Tiroler Kriegserinnerung in der Zwischenkriegszeit (Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2011), 111. See also Arbeiter-Zeitung, 15 May, 1932, 1–2.

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also somewhat perplexedly. They lamented that a growing number of the population had become silent about denouncing the horrible experiences undergone during the war. For Social Democrats, this trend was a consequence of the “military socialization” taking place in the Austrian Republic, fostered by reactionary forces.97 Although the old Austro-Hungarian elites had been severely discredited in the popular mind during the war and the military high command was associated with overriding the rule of law,98 there nevertheless occurred a gradual rehabilitation of the military leadership or, at least, of military virtues. Notions of strength, dignity and the “spirit of the front” (Frontgeist) were counterposed to the seeming banalities of civilian politics. Thus, it appears that the “vanquished” tried to cast off their previous image and to face their former adversaries on equal terms.99 Accordingly, it is not surprising that in the 1930s many Austrian veterans took great satisfaction in the fact that many former officers from the First Wold War held high level positions in government.100 In view of the clear gestures of goodwill shown by the Austrian government when joining the B.e.ö.K.’s honorary committee and its strong interest in addressing former servicemen, it must have been relatively unproblematic for the B.e.ö.K. to abandon definitively the path of seeming neutrality and the preaching of international understanding and cooperation. Only a few months after Adolf Hitler’s vindication of former POWs in Germany as the equals of front soldiers and against the background of the National Socialist strategy of placing veterans at the centre of the national community,101 Austria’s Federal Chancellor Wilhelm Miklas made a similar address to the B.e.ö.K. In December 1933, on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument in honour of former POWs who had died in captivity, Miklas declared that the “Austrian Fatherland would no longer tolerate any defamatory statements” made against former POWs, “but rather that it would recognize the loyal performance of their duties.” Miklas finally expressed the “fatherland’s” gratitude towards the POWs.102 Hans Weiland then issued a 97 Ibid., 112. 98 Pieter M. Judson, “‘Where our commonality is necessary…’: Rethinking the End of the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook 48 (2017): 1–21, here 14; John Deak and Jonathan E. Gumz, “How to Break a State: The Habsburg Monarchy’s Internal War, 1914–1917,” The American Historical Review 122 (2017) 4: 1105–36. 99 Ingeborg Messerer, “Die Frontkämpfervereinigung Deutsch-Österreichs: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wehrverbände in der Republik Österreich,” unpublished PhD. thesis, University of Vienna, 1963, 118. 100 Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr, 96. 101 Nils Löffelbein, “The Legacy of the Front: The Disabled Veterans of the First World War in Germany after 1918,” in New Political Ideas in the Aftermath of the Great War, edited by Alessandro Salvador and Anders G. Kjøstvedt (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), 175–97. 102 Der Plenny 10 (1933) 11/12: 96.

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statement by the B.e.ö.K. on this issue, in which he spoke of a “retrieval of the honour” for the former captives, a goal that the association had been working towards over the course of many years. Now, he believed, “the heart […] could once again beat faithfully for the Fatherland.”103 He also stressed the fact that, in the past, POWs had been shamefully neglected. One can see here a clear effort to overcome the image of the “ungrateful homeland” which had – to varying degrees – taken root among all groups of veterans. This implicit allegation against the policy of the Social Democrat-dominated government between 1918 and 1920 played an important role here.104 Maximilian Ronge, former head of the Austro-Hungarian secret service and responsible for the repatriation of POWs for many years after the collapse of the Dual Monarchy, affirmed in 1933 the overdue recognition of POW virtues and expressed his conviction that the Austro-Hungarian authorities would have shown their appreciation too, had the Monarchy not collapsed.105 In this context, it is also noteworthy that, in the 1930s, the B.e.ö.K. started to make an issue of the Czechoslovak Legion and the consequences for POWs of its actions in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. Thus, the association mirrored the multifaceted Austrian version of the stab-in-the-back myth,106 oscillating between anti-Bolshevism, anti-Semitism and anti-Slav positions. The B.e.ö.K. picked up on pre-1914 accusations against Slav soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army,107 focusing on the cruelties committed by Czechoslovak legionnaires against POWs in Russia. Colleagues in the R.e.K. acclaimed this information provided by the B.e.ö.K. and asserted that only now did Germans understand that the general unreliability of Austro-Hungarian soldiers was entirely due to “Slav treachery.”108 Nevertheless, following the caesura of 1933/34, the B.e.ö.K. viewed its partnership with the governing authorities in Austria as a higher priority than cooperation with former comrades in Germany and Czechoslovakia. Links to these groups were not completely severed, but were placed on the back burner. In turn, the new Austrian regime sought to merge Christian ideology and militaristic rhetoric, thus contributing to the creation of a “common ground between Christian Social and German national groupings.”109 The

103 104 105 106

Ibid., 99. Überegger, Erinnerungskriege, 185. Der Plenny 10 (1933) 11/12: 100. Patrick J. Houlihan, “Was there an Austrian Stab-in-the-Back Myth? Interwar Military Interpretations of Defeat,” in From Empire to Republic, edited by Günter Bischof et al., 67–89. 107 Richard Lein, Pflichterfüllung oder Hochverrat? Die tschechischen Soldaten ÖsterreichUngarns im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna – Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2011). 108 Der Plenny 10 (1933) 5/6: 46–49. 109 Cole, “Divided Land, Diverging Narratives,” 279.

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B.e.ö.K. seemingly turned out to be the ideal recipient for this kind of internal “reconciliation.”

VII. The “rebirth” of the fatherland After the bloody events of February 1934110 the authoritarian regime sought to present a “new” and “real” homeland that everyone could be proud of. As part of this programme, representatives of the new government no longer held back in supporting the B.e.ö.K.,111 but simultaneously demanded an unambiguous patriotic commitment towards the “Austrian Fatherland.” In turn, Hans Weiland proclaimed the “end of an inner conflict” among POWs and a future full of harmony and reconciliation. As “returnees from misery”, former prisoners were elevated to a “metaphysical level”, participating in the “mission of frontline fighters” to lead the country to a brighter future.112 Moreover, the B.e.ö.K. reminded its members of their duty towards the fatherland, rather than pressing claims for compensation.113 Consequently, Der Plenny expressed particular enthusiasm about the future following the issuing of the new Austrian constitution in May 1934, and did so without making close reference to the events of the past months. The ultimately close relationship between the B.e.ö.K. and the leaders of the Austrian Ständestaat was underlined by the extensive presence of high-ranking government officials at various B.e.ö.K. events. The association therefore reacted with great concern when Federal Chancellor Dollfuß was murdered by Nazis in July 1934. Hans Weiland emphasized the chancellor’s merits and reflected on the position adopted by the Dollfuß regime towards Germany.114 Significantly, however, Weiland interpreted Dollfuß’ policy towards Germany as being at its core “großdeutsch.”115 Two years later, the paper presented the July Agreement with Germany as an overdue national reconciliation, even an outright liberation.116 In 1936, the B.e.ö.K. became part of the Österreichische Reichs-Kameradschaftsund Soldatenfront (Austrian Imperial Comradeship and Soldiers Front) and thereby took a step that underpinned the association’s willingness to integrate

110 A Plenny social gathering was postponed due to the bloody events in Vienna in February 1934. See Der Plenny 11 (1934) 2: 1. 111 Der Plenny 11 (1934) 4/5: 34–35. 112 Ibid., 37. 113 Der Plenny 12 (1935) 4: 28. 114 Der Plenny 11 (1934) 8/9: 53–54. 115 Ibid. 116 Der Plenny 13 (1936) 7/8: 53–55.

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into the wider group of former frontline soldiers.117 With great satisfaction, the B.e.ö.K. commented on the inclusion of POWs into the ceremonies to honour fallen war heroes that were organized by the authorities.118 In 1937, Der Plenny reported on the “first international meeting of frontline fighters” in Berlin and published the speech by Reichswehrminister Werner von Blomberg.119 The latter emphasized a new kind of pacifism, while not denying the honour of fighting for the fatherland and the need for national defence. Der Plenny positively welcomed Blomberg’s statements and expressed the hope that former frontline fighters who had confronted the horrors of war would guarantee a just peace and continued dialogue on related issues.120 The above-mentioned meeting of Frontline Fighters had been organized by the Comitato Internazionale dei Combattenti (CIP) and reflected the “emerging Rome-Berlin axis.”121 According to newspaper reports, the CIP meetings in Germany were also attended by an Austrian delegation.122 In 1937 and 1938, CIP delegates gathered also in Paris and London. In this sphere, as Angel ]lcalde has suggested, the “old divide between ex-enemies had finally been transcended,” but the delegates “from all countries” now “shared a very conservative, if not authoritarian, inclination.”123 The B.e.ö.K.’s connection to the highest members of the Austro-fascist regime did not prevent its periodical from actively embracing the annexation of Austria to Germany in March 1938.124 Thereafter, the association’s staff was subject to various changes, because not everyone seamlessly assimilated to the new sit117 Der Plenny 13 (1936) 2: 1; See also Florian Wenninger, “Dimensionen organisierter Gewalt: Zum militärhistorischen Forschungsstand über die österreichische Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Das Dollfuss/Schuschnigg-Regime 1933–1938: Vermessung eines Forschungsfeldes, edited by Florian Wenninger and Lucile Dreidemy (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2013), 493–576, here 525. 118 Der Plenny 12 (1935) 5/6: 39–49; Der Plenny 12 (1935) 12: 94–96. On the “Heldendenkmal” in Vienna and respective ceremonies, see Edgecombe and Healy, “Competing Interpretations of Sacrifice,” 26–29. 119 Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe, 253–5. See also “Blomberg und Göring empfangen die Frontkämpfer,” Salzburger Volksblatt, 17 February, 1937, 1. 120 Der Plenny 14 (1937) 2/3: 11–12; Der Plenny 14 (1937) 7/8: 61–64. Although the B.e.ö.K. increasingly converged with the commemorative rituals and interpretations of the war during the course of the 1930s, there was still space, here and there, for expression of the key ideals that accompanied the association’s birth. The commitment to establishing new guidelines for POW rights or commemoration of the deaths of non-German POWs did not disappear completely, but certainly faded into the background. 121 Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors,” 505. 122 Salzburger Volksblatt, Folge 179, 7. 8. 1937, 3. 123 Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors,” 505. 124 On the goals of the “League of German POWs” (Deutsche Kriegsgefangenen-Liga), which was founded in 1929, see Hans Weiland, Ziele und Aufgaben der “deutschen Kriegsgefangenen-Liga,” in In Feindeshand, vol. 2, edited by Weiland, 424–5.

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uation.125 Eventually, however, Josef May and Gustav Swatek, who belonged to the German Labour Front and the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) respectively, took over the helm.126 Representatives from the German R.e.K. then contacted the new B.e.ö.K. leaders, saying that discussions about the “new possibilities for closer cooperative work” with German “comrades” needed to start immediately. However, at this point in time the R.e.K. was no longer an independent association. After Hitler’s seizure of power, POWorganizations had joined the German Warrior League Kyffhäuser as a “first step towards the unification of all German frontline soldiers and soldiers’ unions.” Shortly before the “Anschluss”, the R.e.K. was incorporated into the Nationalsozialistische Kriegsopferversorgung (NSKOV – National Socialist War Victim’s Care).127 In June 1938, the new B.e.ö.K. leadership addressed its members and informed them that, due to the “formation of the Greater German Reich,” the association would henceforth become part of the German R.e.K.128 This step, it was said, would contribute to the creation of a larger “front soldier collective.”129 According to the B.e.ö.K., about 200,000 former POWs were living in Austria in 1938.130 Faced with the mental preparation for war systematically being carried out by Nazi propaganda, the portrayal of captivity, which displayed one of the realities of war, was unwanted.131 This confirmed what was already evident from the pages of Der Plenny in preceding years, as slogans about peace and demilitarization had steadily been pushed ever more into the background. One and a half years after the annexation, a new world war began, bringing new dimensions of horror. As a result, the experiences of prisoners from the First World War for a long time sank into oblivion. 125 Little is known about the subsequent history of former board members. After the “Anschluss”, however, Hans Weiland, who was a secondary school teacher, refused to teach National Socialist racial theories and later worked as a gardener until the end of the war. He was clearly affiliated to the resistance movement against the NS-Regime. See Renate Schreiber (ed.), Es geschah in Wien: Erinnerungen von Elsa Björkman-Goldschmidt (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2007), 325. 126 Der Plenny 15 (1938) 2/3: 19. 127 Cited in Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr, 96. 128 The documents of the Stillhaltekommissar (Stiko) in Vienna outline the financial aspects of the B.e.ö.K.’s liquidation after the “Anschluss” see AdR ZNsZ Stiko Wien 38 A/106, ÖStA. 129 Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, 96. 130 Letter from the B.e.ö.K. to the Gauleitung, 15 March 1938, AdR ZNsZ Stiko Wien 38 A/106, ÖStA. 131 Wilfried Rogasch, “Zur Geschichte der Sammlung,” in Kriegsgefangen: Objekte aus der Sammlung des Archivs und Museums der Kriegsgefangenschaft, Berlin, und des Verbandes der Heimkehrer, Kriegsgefangenen und Vermißtenangehörigen Deutschlands e.V., Bonn-Bad Godesberg, im Deutschen Historischen Museum, edited by Rosmarie Beier and Deutsches Historisches Museum (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 1990), 12–15 and 13; cf. Alon Rachamimov, POWs and the Great War : Captivity on the Eastern Front (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2002), 222–8.

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VIII. Conclusion Within the landscape of Austrian veterans, the B.e.ö.K. occupied a special position. In contrast to radical veterans with often obvious links to paramilitary groups, who challenged the Austrian state through protests or threats to take power, the B.e.ö.K. long emphasized its pacifistic orientation and political neutrality. Initially, the association stressed its desire for a peaceful future and concentrated on information work to banish prejudices about POWs and on creating a widespread network to support needy former prisoners of war. However, analogous to the deepening political crisis in Austria as well as growing international tensions, the association intensified its political commitment to the “Anschluss” movement, emphasizing the common bond between Germans irrespective of where they lived. Its collaboration with German and Sudeten German associations accelerated this development. In consequence, the B.e.ö.K.’s desire for reconciliation with former enemies remained only halfhearted and the joint work in support of former POWs’ concerns did not go beyond informal cooperation. At the same time, encouraging signals on behalf of veterans’ associations from formerly hostile countries were equally rare. The article shows that the B.e.ö.K. gravitated more and more towards authoritarian positions. Although it was not willing to abandon its commitment to the “Anschluss,” it engaged in an alliance with the Christian Social party to satisfy the wish for recognition of POWs. With its emphasis on the “frontline experience” (Fronterlebnis), the Austro-fascist instrumentalization of veterans’ associations exercised an attraction on the B.e.ö.K. whose leadership had never entirely abandoned an emotional attachment towards military virtues.

Julia Walleczek-Fritz

Staying Mobilized: Veterans’ Associations in Austria’s Border Regions Carinthia and Styria during the Interwar Period1

I.

Introduction

In October 1920, delegates from the Provincial Associations of Returning Soldiers (Landesverbände der Heimkehrerbünde) in Styria, Carinthia, Salzburg, Upper Austria and Lower Austria met in the Styrian capital, Graz. The meeting had been called to agree on war veterans’ basic interests and to express their common demands towards the Austrian political parties on both provincial and state levels. A few months before, in March 1920, the associations had also decided to join the Alpine Association of War Participants (Alpenländischer Verband der Kriegsteilnehmer, hereafter AVK), a new union of former World War One soldiers from the Alpine regions.2 Immediately after its founding in Graz at the beginning of 1920, the AVK, which was the successor institution of the Styrian Association of Returning Soldiers (Heimkehrerbund), gained in importance and tried to expand its vision beyond the provincial borders. The Styrian connection was further strengthened through the continuity in leadership personnel, with Alfred Teischinger, hitherto head of the Styrian Heimkehrerbund, becoming chairman of the AVK.3

1 This paper was written as part of the bilateral Austrian-Czech project funded by the Austrian ˇ R), No. I 3125-G28. The author is Science Fund (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GA C grateful for this generous support. 2 Not to be confused with the association Bund der Alpenländer, a paramilitary self-defence formation founded in 1923 by the Tyrolean Richard Steidle, a former officer who primarily served in the rear of the combat zone during the war. The Bund was renamed the Bund der österreichischen Selbstschutzverbände in 1926. See Clifton Earl Edmondson, “Heimwehren und andere Wehrverbände,” in Handbuch des politischen Systems Österreichs: Erste Republik 1918–1933, edited by Emmerich T#los et al. (Vienna: Manz, 1995), 261–76, here 264–6. 3 Correspondence between Alpenländischer Verband ehemaliger Kriegsteilnehmer and Austrian Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt, 5 May 1920, Inneres, Kriegsgefangenenund Zivilinterniertenamt, 30.901–31.240, 1919–1/1–14, 1920, 1–1/24 (Zl. 45./20.), Archive of the Republic/Archiv der Republik (AdR), Austrian State Archive/Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖStA); Freie Stimmen: Deutsche Kärntner Landeszeitung, 16 November, 1920, 2.

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The new formation attracted great attention within the spectrum of veterans’ associations in post-1918 Austria. Numerous former officers, rank-and-file soldiers, and members of other associations (including veterans’ groups) attended the inaugural meeting. Among them were representatives of the GagistAssociation (Gagistenverband), an association of professional soldiers, and the Union of Front-Line Soldiers (Frontkämpfervereinigung), an ideologically antiMarxist and anti-Semitic oriented movement of returning soldiers that was founded in 1920 by two former Austro-Hungarian officers who had fought in World War One, Emil Fey and Hermann (Ritter von) Hiltl.4 In sum, the October meeting of the provincial associations in Graz implied the taking of a vow with regard to their immediate political intentions. In November 1920, the GermanNational Carinthian newspaper, Freie Stimmen, reported on the meeting and announced a series of demands made by the veterans: the unity of all combatants and the attainment of economic stability, social order and peace, to be achieved in particular by “Anschluss” to an undivided German Reich, which offered – so the association members argued – the opportunity for their homeland’s “recovery.”5 Carinthia and Styria represent interesting case studies for investigating post1918 central Europe and the complex legacy of World War One. The two provinces formed part of a fragile political system in the First Austrian Republic and, more specifically, comprised contested and ethnically diverse borderland regions that were threatened by the emerging State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (SHS), which greatly impacted upon the situation of World War One veterans. Within this context, the situation in Austria’s South indicates that the wartime

4 Kärntner Tagblatt, 9 April, 1920, 4. The Frontkämpfervereinigung was also named Frontkämpfervereinigung Deutsch-Österreich and existed until 1935. Unlike other veterans’ associations, Hiltl intended to involve rank-and-file soldiers in its organization, but the leading positions were nevertheless in the hands of former regular officers who perceived their role to be the defence of “war participants’ interests”. According to the statutes, they planned to unify all “Aryan” frontline soldiers from all branches of service, foster comradeship, pay tribute to fallen soldiers, and contribute to the rebuilding of the fatherland. On the Frontkämpfervereinigung, see Mario Strigl, “Vom Legitimismus zum Nationalismus: Die Frontkämpfervereinigung in Österreich,” unpublished thesis (Diplomarbeit), University of Vienna, 2000; Ingeborg Messerer, “Die Frontkämpfervereinigung Deutsch-Österreichs: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wehrverbände in der Republik Österreich,” unpublished PhD. thesis, University of Vienna, 1963, 3–7; Edmondson, “Heimwehren und andere Wehrverbände,” 263. 5 Freie Stimmen, 16 November, 1920, 2. On the “Anschluss” as a Großdeutsche Lösung (“Greater German Solution”) conceived as part of a democratic, state-building project, see Erin R. Hochman, “Ein Volk, ein Reich, eine Republik: Großdeutsch Nationalism and Democratic Politics in the Weimar and First Austrian Republics,” German History 32 (2014) 1: 29–52.

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crisis was extenuated by the border conflict, much as Robert Gerwarth and others have argued for central and east-central Europe as a whole.6 In examining the militarily and geopolitically contested regions of Carinthia and Styria, firstly, one has to take into account the prolonging of men’s physical and mental mobilization through (military-)political service. In Styria and Carinthia, many returning soldiers from World War One did not undergo a process of demobilization and “re-civilisation” in 1918/1919,7 because they remained doubly mobilized, both militarily and politically, in defence campaigns which lasted until 1920. With regard to military service, the newly installed People’s Defence Battalions (Volkswehrbatallione) were organized to repel Yugoslav territorial incursions.8 For the most part, these groups drew their strength from ex-soldiers who had previously served in Austro-Hungarian army units in Carinthia and – to a lesser extent – Styria.9 Secondly, it is important to focus on the group of war returnees (Heimkehrer), former combatants who gathered together in the already mentioned Carinthian and Styrian Heimkehrerbund, and later on, in the AVK, because they supported the anti-Vienna and anti-Austrian campaign pursued by pro-“Anschluss”, national-conservative or explicitly German-National political parties in the South, 6 Robert Gerwarth, “The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War,” Past & Present 200 (2008) 1: 175–209; Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (eds.), Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War (New York: Berghahn Boks, 2016); Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (eds.), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Benjamin Ziemann, Front und Heimat: Ländliche Kriegserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern 1914–1923 (Essen: Klartext, 1997). 7 For further discussion, with a particular focus on the situation in Austria’s North-East, see Maureen Healy, “Civilizing the Soldier in Postwar Austria,” in Gender and War in TwentiethCentury Eastern Europe, edited by Nancy M. Wingfield and Maria Bucur (Bloomington – Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 47–69. 8 The Volkswehr functioned as a kind of reception camp for returning soldiers at the federal level, in effect becoming an “administrative instrument of demobilization”. See Peter Melichar, “Die Kämpfe merkwürdig Untoter: K.u.k. Offiziere in der Ersten Republik,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 9 (1998) 1: 51–84, here 56. 9 Among others, soldiers from the former infantry regiment No. 7 (IR 7, the traditional Carinthian regiment known as the Khevenhüller) and the Carinthian Freiwillige Schützenregiment took part in the so called Carinthian Abwehrkampf that lasted from November 1918 until June 1919. According to Tam#s R8v8sz, many of the Carinthian soldiers mobilized in the Volkswehrbatallione can not be classified as “combat veterans” due to their limited period of service on the frontline and the fact that large numbers of them were already back home when Austria-Hungary collapsed. See Tam#s R8v8sz, “For the ‘freedom and unity’ of Carinthia? New perspectives on the military remobilization in the Carinthian borderland war (1918–1919),” First World War Studies 7 (2016) 3: 265–86, here 270–5. On the Carinthian Abwehrkampf, see Damijan Gusˇtin, “Die Formierung der Streitkräfte und die Reaktion der Bevölkerung auf die Bildung von Nationalstaaten: Das Gebiet des Landes Kärnten,” in Die Kärntner Volksabstimmung 1920 und die Geschichtsforschung: Leistungen, Defizite, Perspektiven, edited by Hellwig Valentin et al. (Klagenfurt: Verlag Johannes Heyn, 2002), 259–74, here 268–70.

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thus aggravating the conflict between the provinces and the capital.10 These veterans’ associations, located primarily within a nationalist, right-wing ideological space, were not paramilitary associations per se, but they nonetheless followed a similar ideological purpose, engaged in politics at all social levels, and formed part of a wider associational network that included some paramilitary groups. Moreover, part of their programme was to argue for “Anschluss” to the German Reich, as well as to support claims to land and privileges for Germanspeaking Austrian veterans (to the exclusion of Slovene-speakers in Carinthia). Considering the associations’ policy as a whole, this article attempts to examine the right-wing veterans’ movement and its contribution to Carinthia’s and Styria’s political path towards the nationalist right in the interwar period. In addressing this issue, I explore the extent of veterans’ associations’ scope for action within the right-wing context, their social and political influence, their networks and role in wider interest groupings, and individual interests too. The aim is to provide new insights into the associations’ actions and how veterans’ associations came to be instrumentalized and controlled during the 1930s under Austria’s dictatorial regime. In doing so, the article broadens research on the relationship between World War One veterans and Austrian society after 1918. Previous research has focused on the role of former Habsburg officers and the issue of post-1918 paramilitary violence (especially the role of the homeland militia, the Heimwehr),11 but has generally neglected the South of Austria. While recent work on veterans in interwar Europe has rightly stressed the variety of ex-soldiers’ activities, which included internationalism and participation in pacifist organizations, it is also necessary to acknowledge the impact and legacy of continuing conflict in the “shatter-zones” of empire,12 where – as Robert Gerwarth has recently affirmed – the war did not end in 1918.13 Indeed, research to date indicates that the post1918 history of Austria’s South was determined above all by the predominance of 10 See also Stefan Eminger, “Aufstand der Provinz: Zum Spannungsfeld Stadt versus Land im Österreich der Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Die umkämpfte Republik: Österreich von 1918–1938, edited by Stefan Karner (Innsbruck – Vienna – Bolzano: StudienVerlag, 2017), 283–92. 11 For example, see Ludger Rape, Die österreichischen Heimwehren und die bayerische Rechte 1920–1923 (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1977). On the Styrian Heimatschutz and Heimwehr, see also Bruce F. Pauley, Hahnenschwanz und Hakenkreuz: Steirischer Heimatschutz und der österreichische Nationalsozialismus 1918–1934 (Vienna – Munich – Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1972). More recently, see Lothar Höbelt, Die Heimwehren und die österreichische Politik 1927–1936: Vom politischen “Kettenhund” zum ”Austro-Fascismus”? (Graz: Ares Verlag, 2016). 12 See further Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz (eds.), Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Bloomington – Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013). 13 Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War failed to end, 1917–1923 (London: Allen Lane, 2016).

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right-wing German-National formations, in a network ranging from outright paramilitary groups to veterans’ associations. If veterans’ organizations in the First Austrian Republic showed political diversity, this was seemingly less evident in Carinthia and Styria. It remains the case, however, that further research is needed on this topic, given the lack of attention to date in Austrian and international scholarship towards associations of “ordinary” returning soldiers14 and their (personal) intertwining with other ideological groupings.15 This article thus constitutes a preliminary exploration of the topic, taking a regional historical approach and drawing on readily available archival material. As with all such material, questions remain about how representative these sources are of the wider social reality, so it remains an objective for future research to deepen and nuance the picture presented here.

II.

Returning home and the emerging spectrum of veterans’ associations

In addition to the precarious living conditions facing Austria’s inhabitants at the end of the war, people in Carinthia and Styria – particularly those living in the southern parts of these regions – faced new problems as the nascent State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs merged with Serbia in December 1918 to form the 14 War invalids are deliberately excluded from the current analysis, mainly because this topic has already attracted the attention of international research interest. Among numerous recent studies, see Cornwall and Newman (eds.), Sacrifice and Rebirth; Deborah Cohen, “The War’s Returns: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939,” in The Shadows of Total War : Europe, East Asia, and the United States, 1919–1939, edited by Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 113–28; David A. Gerber, “Disabled Veterans, the State, and the Experience of Disability in Western Societies, 1914–1950,” Journal of Social History 36 (2003) 4: 899–916; Christine Beil, “Zwischen Hoffnung und Verbitterung: Selbstbild und Erfahrungen von Kriegsbeschädigten in den ersten Jahren der Weimarer Republik,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 46 (1998) 2: 139–57. For Austria, the standard work is now Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin, Die Wunden des Staates: Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat in Österreich 1914–1938 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2015); also see Ke-chin Hsia, “A Partnership of the Weak: War Victims and the State in the Early First Austrian Republic,” in From Empire to Republic: Post-World War I Austria, edited by Günter Bischof et al. (Innsbruck – New Orleans: Innsbruck University Press, 2010), 192–221; Barbara Hoffmann, Kriegsblinde in Österreich 1914–1934 (Graz – Vienna – Klagenfurt: Verein zur Förderung der Forschung von Folgen nach Konflikten und Kriegen, 2006). 15 However, see the articles by Roberth Gerwarth and John Paul Newman in the above-cited volume Sacrifice and Rebirth; R8v8sz, “For the ‘freedom and unity’ of Carinthia?,” 265–86; Benjamin Ziemann, Contested Commemorations: Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Julia Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge: Polnische Veteranen des Ersten Weltkriegs und ihre internationalen Kontakte, 1918–1939 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011).

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new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which immediately made territorial claims in the border regions.16 While measures were being taken to ensure the security of the borders and to install defence measures so as to repel incursions from South Slav forces, thousands of returning soldiers were crossing the southern Austrian border desiring to return home. The situation was highly chaotic, although military and civilian authorities made considerable efforts to manage the flow of returnees. The State Office for the Army (Staatsamt für Heerwesen), the successor institution to the Austro-Hungarian War Ministry, together with the State Commission for POW and Civilian Internee Affairs (Staatskommission für Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenangelegenheiten), ordered the setting up of special stations and holding camps (so-called Heimkehrerzerstreuungsstationen) and returnee camps (Heimkehrerlager), which were designed for POWs in particular.17 Once they arrived in these camps, POWs had to undergo a series of checks and interrogations. Generally, they were obliged to remain in the camp for several days, because the authorities suspected them of disseminating Communist ideas. At the end of 1920, a reception centre for Carinthian and East Tyrolean returnees still existed just outside Villach in Carinthia; other stations were set up at St. Michael in Upper Styria and at Eggenberg near Graz to coordinate the distribution back home of all Styrian soldiers.18 Confronted with this chaotic situation, the military authorities noted that the control and questioning of the returning soldiers was a “pointless task,” as the country had simply been flooded by returning troops.19 Moreover, alongside those soldiers who passed through the reception centres, thousands more returned home to Carinthia and Styria but by-passed the organizational structures that had been set up. 16 Simultaneous to the military conflict in Carinthia and Styria at the end of the war. See Gusˇtin, “Die Formierung der Streitkräfte,” 259–74; Martin Moll, “Die ‘blutende Wunde’ im Süden: Eine neue Grenze entsteht,” in Bundesland und Reichsgau: Demokratie, “Ständestaat” und NS-Herrschaft in der Steiermark 1918 bis 1945, vol. I., edited by Alfred Ableitinger (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau Verlag, 2015), 289–316. 17 Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr : Die Bedeutung der Kriegsgefangenenproblematik für die Geschichte des Kommunismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa 1917–1920 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2003); see also Hannes Leidinger, “Zwischen Kaiserreich und Rätemacht: Die deutschösterreichischen Heimkehrer aus russischer Kriegsgefangenschaft und die Organisation des österreichischen Kriegsgefangenenund Heimkehrwesens 1917–1920,” unpublished thesis (Diplomarbeit), University of Vienna, 1995, 170–2. 18 Julia Walleczek-Fritz, “Rückführung und Heimkehr : Kriegsgefangene, Flüchtlinge und Heimkehrer in Salzburg nach dem Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges,” in Salzburg 1918–1919: Vom Kronland zum Bundesland, edited by Oskar Dohle and Thomas Mitterecker (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau Verlag, 2018), 233–48. 19 KM, 10/Kgf. Abt. 1918: 10–20/1,4588, 20 November 1918, War Archive/Kriegsarchiv (KA), ÖStA.

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While Carinthian men fought against South Slavic troops in the border conflict, Styria was confronted not only with similar territorial demands but also the danger of communism, as the influence of B8la Kun’s Soviet government in neighbouring Hungary threatened to spill over into Styria.20 The events in the southern border region illustrate how still mobilized World War One soldiers almost seamlessly became engaged in veterans’ associations. Numerous combatants took part in the border wars and then turned to the “fight” for their interests as veterans or immediately became engaged in veterans’ associations. From 1919 onwards, veterans’ associations across the Austrian political spectrum from Social Democrats and Christian Socials to the German-Nationals focused on rallying people with similar social interests and political demands. The same applied to the Styrian Heimkehrerbund, founded in October 1919, and the Carinthian Heimkehrerbund, established in January 1920, both of which adhered to German-National ideas.21 They placed themselves at the service of comrades who had already come back from the war and those who were yet to return. In doing so, their slogans did not seek to differentiate between the diverse groups of returnees or to address their claims separately, but they did show a special interest in the situation of POWs. This was evident from how the associations became established in the region. The origins of the Carinthian Heimkehrerbund can be traced back to an association of former POWs in Vienna, the Imperial Union Free Association of former POWs in Vienna (Reichsverband Freie Vereinigung ehemaliger Kriegsgefangener Wien).22 However, the league, later renamed the Imperial Association of former War Participants in Austria – Workers and Peasants low on land (Reichsvereinigung ehemaliger Kriegsteilnehmer Österreich – Arbeiter und landarmer Bauern), departed from a programme of offering political and economic support for returning former POWs and consequently lost its influence within the sphere of the veterans’ associations.23 Indeed, the majority of members rejected left-wing ideas, which were condemned as a “homage to communism.” Hence, numerous members decided at the end of January 1920 to leave the association and to set up new ones that provided a more appropriate ideological setting.24

20 Alfred Ableitinger, “Unentwegt Krise: Politisch-soziale Ressentiments, Konflikte und Kooperationen in der Politik der Steiermark 1918 bis 1933/34,” in Bundesland und Reichsgau, vol. I., edited by Ableitinger (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau Verlag, 2015), 21–176. 21 “Gründung eines ‘Steir. Heimkehrerbundes’,” Neues Grazer Abendblatt, 6 October, 1919, 5; “Kärntner Heimkehrerbund,” Freie Stimmen, 8 February, 1920, 4. 22 Bundesministerium für Inneres und Unterricht, 21 December 1920, BKA, Inneres, 15/4, Sig. 102717, 1920, AdR, ÖStA. 23 Leidinger, “Zwischen Kaiserreich und Rätemacht,” 145. 24 Freie Stimmen, 8 February, 1920, 4; “Kärntner Heimkehrer, Achtung!,” Freie Stimmen, 22 February, 1920, 4. On the political background regarding links between such associations and

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The years from 1919 to the mid-1920s stand out as the most expansive phase of activity, as numerous veterans’ associations were established all over the country and appealed to thousands of former rank-and-file servicemen to join.25 By means of effective advertising and promotional activities, a large number of local sections of the Heimkehrerbünde were established in Carinthia and Styria. The associations sought to bring together all former participants in the war, including frontline soldiers and POWs, with the stated aim of upholding the spirit of comradeship and preserving military traditions, in a manner that was undoubtedly linked to the old Habsburg order. The fostering of tradition included the obligation to maintain the war graves of Austrian soldiers and POWs and to honour the dead on traditional religious holidays, such as All Saints’ Day.26 For example, veterans fulfilled such duties in Klagenfurt during the funeral of Field Marshal Svetozar Boroevic´ de Bojna, the former Austro-Hungarian commander on the Isonzo front, on 26 May 1920.27 On this occasion, they could publically demonstrate their belief in comradeship and the power of the veterans’ movement. The focus of veterans’ activities was geared towards welfare programmes that included the support of material and non-material interests, advice to invalids, widows and orphans, and the organization of fund-raising events.28 The associations were also concerned with the question of living quarters and the Styrian Returnees League did not hesitate to reproach local housing offices when the allocation of accommodation did not correspond to its demands.29 Other difficulties arose with the association’s clothing programme, which had to be stopped due to malpractices in April 1919, particularly concerning POWs. Instead,

25

26 27

28 29

the communist movement, see also Leidinger, “Zwischen Kaiserreich und Rätemacht,” 135–47. In Carinthia, a total of 45 veterans’ associations (Kriegervereine, Kameradschaftsvereine and so on) were established between November 1918 and March 1938. See Werner Drobesch, Vereine und Verbände in Kärnten (1848–1938): Vom Gemeinnützig-Geselligen zur Ideologisierung der Massen (Klagenfurt: Verlag des Kärntner Landesarchivs, 1991), 126–7. Unterkärntner Nachrichten, 6 November, 1920, 4. “Das Begräbnis des Feldmarschall Boroevic,” Österreichische Wehrzeitung: Zeitschrift für Wehrfragen, Politik u. Wirtschaft, 2 June, 1920, 3–4. The SHS state refused to allow the Croatian former Fieldmarshall Svetozar Boroevic´ (1856–1920) to return to Zagreb after the war, with the result that he and his wife stayed in Carinthia and lived in humble circumstances close to Klagenfurt, where he died on 23 May 1920. His financial problems were only alleviated thanks to a loan he was persuaded to accept from his former comrades in the Military Academy at Wiener Neustadt, comprising an elitist circle of Austro-Hungarian ex-officers. See Ernest Bauer, Der Löwe vom Isonzo: Feldmarschall Svetozar Boroevic´ von Bojna (Graz – Vienna – Cologne: Styria, 1986), 127–31. Neues Grazer Tagblatt, 14 March, 1920, 5; “Sammeltag (Blumentag) für die Heimkehrer,” Arbeiterwille, 3 September, 1921, 6–7. “Grazer Lokalnachrichten: Vom gemeinderätlichen Wohnungsfürsorgeausschuß,” Arbeiterwille: Beilage zum “Arbeiterwille”, 27 January, 1920, 5.

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committees set up by the provincial government guaranteed that clothes were distributed among returning frontline soldiers, POWs and invalids.30 Although these measures generally proved successful, the Styrian Heimkehrerbund nevertheless organized a special plenary meeting in March 1920, attended by delegates from 50 local groups that had around 17,000 members, in order to discuss ongoing problems concerning the so-called “material disarmament.”31 The Carinthian case clearly demonstrates that the veterans’ associations did not constitute a stand-alone project, but were located within a fluid network of interest groups. The situation in Carinthia in the 1920s was characterized by a close interrelation between veterans’ associations and home defence groups (the Heimatschutz and Heimwehr, both paramilitary organizations, which were supported by Conservatives and Großdeutsche). For the most part, these groupings rejected the Social Democratic movement and questioned the value of democracy more generally.32 In addition, numerous former World War One soldiers of different military ranks fought in the Carinthian defence campaign (Abwehrkampf), took part in the Burgenland conflict between Austria and Hungary in the period 1919–1921, participated simultaneously in diverse movements, and laid the groundwork for their political development in a way that clearly shows the continuity between military-political mobilization and their engagement in paramilitary formations.33 For example, the founder of the German-National Heimatschutz in Carinthia, Ludwig Hülgerth, played an important role in the province’s post-war history. Hülgerth, an officer in the 1st Mountain Rifle Regiment (Gebirgsschützenregiment Nr. 1), became the Provincial Military Commander in Carinthia in 1918 and organized the armed units involved in the Abwehrkampf.34 Links to organizations in 30 Leidinger, “Zwischen Kaiserreich und Rätemacht,” 176–7. 31 Correspondence to the Landesrat, 21 February 1920, Landschaftsarchiv (LAA.) Rezens, VII (außer Jg 1919), 1917–1924, VII 6585/1920, Provincial Archive of Styria/Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv (StLA); Landesverband Steiermark to Landesamtsdirektor, 15 December 1923, Statth Präs, A.5.B., 31–1692, 1923, box 1014, Z. 32, 1923, StLA. 32 Although neglecting to consider World War One veterans or their associations as relevant players in relation to Austria’s paramilitary groups, for a general overview see Rape, Die österreichischen Heimwehren; on the Styrian Heimatschutz and Heimwehr, see Pauley, Hahnenschwanz und Hakenkreuz. Cf. Ernst Bruckmüller, Sozialgeschichte Österreichs (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 2001), 413. 33 On the military-political situation and the relationship between the political parties and the Wehrverbände in interwar-Austria generally, see Ludwig Jedlicka, Ein Heer im Schatten der Parteien: Die militärpolitische Lage Österreichs 1918–1938 (Graz – Cologne: Böhlau, 1955). 34 The Carinthian Heimatschutzverband had been founded at the end of 1920 and placed the Heimwehr activities on a legal footing. In its early years, the Heimwehr in particular saw its duty as being the defence of the Carinthian borders and its growth was aided by strong financial support from German and Bavarian paramilitary groups under the military leadership of Hermann Kriebel and Erich Ludendorff. See Ulfried Burz, Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung in Kärnten (1918–1933): Vom Deutschnationalismus zum Führer-

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Germany only strengthened this orientation. The so-called Organisation Escherich (known as Orgesch), founded in Regensburg in Bavaria in 1920, participated in what it termed the “southern border defence.” Similarly, the Organisation Kanzler (known as Orka) later influenced the activities of the Carinthian Heimatschutzverband.35 Further research is still needed on this topic, but it seems evident that the German Orgesch and Orka activists transferred both money and ideas to Carinthia, influencing not only the Heimatschutzverband but also the GermanNational oriented veterans’ associations.36 Alois Maier-Kaibitsch, a Styrian-born former Habsburg army officer, further illustrates the biographical intertwining. He fought in the defence campaign of 1919–1920 and took over the management of the Carinthian German-National and anti-Slovene oriented propaganda organization Homeland Federation (Heimatbund) at the beginning of the 1920s.37 For a time, Maier-Kaibitsch was also chairman of the Khevenhüllerbund, the veterans’ association of the 7th Carinthian infantry regiment, which was established in January 1923 in Klagenfurt.38 During the 1930s, Maier-Kaibitsch then functioned as the provincial leader of the Austrian Soldiers’ Front (Österreichische Soldatenfront) in Carinthia.39 Given the extent of this close personal and political interaction, the Heimatbund’s claims about its “unpolitical” character and its members’ freedom to choose their political allegiance become even more questionable. In practice, the group displayed a profound anti-Semitism and only cooperated with those who shared the same political ideas and could be defined as “comrades-in-arms.” One colleague of the aforementioned Maier-Kaibitsch was the Carinthian Hans Steinacher, who had also served as a lieutenant in the 7th infantry regiment during the war. Their biographies show revealing similarities, with Steinacher also involved in the Abwehrkampf and the conflict over Burgenland, where he

35 36 37 38

39

prinzip (Klagenfurt: Verlag des Kärntner Landesarchivs, 1998), 43; Drobesch, Vereine und Verbände in Kärnten, 107. See also Amt des Bundesführers des österreichischen Heimatschutzes – Propagandastelle (ed.), Heimatschutz in Österreich (Vienna: Zoller, 1934), 159; R8v8sz, “For the ‘freedom and unity’ of Carinthia?,” 268. Burz, Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung in Kärnten, 43–44. Statth Präs, A.5.B., 1472–1916, 1921, box 1010, StLA. For a critical perspective on the Heimatdienst, see Martin Fritzl, Der Kärntner Heimatdienst: Ideologie, Ziele und Strategien einer nationalistischen Organisation (Klagenfurt: Drava, 1990), 17–18. Correspondence from A. Maier-Kaibitsch, Klagenfurt, to Dankl, 23 September 1936, Khevenhüllerbund collection, box 4, Provincial Archive of Carinthia/Kärntner Landesarchiv (KLA). See also Alfred Elste, “Biographische Skizzen führender Kärntner Nationalsozialisten,” in Auf dem Weg zur Macht: Beiträge zur Geschichte der NSDAP in Kärnten von 1918 bis 1938, edited by Alfred Elste and Dirk Hänisch (Vienna: Braumüller, 1997), 345–74, here 365; Khevenhüllerbund collection, 1923–1926, 1, Konv. 1,1, KLA. Correspondence from A. Maier-Kaibitsch, Klagenfurt, to Dankl, 23 September 1936, Khevenhüllerbund collection, box 4, KLA.

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worked closely with Maier-Kaibitsch.40 In sum, both men were socialized in a German-national environment and subsequently made careers in the NSDAP, which they joined in 1933/1934.41 Hans Steinacher further supported the Carinthian Hanns Albin Rauter, who had served in the same unit as Ludwig Hülgerth during the war and also took part in the Carinthian defence campaign.42 Rauter subsequently became extensively engaged in the Styrian paramilitary home defence movement (Selbstschutz).43 Right from the early years, the Styrian Heimkehrerbund shared an ideological programme with the Defence League of German-Aryan War Participants (Schutzverband deutsch-arischer Kriegsteilnehmer) and supported the Viennese League of Anti-Semites (Antisemitenbund).44 It had essentially been the Schutzverband that initiated the emergence of a returnee soldiers’ movement, in particular through its role in the founding of the Styrian Heimkehrerbund. Given its already clear ideological position, it thus “became necessary” to stress the “economic side” of the newly formed Heimkehrerbund, as the local GermanNational oriented newspaper, Neues Grazer Tagblatt, concluded in January 1920.45 When demands for the break-up of the Schutzverband arose, returnee soldiers were offered the opportunity to join either the Heimkehrerbund or the Styrian branch of the Antisemitenbund instead.46 While the Styrian Heimkehrerbund’s aggressive national stance gained its support from the German-National student body in the regional capital, Graz, it also began to engage more directly with the concerns of ex-soldiers’ and exPOWs, as well as in day-to-day political activity.47 In November 1919, the Heimkehrerbund proposed that its members be included in the Provincial Dispatch Office for Returnees (Heimkehrer-Abfertigungsstelle), an institution con40 Wolfram Mallebrein, Hans Steinacher : Ein Kämpfer für Freiheit und Selbstbestimmung; eine Biographie (Klagenfurt: Heyn, 1980), 9 and 32; Arnold Suppan, Jugoslawien und Österreich 1918–1938: Bilaterale Außenpolitik im europäischen Umfeld (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1996), 1010. 41 Elste, “Biographische Skizzen,” 371–3. 42 Burz, Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung in Kärnten, 49. 43 Alfred Ableitinger, “’Unpolitische‘ Heimwehr? Auseinandersetzungen im untersteirischen Bauernkommando 1922/23,” in Rutengänge: Studien zur geschichtlichen Landeskunde; Festgabe für Walter Brunner zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Historische Landeskommission für Steiermark und Historischer Verein für Steiermark (Graz: Historische Landeskommission für Steiermark, 2010), 568–81, here 569. 44 Dieter A. Binder, “Jüdische Steiermark – Steirisches Judentum,” in Steiermark: Die Überwindung der Peripherie, edited by Alfred Ableitinger and Dieter A. Binder (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2002), 527–50, here 530. 45 “Auflösung des Schutzverbandes deutscharischer Kriegsteilnehmer,” Neues Grazer Tagblatt 22 January, 1920, 4. 46 Ibid. 47 Correspondence from Deutsche Studentenschaft to Landesregierung Steiermark, 23 December 1918, Statth Präs, A.5.B., Zl. 41/1919, StLA.

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cerned with providing support for returnee soldiers. However, its request was refused due to financial reasons, which led it to write in protest to the Bureau for POWs and Civilian Internees (Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt), a federal government office concerned with the repatriation of soldiers. On behalf of its 10,000 members, the Styrian Heimkehrerbund expressed its anger at this rejection, arguing that it showed once more how the bureau was failing to take responsibility for returnees.48 The latter dispute was just one example of how the league’s political activities deepened its sense of distance from the authorities in Vienna. The above-mentioned Alfred Teischinger, who was in close contact with the Military High Commander for Styria, informed the leading Social Democrat politician Julius Deutsch at the State Office for the Army in Vienna in September 1919 that returnee soldiers expected to be involved in the process of nation-building. Supporting the “Anschluss”, Teischinger claimed that Styrian ex-soldiers were resolutely opposed to the formation of a Danubian Federation, a political concept proposed by a number of individuals after 1918 as a potential umbrella organization for some of the successor states of the Habsburg Empire, including Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.49 The Heimkehrerbund, which was constantly active in its media work and in exploiting its network of contacts, also let Julius Deutsch know its opinion about the drafting of the new army law, which was passed in March 1920. This law foresaw the formation of a regular army, but aimed to exclude former officers of the Habsburg army. As historians have argued, the institution came to be characterized by personnel and material failings, as well as being criticized by its opponents for following social democratic interests.50 Related to these issues of daily politics, a central question for veterans’ associations after 1918 was that of defining just who could be termed a “veteran.” This debate already began at the end of the war, when the Army High Command (Armeeoberkommando) denoted former POWs as “homecomers” (Heimkehrer) and other former soldiers as “frontline homecomers” (Frontheimkehrer). The discussion continued after 1918 and consumed a lot of the associations’ energy, both internally and with regard to their communication with public authorities. 48 Correspondence between Styrian Heimkehrerbund and Austrian Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt, 24 November 1919, Inneres, Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt, 30.901–31.240, 1919–1/1–14, 1920, 1–1/6 (Zl. 4290), AdR, ÖStA. 49 Forderungen von Heimkehrern, Statth Präs, A.5.B., Z. 2469, 1919, StLA; Abschrift Landesbefehlshaber Steiermark to Julius Deutsch, 1 September 1919, Präs Nr. 6434/Glstb, StLA. 50 M. Christian Ortner, “Von der Volkswehr zum Bundesheer 1918–1938,” in Die umkämpfte Republik, edited by Karner (Innsbruck – Vienna – Bolzano: StudienVerlag, 2017), 129–35. See also “Die Politik des Staatssekretär Dr. Deutsch: Der Wehrgesetzentwurf,” Der Neue Tag, 4 December, 1919, 3–4; “Deutschösterreich: Nationalversammlung,” Linzer Tagespost, 6 December, 1919, 2.

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As a result, a process of differentiating between veterans began, as was visible in the varying terminology employed: war participants (Kriegsteilnehmer), frontmen (Frontler), front-fighters (Frontkämpfer), comrades from behind the lines (Hinterlandskamerad), and servicemen from the staging area and behind the lines (Etappen- und Hinterlandskriegsdienstleistende). For officers too, distinctions were made according to rank and place of service. Hence, the space in which military service was carried out during the war became a key criterion for defining war experiences and deciding on the type and extent of social benefits provided by the Austrian state. In particular, the AVK engaged in a long struggle for more resources and began to distinguish more sharply between the diverse groups of veterans when the amount of benefits available notably decreased.51 In July 1920, the left-wing newspaper Arbeiterwille provocatively asked Alfred Teischinger and his colleagues how long they intended staying homecomers.52 In doing so, they were responding to a previous statement by Teischinger, who had asserted that the successful repatriation of POWs from Siberia was due to the veterans’ associations’ efforts. The return of ex-POWs from Russia was a burning political issue and caused several confrontations between the different political movements and their media mouthpieces, as all sides sought to appeal to the plethora of ex-soldiers after 1918.53 The Arbeiterwille even accused the veterans’ associations of misusing the returnees for party political purposes, whereas Teischinger incriminated the government of Karl Renner, that of his successor Michael Mayr, and the main governing parties for the outcome of the war.54 At the same time, the Carinthian and Styrian homecomers’ leagues cooperated closely against political opponents, while still promoting the notion of their “unpolitical” character. Hence, the Arbeiterwille questioned how it was that the monarchist Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Klimann and the German-National parliamentary deputy Josef Pflanzl, who had negotiated with representatives of the SHS in Maribor/Marburg in 1918, were the inspiration behind the formation of the Heimkehrerbünde.55 The Carinthian Klimann was a supporter of the 51 Correspondence Alpenländischer Verband von Kriegsteilnehmern to Staatssekretär Renner, 10 September 1920, LV, BMfHW, Abt. 1, 1921, box 922, AdR, ÖStA; Inneres, Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt, 30.901–31.240, 1919–1/1–14, 1920, 1–1/37 (Zl. 1092/ 20), AdR, ÖStA; LV, BMfHW, Abt. 1, 12–16, 1922, box 1243, AdR, ÖStA; “Für den Kärntner Heimkehrerbund,” Freie Stimmen, 29 February, 1920, 2–3; Kärntner Tagblatt, 16 January 1919, 1–2. 52 “Zur Ankunft des Heimkehrerzuges,” Arbeiterwille: Beilage, 13 July, 1920, 6. 53 Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr; Georg Wurzer, Die Kriegsgefangenen der Mittelmächte in Russland im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen:V& R unipress, 2005). 54 Arbeiterwille: Beilage, 13 July, 1920, 6. 55 “Nachrichten aus Kärnten: Die Gemeindewahlen und die sozial-demokratische Presse,” Arbeiterwille, 22 April, 1920, 7.

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provincial Heimkehrerbund and was simultaneously engaged in the Heimatschutzverband, which was characterized by frictions between Greater GermanNationalist (Großdeutsch) and Christian-Social wings.56 At the session of the Carinthian provincial assembly (Landtag) in March 1920, the conflict between the parties was aggravated by Klimann’s application for financial support for the Carinthian Heimkehrerbund. Social Democrats claimed that the Bund was promoting its ideas among working-class returnee soldiers, when the latter should have been joining Social Democratic organizations. In referring to Germany as a role model, Klimann argued that the provincial assembly owed a “debt of gratitude” to veterans.57 He tried to claim that returnee soldiers organized in the Heimkehrerbund did not belong to any political party, thus demonstrating the association’s “unpolitical” character. Yet, in the course of the subsequent debate, other deputies in the assembly frankly enunciated their misgivings about the organization’s alleged impartiality and denounced its German-National tendencies, specifically referring to the circumstances of the league’s formation as well as its anti-Semitic statements and anti-Social Democratic stance. Klimann countered that these views were simply part of a “German-Aryan” position, not one of party politics. Eventually, the assembly delegates decided not to provide financial support to any form of association. Fearing that the communists, who had applied for a subsidy of 50,000 crowns, too, would thereby be provided with some “means for agitation,” the deputies considered it judicious not to distribute any funds at all.58 Accordingly, the Carinthian Heimkehrerbund felt compelled to reiterate that all former soldiers of “German-Aryan origin“ were welcome, regardless of social background or party affiliation.59 Increasingly, however, this German-National rhetoric was sharpened by anti-Semitic slogans. In March 1921, a resolution by the Heimkehrerbund called for the “expulsion of all Eastern Jews” from Austria and once more promoted the “Anschluss” idea.60 The German-National oriented veterans’ associations in Styria were well embedded in the predominantly German-National and Christian Social setting of the province. They could bank on the support of the Christian Social, authoritarian anti-Marxist Anton Rintelen, who was Styrian governor (Landeshauptmann) from 1919 to 1926 and again from 1928 to 1933, and a supporter of 56 Klimann was nominated military representative to the provincial assembly in February 1919 and became, as one of very few former Habsburg officers, parliamentary commissar in the Ministry of Defence in 1923. See Burz, Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung in Kärnten, 44; Melichar, “Die Kämpfe merkwürdig Untoter,” 59; Drobesch, Vereine und Verbände in Kärnten, 107. 57 “Vorläufige Landesversammlung,” Freie Stimmen, 12 March, 1920, 2. 58 Ibid. 59 Unterkärntner Nachrichten, 26 June, 1920, 3. 60 Unterkärntner Nachrichten, 19 March, 1921, 5–6. On anti-Semitism in post-war Central Europe, see also Gerwarth, “The Central European Counter-Revolution,” 198–203.

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the “Anschluss”.61 Rintelen, who had participated in the war but without undergoing any frontline experience, was in charge of the administration of returnee soldiers in Styria when he became deputy governor in 1918.62 In retrospect, he viewed negatively the events surrounding the foundation of the Austrian Republic, which he believed had been overly influenced by soldiers returning from Russia.63 One of Rintelen’s successors, Karl Maria Stepan, who governed Styria between 1934 and 1938, belonged – like Rintelen – to the community of organized veterans’ associations after he had returned from Russian captivity.64 Nevertheless, while the Heimkehrerbund could count on the support of influential people such as Rintelen, it did not go uncontested. It was scathingly criticized by the Styrian Social Democrats in particular, as well as by the Provincial Association of War-Disabled and Invalids (Landesverband der Kriegsbeschädigten, Kriegerwitwen und -waisen Steiermarks), which dissociated itself from the Heimkehrerbund. In return, Social Democrats were accused of directing abuse at returning soldiers for political purposes.65 In the 1920s, the Heimkehrerbund became increasingly linked in public discourse to the paramilitary formations of the Heimwehr. Already in February 1920, the Neues Grazer Tagblatt reported that Styrian veterans felt obliged to state that the two organizations had nothing in common and were not interdependent in terms of personnel and finance. The league argued that it kept “apart from any political goings-on” and just concentrated on the economic and social interests of returnees.66 Nevertheless, the head of the Styrian association, Alfred Teischinger, was said to be involved in Heimwehr activities.67 Moreover, the league was often placed in connection to Heimwehr activities and in June 1920 the Social Democratic deputies in the provisional National Assembly in 61 Gernot D. Hasiba, “Gesetzgebung und Verwaltung in der Steiermark 1918 bis 1933,” in Bundesland und Reichsgau, vol. I., edited by Ableitinger (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau Verlag, 2015), 191–237, here 206. 62 Ableitinger, “Unentwegt Krise,” 57; Correspondence between the Bezirkshauptmannschaft Hartberg and the Präsidium of the Landesregierung, 12 May 1921, Statth Präs, A.5.B., Zl. 1283/1921, StLA. 63 Leidinger, “Zwischen Kaiserreich und Rätemacht,” 154. 64 While Rintelen contributed to the move towards dictatorship in 1934, Stepan was significantly involved in the organization of the Vaterländische Front, which he headed between February and October 1934. On the Vaterländische Front, see Robert Kriechbaumer (ed.), Österreich! und Front Heil! Aus den Akten des Generalsekretariats der Vaterländischen Front; Innenansichten eines Regimes (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2005). 65 “Delegiertentag des Landesverbandes der Kriegsbeschädigten, Kriegerwitwen und -waisen Steiermarks,” Arbeiterwille, 23 May, 1920, 3–4; “Die Delegiertentagung der steirischen Kriegsopfer,” Arbeiterwille, 22 March, 1927, 3. 66 Neues Grazer Tagblatt, 17 February, 1920, 4. 67 Correspondence to the Präsidium der Landesregierung Steiermark, 22 July 1921, Statth Präs, A.5.B., Zl. 1714/1921, StLA.

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Vienna, Hans Muchitsch and Friedrich Adler, directly accused the two groups of collaboration when raising questions concerning recent incidents in Graz and protests against organized workers in other regions of Styria.68

III.

Towards unification

The formation of the AVK in the spring of 1920 constituted a first step towards the consolidation of right-wing veterans into a movement directed against other political parties and Viennese centralism. In other words, numerous ideas and aims that had already been promoted were renewed within a German national setting. From its registered headquarters in Graz, the AVK still claimed to want to unite all former participants in the war, to campaign for peace and order, and to improve the economic situation. At the same time, it appealed to all parties to focus on the “Anschluss” idea, claiming that its members would refuse any other form of postwar reconstruction. The AVK also demanded that politics should focus more actively on the “victims of war” and that the new parliament should represent more firmly the interests of POWs and returnee soldiers than had been the case under the provisional National Assembly. In doing so, the AVK articulated specifically anti-Semitic demands, including “the purging from public offices and central economic agencies of Jewish intruders, who have pushed out locals by means of recently acquired residential rights.”69 Also particularly noticeable was the mobilization against female employment and the call to “fight the system of unskilled female workers,” which was something that the Styrian Heimkehrerbund had already focused on and challenged the public authorities about.70 This continued to be an important part of the league’s programme.71 In the tradition of its precursor, the AVK, which numbered 40,000 members by May 1920,72 the Heimkehrerbund directly sought to exercise political influence and strongly protested against the enormous reparations that had been imposed on the Austrian state.73 68 “Konstituierende Nationalversammlung,” Wiener Zeitung, 9 June, 1920, 2–3. 69 LV, BMfHW, Abt. 1, 14–17, 1921, AdR, ÖStA. 70 Correspondence from BH Weiz to Präsidium der Landesregierung Steiermark, 2 April 1920, Statth Präs, A.5.B., 1816–2430, Zl. 2000/1, 1919, StLA; Correspondence of the Styrian Heimkehrerbund to Landesregierung, 29 January 1920, Statth Präs, A.5.B., 1816–2430, Zl. 252/1920, StLA. 71 Correspondence from Alpenländischer Verband der Kriegsteilnehmer to Viennese Ministries, 9 August 1921, LV, BMfHW, Abt. 1, 14–17, 1921, Sig. 14–22/1, 2, AdR, ÖStA. 72 Correspondence from the Alpenländischer Verband ehemaliger Kriegsteilnehmer to the Austrian Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt, 5 May 1920, Inneres, Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt, 1919, 1–1/24 (Zl. 24933), AdR, ÖStA. 73 BKA, Inneres, Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt, 1919, 1–1/24 (Zl. 24933), 19 May 1920, AdR, ÖStA; Freie Stimmen, 16 November, 1920, 2.

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In order to reach out to veterans in the most remote corners of the southern provinces, the association’s weekly magazine, Die Heimat74 (after 1931, the Yearbook of the AVK), evolved into an essential organ for the league’s social and political activities and ideas.75 Initially, a particular concern was with their members’ potential allocation of land based on the Re-settlement Law (Wiederbesiedlungsgesetz), which turned into a burning issue throughout the 1920s, especially in Austria’s contested border regions. The law had been proposed at the end of 1918 by German-National deputies and was finally approved in May 1919. Its general aim was to facilitate the re-distribution of rural property in favour of small and medium-sized farmers, but it also focused specifically on the need for land among returnee soldiers, although the AVK had demanded that this be exclusively reserved for those of “German-Aryan affiliation.”76 Along with the veteran’s homesteads movement, dedicated to the construction of housing for ex-soldiers (Kriegerheimstätten), the league stressed the social aspects of the resettlement policy, seeing it as a way of thanking returnee soldiers for their service to the fatherland. In practice, however, the movement only superficially supported projects dedicated to returnee soldiers, invalids and the bereaved, because its fundamental interest lay in demographic policy, race hygiene and military policy.77 Discussions of the re-settlement law flared up again when the league demanded an amendment to the law and argued for it to be implemented “with special consideration for ex-soldiers.”78 The relationship between the AVK and the Styrian provincial government deteriorated when it vehemently called on politicians to honour the organized veterans’ efforts to act as a “bulwark for peace and order.” In turn, the Heimkehrer expected the AVK to take a more radical stance and to produce definite results regarding the provisions of the re-settlement law. At the so-called Grenzheimkehrertag, a meeting of returnee soldiers living close to the Styrian border that took place in the village of Straß in October 1922, thousands of homecomers from Lower Styria participated in a protest march on this issue. They finally agreed to stop the ongoing political discussion on applicants for 74 Deutsche Zeitung, 26 September, 1920, 3. 75 On the occasion of the plebiscite in Carinthia, musicians from a local section of the Styrian Heimkehrerbund played publicly in Graz for resident Carinthians due to vote in Carinthia on 6 October 1920. The AVK published a special number of Die Heimat, entitled “Undivided Carinthia”, which was distributed free of charge among those leaving for Carinthia. See “Zur Volksabstimmung in Kärnten,” Grazer Mittagszeitung, 6 October, 1920, 3. 76 The end of the Wiederbesiedlungsgesetz and -aktion had come in 1928. See Ingrid Linsberger, “War es eine Bodenreform? Das Wiederbesiedlungsgesetz und seine Umsetzung in Niederösterreich,” unpublished dissertation thesis, University of Vienna, 2010, 141–7 and 163. 77 Robert Hoffmann, “Nimm Hack’ und Spaten …”: Siedlung und Siedlerbewegung in Österreich 1918–1938 (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1987), 34–40. 78 Freie Stimmen, 16 November, 1920, 2.

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resettlement (Wiederbesiedlungswerber),79 and instead placed the rejection of naturalisation for Jews and other “foreigners” at the top of their agenda.80 The extent of the AVK’s network became clear in 1923, when the idea of an Alpine Disappropriation Law (Alpen-Enteignungsgesetz) took shape. The AVK, represented by Alfred Teischinger, aimed to found a committee to consult on the matter, which would include delegates from the Styrian associations for war invalids, the League of Pasture Cooperatives, the Free Association of Re-Settlement Applicants in Styria, and the Association of Peasant Land Reformers.81 The AVKwas active internationally too, endeavouring to cooperate with, for example, the Central League of German War Invalids (Zentralverband Deutscher Kriegsbeschädigter) in Berlin on socio-political issues.82 At the same time, the AVK blamed the Austrian government for showing little interest in the association’s efforts, even though the AVK numbered around 50,000 members in Styria at the end of 1921.83 Over time, the involvement of association members in multiple executive positions became a point of conflict. Teischinger himself became caught up in the cross fire of criticism, because he was said to be involved politically in the Styrian provincial government, a newspaper editorial office, and the leadership of the local Heimwehr.84 The reproach was not unsubstantiated. Teischinger, who in 1923 attended the inauguration of a monument for fallen soldiers and liberation in the Styrian border-village of Spielberg, had given a speech there, stressing that the veterans’ organization had only come into being because of the “cooperation between paramilitary formations (Selbstschutzformationen) and military associations.”85 When a fund-raising reunion of former soldiers took place for the benefit of war invalids, widows and orphans at the beginning of June 1924 in Graz, opponents such as the League of Opponents of War Service (Bund der Kriegsdienstgegner), the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom (Internationale Frauenliga für Frieden und Freiheit), and the Free Republicans’ 79 Präsidium des BM für Handel, Gewerbe, Industrie und Bauten to BKA, 21 November 1922, BKA, Staatskanzlei, BKA (alt), Sig. 2310/1, 1922, AdR, ÖStA. 80 Landesverband Steiermark to Präsidium der Steirischen Landesregierung, 19 August 1922, Statth. Präs, A.5.B., Zl. 1466/1922, StLA. 81 Correspondence from the Landesverband Steiermark to the Landesamtsdirektor, 15 December 1923, Statth Präs, A.5.B., Zl. 32/1923, StLA. 82 BKA, Staatskanzlei, BKA (alt), Sig. 244, 10 January 1921, AdR, ÖStA. 83 Verbandstag des Alpenländischen Verbandes der Kriegsteilnehmer 1914–1918, 29 December 1921, LV, BMfHW, Abt. 1, 12–16, 1922, Sig. 14–1, AdR, ÖStA. 84 Correspondence from the Alpenländischer Verband der Kriegsteilnehmer to the Präsidium der Landesregierung Steiermark, 22 July 1921, Statth Präs, A.5.B., Zl. 1714/1921, StLA. 85 “Ein deutscher Tag an der Grenze: Enthüllung des Krieger- und Befreiungsdenkmales in Spielfeld,” Neues Grazer Morgenblatt, 9 September, 1923, 3.

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Party of German-Austria (Partei der freien Republikaner Deutschösterreich), judged the meeting to be “an undisguised training exercise and preparation in weapons use by militia formations [Heimwehren] and veterans’ associations.”86 Among those due to attend were ex-soldiers from Styria, Carinthia and Vienna, including around 600 former front-line soldiers from the Frontkämpfervereinigung, and the so-called Iron Corps (Eiserne Korps), which was another highly active veterans’ association, fronted by the well-known former Habsburg military commander, Field Marshal Archduke Eugen.87 While the ideological gap widened between the right-wing associations and other veterans’ groups of a different political orientation and placed the former firmly in the vicinity of paramilitary formations, the second half of the 1920s was generally characterized by the consolidation of the right-wing veterans’ movement and the associations’ efforts at securing their raison d’Þtre via welfare activities.88 As part of their original purpose, they financed the construction or renovation of several war monuments or organized battlefield trips.89Austria’s political system in the 1930s and, above, all the beginning of the dictatorial regime of Engelbert Dollfuß, who consciously presented himself as a representative of the war generation,90 directly affected veterans’ associations by leading to an intensified control of their organizational structures. A number of organizations began to bind the veterans’ associations closer together and continuously sought to integrate them further into the government system, with the main players being the regime’s Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front),91 which adopted the appearance of a non-party character, the newly founded Austrian Soldiers Front (Österreichische Soldatenfront), and the umbrella organization Austrian Imperial Comradeship and Soldiers’ Union (Österreichischer Reichskameradschafts- und Kriegerbund, hereafter ÖRK), led by the former Austro-Hungarian army officer Alois Schönburg-Hartenstein.92 As a result, the AVK saw its power diminishing and strove to incorporate any still independent veterans’ associations in Styria into its own organizational structure,93 repeatedly arguing that isolated local groups would be unsuccessful.94 The 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Report Eiserne (III.) Korps, Statth Präs, A.5.B., Zl. 652/1924, StLA. Ibid. Gemeinde Oberwölz, box 31, fol. 189, StLA. BA Fürstenfeld Erh, 10 July 1931, Bezirksvertretung (BV) Fürstenfeld, box 6, fol. 40b, Zl. 613, StLA. Kriechbaumer (ed.), Österreich! und Front Heil!, 19. Ibid., 29. Melichar, “Die Kämpfe merkwürdig Untoter,” 81. Alpenländischer Verband der Kriegsteilnehmer 1914–1918 (ed.), Jahrbuch 1931, vol. 1. (Graz, 1931), 35. Correspondence from the Alpenländischer Verband to Heimkehrerbund Oberwölz, 25 September 1929, Gemeinde Oberwölz, box 31, fol. 189, fasz. 29, StLA.

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AVK continued to affirm that it stood for a united front of all World War One participants and referred to the tradition and solidarity of the “trench communities”. Nevertheless, the association worried that members might separate to join another recently founded association, the so-called Provincial Comradeship and Soldiers’ Union (Landeskameradschafts- und Kriegerbund), thereby potentially diminishing the AVK’s influence.95 With Alfred Teischinger having in the meantime resigned from office,96 league meetings in the 1930s were increasingly attended by representatives from paramilitary groups, such as the German association, Steel Helmet (Stahlhelm), from Munich, and the Styrian Landeskameradschaftsbund.97 On these occasions, there was frequent re-discussion of the re-settlement question. In particular, concern was expressed about the families of German-speaking members who lived only a few kilometres away from the border and had decided to opt for Yugoslavia, but were now being expelled from there.98 After Dollfuß’ assassination by National Socialists in July 1934, his successor Kurt Schuschnigg pointed to the continuing importance of the veterans’ movement and stressed the positive effects of its “apolitical” character. He further remarked that the newly renamed comradeship associations (Kameradschaft) were becoming sucked more and more into the path of paramilitary groups and he criticized the attempts by opponents to try to gain influence over the veterans’ associations.99 At the local level, meanwhile, individual personnel decisions contributed to the merging of several associations, as was the case with Josef Weis, who became provincial leader of the Styrian Landeskameradschaftsund Kriegerbund and the Österreichische Soldatenfront.100 Already in June 1934, Weis addressed former comrades from World War One and called on them to support the government if they wanted to “keep the honour of all front-soldiers and warriors pure.” Just a few weeks later, he again reminded members to join Schönburg-Hartenstein’s association, which already numbered 60,000 men by August 1934, stressing that the “unity of all old soldiers” created a powerful voice

95 Alpenländischer Verband der Kriegsteilnehmer 1914–1918 (ed.), Jahrbuch 1931, vol. 1 (Graz, 1931), 37–38; Der Kriegsteilnehmer: Mitteilungen des Alpenländischen Verbandes der Kriegsteilnehmer 1914–1918 10 (1932) 2: 1; Protocol of the Heimkehrerbund Oberwölz meeting, 16 February 1930, Gemeinde Oberwölz, box 31, fol. 189, fasz. 29, StLA. 96 Der Kriegsteilnehmer 9 (1931) 3: 1–2; Der Kriegsteilnehmer 11 (1933) 1: 1. 97 Alpenländischer Verband der Kriegsteilnehmer 1914–1918 (ed.), Jahrbuch 1931, vol. 1 (Graz, 1931), 42–43. 98 Der Kriegsteilnehmer 11 (1933) 3: 1. 99 Vaterländische Frontkämpferbewegung, July 1935, Gemeinde Oberwölz, box 31, fol. 189, No. 4926, StLA. 100 Landeskameradschafts- und Kriegerbund, Verlautbarung No. 2, 24 September 1924, Gemeinde Oberwölz, box 31, fol. 189, No. 586, StLA.

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which allowed it to speak up for soldiers’ rights.101 In this respect, Weis’ message was similar to that of Schönburg-Hartenstein himself, who repeatedly emphasized that different groups such as the Homeland Defence (Heimatschutz), Eastern March Stormtroopers (Ostmärkische Sturmscharen), Freedom League (Freiheitsbund), Christian-German Gymnasts (Christlich-deutsche Turner), Burgenland Marksmen (Burgenländische Landesschützen) and comradeship associations needed to join the new organization, whether through corporate or individual membership.102 Nonetheless, the AVK sought to resist incorporation into the Vaterländische Front, which was headed by vice-chancellor Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg.103 Instead, they agreed to join the ÖRK, given that they shared many ideas.104 In 1935, the ÖRK merged with the Österreichische Soldatenfront, to become the Imperial Comradeship and Soldiers’ Front (Reichskameradschafts- und Soldatenfront), also known as the Patriotic Movement of Frontline Fighters (Vaterländische Frontkämpferbewegung). The aim was still to incorporate all veterans’ and comradeship associations into one organization, and continual pressure was still exerted on them to do so. The associations were forced to change their names and to remove any suggestion of the previously independent and diverse associational sphere. Most associations fell into line, because the new system’s executive body took key decisions on the entire welfare system for soldiers, relating to invalidity, workplace rights, re-settlement issues and welfare benefits.105 As partial compensation for the restrictive stipulations, former World War One soldiers experienced a revival of their military status, a positive re-evaluation of their past deeds, and an ongoing ideological mobilization under the authoritarian dictatorship. The government courted veterans throughout Austria because it saw them as a vital component in the consolidation of the new system in the 1930s and as a basis for the reshaping of the regime through the revival of the Habsburg Monarchy’s heritage.106 By the mid-1930s, therefore, the diverse spectrum of associations of the 1920s had already disappeared, even before the Nazi government put an end to the Austrian veterans’ organizations after the 101 Aufruf Weis, 1 August 1934, Gemeinde Oberwölz, box 31, fol. 189, o. Zl., StLA. 102 Landeskameradschafts- und Kriegerbund v. Stmk, Verlautbarung No. 3, 24 October 1934, Gemeinde Oberwölz, box 31, fol. 189, No. 679, StLA. 103 Amt des Bundesführers des österreichischen Heimatschutzes – Propagandastelle (ed.), Heimatschutz in Österreich (Vienna: Zoller, 1934). 104 Der Kriegsteilnehmer 12 (1934) 1: 1. 105 Erlass No. 1, 28 May 1935, Gemeinde Oberwölz, box 31, fol. 189, StLA; Landeskameradschafts- und Kriegerbund, Verlautbarung No. 8, 17 July 1935; Gemeinde Oberwölz, box 31, fol. 189, No. 3630, StLA. 106 Cf. Ernst Hanisch, “Die Rückkehr des Kriegers: Männlichkeitsbilder und Remilitarisierung im Österreich der Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Transit: Europäische Revue 16 (1999), 108–24, here 121.

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annexation in March 1938. In a way similar to other Austrian provinces, Carinthian and Styrian veterans’ associations were either integrated into the National Socialist Warriors Association Kyffhäuser (Kyffhäuser Reichskriegerbund), or they were dissolved.

IV.

Conclusion

During the 1920s, a diverse spectrum of associations emerged among war veterans in Austria’s southern provinces of Carinthia and Styria. Those, which played the most prominent role in public, namely the Carinthian and Styrian Heimkehrerbund and later the AVK, were located within a German nationalist, right-wing ideological context. They were strongly influenced by the borderland conflicts after 1918 and by ongoing political and social frictions between the provinces and Vienna on the one hand and German-speaking Austrians and other ethnic groups on the other hand. Their members, mainly former Habsburg officers and rank-and-file soldiers, underwent a continued mobilization as they engaged in the border conflicts post-1918 and/or joined in veteran’s associations. Aside from the aim of uniting all ex-combatants fighting for recognition of their material and non-material interests, the veterans’ programme focused intensively on achieving economic stability through the “Anschluss” to Germany, while simultaneously advocating an anti-Semitic and anti-feminist course. Throughout the 1920s, the veterans’ associations proclaimed their “unpolitical character”, but in practice disseminated their ideas through a network that included paramilitary groups. In doing so, they significantly strengthened Austria’s right-wing politics in the southern provinces during the interwar period. Although they were not originally paramilitary formations, the veterans’ associations became more and more intertwined with them, including at the international level. In addition, the organizations examined in this article already embarked upon the first step towards the unification of the associations that gathered pace in the 1930s. The authoritarian dictatorship under Engelbert Dollfuß and then Kurt Schuschnigg sought to exert control over the veterans’ associations and their organizational structures. The Vaterländische Front and the Österreichischer Reichskameradschafts- und Kriegerbund began to bind the veterans’ associations together, whereas the AVK increasingly faced a loss of influence. Finally, the Vaterländische Frontkämpferbewegung incorporated almost all former World War One soldiers and their organizations in a renewed process of transformation that was accompanied by the revival of the Habsburg Monarchy’s heritage, particularly its military traditions.

V#clav Sˇmidrkal

The Defeated in a Victorious State: Veterans of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the Bohemian Lands and Their (Re)mobilization in the 1930s1

I.

Introduction

Recent research on veterans of the First World War in interwar Czechoslovakia has focused primarily on two groups of former soldiers, who managed to win material and symbolic recognition from the state by successfully incorporating their collective wartime experience into the official narrative of the Czechoslovak republic being a state born out of resistance to the Habsburg Empire.2 According to Natali Stegmann, the dominant discourse of the “heroes” and “victims” of the war enabled legionnaires and war invalids to stand out from the amorphous mass of former soldiers.3 The legionnaires – recruited mostly from Czech and Slovak expatriots and prisoners of war (POWs) to fight alongside the Entente armies against the Central Powers – were seen as the standard-bearers of war-time victory and the idea of the Czechoslovak state, even though their actual motivations for enlisting were complex and varied. Although numerically they represented less than one tenth of all Czech and Slovak soldiers drafted during World War One (more than 1.4 million Czechs and Slovaks from Austria-Hungary were mobilized, while about 110,000 men fought in the Czechoslovak legions), they enjoyed a privileged position among war veterans in interwar Czechoslovakia.4 War invalids and the bereaved – at the time, legally termed 1 This article was written as part of the bilateral Austrian-Czech project funded by the Austrian ˇ R), grant no. GF17–33831 L. The Science Fund (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GA C author is grateful for this generous support. 2 Boris Barth, Europa nach dem Großen Krieg: Die Krise der Demokratie in der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1938 (Frankfurt – New York: Campus Verlag, 2016), 206–10. 3 Natali Stegmann, Kriegsdeutungen – Staatsgründungen – Sozialpolitik: Der Helden- und Opferdiskurs in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1948 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010). ˇ eskoslovensko (Prague: Nasˇe vojsko, 2009), 285; 4 For the figures, see Jan Michl, Legion#rˇi a C Martin Zückert, “Memory of war and National State Integration: Czech and German Veterans in Czechoslovakia after 1918”, Central Europe 4 (2006) 2: 111–21, here 111. Among the literature on legionnaire veterans, see for example Gerburg Thunig-Nittner, Die Tschechoslowakische Legion in Russland: Ihre Geschichte und ihre Bedeutung bei der Entstehung der

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“people harmed by war” (v#lecˇn& posˇkozenci or Kriegsbeschädigte) – occupied a symbolically less significant, but socially more needy position. Across Czechoslovakia, more than 950,000 people applied for this status and over 650,000 received a pension by 1929.5 Their physical injuries or the loss of family breadwinners made these war victims into the object of a social policy whose success (or failure) was an important indicator of the new state’s legitimacy. Less visible at the time, and less researched subsequently, has been the large group of former soldiers who returned from the war, but did not belong either to the legally defined and state regulated group of legionnaires or to the category of “people harmed by war”. However, two scholarly articles have helped to shift the focus towards this mass of former soldiers. Firstly, Martin Zückert has analyzed the collective memories of Czech and German veterans of the Austro-Hungarian army in interwar Czechoslovakia and examined their respective integration into the hegemonic republican narrative. While it made sense for Czech veterans to try and assimilate their wartime experience to that of the legionnaires, whose deeds were presented as a blueprint for the Czech nation, German veterans could not subscribe to this nationally exclusive narrative, so they cultivated their own collective memory of the war.6 Secondly, Jirˇ& Hutecˇka has examined the memoirs of Czech veterans of the Austro-Hungarian army from a gender historical perspective, arguing that their individual processing of what they had gone through in wartime was shaped by the effort to overcome their marginalized sense of masculinity (both during the period of combat and after 1918). By searching for ways to attach their own interpretation of the war to the hegemonic type of masculinity represented by the legionnaires, they strived to integrate their experience into Czech national memory.7 The cultivation of a collective memory is indeed one of the fundamental ways of turning wartime experience into a shared identity as veterans.8 However, each form of this collective self-identification requires not only organizational work

5 6 7 8

1. Tschechoslowakischen Republik (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1970); Michl, Legion#rˇi a ˇ eskoslovensko; Katya Kocourek, C ˇ echoslovakista Rudolf Medek: Politicky´ zˇivotopis (Prague: C Mlad# fronta, 2011); Dalibor V#cha, Srdce tak bohat8 na zˇivot: Rudolf Medek a jeho doba (1890–1940) (Prague: Epocha, 2017). Ondrˇej Kypr, Sveˇtov# v#lka a jej& obeˇti (Prague: Vytiskla knihtisk#rna Josefa Obrdy, 1929), 34. ˇ eskoslovensku v letech 1918–1938,” See further Marek Ru˚zˇicˇka, “P8cˇe o v#lecˇn8 invalidy v C unpublished doctoral dissertation, Charles University Prague, 2011. Zückert, “Memory of war”; Martin Zückert, Zwischen Nationsidee und staatlicher Realität: Die tschechoslowakische Armee und ihre Nationalitätenpolitik 1918–1938 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 222–38. Jirˇ& Hutecˇka, “Kamar#di frontovn&ci: Maskulinita a pameˇˇt prvn& sveˇtov8 v#lky v textech cˇeskoslovensky´ch c. a k. veter#nu˚,” Deˇjiny–Teorie–Kritika 11 (2014) 2: 231–65. For recent work in this vein, see Marcin Jarza˛bek, Legionis´ci i inni: Pamie˛´c zbiorowa weteranjw I wojny ´swiatowej w Polsce i Czechosłowacji okresu mie˛dzywojennego (Krakow: Universitas, 2017).

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by veterans themselves, but also a social context in which this can take root. In this article, therefore, I do not consider veterans simply as all former soldiers from the First World War, but instead I analyze them through their socially constructed collective identity as “veterans,” taking into account how the specific form and content of this identity changed over time. In short, identifying as a veteran is not solely based on past experience, but on the way in which this experience is communicated, interpreted, and instrumentalized as a “valuable sacrifice.” Moreover, this process does not take place in isolation from the outer world but through interaction with other veterans, society and the state, on both national and transnational levels.9 This article begins by arguing that the predominantly pacifist 1920s – based on the new European order established at Versailles – discouraged veterans of the former Austro-Hungarian army in Czechoslovakia from undertaking much beyond commemorative and social activities on the local level. However, the rise of fascist revisionism in international politics during the course of the 1930s, together with the return of war as a means of politics and growing military defence preparations on the part of Czechoslovakia, created new possibilities for the (re-)mobilization of veterans for military and political aims. In this era of growing international insecurity, war veterans from the former Austro-Hungarian army rose to prominence as seasoned ex-soldiers, yet Czechoslovakia’s inability to radically transform its existing veterans policy revealed serious shortcomings in its construction as a victorious nation state.10 In terms of source material, this article is based primarily on periodicals published by veterans’ associations and on archival documents from the Czechoslovak government. If not explicitly mentioned otherwise, the analysis deals with veterans in the Bohemian lands and does not include veterans from Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia. I use the collective nouns “Czechs” and “Germans” to describe the two biggest ethnic groups in the Bohemian lands, even though this represents a simplification and elides regional differences among each of these groups. The adjective “Czechoslovak” refers to Czechoslovakia, but sometimes – in the language of the sources – to Czechoslovakism as a national ideology 9 On this constructivist concept of a veteran, see Julia Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge: Polnische Veteranen des Ersten Weltkriegs und ihre internationalen Kontakte, 1918–1939 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011), 7–19; Benjamin Ziemann, Veteranen der Republik: Kriegserinnerung und demokratische Politik 1918–1933 (Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz Nachf., 2014), 7–9; ]ngel Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 11–12; for the term “valuable sacrifice,” see Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (eds.), Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016). 10 For a recent summary of on-going debates on Czechoslovak democracy, see Ota Konr#d, “Widersprüchlich und unvollendet: Die Demokratie der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik 1918 bis 1938,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 66 (2018) 2: 337–48.

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positing that Czechs and Slovak were one nation. Given that Czechoslovakia defined itself as a nation state of “Czechoslovaks,” these two meanings can overlap. The first part of this article describes the social landscape of “defeated” veterans in the Bohemian lands and identifies four types of veterans’ associations. In the second section, the focus moves on to the centralization of these associations in the second half of the 1930s in response to the spread of nondemocratic politics and the spectre of war. While these veterans, who had previously been marginalized because of their past, came to receive more public attention and recognition, the state nevertheless insisted on continuity with regard to its veterans policy. The following section shows that, by conferring the status of “Czechoslovak volunteer from the years 1918–1919” in 1938, the state only extended the legionnaire paradigm further, principally to Czechs and Slovaks who had volunteered for the borderland wars in the initial phase of Czechoslovakia’s foundation. Finally, the Czechoslovak Republic’s internal efforts at sustaining the veterans’ hierarchy came up against transnational pressures guided by fascist states, which successfully lobbied for revision of the prevailing separation of war veterans into “the victors” and “the defeated” in order to use them as a vehicle for revisionist foreign policies.

II.

Veterans of a Defeated Army in a Victorious State

The paradigm of cultures of victory and defeat, which historians have used to explain the different development of European states after 1918, is somewhat problematic in the case of Czechoslovakia, given that both cultures were constructed alongside one another within a single state.11 While the country as a whole was demonstrably among the victors, most of the former soldiers who became Czechoslovak citizens once belonged to the defeated army of AustriaHungary. This divergence between the victorious ethos of the successor state, embodied in the relatively small group of legionnaire veterans, and the majority experience of serving in a defeated army, led to the fragmentation of AustroHungarian army veterans’ associations in the 1920s and, in the case of the Czech veterans, also to organizational weaknesses. Until the 1930s, veterans from the Austro-Hungarian army had typically been active on the local level only and

11 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery (London: Granta Books, 2004); John Horne, “Beyond Cultures of Victory and Cultures of Defeat? Inter-war Veterans’ Internationalism,” in The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism, edited by Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 207–22; John Paul Newman, Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building 1903–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

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devoted their efforts primarily to differently permeated remembrances of the past, caring for the needy, and social activities. The unfriendly approach adopted by the Czechoslovak executive also played a role in this situation. Government authorities chiefly wanted to prevent these associations from becoming a locus for subversion, whether as paramilitary forces or as supporters of military traditions alien to the those of the Czechoslovak Army, which were based on the legacy of the Legions. While secret intelligence monitors assessed the former aspect to be non-existent among Czech veterans and negligible among German veterans, the latter issue kept the authorities occupied because it concerned both Czechs and Germans and was also difficult to define bureaucratically.12 The growing number of meetings and conventions of veterans’ associations in the first half of the 1920s, which were prohibited or approved seemingly without rhyme or reason, led in 1925 to a meeting between representatives from the Ministry of National Defence and the Ministry of the Interior about how to react. Ministry of National Defence officials initially requested the Ministry of the Interior to approve the prohibition of “any actions that would lead to a revival of old Austrian traditions,” but this proposal was in the end watered down to banning members of the military on active duty from participating in veterans’ activities. Furthermore, the two ministries came to a vague agreement that the government must be more vigilant and careful.13 The officials evidently believed that the German veterans’ activities had more than “a purely social and leisure character” and, in fact, promoted the history and traditions of an armed force that was the enemy of the Czechoslovak nation and state. Although there was never any question of their being susceptible to irredentism in the way that some Germans were suspected of, even Czech veterans’ commemorative activities were considered unhelpful for the establishment of a new Czechoslovak military tradition.14 The government enacted repressive new laws, such as no. 267/1920 Coll. on “unsuitable names,” which obliged veterans groups to drop any names alluding to the Austro-Hungarian past,15 and the “Law on the Protection of the Republic” no. 53/1923 Coll., which outlawed the public display of monarchist relics (§26). However, the main tool for regulating the activities of veterans’ associations was the former Austrian law on associations, no. 134 from 1867. This law required associations to define themselves as apolitical and empowered government

ˇ SR, fo. 75; Refer#t plk. Zˇ#ka o plukovn&ch 12 Z cˇinnosti spolku˚ prˇ&sl. by´v. rak. uh. formac& v C spolc&ch nasˇich Neˇmcu˚, fo. 79, f. PMV, k. cˇ. 768, National Archives of the Czech Republic/ N#rodn& archiv (hereafter NA). ˇ SR, fo. 71–74, f. PMV, k. cˇ. 768, NA. 13 Z cˇinnosti spolku˚ prˇ&sl. by´v. rak. uh. formac& v C 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., fo. 74.

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commissioners to police the associations’ compliance with their by-laws.16 Within this legal framework, many groups of veterans from the Austro-Hungarian army were active in the Bohemian lands in the 1920s, despite bureaucratic surveillance and occasional censorship or bans. Overall, these veterans’ associations can be classified into four types: regimental, ex-servicemen’s, POWs’, and “anti-system” political associations. Veterans’ associations of former “Czech” and “German” infantry regiments from the Austro-Hungarian army (i. e. regiments from the Bohemian lands that had been predominantly manned by ethnic Czechs and ethnic Germans respectively) felt the strongest ties to their military experience in the First World War. Although veterans in these associations were seemingly united by a common past, they were nonetheless divided along national lines. This was also reflected in diverging narratives. For the Czech associations, embracing nationalism was a way to rid themselves of the potential stigma of Habsburg loyalism and to link their wartime experience to the story of the victorious Czech nation. For German veterans’ groups, the nationalist discourse of the German soldier who remained undefeated on the field of battle, but was betrayed by the hinterland, provided a form of psychological defence against the new post-war order that made the Germans a minority in the Czechoslovak state. Czech veterans’ regimental (e. g. from the 28th, 35th, 36th, 75th, and 102nd infantry regiments) and sailors’ associations became loosely united within the Kamar#dstv& (hereafter, the “Comradeship”) and tried to fuse their military past with the dominant story of opposition to the Habsburgs, which was most clearly expressed in the “foreign resistance” of the Czechoslovak legionnaires.17 For Czech soldiers conscripted into the Habsburg army who had been unable to join the legions and to fight directly against Austria-Hungary, there had been the option of “domestic resistance” and undermining Austria-Hungary from within. Hence, the usual heroic interpretation of military glory in regimental histories, based on their battlefield exploits, was replaced by examples of Czech soldiers’ defiance. The ignoring of commands, acts of sabotage, revolts, and desertion, which the Austrian authorities had viewed not only as punishable offenses, but also as proof of the “unreliability” of Czech soldiers in general, were now elevated

ˇ eskoslovensk8 pr#vo spolkov8 (Prague: Aventinum, 1924), 51–54. 16 V#clav Dusil, C ˇ esˇt& n#morˇn&ci 17 For more on Czech sailors after 1918, see Jindrˇich Marek, Pir#ti svobody: C v letech 1918–1921 (Cheb: Sveˇt krˇ&del, 2002); Jarmila Urbanov#, Brneˇnsˇt& Marinˇ#ci: Posledn& veter#ni rakousk8ho v#lecˇn8ho lodˇstva (Brno: Barrister & Principal, 2004). On the question of Czech soldiers’ loyalty during the war, see Richard Lein, Pflichterfüllung oder Hochverrat? Die tschechischen Soldaten Österreich-Ungarns im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna – Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2011).

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into acts of national resistance.18 Despite fighting in the Austro-Hungarian army, these veterans were portrayed as welcoming their defeat, which enabled them to join other jubilant Czechs and Slovaks in celebrating the establishment of Czechoslovakia. Czech veterans thus maintained their distance from Austro-Hungarian military symbols, because their acknowledgement would have been to deny their newly established version of the past. For example, Czech ex-sailors did not place much value on awards gained for their loyal service to the emperor, but instead highlighted events such as the Cattaro mutiny in February 1918 or celebrated figures such as the navy cook, Frantisˇek Koucky´, who plotted to desert with a torpedo boat to Italian shores, only to be intercepted, court-martialled and executed in May 1918.19 By contrast, German veterans’ associations of this type nurtured a classic narrative of military heroism. After a frosty welcome home by their fellow citizens at the end of the war, battlefield-proven military virtues, such as fidelity, courage, and fulfilment of one’s duties were highlighted once more as positive characteristics.20 Veterans’ groups from the former 42nd, 73rd, 92nd, and 94th infantry regiments, which came together under the umbrella association of “Sons of the Homeland in the World War” (Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkriege, hereafter “Homeland’s Sons”) began to promote the image of the German soldier as a role model of masculinity. In this interpretation, German soldiers had gone to war to fight for their fatherland and had distinguished themselves in many victorious battles. Since these men could not be defeated in a fair fight on the battlefield, their souls had allegedly been betrayed by “unscrupulous people” during the overthrow of the Habsburg state in 1918, while the soldiers faithfully guarded the frontline.21 This argument, although cautious in terms of naming specific culprits, constituted a local variation on the “stab in the back” legend current in the Weimar Republic, according to which the revolution began in the hinterland, thereby exonerating soldiers from any blame for the war’s outcome.22 Therefore, German veterans in the “Homeland’s Sons” organization saw no need to distance themselves from their military past and army folklore, to the extent that their

18 Hutecˇka, “Kamar#di frontovn&ci,” 240–6; Josef Fucˇ&k, Osmadvac#tn&ci: Spor o cˇesk8ho voj#ka I. sveˇtov8 v#lky (Prague: Mlad# fronta, 2006), 441–2. 19 Morˇe Slovanu˚m! 3 (1928) 6: 1. 20 Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg: Der 92er 1 (1924) 1: 1; Richard Wagner (ed.), Geschichte des ehemaligen Schützenregimentes Nr. 6 (k.k. Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Eger Nr. 6) (Karlsbad: Verlag Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg, 1932), 375. 21 Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg: Der 42er 1 (1924) 1: 1. 22 Boris Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration: Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2003).

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meetings included organized parades, brass bands playing familiar military songs, and priests holding field masses.23 The second type of veteran was represented by self-help associations of exservicemen (vyslouzˇilci or gediente Soldaten, hereafter “Ex-Servicemen”), a form of veteranship which Czechoslovakia inherited from the Habsburg monarchy.24 Military experiences undergone by troops and non-commissioned officers from different sections of the army at varying points in time were all brought together here via the platform of local veterans’ associations. Whereas a large proportion of “Ex-Servicemen” belonged to the older generation, who had been militarily socialized before the First World War, there were also representatives from the younger generation that had fought during 1914–1918, as well as from the youngest generation of all, which served in the Czechoslovak army.25 In lieu of seeking to keep alive divergent past experiences, the “Ex-Servicemen” forged a new kind of veteran identity. Aside from their specific uniforms and insignia, drill exercises and military music,26 the “Ex-Servicemen” distinguished themselves by combining embeddedness in their local neighbourhood with civic loyalty to the state. While close involvement in community life comprised an element of continuity before and after 1918, the second aspect became problematic after the establishment of Czechoslovakia, which – unlike the Habsburg Monarchy (or its Cisleithanian half after 1867) – was set up as a nation state of “Czechoslovaks,” with other ethnic groups being defined as minorities. Identification with the state became all the more a challenge, since “Ex-Servicemen” were more active in the German-speaking regions of the Bohemian lands. By contrast, they were somewhat ridiculed within Czech society for their theatrical demonstrations of loyalty to the former Habsburg state and many Czechs therefore looked down upon the term veter#n.27 Nevertheless, in ethnically mixed regions such as Silesia or Northern Moravia, Czech and German “ExServicemen” associations still belonged to the same umbrella organization and cooperated with each other into the 1930s.28 The third type of veterans’ associations was formed by German-speaking former POWs. They were as removed from the spotless military traditions promoted by “Homeland’s Sons” as they were from the veteran folklore of the 23 For example Spolek “Heimatsöhne im Weltkrieg”, slavnost k pameˇti padly´ch dne 3. listopadu 1934 – pru˚beˇh, 3 November 1934, f. PZ5, k. cˇ. 1274, NA. 24 Laurence Cole, Military Culture and Popular Patriotism in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 25 For statistics from 1938, see Der Kamerad 39 (1938) 8: 2. ˇ ech#ch, na Moraveˇ a ve Slezsku (n.p.: J. 26 Jarom&r Indra, Spolky C. k. vojensky´ch vyslouzˇilcu˚ v C Indra, 2010); St#tn& okresn& archiv Karvin#, f. Podpu˚rny´ spolek vojensky´ch vyslouzˇilcu˚ Karvinn#. 27 For example Nasˇe z#loha 4 (1938) 5/6: 44. 28 See various issues of the journal Prˇ#telsky´ list/Kameradschaftsblatt.

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“Ex-Servicemen.” Instead, they saw their experience of wartime captivity as humiliating, but equally as an opportunity to cleanse themselves of their former military identity and to embark upon a new beginning.29 At first glance, their transformation appears to show a degree of similarity to Czech and Slovak POWs who also sought to “re-invent” themselves. However, while the legionnaires spiritually transformed themselves from Austro-Hungarian POWs to Czechoslovak revolutionary fighters, German POWs focused very much on disarmament and the vision of building a new life upon the ruins of defeat. The notion of “comradeship” was understood as the coming together of different individuals bound together by their common fate in the POW camps, thereby creating the foundation for the moral renewal of the German people, which had otherwise fallen into “willfulness, fragmentation, selfishness, hatred, and disunity” after the war.30 This is also why, unlike the two types of German veterans’ organizations already mentioned, there was no Czech counterpart in the form of a Czech association of former POWs. Above all, the Czech POW experience could not be integrated so easily into the framework of anti-Habsburg resistance. While German POWs were only able to sit out the time in captivity and wait until the end of the war, Czech and Slovak POWs had the opportunity to join the Czechoslovak legions, so – according to the post-1918 national narrative – only Czech and Slovak “reactionaries,” the “unsure,” and “cowards” remained in the POW camps.31 By contrast, the fourth type of veterans’ organization was only to be found among Czechs in the Bohemian lands and formed a political instrument diversely used by Fascists and Communists. At the beginning of the 1920s, there was an attempt to forge former frontline Czech soldiers into a national resistance movement in the shape of the “Honourable Czechoslovak Legion” (Cˇestn# legie cˇeskoslovensk#). At first, this movement possessed fascist tendencies, but it soon became controlled by Communists and then dissolved after a few years. Subsequently, the Communists founded their own “Independent Movement of Frontline Soldiers” (Neodvisl8 sdruzˇen& voj#ku˚ z fronty) in 1925, which continued in existence until the end of the 1930s. In the second half of the 1920s, fascists founded a new “National Association of Frontline Soldiers” (N#rodn& sdruzˇen& voj#ku˚ z fronty), which went through several organizational changes but remained barely visible, just like the above-mentioned communist association. In 1937, Czech fascists established another organization, the “Union of Frontline Soldiers” (Svaz voj#ku˚ z fronty), from which the “Executive of Former 29 Der Kriegsgefangene. Monatsschrift für ehem. Kriegs- und Zivilgefangene, Mitteilungsblatt der Reichsvereinigung ehem. Kriegsgefangener in der Tschechoslowakei 9 (1932) 1: 1–2. 30 Ibid., 1. ˇ eskoslovensk8 legie v It#lii,” Historie a vojenstv& 42 (1993) 1: 17–97, here 31 Bohum&r Kl&pa, “C 75; for Austrian POWs, see Verena Moritz’s contribution to this issue.

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Soldiers for the Czechoslovak Republic” (Exekutiva by´valy´ch voj#ku˚ pro RCˇS) split the same year.32 Unlike the previously mentioned associations, which allowed relatively clearly defined groups of people to become members according to their particular military past, the goal of the communist and fascist associations was to appeal to as many veterans (and voters) as possible through the overt politicization of the myth of the frontline soldier. This myth was formulated very freely. Instead of describing and evaluating specific historic events, it worked with abstract categories and concepts, which aimed at political mobilization regardless of the soldiers’ specific experiences. The common ideological starting point for both the communist and the fascist myth of the former soldier was an “anti-system” stance, whereby it was argued throughout the whole interwar period that ex-soldiers from the First World War – unlike the legionnaires – had not received any symbolic recognition or the social support to which they should have been entitled due to their wartime service. Where the Fascists and the Communists differed was in their explanation of this situation. For the far left, the war and the military were seen from a class perspective. The war was the expression of the class interests of the political and economic elites and had occurred at the expense of the unfortunate working class, from which the ordinary soldiers were recruited.33 For the Fascists, however, the key interpretive category was that of the nation, which was actually seen as having strengthened itself through the war. Yet, after the war, a vaguely defined elite of “political conjurers, industrial cartels, monopolizing landowners, and socialist upstarts” had corroded the nation through party politics and pushed the “frontline soldiers” aside.34 Here, the communist and fascist myths of the frontline soldier coincided again: both agreed that “frontline soldiers” deserved a greater share of political power.35 However, neither of these myths based on anti-system politics attracted a significant number of veterans. This reflected the position of the Fascists and the Communists in general in interwar Czechoslovakia, neither of whom were able to challenge the dominant political groups’ hold on power (despite the Communists being one of the largest parties in the country’s very heterogeneous political landscape).

ˇ echy a 32 Martin Vesely´, “Retardace, kolaborace a aktivismus arm#dn&ch elit v Protektor#tu C Morava,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Charles University Prague, 2013, 74–78. 33 M&r. Cˇasopis Sdruzˇen& cˇeskoslovensky´ch vyslouzˇily´ch voj&nu˚ a fflcˇastn&ku˚ sveˇtov8 v#lky v Cˇeskoslovensk8 republice 3 (1937) 8: 1. 34 Pr#vo obcˇana 2 (1937) 3. 35 For the communist line of argument, see issues of M&r; for the fascist equivalent, see Hlas ˇ S from 1937 and 1938. voj#ku˚ and Hlas voj#ku˚ z fronty RC

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Czechoslovak “Reservists and Ex-Soldiers” and Sudeten German “Soldiers”

In response to the rise of revisionism in international politics and the abrupt worsening of the security situation in Europe in the mid-1930s, Czechoslovakia reacted by embarking on hectic defence preparations. In a related development, the above-mentioned Czech and German veterans’ associations reformulated their statutes, centralized their organizational structures, and strengthened their national affiliations. In short, the growing demand for military skills and active citizenship encouraged veterans to proffer their hitherto overlooked wartime experience. On the Czech side, this process led to an escalation in the conflict between two competing concepts of what it meant to be a veteran, as represented by the “Comradeship” on the one hand and by reservists of the Czechoslovak army (who had mostly served after 1918) on the other hand. At the same time, a unifying drive among Czech regimental associations from the former AustroHungarian army combined with organizational initiatives from Czechoslovak army reservists in the foundation of the “Union of Czechoslovak Fighters from the World War and Reserve Members of the Czechoslovak Army” (Svaz ˇcsl. bojovn&ku˚ ze sveˇtov8 v#lky a prˇ&slusˇn&ku˚ cˇs. arm#dy v z#loze) in the summer of 1935. Inspired by similar veterans’ groups abroad, the goal of this union was the creation of a strong central organization of Czech ex-soldiers, who could offer their experience of combat or military service for the defence of Czechoslovakia. As the association journal argued, in place of the “dangerous” literary stereotype embodied by the “Good Soldier Sˇvejk”, a new, ideal Czechoslovak citizen – “a republican and uncompromising protector of freedom” – should emerge from the older generation of Czech soldiers from the First World War and the younger generation socialized in the Czechoslovak Army.36 However, the mutual fulfilment of this ideal was abandoned within half a year, when ideological disputes arose between former Austro-Hungarian soldiers represented by Polda Kumbursky´ and a group of former legionnaires and Czechoslovak Army soldiers, on whose behalf Otakar Vaneˇk – a former legionnaire in Russia and military press publisher – acted.37 The growing clash of ideas was overtly apparent in their journal “Our Reserve” (Nasˇe z#loha), with the March 1936 issue containing articles both defending and condemning Czech veterans from the Austro-Hungarian army.38 As well as this journal, other publications, a public exhibition of war relics, and the staging of a dramatic play about Czech 36 U. Janovicky´, “5kol nasˇ& generace,” Nasˇe obrana, 1 (1935) 3/4:17–18, here 18. 37 “Programov8 prohl#sˇen&,” Kamar#dstv& 5 (1936) 19/20: 297–300, here 297–8. 38 Nasˇe z#loha 2 (1936) 6/7.

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soldiers on the Italian front indicated how the “Comradeship” sought to promote a new image of Czechs in the Austro-Hungarian army as “good soldiers”, who were not shirkers, saboteurs or deserters by default, but reliably fulfilled their military duties, despite their spiritual alienation from the Habsburg monarchy.39 Yet, this positive re-evaluation of service in the defeated army irritated the “Reservists”, who insisted on the incompatibility between service in the Habsburg army and Czechoslovak military traditions. While ceasing cooperation with the “Reservists” for some period of time, the “Comradeship” nevertheless found a new ally in the shape of a minority, but influential right-wing grouping, the “Independent Union of Czechoslovak Legionnaires” (Nez#visl# jednota cˇs. legion#rˇu˚). The two groupings displayed common interests in their emphasis on Czech nationalism and military masculinity and they were both equally critical of the biggest – left-wing – legionˇ eskoslonaire organization, the “Czechoslovak Community of Legionnaires” (C vensk# obec legion#rˇsk#). This liaison even helped representatives from the “Comradeship” obtain an audience with Czechoslovak president Edvard Benesˇ, as well as winning them an invitation to participate in the prestigious celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of the Battle of Zborov, organized in 1937 by the Independent Union of Czechoslovak Legionnaires.40 The Ministry of National Defence (MND) tried to counteract the mutual weakening of Czech veterans deriving from the ideological conflicts between the “Comradeship” and “Reservists” on the one hand and the competing myths of the front-line soldier propagated by the Fascists and Communists on the other. The common denominator behind the MND’s push towards unification of the veterans was the latter’s willingness to help defend the state by participating in defence training. According to §20 of the law on defence training (no. 184/1937 Coll.) from mid-1937, authorization to provide training for military defence could only be granted to centrally organized associations recognized by the Czechoslovak government. A first meeting of representatives from five Czech veterans’ associations – “Comradeship,” “Reservists,” (Czech) “Ex-Serviceˇ eneˇk men,” “Executive,” and “Union of Frontline Soldiers” – with Colonel C Kudl#cˇek from the MND’s Defence Training Division took place in January 1938. 39 Hutecˇka, “Kamar#di frontovn&ci,” 247–55; emblematic for this interpretation were the memoirs by retired general Karel Wagner, see Karel Wagner, S cˇesky´m plukem na rusk8 fronteˇ (Prague: List Kamar#dstv&, 1936). 40 The Battle of Zborov on 2 July 1917 was celebrated in Czechoslovakia as the successful “baptism by fire” for the Czechoslovak legion in the fight against the Austro-Hungarian troops on the Russian front. Karel Straka, “Prezident republiky Edvard Benesˇ a cˇeskoslovensk# brann# moc v jubilejn&m roce 1937,” Historie a vojenstv& 66 (2017) 2: 4–21; Z#pis o vy´borov8 schu˚zi deleg#tu˚ dne 19. kveˇtna 1937, f. MNO-HSˇ Odd. brann8 vy´chovy, k. cˇ. 218, Military Central Archives-Military Historical Archives / Vojensky´ fflstrˇedn& archiv-Vojensky´ historicky´ archiv (hereafter V5A-VHA), Prague.

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One of the meeting’s key goals was the creation of a unified veterans’ organization, which could be achieved in two possible ways: either through the “Reservists,” who most closely corresponded to the MND’s ideas, or by means of a newly founded organization. The MND wished to put forward a retired general to head the proposed central organization in order to help maintain the MND’s influence within it. However, an argument broke out between the different representatives over how much influence each of the associations present should have in the new organization. While smaller associations argued for the same amount of delegates for each participating association, the larger associations demanded representation proportional to their size.41 After several further meetings and the gathering of background information on the associations, the MND decided to stop dealing with the fascist “Executive” and the “Union of Frontline Soldiers.” It then continued to negotiate with the three remaining groups – “Comradeship,” “Reservists,” and “Ex-Servicemen” – about the founding of a “Union of Czechoslovak Reservists and Ex-Soldiers” (Svaz ˇceskoslovensky´ch z#lozˇn&ku˚ a by´valy´ch voj#ku˚), which was supposed to cultivate readiness for military defence in the spirit of the legionnaires and Czechoslovak army traditions. The creation of the central organization was finally authorized in August 1938.42 After the exclusion of communist and fascist former “front soldiers,” most Czech veterans from the old Austro-Hungarian army were now united under the officially approved platform, together with men from the younger generation who had served after 1918. Significantly, however, the MND did not invite any representatives from the German veterans to the negotiations, and the surviving documentation provides no evidence that it even considered this option. After the parliamentary elections of 1935, the nationalist and later irredentist and National Socialist Sudeten German Party (Sudetendeutsche Partei, SdP), which was founded in 1933 to defend the interests of all Germans in the Bohemian lands, began to court German veterans, as possible bearers of a reformulated Sudeten German identity.43 The SdP estimated that 250,000 to 300,000 German-speaking former soldiers lived in the Bohemian lands, and that their largest organization was the social democratic “Union of War Wounded, Widows and Orphans” (Bund der Kriegsverletzten, Witwen und Waisen, hereafter the “War Wounded,” comprising 15 % of all veterans), followed by the “Homeland’s Sons” (6 %), the “Ex-Serv41 Sloucˇen& spolku˚ z#lozˇn&ku˚, by´valy´ch voj#ku˚ a voj#ku˚ z fronty – Zpr#va pro pana ministra o vy´sledku jedn#n&, 22 February 1938, MNO-HSˇ Odd. brann8 vy´chovy, k. cˇ. 342, V5A-VHA. ˇ .s.Z.) se 42 Spolek “5strˇed& svazu cˇeskoslovensky´ch z#lozˇn&ku˚ a by´v. voj#ku˚ (zkr#ceneˇ 5.S.C s&dlem v Praze” – utvorˇen&, 8 August 1938, f. MNO-HSˇ Odd. brann8 vy´chovy, k. cˇ. 343, V5AVHA. 43 Ralf Gebel, “Heim ins Reich!”: Konrad Henlein und der Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938–1945) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999).

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icemen” (5 %), and the “POWs” (3 %). According to the SdP, around 75 % of exsoldiers were not affiliated with any organization, but together possessed the potential to become one of the pillars of the Sudeten German movement, the goal of which was to create a “people’s community” (Volksgemeinschaft) according to the Nazi model.44 This implied not only overcoming political fragmentation, social divisions, and different confessional denominations among Sudeten Germans, but also their cultural and geographical diversity. By idealizing the “comradeship” of former frontline soldiers, who had allegedly managed to overcome such differences in the trenches and learned to “live in loyalty, appreciation, and selflessness” regardless of the losses and suffering they faced, the party believed it had identified a possible source of social cohesion for the kind of Sudeten German identity that it wished to foster.45 Following its positive results in the legislative elections in the summer of 1935, the Sudeten German Party made a first attempt to unify the German veterans’ associations. The question was discussed at a meeting of representatives from “Homeland’s Sons,” “POWs,” and the “War Wounded” in Liberec/Reichenberg in June 1935, although the participants categorically refused any attempts to drag politics into the associations’ work.46 After several weeks of campaigning for the idea, the representatives met again in Liberec/Reichenberg in August. Otto Steinfelder, the chairman of the northern Bohemian regional organization of “Homeland’s Sons,” proposed the unification of German veterans into a single association of former frontline soldiers under the patronage of the Sudeten German Party, which had offered to assist the organization. However, other representatives immediately objected to this overt politicization of veterans’ affairs, with the “War Wounded” protesting the loudest.47 They considered a new organization to be confusing and of little use. Instead of a unified organization, therefore, a voluntary “Sudeten German Working Society of Former Soldiers” was founded in September 1935, which initially sought closer cooperation between the highest functionaries in “Homeland’s Sons,” “POWs”, and the “War Wounded.” Their aim was to achieve greater recognition for Sudeten German war sacrifices and to raise awareness about former frontline soldiers’ concerns among the general public, government, and parliament. As with fascist veterans’ “diplomatic activity” elsewhere, the new organization argued that it would help the different nationalities within Czechoslovakia to understand one another

44 45 46 47

Bericht über das sudetendeutsche Frontkämpfertum, 1, f. SdP, k. cˇ. 11, NA. Der Kamerad (January 1938): 1. Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg 12 (1935) 6: 150. Ing. Otto Steinfelder z Mimoneˇ zakl#d#n& svazu by´v. frontovy´ch voj#ku˚, 29 August 1935, f. PZ5, k. cˇ. 1274, NA.

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better, as well as improving relations between veterans on the international level.48 Ultimately, therefore, Steinfelder’s initiative from the summer of 1935 was perceived as too rash and was rejected on the grounds it would have caused an unwanted split among German veterans.49 Nevertheless, the SdP continued to keep veterans in its sights. As its politics gradually shifted from the representation of German national interests to one of Nazification and a policy of secession from Czechoslovakia, so too did their relationship to veterans alter. In 1938, after Austria’s annexation by Germany had transformed the international status quo, the SdP – following instructions from Berlin – mounted a concerted political campaign to break up Czechoslovakia. The resultant growth of pressure on the Sudeten German Social Democratic Party produced further significant ˇ esk# L&pa/Böhdevelopments in veterans politics.50 On 24 April 1938, in C misch Leipa, representatives from all the relevant German veterans’ associations now agreed to found the “Sudeten German Union of Soldiers” (Sudetendeutscher Soldatenbund) under the leadership of former “frontline fighter” and head of the SdP Konrad Henlein, with the goal of representing roughly 180,000 veterans. As the German veterans’ newspaper announced, under “this respected authoritarian leadership,” the new union would bind the hitherto autonomous associations together.51 The originally diverse groupings of German veterans in the Bohemian lands were thus to be consolidated as one block of “Sudeten German soldiers.”52

IV.

Foreign and Domestic “Volunteers”

In the late 1930s, the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia was repeatedly contested by its neighbouring states, who laid claim to border regions and the national minorities who lived in them. In consequence, activities increased among veterans from the borderland wars of 1918–1919, when the Germanspeaking parts of the Bohemian lands, the Teschen region and the whole of Slovakia had been claimed by neighbouring states. At that time, legionnaires returning from France and Italy and, above all, the newly established domestic 48 Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg 12 (1935) 11/12: 238. 49 Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg 12 (1935) 9: 201. 50 Stanislav Kokosˇka and Thomas Oellermann, Sudetsˇt& Neˇmci proti Hitlerovi: Sborn&k neˇˇ R, 2008). mecky´ch odborny´ch studi& (Prague: 5stav pro soudob8 deˇjiny AV C 51 Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg 15 (1938) 5: 268; for Henlein’s portait as a “front fighter”, see Rudolf Jahn, Konrad Henlein an der Front (Karlsbad – Leipzig: Karl H. Frank, 1938). 52 SdP – usmeˇrneˇn& svazu˚ neˇmecky´ch bojovn&ku˚ z fronty, 18 September 1938, f. PMV, k. cˇ. 1301, NA.

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volunteer troops had helped consolidate the new Czechoslovak state in a series of conflicts fought alongside former members of the Austro-Hungarian army. From the mid-1930s onwards, three umbrella organizations of veterans from the postindependence volunteer troops sought to gain recognition from the state for the service they had rendered. The largest – with about 16,000 members in 108 groups in 193853 – and politically most influential of these groups was the “Czechoslovak Community of Volunteers” (Cˇeskoslovensk# obec dobrovolcu˚, ˇ sOD). C This association first introduced itself to the public during the Third Manifestation Congress of Czechoslovak Legionnaires in Prague, organized in July ˇ sOL).54 The C ˇ sOD 1935 by the “Czechoslovak Community of Legionnaires” (C ˇ sOL, with which it shared a similar collaborated closely with the left-wing C name. The two groups also overlapped in terms of their goals, because both promoted the term “Czechoslovak volunteer from 1918–1919” and sought to ˇ sOD explain the volunteers’ historic role in the conflicts. In this respect, the C competed with the “Association of Slovak Volunteers” (Sdruzˇenie slovensky´ch dobrovol’n&kov), whose central organization was created in 1929 in Zˇilina. Comprising more than 2,500 members in 57 sections (growing to 4,500 members in 72 local sections by 1938),55 its members were mainly Slovaks, alongside Czechs who had participated in the battles on Slovak territory in 1918–1919 and lived in Slovakia. The third largest association was the “Association of Brothers from the Liberty Guard troops, the Sokol Battalions and Centurions from 1918–1919” (Sdruzˇen& bratrˇ& pluku˚ Str#zˇe svobody, sokolsky´ch praporu˚ a setnin z let 1918–1919), which represented troops who had been recruited from the Sokol gymnastic associations and other sports associations.56 The mounting pressure from veterans and the public to acknowledge the virtues of the post-1918 volunteers led the government to re-evaluate its current policy, which only officially honoured “legionnaires” as defined by law no. 462/ 1919 Coll. for their role in the foundation of Czechoslovakia. To fit into this definition, it was necessary for the veteran to have volunteered for a Czechoslovak legion or allied army by the date of Czechoslovakia’s proclamation of independence, i. e. before 28 October 1918.57 Accordingly, the definition was now 53 Informace o dobrovolecky´ch organisac&ch z let 1918/1919, f. VKPR, k. cˇ. 190, sig. 1938: vsˇeob-2785, V5A-VHA. ˇ eskoslovensk# obec legion#rˇsk# (ed.), Pam#tn&k III. manifestacˇn&ho sjezdu cˇeskosloven54 C ˇ sOL, 1936), 42. sky´ch legion#rˇu˚ v Praze (Prague: C 55 Zpr#va o organizacˇnej cˇinnosti, pozˇadavky a zˇelania, f. VKPR, k. cˇ. 190, sig. 1938: vsˇeob2785, V5A-VHA. 56 Informace o dobrovolecky´ch organisac&ch z let 1918/1919, f. VKPR, k. cˇ. 190, sig. 1938: vsˇeob-2785, V5A-VHA. 57 Ivan Sˇedivy´, “Legion#rˇsk# republika? K syst8mu legion#rˇsk8ho z#konod#rstv& a soci#ln& p8cˇe ˇ SR,” Historie a vojenstv& 51 (2002) 1: 158–84, here 160–1. v meziv#lecˇn8 C

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to be widened to include those veterans who had volunteered for Czechoslovakia after this date. Yet, if the issuing of legionnaire identity cards in accordance with the above-mentioned law was already a difficult bureaucratic task (evident in the more than two thousand wrongly issued and later rescinded legionnaire cards),58 the administrative definition of the post-1918 volunteer was even more complicated. The great difficulty was in retroactively distinguishing which Czechoslovak soldiers from the former Austro-Hungarian army could be considered a volunteer and which were fulfilling compulsory military service at a time of postrevolutionary chaos. The “Liberation Memorial,” which was the official museum of Czechoslovak resistance in the First World War, therefore proposed that a volunteer was anyone who placed himself at the disposal of the Czechoslovak National Committee, i. e. the interim government, in the period between 28 October and 23 November 1918, which was the date of the first official demobilization. For the period after 23 November 1918, volunteers were defined as those former soldiers who were officially demobilized and subsequently revolunteered for army duty before 31 July 1919. The goal here was to prevent former soldiers who were still on active duty from seeking volunteer status. In Slovakia, a volunteer was considered anyone who had been in service for Czechoslovakia up to 20 March 1919 (in the eastern region of Kosˇice, it was until 29 March 1919) and, after these dates, anyone who voluntarily (re-)enlisted.59 Volunteer status was also conferred upon those who enlisted in the Czechoslovak legion in Russia after 28 October 1918, and those who enlisted in the ˇ eskoslovensk# domobrana) in Italy, which was “Czechoslovak Home Guard” (C composed of 56 battalions formed after autumn 1918 via the voluntary recruitment of Austro-Hungarian POWs from the Bohemian lands held in camps in Italy.60 After returning to Czechoslovakia, the home guard members were generally used for auxiliary work, such as guard duties and general assistance, but several of its battalions were deployed during the battles in Slovakia in 1919, too.61 As well as contributing to the definition of volunteer status and the issuing of a commemorative medal, the “Liberation Memorial” tried retroactively to create the appearance of unity among volunteers by means of an “invented” historical uniform, which sought to “cover over” the actual diversity and improvised na-

58 Prˇehled leg. potvrzen& vydany´ch od 1. dubna 1920 do 31. prosince 1925, f. KLEG, k. cˇ. 26, V5A-VHA. 59 Vyj#drˇen& Kancel#rˇe cˇs. legi& k 2. odstavci “smeˇrnic”, jednaj&c&mu o definici pojmu “by´v. dobrovoln&k”, 4, f. Pam#tn&k osvobozen& 1919–1939, k. cˇ. 25, V5A-VHA. ˇ esk8 Budeˇjovice: Jihocˇesk8 muzeum 60 Jan Solpera, Cˇeskoslovensk# Druh# arm#da, 2 vols. (C ˇ esky´ch Budeˇjovic&ch, 2014). vC ˇ eskoslovensk# Druh# arm#da, vol. I, 169. 61 Solpera, C

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ture of the volunteer units.62 More importantly, in the area of social policy, volunteers were supposed to be given preferential treatment similar to the holders of legionnaire’s status, meaning they could apply for government work and for promotion as public servants.63 This distinction between volunteers from 1918–1919 who received official recognition from the state and conscripted soldiers who were not eligible for any recompense irritated the “Comradeship.” It protested against this notion of the “Czechoslovak volunteer from 1918–1919” in a letter addressed to the government in December 1937. This association of Czech veterans from the AustroHungarian army asserted that their services to Czechoslovakia during the same period were no less significant than those of the volunteers, because their support for the revolution and the maintenance of order in the early stages of the new state had represented the culmination of both the passive and active resistance during the war. The “Comradeship” argued further that the lack of recognition meant they were portrayed as bad role models for the younger generation and it also pointed to the successful remobilization of German veterans in the Bohemian lands. Their organization had become the “corner stone of German national life,” while Czech veterans – from the Austro-Hungarian army – were overlooked.64 By establishing the official status of “Czechoslovak volunteer from 1918–1919,” approving certain social benefits, and introducing commemorative medals and uniforms, the Czechoslovak state rectified some of the minor injustices in its veterans policy. Nevertheless, this step highlighted the discrepancy between honouring voluntary enlistment into the army and undervaluing compulsory military service. In 1918–1919, Czechoslovak army volunteers and Czechoslovak conscripted soldiers had not been pitted against one another fighting on opposite sides in the war, some for Czechoslovakia, and others in the “foreign service” of Austria-Hungary, but had fought together. The limits to the volunteer paradigm were thus replicated with regard to the armed conflicts in the Czechoslovak borderlands, as the contribution of soldiers serving in the army was seemingly less meritorious than that of those who had volunteered. Moreover, national minorities were excluded to an even greater extent from the possibility of acquiring the status of a post-1918 volunteer. Although some Germans from the Bohemian lands were among the legionnaires and home guard members, this status was considered more a source of shame than honour within their local communities. As a German62 Vy´hody by´v. dobrovolcu˚ z let 1918–1919, smeˇrnice o jejich prov#deˇn&, 23 December 1937, f. Pam#tn&k osvobozen& 1919–1939, k. cˇ. 25, V5A-VHA. 63 N#vrh smeˇrnic ku prov#deˇn& vl#d. usnesen& z 11/VI 1937, 16 March 1938, f. VKPR, k. cˇ. 185, 1938, sig. vsˇeob-1116, V5A-VHA. ˇ s., Dopis “Kamar#dstv&” ministersk8 radeˇ 64 “Kamar#dstv&” – petice ministersk8 radeˇ R. C (prosinec 1937), f. MNO-HSˇ Odd. brann8 vy´chovy, k. cˇ. 343, V5A-VHA.

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language journal for ex-POWs argued in early 1932, a “good” German could not become a Czechoslovak legionnaire, because voluntary enlistment in the Czechoslovak national army and fighting against Austria-Hungary was not compatible with German national sentiment. By the same nationalist token, a “good” Czech was forced to join the Austro-Hungarian army, but could not be a “good soldier” – something that he could only become once he enlisted in the Czechoslovak legion. Hence, so the journal suggested, the only Germans who became Czechoslovak legionnaires were those who had been forced to join by external circumstances or those who lived in a German community and spoke German, but actually felt themselves to be Czech.65 When representatives from one of the volunteer veterans’ groups, the “Association of Brothers from the Liberty Guard troops, the Sokol Battalions and Centurions from 1918–1919,” had an audience with President Edvard Benesˇ in the summer of 1938, they requested that members of the “foreign” (i. e. legionnaires) and “domestic” resistance be granted equal rights. In reply, Benesˇ pointed to the higher risks undertaken by the legionnaires and argued somewhat vaguely that implementation of the request would have “far-reaching consequences.”66 In sum, this official position implied that Czechoslovakia was born of a revolution abroad, the success of which had been guaranteed, firstly, by the conscious, voluntary transfer of loyalty from Austria-Hungary to Czechoslovakia, and secondly, by service in its armed forces prior to the state’s actual formation. Even the grave international security situation and the mobilization of veterans for a new war did not persuade the Czechoslovak government to abandon the basic principles of its veterans policy. Instead, the policy was merely rearranged, as the state acknowledged the contribution of more volunteers, sought to exercise control over Czech veterans from both the Austro-Hungarian and the Czechoslovak armies, and continued to overlook the experience of other soldiers. However, as the next section will show, while the government feared the incalculable consequences of abandoning the principle of Czechoslovak volunteering as the basis for its veterans policy, its insistence on this point lost it support in a changing international environment.

V.

Transnational Veteran Revisionism

The unwillingness of the veterans and the state to take bolder steps to create a united sense of veteran identity stretching beyond the categories of the Czech or German nation, service in a victorious or defeated army, and voluntary or 65 Der Kriegsgefangene (February/March 1932): 2–3. 66 Z#znam pro audienci, 19 July 1938, f. VKPR, k. cˇ. 190, sig. 1938: vsˇeob-2785, V5A-VHA.

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mandatory service, came up against increasing pressure from the international veterans’ movement in the second half of the 1930s. Changes in European politics after the rise of German National Socialism led to significant shifts in the international veterans’ organizations, ranging from the rhetorical defence of victory by the national-conservative “Interallied Federation of Ex-Servicemen” (F8d8ration interalli8e des anciens combattants, FIDAC), the social integration of veterans according to the principles of the League of Nations and the International Labour Organization promoted by the left-wing “International Conference of Associations of War Invalids and Veterans” (Conf8rence internationale des associations de mutil8s de guerre et anciens combattants, CIAMAC), to the temporary hegemony of transnational revisionism in the shape of the fascistcontrolled “International Standing Committee” (Comit8 international permanent, CIP), founded in 1936.67 CIAMAC, an umbrella organization that primarily united associations of war invalids, was weakened after the German and Austrian associations, which had formed the backbone of the organization, were forced to leave when authoritarian governments came to power in both countries in 1933.68 FIDAC, by contrast, contributed to its own decline, when some members attending its sixteenth convention in Brussels in September 1935 repeatedly refused to change the association’s character from “interallied” to “international,” even if they expressed support for the idea of starting a dialogue with veterans from former enemy countries on a new multilateral platform.69 In the meantime, German and Italian fascist veterans began to use bilateral “veteran diplomacy” for facilitating contacts with veterans in neighbouring France, thereby paving the way for the foundation of the CIP.70 However, the Fascists were not in a hurry to create a firm organizational structure or their own distinct programme. In fact, the vagueness of their activities and the simplicity of the CIP’s structure proved to be advantageous in manipulating the attention of the broader international public through the symbols and emotions connected to war veterans. Unlike the attempt to start a dialogue during the veterans’ congresses held in Luxemburg in 1927 and 1928, which had failed due to the inability to find a common language

67 ]ngel Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors: Politics, Alliances and Networks in the Interwar Period,” European Review of History/Revue europ8enne d’histoire 25 (2018) 3/4: 492–511. 68 Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin, Die Wunden des Staates: Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat in Österreich 1914–1938 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2015), 451–3; Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors,” 502. 69 F8d8ration interalli8e des anciens combattants (ed.), Rapports et r8solutions du SeiziHme congrHs annuel (Paris: FIDAC, 1935), 25. 70 Roland Ray, Annäherung an Frankreich im Dienste Hitlers? Otto Abetz und die deutsche Frankreichpolitik 1930–1942 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2000), 109–55.

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beyond that of victorious and defeated states,71 participants in CIP meetings tried to avoid contentious topics, such as the revision of the peace treaties or the question of guilt for the First World War. At the international level, this helped the fascists to appropriate the myth of the frontline soldier as the most important symbolic figure in each nation and to dominate the discourse on peace and reconciliation among nations, thus impressing a simple, but attractive programme upon the CIP.72 After a preliminary meeting of veterans’ representatives in Berlin in 1936, the CIP launched its activities in Rome in November of the same year with the participation of veterans’ delegations from fourteen states, among them the former legionnaire and career diplomat Miroslav Lokay from Czechoslovakia. The hosts impressed the delegates with their description of the social aid that the Italian state provided veterans and the prestige that they enjoyed in society.73 By the same token, in February 1937, CIP delegates were amazed by the perfectly organized convention in Berlin. A subsequent personal meeting with Hitler at Obersalzberg convinced many veterans of his peaceful intentions, an image that subsequently circulated in the press around the world.74 In Czechoslovakia, too, Lokay spoke positively about his experience at the meeting; fundamental criticism of the event only came from the communists.75 In 1937, the CIP decided to create national sections in each member state, with the intention that veterans’ associations should apply to join them. Czechoslovakia, which so far had solely been represented by legionnaires or volunteers from 1918–1919 within the CIP, now faced a “problem,” as it was put in a memorandum for the Office of the President of the Republic. A possibility had been opened up for German or Hungarian veterans from Czechoslovakia to apply for membership.76 Indeed, when the CIP met again in Rome in April 1937, 71 Ibid., 188; Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge, 191. 72 Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors,” 256. 73 Miroslav Lokay, “Schu˚ze vy´konn8ho vy´boru st#l8ho mezin#rodn&ho komit8tu by´valy´ch boˇ eskoslovensky´ legion#rˇ 19 (1937) 17: 3; Martina Salvante, “The Italian ˇ &meˇ,” C jovn&ku˚ v R Associazione Nazionale Mutilati e Invalidi di Guerra and Its International Liaisons in the Post Great War Era,” in The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism, edited by Eichenberg and Newman, 162–83, here 175. 74 FIDAC – Revue interalli8e des cinq parties du monde 13 (1937) 4: 5. ˇ eskoslovensky´ legion#rˇ 19 (1937) 14: 75 Miroslav Sˇebor, “Ze Sdruzˇen& italsky´ch legion#rˇu˚,” C 5–6; Rud8 pr#vo, 24 February, 1937. 76 Z#znam ze dne 1. brˇezna 1937, f. KPR, D 11284/37, Office of the President of the Republic Archives/Archiv Kancel#rˇe prezidenta republiky, Prague. Hungarian veterans’ associations were rare in Czechoslovakia and more concerted organizational efforts only intensified in Spring 1938; see Elena Mannov#, “‘Pljen’ kr#l’ovi a ‘Trikr#t sl#va’ prezidentovi: Spolky vojensky´ch veter#nov v Bratislave za monarchie a za republiky,” in Vojak medzi civilmi, civil medzi vojakmi: Vztˇah arm#dy a spolocˇnosti v obdob& moderniz#cie, edited by Gabriela Dudekov# and Elena Mannov# (Bratislava: Spolocˇnostˇ Pro Historia, 2017), 363–96, here 385.

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the “Homelands’ Sons” and “POWs” expressed interest in joining the Czechoslovak CIP and asked the government for its official consent.77 Besides the “national” contacts maintained with similar veterans’ associations in Germany and Austria, the goal of these German veterans from the Bohemian lands now became international multilateralism with the official endorsement of the Czechoslovak government.78 Among many other countries, CIP ideas also found supporters in the British Legion, the nation-wide association of British veterans, whose representatives arrived in Prague in July 1937 as part of their round-trip to countries in EastCentral Europe to promote international cooperation within the CIP.79 The British thought the international veterans’ movement could only be built upon membership in strong national organizations like theirs, which was currently lacking in Czechoslovakia. Their initiative led to the first official meeting between representatives of Czech and German non-disabled veterans’ organizations on 22 July 1937, which took place in the elegant rooms of the Social Club on Na Prˇ&kopeˇ Street in Prague. The representatives agreed on the need for more cooperation in order to maintain international peace and domestic reconciliation.80 Zdeneˇk Fierlinger, a legionnaire, social democratic politician and career diplomat, who participated in the meeting and wrote about it in the legionnaire press, welcomed this initiative because – in his view – it constituted a demonstration of social solidarity among veterans, as well as the concern to maintain world peace. Nevertheless, he also formulated a pre-condition for further cooperation: any new all-Czechoslovakian veterans’ federation, as well as the new international veterans’ movement, should remain under the control of democratic political forces.81 However, right from the beginning, this condition was not met, so the CIP in effect became a platform for pro-fascist politics. Yet, abstaining from CIP activities was not an option for Czech veterans either, because this would have led to their isolation at a time when many other European states, including Czechoslovakia’s closest allies, France and Yugoslavia, ˇ eskoslovensky´ legion#rˇ 20 77 Miroslav Sˇebor, “Z legion#rˇsky´ch projevu˚ a legion#rˇsk8 cˇinnosti,” C (1938) 7: 1–2, here 2; Letter of Reichsvereinigung ehemaliger Kriegsgefangener in der Tschechoslowakei to the Council of Ministers Presidium, 10 April 1937, f. PMR, k. cˇ. 85, NA. 78 Zückert, “Memory of War,” 118. 79 Niall Barr, The Lion and the Poppy : British Veterans, Politics, and Society, 1921–1939 (Westport: Praeger, 2005), 151–90; more broadly on British diplomacy towards Czechoslovakia, see Igor Lukesˇ, Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler : The Diplomacy of Edvard Benesˇ in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 79–86. ˇ eskoslovensky´ legion#rˇ 20 (1938) 7: 2. 80 Sˇebor, “Z legion#rˇsky´ch,” C 81 N#rodn& osvobozen&, 12 August, 1937, 1. Compare the plea from around the same time by retired officer Rudolf Kalhous, calling for the creation of a single veterans’ organization in Czechoslovakia: Rudolf Kalhous, “Voj#ci z fronty a jejich vy´znam pro obranu st#tu,” Nasˇe doba 44 (1936/1937) 10: 589–93.

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were represented in this forum by their veterans. Even if French veterans left the CIP in May 1938 in protest against the manipulated election of the organization’s chairman at the London congress and Yugoslav veterans bilaterally expressed solidarity with Czechoslovak legionnaires in their fight against foreign political revisionism, these voices were unable to alter the prevailing policy of appeasement as a response to revisionism on the international stage.82 Through the CIP, which outwardly emphasized honour and equality between veterans regardless of nationality or any other background, the representatives of the German “Homeland’s Sons” and “POWs” became an equal partner to Czechoslovak legionnaires and volunteers, with the result that they were allowed to send one delegate to the CIP meetings. While Lokay reported on the CIP’s official intentions and adopted its general rhetoric on veterans as the bearers of peace and understanding between nations, “Homeland’s Sons” representative Gustav Kirsch saw the CIP as a prestigious platform for the articulation, promotion, and protection of the interests of Sudeten German veterans.83 Thanks to his participation in the CIP, Kirsch got the opportunity to present his views to important politicians, career diplomats, and journalists, both abroad and in Czechoslovakia. Due to this rise in prominence, German representatives from the “Homeland’s Sons” also gained their first audience with Czechoslovak President Edvard Benesˇ in February 1938.84 Besides this visibility at the highest political levels, the CIP further gave Kirsch the chance to criticize Czechoslovakia’s veterans policy and thereby to challenge the concept of Czechoslovakia as a nationstate of “Czechoslovaks.” At the CIP congress in Paris in November 1937, for instance, Kirsch pointed to the unequal social standing of Sudeten German veterans in relation to the favoured Czechoslovak legionnaires, mentioning as an example the ban on wearing medals and decorations from the Austro-Hungarian army.85 Kirsch’s firm expression of conviction evidently impressed his audience, because the CIP’s Czechoslovak section was duly assigned the job of trying to remove such obstacles on the road to understanding and maintaining peace. They were also tasked with submitting a progress report at the next CIP convention in London in May 1938.86

82 Alcalde, “War Veterans as Transnational Actors,” 267; Newman, Yugoslavia in the Shadow, 235. 83 For reporting on the CIP congress in Paris in November 1937, see for example Sˇebor, “Z legion#rˇsky´ch,” Cˇeskoslovensky´ legion#rˇ 20 (1938) 7: 2; Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg 15 (1938) 3: 233. 84 “Präsident Benesˇ an die deutschen Frontkämpfer,” Nasˇe vojsko (Deutsche Beilage) 11 (1937–1938) 11/12: 84–5; Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg 15 (1938) 2: 220–1. 85 Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg 15 (1938) 3: 233. 86 Ibid.: 233–4. See also Der Heimat Söhne im Weltkrieg 15 (1938) 5: 269.

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In sum, although there were also many Czech veterans’ associations – from both victorious and defeated armies – represented in the CIP, it was much more the German associations from the Bohemian lands that used the organization to their advantage. Their participation within it gave them greater international visibility, rehabilitated their status as veterans equal to those from other European states, and allowed them to articulate ideas about maintaining peace while simultaneously aiming to challenge the status quo.

VI.

Conclusion

While, in the 1920s, the Czechoslovak state looked on associations of veterans from the Austro-Hungarian army with general mistrust, but nevertheless tolerated them as a relic from the past that did not appear to undermine the construction of Czechoslovakia as a victorious state, the (re-)mobilization of these veterans in the 1930s revealed the limits and thus the fragility of this situation. On the one hand, given its insistence on the democratic character of the Czechoslovak state, the government could not simply repress these unwelcome associations as a dictatorship might do. On the other hand, it was not prepared to adopt a more integrative approach and fundamentally rethink its veterans policy, which was based on the prominent position of Czechoslovak legionnaires. By expanding the legally defined legionnaire status to Czechoslovak volunteers from 1918–1919 in the late 1930s, Czechoslovakia underlined its idealized character as a victorious nation state of Czechs and Slovaks. Including organized Czech veterans from the Austro-Hungarian army into this hierarchy as “Czechoslovak Reservists and Ex-Soldiers” proved to be manageable, but only via the accepted concept of anti-Habsburg resistance in the past and national loyalty to the republic in the present. Given that they were generally satisfied with the national independence achieved in 1918, most Czech veterans from the AustroHungarian army were in practice not receptive to the fascist or communist “frontline soldier” myth and did not use this to demand special privileges or a greater share in political power. Although these veterans were conscious of not being formally recognized in terms of legal status or decorations, their frustration with the existing system was not sufficiently strong to develop into overt anti-system politics. On the contrary, the majority of these veterans did not want to radically transform Czechoslovakia, but to defend it against its potential enemies, both internal and external. Having been denied entry into the realm of Czechoslovak military traditions, they were at least accepted as men who were ready to offer their war experience for the defence of Czechoslovakia. At the same time, most Czech former soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army had been inhibited in organizing themselves as veterans on a larger scale, not

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only due to the difficulties in fitting into the hegemonic narrative of national victory that was monopolized by the legionnaires, but also because of the lack of long-standing military veteran traditions within Czech nationalism. In the case of German veterans in the Bohemian lands, the situation was different. Besides a stronger tradition of veterans’ associations rooted in the German nationalconservative milieu, there was a strong potential for mobilization through refusing to accept their defeat and its consequences. Up until the late 1930s, this potential had yet to be unlocked and groups such as the “Ex-Servicemen” ritually declared their loyalty to Czechoslovakia, much as they were used to do in the Habsburg monarchy. While the state remained suspicious towards all German veterans alike and did not try to work with them in constructing a concept of the multinational “Czechoslovak” veteran defined by civic principles, the Sudeten German Party, inspired by Nazi Germany, understood the potential strength of the organized veterans’ movement for the formation of a Sudeten German “People’s Community” based around the fascist front-line soldier myth. The gradual political penetration of these German veterans’ associations was accomplished in the spring of 1938, when they were placed under the control of the Sudeten German Party as “Sudeten German Soldiers.” Overall, owing to their age, the active service of veterans from the First World War in the armed forces in interwar Czechoslovakia was less important than their symbolic value as combat-experienced men who made up a significant portion of the adult male population. This was also the case with the Comit8 International Permanent, which served as an international channel for a reconciliatory rhetoric of peace that actually masked fascist revisionist goals. Within the CIP, which was based on equality between veterans regardless of which front they had fought on, Czech and German (non-invalided) veterans from Czechoslovakia were for the first time made to accept each other as partners within this organization. Here, the previous supposition about the superiority of victorious volunteers and the inferiority of other veterans was weakened. Moreover, in pointing to the unequal treatment of veterans at the state level, especially of those defined as “frontline soldiers,” the CIP provided a yardstick against which the inner inconsistencies of Czechoslovak politics could be exposed. This relativization of veterans’ experiences bore more serious consequences for Czechoslovakia than for other states, because the treatment of this problem seemed to lie at the very heart of Czechoslovak statehood and the international system that had made it possible after 1918.

Radka Sˇustrov#

The Struggle for Respect: The State, World War One Veterans, and Social Welfare Policy in Interwar Czechoslovakia1

I.

Introduction

In October 1922, barely four years after the end of the First World War, an anonymous group of Czech workers and public servants sent a letter to the Czechoslovak government. It contained the following explicitly written complaint: “When selecting or releasing state, military, and other office employees, only legionnaires or invalids are chosen and non-invalids and non-legionnaires, such as workers or public servants, are dismissed. Kindly ask yourselves this question: is this right and fair?”2 War veterans evidently sensed that the Czechoslovak government supported some groups more than others. Historian Natali Stegmann has studied veterans’ unequal status in Czechoslovakia and shown how the state dealt with them by using the discourse of heroes and victims, which created a hierarchy of social rights in the interwar period.3 According to Stegmann, this ambivalent approach had the greatest impact on the German-speaking minority, which experienced more deeply the difference between its own expectations and the conditions in which it lived. Although the argument that it “all comes down to nationality” is well founded, it nonetheless cannot explain everything. The above-mentioned workers’ and public servants’ criticism shows that Czechs were also aware that a certain amount of injustice flourished in Czechoslovakia. 1 This paper was written as part of the bilateral, joint Austrian-Czech project funded by the ˇ R), No. I 3125-G28. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GA C author is grateful to all colleagues participating in this project for offering helpful comments. 2 Letter addressed to the government of the Czechoslovak Republic, 22 October 1922, Presidium of Ministerial Council Collection (PMR Coll.), Carton 3083, National Archives of the Czech Republic/N#rodn& archiv (NA). In Czech: “Prˇi prˇeb&r#n& anebo propousˇteˇn& zameˇstnancu˚ st#tn&ch a vojensky´ch fflstavu˚, fflrˇadu˚ atd. prˇeb&raj& se pouze legion#rˇi nebo invalid8 a prˇi propousˇteˇn& zase jenom neinvalid8 a nelegion#rˇi atˇ deˇln&ci, atˇ fflrˇedn&ci. Polozˇte si p#nov8 ot#zku, je tento postup spr#vny´ a spravedlivy´ ?”. 3 Natali Stegmann, Kriegsdeutungen – Staatsgründungen – Sozialpolitik: Der Helden- und Opferdiskurs in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1948 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010).

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The existing practice was based on a principle that I call “politically desired heroism.” As historian Andrea Orzoff has shown, the “liberation legend” created friction between those who took part in the founding of the republic and those who did not or could not benefit from this heroic story.4 At its center stood “president-liberator” Tom#sˇ G. Masaryk, with his army composed of Czech and Slovak legionnaires. After the republic was founded in October 1918, in the following months a series of laws began to apply which defined the contribution made in wartime that the state would reward. It created a situation in which the governmental agencies’ attention and welfare was, to a certain extent, exclusively distributed. But is the dichotomy between heroes and victims, as Stegmann described it, a sufficient reason to explain how interwar Czechoslovakia dealt with its veterans? To a considerable degree, Czechoslovakia was founded on legal principles similar to the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy. It continued in the latter’s footsteps legislatively, inheriting the empire’s social laws, which it actively tried to perfect.5 After 1918, the tools of social welfare were a significant component of the emerging policy of the new state. The country’s economic development and the creation of the pillars of a social state greatly contributed to the stability of this interwar democracy and facilitated its citizens’ political participation. Both factors helped reduce the greatest threat to democratic capitalism – social inequality. The point at which the state takes responsibility for the health and social welfare of its citizens, however, always derives from a particular society’s moral values and prevalent ideas about social needs. There is generally no clear consensus about who is entitled to support and what they should get; interwar Czechoslovakia was no exception.6 Moreover, it is easy to comprehend how achieving consensus on this issue of social needs was complicated by the fact that the new state was still in the process of taking shape. The great heterogeneity of Czechoslovakia’s political, ethnic, and social identities, together with the varying wartime experiences of different national groups, decisively influenced the postwar economic and social situation of First World War veterans. The government had to deal with this internal heterogeneity, while also formulating its own political ideology and legitimizing its existence within postwar Europe. In other words, during this first phase, the country’s international security and economic situation were of greater im-

4 Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 5 Jaroslav Houser, Vy´voj soci#ln& spr#vy za prˇedmnichovsk8 republiky (Prague: Academia, 1968). 6 Cf. Jakub R#kosn&k’s study on the phenomenon of unemployment in interwar Czechoslovakia: Jakub R#kosn&k, Odvr#cen# tv#rˇ meziv#lecˇn8 prosperity: Nezameˇstnanost v Cˇeskoslovensku v letech 1918–1938 (Prague: Karolinum, 2008).

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portance than the arguments about social rights and justice that veterans employed when addressing the government. If we look more closely at veterans of the First World War in Czechoslovakia, a clear picture emerges: from the territory of Bohemia and Moravia, about 1.4 million men, and from the territory of Slovakia, about 300,000 men joined the Austro-Hungarian army. The vast majority remained in Habsburg service until the end of war. During the war, approximately 100,000 Austro-Hungarian army soldiers or Czech and Slovak speaking expatriates joined one of the Czechoslovak legions forming the Czechoslovak Army abroad.7 After 1918, the majority of legionnaires settled in the new republic. After the war, however, Czechoslovakia only counted 88,688 individuals as officially recognized legionnaires.8 In 1919 and 1920, some legionnaires left for the United States of America, mainly Czech and Slovak nationals who had lived there before the war’s outbreak. The Czech and Slovak diaspora in the United States numbered around 650,000 people. According to official American statistics, 42,404 Czechs and Slovaks from the Austro-Hungarian Empire enlisted in the U.S. Army, while 3,002 men joined Czechoslovak legions destined for France (2,390 of whom actually went to France, where they helped fight for an independent Czechoslovakia).9 Bohemian Germans generally saw out the war in the Austro-Hungarian army, but a few of them were also legionnaires. War invalids were the only subgroup who could be found in both of the abovementioned groups – legionnaires and former Austro-Hungarian soldiers – and they were ethnically diverse. Some of them lived in neighbouring Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Poland or in Switzerland after the war.10 Between 1920 and 1927, 951,148 persons affected by the war, i. e. war invalids, widows, orphans, etc., demanded a state pension. The Czechoslovak government approved and paid out pensions for 654,698 of them.11 In the 1920s, more than 400,000 families were dependent on their disability pensions.12 Invalids, together with the other veterans’ groups mentioned, were part of a diverse ethnic, social, and political landscape, which to a certain extent correlated to their individual experience on the battlefield. For instance, the majority of left-wing legionnaries came from the ˇ eskoslovensko (Prague: Nasˇe vojsko, 2009), 285. 7 Jan Michl, Legion#rˇi a C 8 For statistics on legionnaires up until 31 December 1934, see Michl, Legion#rˇi, 285. ˇ SR v dokumentech a 9 V#clav Vondr#sˇek and Frantisˇek Hanzl&k, Krajan8 v USA a vznik C ˇ R, 2009), 3. fotografi&ch (Prague: Ministerstvo obrany C 10 Memorandum of the auxiliary agenda of the union of Czechoslovak legionnaires in America – Cleveland – Ohio 1922, Ministry of National Defence, Presidium Collection (MNO Presidium Coll.), Signature (Sign.) 39, Carton 32, Military Central Archive – Military Historical Archive / Vojensky´ fflstrˇedn& archiv-Vojensky´ historicky´ archiv (V5A-VHA). 11 Libor Musil, “Chudoba a cˇeskoslovensky´ st#t mezi dveˇma sveˇtovy´mi v#lkami,” Sborn&k Prac& Filozofick8 Fakulty Brneˇnsk8 Univerzity 43 (1994) No. 36: 23–45, here 36 and 38. 12 Ibid., 39.

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Russian front. They mostly had the most extensive battlefield experience, but faced a much harder social struggle because they only returned from the war later than other soldiers. By that time, the majority of civil service jobs reserved for legionanries were already taken. By contrast, there were much better prospects for service in the Czechoslovak army for Czechs and Slovaks when compared to members of the German or Hungarian minorities, who the army authorities regarded as untrustworthy. For the political elites, too, the range of national identities represented a latent risk of political revolution and they saw the elimination of this diversity as one of the first tasks of the young Czechoslovak state.13 Current historiography has described Czechoslovakia’s social legislation in relatively substantial detail with regard to the process of law-making, with the general consensus being that social welfare for veterans was limited.14 In the following pages, I will argue that social welfare for veterans was the subject of negotiation, but that it was difficult, if not downright impossible, for the state to reach an agreement with all veterans during the First Republic. While veterans thought in categories of social justice and democracy, the state and its institutions applied the arguments of national security and economic efficiency. When they communicated with each other, each side emphasized different priorities, which decreased the likelihood of reaching an agreement. Veterans reacted to this situation by protesting against the existing system. Like veterans in neighbouring states had done, they tried to demonstrate their dissatisfaction and poverty by calling attention to their suffering and unparalleled services to the state, albeit by using more peaceful means than some of their counterparts elsewhere.15 In other words, Czechoslovak veterans became overtly political actors, despite their proclaimed and state mandated non-partisanship.16 One of their biggest problems, however, was the heterogeneity of their identities, which prevented veterans from developing a strong, collective voice and advancing their own ideas of justice. Far from diminishing their political activism, this diversity determined how it was manifested in organized group activities. Veterans saw their efforts as an important step towards the defense of social justice within the context of wider social reforms. Instead of the violent clashes that occurred in Austria or the mass demonstrations in the United States 13 Cf. V#clav Sˇmidrkal’s essay in this special issue. 14 Stegmann, Kriegsdeutungen – Staatsgründungen – Sozialpolitik; Marek Ru˚zˇicˇka, P8cˇe o ˇ eskoslovensku v letech 1918–1938, unpublished dissertation thesis, v#lecˇn8 invalidy v C Charles University Prague, 2011. 15 Cf. Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley – Los Angels – London: University of California Press, 2001), 163. 16 See Ondrˇej Kypr, Hnut& cˇesky´ch invalidu˚ v#lecˇny´ch a jeho organisace (Pardubice: author’s private imprint, 1919), 58–59.

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or France,17 political actors in Czechoslovakia quickly managed to absorb the language of political negotiation so that they could try and advance their demands in entirely new circumstances. Yet, veterans’ political activism in Czechoslovakia never became as extensive or as disputed as in other countries. This was mostly because they saw their social rights as an essential component of the young democracy. They did not challenge Czechoslovak statehood or, in fact, the competence of its political representatives, but searched instead for a path of identification and recognition.18 In this article, I will focus my attention on the interaction between the Czechoslovak state and veterans of the First World War. In examining veterans’ social welfare as an object of political negotiation and as a motif of political activism, I am interested in how important it was for the Czechoslovak state to support those people who – if we borrow the language of the time – “contributed” to the creation of the republic, and those who were fundamentally connected to the former Habsburg regime. At the same time, a key question is the weight given to the physical disability argument in these discussions. After briefly focusing on the dominant national narrative and the loyalty of the actors who took part in or were symbolically excluded from the creation of a national myth about the founding of the Czechoslovak state, I will outline the social and economic context of veterans’ legal and social welfare. Lastly, I will discuss veterans’ political activism in response to the social and economic conditions in which they found themselves, even though they declared themselves to be wholly apolitical.

II.

The Hegemonic National Myth and Loyalty to the State

When the above-mentioned group acting as representatives of the war veterans associations addressed their criticism of conditions in Czechoslovakia to the government in October 1922, they presumably did not believe that functioning democratic mechanisms had been fully established. “All citizens of Czechoslovakia have responsibilities, but rights are given only to these two groups [legionnaires, invalids]. What kind of love can this ignored citizen have for his country, how will this ignored citizen protect the state in times of need?”, they pointedly asked about the relationship between recognition from the state and 17 Chris Millington, From Victory to Vichy : Veterans in Inter-War France (Manchester – New York: Manchester University Press, 2012); Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin, Die Wunden des Staates: Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat in Österreich 1914–1938 (Vienna – Cologne – Weimar : Böhlau, 2015). 18 Jirˇ& Hutecˇka, “Kamar#di frontovn&ci: Maskulinita a pameˇˇt prvn& sveˇtov8 v#lky v textech cˇeskoslovensky´ch c. a k. veter#nu˚,” Deˇjiny–Teorie–Kritika 11 (2014) 2: 231–65.

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loyalty towards it.19 According to the veterans, authentic patriotism, emotionally tied to Czechoslovakia and manifested by fighting in the war, deserved public recognition. This key struggle for recognition, which lasted throughout the entire interwar period, had its origin in the discourse about the “revolutionary roots” of the Czechoslovak state, which was the core term used by the state founders to describe the transition from Habsburg rule to the new republic. For the Czechoslovak government, it was not actual participation in the war that was important, but individual contributions to the establishment of the republic. In most contemporary nation-states, a soldier was mobilized wearing the uniform of his country and wore it until the end of his military service, and then returned to the country for which he had risked his life. In Czechoslovakia, however, having supported the uncertain project of an independent republic before 1918 and exchanging an Austro-Hungarian uniform for a legionnaire’s outfit was prized over everything else. During the First World War, for instance, Czechoslovak general Sergej Ingr swapped his uniform five times: after wearing an AustroHungarian, Serbian, Russian, and Italian one, he put on a French legionnaire’s uniform and ranked among the Czechoslovak army’s elite on account of his contribution to the war effort.20 After 1918, two lengthy and at times overlapping arguments broke out: on the one hand between members of the domestic (Czech politicians who stayed at home during the war) and foreign resistance (Masaryk’s action committee abroad), and on the other hand between the supporters of the “old order” (the monarchy) and the “new regime” (the republic). The leading political figures came from the representatives of the foreign resistance, the political circles which later coalesced around T. G. Masaryk and Edvard Benesˇ in the group known as “The Castle” and drew their legitimacy from actions on the battle-front (whether through direct military involvement or the political campaign in exile). Legionnaires thus stood at the very center of the new state’s creation and often held firmly nationalist opinions. They were the expression of the genesis of Czechoslovak national identity, which was supposedly born on the battlefield near Zborov, where Czech and Slovak legionnaires had fought alongside one another with a common military and political goal.21 Legionnaires were thus the 19 Letter addressed to the Government of the Czechoslovak Republic, 22 October 1922, PMR Coll., Carton 3083, NA. In Czech: “Povinnosti ke st#tu maj& vsˇichni obcˇan8 cˇeskoslovensk8 republiky, avsˇak pr#va dost#vaj& se pouze teˇmto dveˇma skupin#m [legion#rˇu˚m, invalidu˚m]. Jakou mu˚zˇe m&ti l#sku k vlasti, ke st#tu takhle odstrkovany´ obcˇan, jak bude chr#niti celek st#tn& v prˇ&padeˇ potrˇeby takhle odstrkovany´ ?”. 20 Michl, Legion#rˇi, 18. ˇ echoslovakista Rudolf Medek: Politicky´ zˇivotopis (Prague: Mlad# fronta, 21 Katya Kocourek, C 2011), 87; cf. Nancy M. Wingfield, “National Sacrifice and Regeneration: Commemoration of

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main initiators of the exclusive definition of Czechoslovakism, the ideology of a united nation of Czechs and Slovaks, which continued in the new republic after 1918. However, this national political construct was in conflict with other groups and their leaders with different wartime experiences, who were unable to establish their postwar identity on the basis of past participation in a legion.22 The Battle of Zborov had a significant symbolic value, whatever the battlefield reality.23 It defined the parameters of the political and social status quo, any violation of which caused a latently adversarial environment with a mostly political and nationalistic subtext. The overlooked actors in the domestic resistance and other critics of the ruling Castle group were the ones that used the political argument the most.24 They criticized the growing communist movement in Czechoslovakia, which was allegedly supported by the returning legionnaires from Russia who brought home with them a revolutionary and subversive ideology.25 Legionnaires, for their part, employed the nationalist argument, which emphasized a Czechoslovak national identity and the exclusion of unsuitable digressions from the national story.26 Not only non-legionnaires, but also the supposedly “untrustworthy” Bohemian Germans, Hungarians, and Jews did not fit into the “liberation legend” and, ultimately, into the nationalist definition of Czechoslovakism, both of which were pillars of the Czechoslovak project.27 The state anxiously distanced itself from any revision of the legionnaire myth and the the government was thus reluctant to support anything outside of this frame of reference. In October 1928, for example, it refused to participate in the

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the Battle of Zborov in Multinational Czechoslovakia,” in Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, edited by Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016), 129–50. Cf. the debate between J. Kucˇera and E. Broklov#: Jaroslav Kucˇera, “Politicky´ cˇi prˇirozeny´ ˇ esky´ n#rod? K pojet& n#roda v cˇeskoslovensk8m pr#vn&m rˇ#du meziv#lecˇn8ho obdob&,” C ˇ esky´ cˇasopis historicky´ 99 (2001) 3: 548–68; Eva Broklov#, “Politicky´ nebo etnicky´ n#rod?,” C cˇasopis historicky´ 100 (2002) 2: 379–4. ˇ esˇt& voj#ci Rakouska-Uherska v prvn& Cf. Richard Lein, Plneˇn& povinnost&, nebo velezrada? C sveˇtov8 v#lce (Prague: Academia, 2018). Cf. Orzoff, Battle for the Castle. ˇ SR,” in Moc, vliv a autorita Ivan Sˇedivy´, “Legion#rˇi a mocensk8 pomeˇry v pocˇ#tc&ch C ˇ SR (1918–1921), edited by Jan H#jek et al. (Prague: v procesu vzniku a utv#rˇen& meziv#lecˇn8 C ˇ esk8 republiky, 2008), 16f. Masaryku˚v fflstav a Archiv Akademie veˇd C Cf. Tom#sˇ Sniegonˇ, Zmizel# historie: Holokaust v ˇcesk8 a slovensk8 historick8 kulturˇe (Prague: Argo, 2017). Germans and Jews were prevented from enlisting into the newly forming Czechoslovak army after 1918 for “precautionary reasons”, because the army command saw these groups as potentially hostile to the new state. The question of how to build a single army out of many ethnicities arose only in the second half of 1919. Martin Zückert, Zwischen Nationsidee und staatlicher Realität: Die tschechoslowakische Armee und ihre Nationalitätenpolitik 1918– 1938 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 55.

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events organized by the Union of Former Members of the 21st Artillery Division during the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, explaining that they lacked “national significance.”28 According to the government, there “were not enough historical reasons” to support the union,29 even though the latter publicly declared its allegiance to Czechoslovak nationalism and legitimized its existence on the grounds of the anti-Habsburg revolt that took place on the Piave front between 22 and 28 October 1918. In this respect, the 21st Artillery Division’s history could have been embellished after the war in order to receive the same advantages as the legionnaires. Although the Union was repeatedly rejected by the state, the 21st Artillery Division’s members nevertheless steadfastly claimed allegiance to Czechoslovak ideology after the war and were seemingly determined to be its faithful advocates. It is readily apparent that the exclusive interpretation of national identity was ideologically tied to the past. What determined the social status of a World War One veteran was not his loyalty to the state since the republic’s foundation, but the retrospective assessment of his personal decisions and actions before 1918. Thus, veterans could not distance themselves from politics or nationalism, which influenced social and economic aspects of their lives in the new liberal democracy. Veterans were either part of the “liberation legend” that glorified the Czechoslovak legions, or they were marginalized and stood in acknowledged or unacknowledged opposition to the victorious thinking of the ruling elites. Nevertheless, the fragmentation of veterans’ groups was actually a precondition for the republic’s stability. The exclusive interpretation of national identity guided the social conflict, helped by social legislation and various tools of political control.30 Over the long-term, however, there is no denying that it also increased political tensions. Next to meritorious contributions to the state, the “recognition” logic behind veterans’ welfare benefits, which were based on legionnaire legislation and politically desired heroism, proved to be divisive.

28 Ministry of National Defense to the Presidium of Ministerial Council, Union of Members of the Former 21st Artillery Division – protectorate of the feast, 27 September 1928, PMR Coll., Carton 3094, NA. In Czech: “celon#rodn& vy´znam”. 29 Ibid. In Czech: “dostatek historicky´ch du˚vodu˚”. 30 Specifically, these tools included the creation of a non-governmental group of representatives from the largest political parties (the so-called “Five”), a series of censorship measures that affected the non-legionnaire veterans’ press, and the passing of the act on the protection of the state, no. 50/1923 Coll. of Laws and Regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia.

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Social Welfare and Economic Conditions

It would be too reductive to place the veterans question solely within a culturalpolitical context. The cult of the legionnaire predominated in interwar Czechoslovakia, but strongly critical voices could also be heard. The most famous statement was probably uttered by Minister of Finance Alois Rasˇ&n, who said of the legionnaires in December 1922, “what is done in the name of the state shall not be remunerated.”31 For Rasˇ&n, who was imprisoned in Austria during the First World War and faced the death penalty for treason and espionage, the legionnaires’ dedication to the state and the sacrifice of their lives was not an argument for the granting of special benefits. Rasˇ&n’s willingness to to criticize legionnaires and to challenge their exclusivity, along with his policy of harsh economic reforms made him a very unpopular minister. Indeed, when he was shot by radical leftist assassin Josef Sˇoupal in February 1923, as he lay bleeding on the street, his first question was: “Have I been shot by a legionnaire?”32 As a matter of fact, legionnaires were not behind the assassination of Rasˇ&n, who ultimately succumbed to his wounds. Somewhat paradoxically, legionnaire members generally did not feel satisfied, even though – out of all the demobilized soldiers – they seemed to have the most reason to be. Besides public recognition, the state tried to help them stand on their own feet and make them financially self-sufficient by giving them land or licenses to run a newsstand or a cinema. Many would only fully appreciate this several years later, during the Great Depression. Generally speaking, national security, in the broad sense of the term, provided the legislative foundation for a series of legionnaire laws promulgated in 1919.33 As their name suggests, they pertained to legionnaires only. They confirmed that a veteran’s social status was determined by past achievements and that the legionnaires’ standing was incorporated into a clear hierarchy. Veterans outside the purview of the legionnaire legislation, i. e. those who could not substantiate their application for legionnaire status, based on the cut-off date of 28 October 1918 (the day the independent republic was declared), became “illegal” legionnaires. This group was not entitled to all kinds of benefits that the state set aside for acknowledged legionnaires. A total of roughly 89,000 legally recognized legionnaires received state support when they applied for preferential placement in the civil service, local admin31 Jana Sˇetrˇilov#, Alois Rasˇ&n: Dramaticky´ zˇivot ˇcesk8ho politika (Prague: Argo, 1997), 118. In Czech: “za to, co se deˇl# pro n#rod, se neplat&”. 32 Ibid. 33 The basic framework of the legislation on legionnaires was provided by Act no. 282/1919 Coll. on concessions to legionnaires for civil service positions (from 23 May 1919) and 469/1919 Coll. on awarding positions to legionnaires (from 24 July 1919) – held in the Collection of Laws and Regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia for the relevant year.

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istrations, or the private sector. In addition, they received land allotments, were given precedence when business licenses were issued and drew various one-off benefits, while reimbursement was also provided for the educational expenses of legionnaire orphans.34 These extremely generous legionnaire benefits aggravated non-legionnaires, as we have seen in the opening quotation. Upon their return to civilian life, the other legionnaires basically had to rely upon themselves, or at best to seek support from veterans’ associations, if they happened to be members of one. Alongside the legionnaire legislation, the second substantial group of laws passed was a series of statutes pertaining to welfare benefits for the war injured or invalids,35 with provincial administrations being charged with their enforcement.36 Unlike the legionnaire legislation, these statutes did not differentiate between legionnaires and non-legionnaires. People entitled to a pension only had to meet two conditions: they had to be Czechoslovak citizens and have an annual salary lower than 4,000 Czechoslovak Crowns (CSK) (or 6,000 CSK, if the injured person supported other people in a common household).37 The individual concerned could then receive a pension that would raise his salary up to the established income threshold. If the individual’s income was at least 85 % lower (the toughest cases), the invalid was entitled to a full pension of 1,800 CSK per year.38 By way of comparison, in 1920 the average daily wage in Czechoslovakia was 19.11 CSK, i. e. 4,584 CSK per year; a year later it was 30.7 CSK, i. e. 7,390 CSK.39 In the second post-war year, the state’s annual benefit for the neediest injured ex-soldiers was only a third of the average yearly salary. In 1922 and 1930, the law on benefits for the war injured was amended, raising the yearly pension for the neediest invalids to 2,400 CSK, then to 4,800 CSK, and also slightly increased widow pensions and pensions for the blind.40 Considering the 34 For a systematic discussion, see Ivan Sˇedivy´, “Legion#rˇsk# republika? K syst8mu legion#ˇ SR,” Historie a vojenstv& 51 (2002) 1: rˇsk8ho z#konod#rstv& a soci#ln& p8cˇe v meziv#lecˇn8 C 158–84. 35 On the interpetation of the laws and decrees, see Jan Svoboda (ed.), Prˇ&rucˇka v#lecˇn8ho posˇkozence ˇceskoslovensk8ho: Soubor z#konu˚, narˇ&zen& a vy´nosu˚ v p8cˇi o v#lecˇn8 posˇkozence se vzorci pod#n& a zˇ#dost& (Brno: Obzor soci#ln& p8cˇe, 1923). 36 On this point, see Stegmann, Kriegsdeutungen – Staatsgründungen – Sozialpolitik. 37 Collection of laws and regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia, law no. 142/1920 Coll. on benefits for the war injured (20 February 1920), here §§ 2 and 3. 38 Ibid., Act no. 142/1920 Coll. on benefits for the war injured (20 February 1920), here § 7. 39 St#tn& fflrˇad statisticky´ (ed.), Statistick# prˇ&rucˇka Republiky ˇceskoslovensk8 II. (Prague: Burs&k & Kohout, 1925), 466–7. 40 Collection of laws and regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia, Act no. 39/1922 Coll., which amends and adds several regulations to 20 February 1920, no. 142 Coll. of laws and regulations on benefits for the war injured (25 January 1922); Act no. 133/1930 Coll., which amends and adds several regulations to 20 February 1920, no. 142 Coll. of laws and regulations on benefits for the war injured, as amended by the law from 25 January 1922, no. 39.

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value of the average salary in 1930 (daily 29.13 CSK, i. e. yearly 6,991.20 CSK),41 from the recipients’ perspective this was a small victory, which only encouraged veterans’ group leaders to keep up their hard work and not let up. The third group of veterans whose discharge from active military duty needed to be regulated by special administrative measures was that of professional soldiers. In order to pay out the retirement benefits of army members (including those from the former Austro-Hungarian army), the pension was calculated on the basis of the soldiers’ age, health condition, and length of service; in the case of reserve officers, their service in the Czechoslovak armed forces was also counted.42 However, the remuneration of service in the Czechoslovak legions stretched the limits of the social welfare system, because time served in the legions counted three times as much as regular army service. Hence, legionnaires received the same amount as professional soldiers did. The government granted different retirement pension payments only for this group.43 This was confirmed by the transfer of the legionnaire agenda, including that of the invalided legionnaires, to the Ministry of Defense in the spring of 1922. By contrast, all nonlegionnaires remained under the remit of the Ministry of Social Affairs.44 Especially for professional soldiers, the post-war demobilization became a litmus test of political and national loyalty. The establishment of the country’s own army demanded much of its soldiers and sometimes set firm boundaries between the old and the new regimes.45 Former Austro-Hungarian soldiers were all too familiar with this issue. Enlistment in the Czechoslovak Army was often rejected in the case of German nationality, service in the Austrian Volkswehr (namely, the provisional army of the Austrian Republic) between 1918 and 1920, insufficient knowledge of the official Czechoslovak language, permanent residency abroad, or retirement prior to the regime change of 1918. After the Czechoslovak Army rejected them, they were transferred to the reserves as privates, a demotion in terms of military social welfare benefits.46 While the legionnaires

41 Salaries differed widely depending on the sector. They oscillated between a daily salary of 36.86 CSK in the transportation and goods storage industry and a daily salary of 14.47 CSK in agriculture. St#tn& fflrˇad statisticky´ (ed.), Statistick# rocˇenka Republiky ˇceskoslovensk8 (Prague: Orbis, 1934), 213. 42 Collection of laws and regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia, Act no. 76/1922 Coll., here § 26. 43 Ibid., Act no. 76/1922 Coll., here § 81. 44 Decree of the Ministry of Social Affairs from 15 May 1922, no. 14.168/B-22. 45 Cf. Zückert, Zwischen Nationsidee und staatlicher Realität. 46 For more details, see the Collection of laws and regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia, Act 194/1920 Coll., which regulates the transfer of military servicemen from the former AustroHungarian, Austrian, and Hungarian armed forces into the armed forces of the Czechoslovak Republic and regulates the social welfare entitlements of former military servicemen who committed an offense against the Czechoslovak nation; “Imperial union of Czechoslovak

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called some of those affected “old Austrian generals,” which had a pejorative connotation, for civil servants in the ministry they were simply “old military pensioners,” i. e. people who had retired under the former regime. Their pensions were greatly reduced after the change of regime, despite the number of years served and their rank.47 In reality, this did not just affect the generals, but a wider circle of people. In 1926, more than 770 people whose pensions had been calculated according to the previous Austrian laws lived in Czechoslovakia.48 All told, there were 211 former Austrian generals in Czechoslovakia in 1925. Twelve years later, in 1937, only 73 remained alive; 48 of them were over seventy-five years of age and 20 were over eighty.49 It is evident that, for government officials, there only existed legionnaires, invalids, professional soldiers, their relatives, and surviving family members. Each constituted a category for negotiation about social welfare.50 All of the rest, i. e. those who did not join the legions or were not invalids, were regarded as simply having ended their service in the Austro-Hungarian army. After the war, they returned to their jobs, and did not live to see any social welfare benefits or other form of help from the state. Invalids received care, but they were more or less continuously subject to health examinations, the aim of which were to ascertain the current state of the war injury. If the invalids’ health situation improved, which the civil servants counted on, their pensions were decreased.51 This had little in common with the idea of the victorious Czechoslovak nation, but was due to a state budget that was stretched thin. The process that accompanied the categorization of veterans of the First World War can be interpreted in two ways. First, the thorough rationalization of the young republic’s financial policy is reflected in its stance towards veterans. Welfare benefits for the war injured were a social necessity, especially for the most extreme cases and for widows and orphans. Second, the Czechoslovak

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non-active servicemen and their family members” in a letter to the Ministry of National Defense, June 1923, PMR Coll., Carton 1860, NA. Public offices acknowledged social welfare benefits up to the sixth rank at most and only if the person concerned had acquired continuous residence rights in a municipality in Czechoslovakia before 1 January 1910 (Act no. 194/1920 Coll., which regulates the transfer of military servicemen from the former Austro-Hungarian, Austrian, and Hungarian armed forces into the armed forces of the Czechoslovak Republic and regulates the social welfare entitlements of former military servicemen, who committed an offense against the Czechoslovak nation (19 March 1920)). Petition of the Imperial Union of Czechoslovak non-active servicemen and their family members, based in Prague-II, Prˇ&kopy 26 [1926], PMR Coll., Carton 1860, NA. Memorandum of the old generals of the former V. and higher ranks, widows, and orphans, October 1937, PMR Coll., Carton 1860, NA. Collection of laws and regulations of the Czechoslovak state, Act no. 76/1922 Coll. on military welfare benefits (17 February 1922). ˇ eskoslovensku, 383. Ru˚zˇicˇka, P8cˇe o v#lecˇn8 invalidy v C

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government projected its national ideology onto its veterans policy, striving to legitimate its position, which was confirmed by the new commemorative events.52 The conscious naming of the difference between the old and the new, in terms of service to the monarchy and then to the republic, consolidated the basic calculation used to judge the historical experiences of an individual or a collective group. Both the above aspects were tied to the geographic space of Czechoslovakia as a hard-won terrritory, gained by military action. At the same time, the establishment of Czechoslovakia as an independent state possessed a wider international dimension. The formation of this new state in Central Europe had derived from a campaign by political and national forces acting on an international stage. Accordingly, the notion of Czechoslovakia was not just limited to its national borders, given that many Czechs and Slovaks were permanently settled in Germany, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and Poland, as well as in the United States of America. This had implications for the state’s policy towards war veterans, because the latter soon let the new republic know about their difficult post-war economic circumstances. From the European countries, it was essentially only war invalids or former professional soldiers who spoke up, using economic arguments to explain why they were unable to move back to Czechoslovakia. This was indeed very difficult in view of the housing crisis that escalated after 1918 in the larger towns (especially in Prague) and the restrictions on the right to move, such as needing official permission to change domicile.53 These limitations were only in effect from April 1919 and lasted just one year, but for many the high costs of moving and the futility of searching for a new home and job in Czechoslovakia made their vision of a new beginning very unrealistic.54 Long-term residence beyond the borders of the republic created large problems for the redistribution of pensions and food benefits. The Czechoslovak war injured living in neighbouring countries suffered due to the economic instability and high inflation that resulted in the immediate post-war period. The most critical situation was in Germany, where the Czechoslovak government estimated that around 17,000 pensioners with Czechoslovak citizenship lived.55 The 52 Vojteˇch Kessler, “Vzpom&nkov8 oslavy bitvy u Zborova,” in Sl#va republice! Ofici#ln& sv#tky a oslavy v meziv#lecˇn8m Cˇeskoslovensku, edited by Dagmar H#jkov# et al. (Prague: Academia ˇ R, V. V. I., 2018), 181–217; Wingfield, “National Sacrifice – Masaryku˚v fflstav a Archiv AV C and Regeneration,” 129–50. 53 Collection of laws and regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia, Act no. 181/1919 Coll. on the restrictions on the right to move (1 April 1919). 54 On the housing situation in Czechoslovakia, compare Jakub R#kosn&k and Igor Tomesˇ a kol., ˇ eskoslovensku: Pr#vneˇ-institucion#ln& vy´voj v letech 1918–1992 (Prague: Soci#ln& st#t v C Auditorium, 2012), 278–9. 55 Record of the intra-ministerial conference on 29 September 1923 at the Ministry of Social Affairs, p. 19, PMR Coll., Carton 3093, NA.

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rapid loss in value of the German Mark meant that if the retiree did not spend the payments immediately, so much value would be lost within three days that the benefits became practically worthless. In an effort to prevent foreign currency speculation and ensure the safest way to distribute pensions, civil servants decided to pay Czechoslovak pensioners in Germany in Czechoslovak crowns through Czechoslovak representative bodies.56 In the autumn of 1923, cashless transfers or placing the money in a bank account did not seem safe due to fears of another German revolution and the risk of state assets being confiscated. The only solution was to export Czechoslovak bills to the total of 1,100,000 CSK, which would cover all the monthly pensions payble in Germany. Ministry of Foreign Affairs couriers were tasked with transporting the bills to the Czechoslovak representative bodies, where pensions would have to be picked up personally.57 Social welfare for American legionnaires was also taken care of through representative bodies. In this case, however, the situation was complicated by the fact that most were not actually Czechoslovak citizens, but citizens of the United States. During the war, Masaryk’s foreign missions had depended on compatriots across the Atlantic Ocean, who were increasingly anti-Austrian during the first months of the conflict.58 This culminated in many American compatriots joining the Czechoslovak legions, following the call made by the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris, unless they had already joined the American or Canadian army in the previous months. In November 1917, the first compatriot expedition from New York to France took place. By the end of the war, around 2,300 Czechoslovak compatriots had traveled to Europe. Most of these were men who were unable to enlist in the American Army due to their age or employment. After serving in the French legions, they returned to the United States in 1919 and 1920, where conditions were considerably different to when they had left in the autumn of 1917. After being in Europe for two years, they lost their jobs, and some apparently even lost their U.S. citizenship and the right to regain it within the next five years.59 However, most of them remained U.S. citizens, albeit facing uncertain prospects after serving in the Czechoslovak legions because American government bodies neither recognized nor compensated these victims of the 56 Welfare of Czechoslovak war injured abroad. Distributing pensions to the war injured in Germany, letter from the Ministry of Social Affairs to the provincial office of the war injured in Karl&n, 3 October 1923, PMR Coll., Carton 3094, NA. 57 Record of the intra-ministerial conference on 29 September 1923 at the Ministry of Social Affairs, p. 3, PMR Coll., Carton 3094, NA. ˇ esˇi v Americe za prvn& sveˇtov8 v#lky (Prague: Na58 Dagmar H#jkov#, “Nasˇe cˇesk# veˇc”: C kladatelstv& Lidov8 noviny, 2011), 31–2. (Knizˇnice Deˇjin a soucˇasnosti 42). 59 Memorandum of the auxiliary agenda of the union of Czechoslovakian legionnaires in America – Cleveland – Ohio 1922, MNO Presidium Coll., Sign. 39, Carton 32, V5A-VHA.

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world war. The Czechoslovak governmental agencies were similarly impervious to their needs. Despite their compatriot identity, American legionnaires did not have Czechoslovakian citizenship, which disqualified them from benefitting from the Czechoslovak social welfare system. Hence, these war volunteers suddenly found themselves in a social vacuum, with many verging on bankruptcy. In July 1922, 101 of the 2,300 former compatriot legionnaires were invalids, 30 of whom were among the most needy cases. In addition, unprovided for women and children remained after the death of 96 legionnaires.60 The majority was reduced to reliance on private assistance or charitable donations from the American Red Cross.61 Among all the masses of demobilized soldiers throughout Europe and the American continent, one hundred invalids constituted an insignificant number, but it highlighted the political and economic viewpoints determining Czechoslovak policies towards war veterans. According to these criteria, having a legionnaire past entitled even injured soldiers across the ocean to a pension. However, this right was relativized by their citizenship and the weakness of the Czechoslovak currency in relation to the American dollar (USD). Among the war wounded, Czechoslovak representative bodies identified not only Czechs and Slovaks who had voluntarily enlisted in the Czechoslovak armed forces abroad, but also those who had enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army allegedly out of “Austrian patriotism.” This dual categorization, which the civil servants in the Ministry of National Defense thought required something other than a “uniform standard”, resulted in specific measures. In the summer of 1920, government agencies therefore proposed the payment of two types of benefits: invalids who had fought for the Habsburg Empire would receive benefits in accordance with Czechoslovak regulations of at most 5 CSK per 1 USD, based on the prewar gold standard. Injured legionnaires would receive benefits in accordance with the norms valid for citizens of the United States.62 However, the difference between the dollar and the crown varied greatly during the first post-war years, until a stable exchange rate was established according to the gold standard at 33.75 crowns per dollar.63 The unreliability of the Czechoslovak currency in foreign markets and the high inflation rate made the crown fall from 17 CSK to the dollar 60 Ministry of National Defense, Office of the Czechoslovak legions to the Presidium of the Ministry of National Defense, Memorandum of the auxiliary agenda of the union of Czechoslovakian legionnaires, 5 July 1923, MNO Presidium Coll., Sign. 79/12-T, Carton 107, V5A-VHA. 61 Memorandum of the auxiliary agenda of the union of Czechoslovakian legionnaires in America – Cleveland – Ohio 1922, MNO Presidium Coll., Sign. 39, Carton 32, V5A-VHA. 62 [Ministry of National Defense] to the ministerial council in Prague, 2. July 1920, MNO Presidium Coll., Sign. 7/13, Carton 62, V5A-VHA. 63 Collection of laws and regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia, Act no. 166/1929 Coll. on the final adjustment of the Czechoslovak currency (from 7 November 1929).

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in the summer of 1919 to 120:1 in 1920. Two years later, the exchange rate was 42:1.64 In practice, granting a full pension of 1,800 CSK per year to an American compatriot meant that he would receive 43 USD every year. After the yearly pension was raised to 2,400 CSK in 1922 and 4,800 in 1930, the sum amounted to 57 USD and, later, 142 USD. In comparison, the American congress had passed the War Risk Insurance Act in October 1917, which established a monthly pension of 30 USD for full disability, raising it to 80 in 1919.65 The Czechoslovak proposal from the summer of 1920 preceded the amendment that granted legionnaire-compatriots the right to receive benefits. The valid and binding norm was contained in §§ 81 to 83 of the law on military welfare benefits from February 1922.66 Thus, more than three years after the war, social welfare benefits were awarded to those who did not live in Czechoslovakia and/or were foreign citizens, but had verifiably fought as legionnaires.

IV.

Thinking and Acting Politically

In most of interwar Europe and the United States, the political dimension to veterans’ issues was very striking, but in the Czechoslovak context it was not so self-evident. The general impression is that the Czechoslovak state successfully helped First World War veterans in returning to civilian life. Given that millions of soldiers who had risked their lives for their homeland could easily become politically active and demand changes when they returned home, many governments feared that the unsolved social question would popularize socialist ideas among the lower social classes.67 Towards the end of the war, for instance, politicians in Great Britain held such views, which were shared by Winston Churchill, among others. This is why Great Britain began to build new housing developments for the one million men returning home from the

64 Conversion according to http://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html (1 January 2019; NB the currency converter is a test version set up by Rodney Edvinsson, Associate Professor of Economic History, Stockholm University). See further Vlastislav Lacina, Formov#n& cˇeskoslovensk8 ekonomiky 1918–1923 (Prague: Academia, 1990), 179. 65 Stephen R. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal Era (New York – London: New York University Press, 2010), 15. See also the summary overview in Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, The G. I. Bill: A New Deal for Veterans (New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 11–33. 66 Collection of laws and regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia, Act no. 76/1922 Coll. on military social welfare (17 February 1922). 67 Cf. Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (eds.), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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front. Half a million apartment units were planned to be built by 1921.68 Potential conflicts were supposed to be eliminated by social welfare measures that helped those returning find housing and re-enter society. This could only work if the relationships involved were based on mutual respect: veterans acknowledged the legitimacy of the state, while the state recognized their wartime contribution and provided them with adequate social compensation. Different political cultures, economic factors, and ethnic relations all influenced this question. Across the Atlantic Ocean, for example, veterans’ policy ultimately became an incendiary and highly politicized subject, as the election campaigns in the United States in the 1930s showed.69 Thus, social welfare for legionnaire-compatriots not only had a social and economic context, but also a distinctly political one. “The matter is urgent and within political reach,” wrote civil servants in the Czechoslovak Ministry of National Defense to the Ministry of Finance in August 1921, because “its incomplete solution [of social welfare for legionnaires] could awaken bitterness and deny us the sympathy of the Czech-American public that supported our revolutionary movement during the war.”70 Since the very beginning of the war, American compatriots had sent generous contributions in support of the Czechoslovak resistance movement in exile. The issue even permeated Czechoslovak-American diplomatic relations: “Americans cannot understand that disability benefits for a mere 100 persons cannot be quickly and easily amended,” the Czechoslovak embassy in Washington wrote to Prague in April 1921.71 Adjusting veterans’ social welfare would primarily be “politically beneficial” to Czechoslovak foreign political relations, as the embassy staff noted. Hence, the issue of social welfare ranged from the local political level to the sphere of foreign policy and became one of the main reasons that made Americans initiate dialogues on mutual social welfare for war returnees from Czechoslovakia and the United States.72

68 Chris Renwick, Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State (London: Penguin Books, 2018), 139. 69 Cf. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill. 70 Ministry of National Defense to the Ministry of Finances, American Czechoslovak legionnaires welfare benefits, 27 August 1921, MNO Presidium Coll., Sign. 79/12-I, Carton 107, V5A-VHA. In Czech: “Veˇc je nal8hav# a politick8ho dosahu”; “nefflpln8 jej& rˇesˇen& [legion#rˇsk8ho zaopatrˇen&] mohlo by vzbuditi roztrpcˇen& a prˇipraviti n#s o sympatie cˇeskoamerick8 verˇejnosti, kter# za v#lky podporovala financˇneˇ nasˇe revolucˇn& hnut&”. 71 Czechoslovak Legation, Washington, Definitive calculation of invalidity pensions for Czechoslovak legionnaires in the USA, 25 April 1921, MNO Presidium Coll., Sign. 79/12-I, Carton 107, V5A-VHA. In Czech: “Americˇan8 nedovedou pochopiti, zˇe by se nedaly co nejrychleji a prˇimeˇrˇeneˇ upravit invalidn& pozˇitky asi pouhy´ch 100 osob”. 72 Ministry of Social Affairs of the Czechoslovak Republic to the Ministry of National Defense, agreement between the Czechoslovak Republic and the United States on the mutual treatment

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While the U.S. government provisions constituted an important comparative framework for former Czechoslovak legionnaires living in America, for veterans in Czechoslovakia international cooperation at the level of transnational agencies had a similar purpose. The International Union of Injured War Combatants (Conf8rence Internationale des Associations de Mutil8s et Anciens Combattants, CIAMAC), which acted on behalf of the war injured from both victorious and vanquished states, represented around four million war invalids in Europe.73 The main topics it addressed were veterans’ legislation in the individual European states, the definition of a war invalid, and the establishment of the state’s responsibility to care for invalids. Thanks to the in-depth reports from the negotiations involving CIAMAC, veterans in Czechoslovakia got to know their way around European veterans’ policies and how to defend their demands vis-/-vis the Czechoslovak government. Unlike in the United States, where the veterans’ movement became a protest movement, in Czechoslovakia the activities of veterans groups were strictly controlled.74 Like the relevant Austrian law before 1918, the Czechoslovak law on associations did not allow veterans’ associations openly to develop political activities.75 Supervision by the governing bodies thus frequently forced them to make a tactical maneuver, namely to declare that the association was “apolitical.” Legionnaires did this, too. Nevertheless, as the Czechoslovak general and hero of the Battle of Zborov, Rudolf Medek, said at the fourth meeting of the Independent Union of Czechoslovak Legions in November 1932, “this does not mean that our people do not want or do not know how to think politically.”76 Indeed, veterans in Czechoslovakia not only thought politically, but they also acted politically. Representatives from municipal councils, governmental agencies, and political parties spoke at their meetings, and members of their leadership were elected to the chamber of deputies or the senate in order to defend veterans’ political and social interests within the legislature.77 The political activity of war returnees assumed various forms, but in practice veterans in Czechoslovakia were limited by the law on the protection of the

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of persons laid off from the military, 29 November 1920, MNO Presidium Coll., Sign. 79/1, Carton 107, V5A-VHA. Cf. Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman (eds.), The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (New York – Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Stephen R. Ortiz (ed.), Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012). Austrian R. G. Bl., Act No. 134 on the law of free assembly (15 November 1867). Kocourek, Cˇechoslovakista Rudolf Medek, 182. In Czech: “to nemu˚zˇe znamenati, zˇe nasˇi lid8 nechteˇj& nebo nedovedou politicky myslit”. For example: “The convention of the war invalids club in Olomouc,” Novy´ zˇivot. 5strˇedn& org#n Druzˇiny cˇeskoslovensky´ch v#lecˇny´ch posˇkozencu˚, 12 April, 1930, 4.

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republic.78 The parliament passed this measure in March 1923 in reaction to the above-mentioned assassination of the Finance Minister Alois Rasˇ&n, although parliamentary representatives had already been working on it for several months prior to his death. It was a punitive regulation that protected the basic institutions of the state and the ideas it was founded upon. Its goal was to manage the convergence of various political, ethnic, and religious identities.79 Moreover, the censor’s office applied the new legislation through its prohibitions. This limited veterans’ opportunities to articulate their demands, to stand up against corruption, or to criticize the state’s policy on veterans. Fervent support for “social justice” by war invalids often provoked censorship. “The republic is being publicly besmirched in a seditious way, which may lower respect for the republic and threaten the peace within the republic,” the Provincial Criminal Court in Prague wrote in 1929, explaining the proceedings against a monthly journal published by Czechoslovak invalids, Novy´ zˇivot (New Life).80 The editors of this periodical, which was produced by the central office of the Czechoslovak War Veterans Club and was first published in June 1917, complained about existing practices. They asked whether there was “still any kind of social welfare” or “any justice at all” in Czechoslovakia, and implied that people should not be able to get around the land reform laws and allocations of land according to Czechoslovak law. They even mockingly posed the question, “where is my home?”81 In alluding in this way to the Czechoslovak national anthem, they answered that Czechoslovakia is “only on the surface a paradise on earth for invalids.”82 The issue of social injustice, which war invalids viewed as relevant to their situation whether during periods of economic growth or crisis, called into question the basic values of the Czechoslovak state, namely democracy, justice, and humanity. From the legionnaires’ point of view, any “injustices” that occurred were for the most part due to the inconsistent application of the legionnaire laws. Not all 78 Collection of Laws and Regulations of the State of Czechoslovakia, Act no. 50/1923 Coll. on the protection of the republic (19 March 1923). 79 On 1 November 1920, a group of Jewish Czechoslovak legionnaires addressed a letter to the Prime Minister in order to raise awareness about the Agrarian Party’s aggressive anti-Semitic campaign, which opposed “the democratic and legal sense of our people” (To the Prime Minister, 1 November 1920, PMR Coll., Carton 3082, NA). More particularly on anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia, see Michal Frankl and Miloslav Szabj, Budov#n& st#tu bez antisemitismu? N#sil&, diskurz loajality a vznik Cˇeskoslovenska (Prague: Lidov8 noviny, 2015). 80 Frantisˇek Neumeister, “Zabavuje se,” Novy´ zˇivot. 5strˇedn& org#n Druzˇiny cˇeskoslovensky´ch v#lecˇny´ch posˇkozencu˚, 4 May, 1929, 1. In Czech: “Hanob& se verˇejneˇ zpu˚sobem ˇstvavy´m republika tak, zˇe to mu˚zˇe sn&zˇiti v#zˇnost republiky a ohroziti obecny´ m&r v republice.” 81 For example, see Act no. 462/1919 Coll. on providing jobs to the legionnaries; Act no. 81/1920 Coll. on land allocation (23 January 1920). 82 Here, see in particular Novy´ zˇivot 36 (1924) and 14 (1925) and 20 (1932) and 14 (1934). In Czech: “jesˇteˇ neˇjak# soci#ln& p8cˇe?”; “je u n#s vu˚bec spravedlnost?”; “Kde domov mu˚j?”; “zemsky´ m r#jem pro invalidy jen na pohled”.

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legionnaires held positions in state employment because there were not enough such posts available and also because legionnaires returned to the republic in different waves. While the legionnaire circles were a “bastion of state-formation” and defended Czechoslovak nationalism and the existing order, for non-legionnaires it was primarily Czech and German war invalids who demanded a more social dimension to democracy in Czechoslovakia. However, they were not united in this effort and war invalids themselves often criticized the fragmentation amongst this interest group. In 1923, German invalids warned against the separation of the war injured along national and party lines, because this would end up weakening the pressure on the government to accept the veterans’ demands.83 It is necessary to add that, despite partial cooperation with war invalids, deeper unity between First World War veterans did not come to pass and their activities predominantly played out along national and associational lines based on their military past and political orientation. Only war invalids had a wider network of contacts. Czechoslovak veterans’ political activism focused on expanding social welfare and the amendment of social legislation. Veterans followed the issue passionately from the first proposal of a bill to the final vote in parliament. Their forms of political activism can be characterized in four basic ways: declaration, negotiation, interpellation, and demonstration. They adopted these responses at different points in time, depending on what might achieve the desired result, and sometimes combining several of them at once. “Declaration” was the most common type of activity, the best example of which are the final resolutions proclaimed at the many meetings held by veterans’ associations to discuss the current state of social welfare and other matters related to their associational life. These resolutions, which criticized what political leaders were doing, usually made their way through the corridors of Czechoslovak government until they ended up at the Ministry of Social Affairs. In some cases, the same resolution was sent out simultaneously by different local branches belonging to the same veterans’ association, in order to create the impression that this criticism was more widespread and not just the result of one meeting. For example, the German Union of War Invalids, Widows and Orphans in Czechoslovakia (Bund der Kriegsverletzten, Witwen und Waisen der ˇcsl. Replk.) swamped the presidium of the ministerial council in November 1923 with identical sounding statements on the planned adjustment to the pension for persons wounded in the war. The establishment of an income limit, the reduction in benefits to make up for the high costs of goods and services, the demand for measures that would cut the unemployment rate among German invalids, the reevaluation of the criteria for receipt of a widow’s pension, and the criticism of ˇ eskoslovensku, 134. 83 Ru˚zˇicˇka, P8cˇe o v#lecˇn8 invalidy v C

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the medical examinations for invalids as a tool that might have fairly judged the level of disability but did not work in practice – all these objections formed the subject of veterans’ submissions to the government about current policy towards invalids.84 In addition, they protested against the mechanization of the steps undertaken by the state bureaucracy – whether by chance or intentionally – to count the number of invalids, which did not correspond to the actual reality. The tone in which the invalids formulated their resolutions was self-confident and critical, with all their statements concluding, “this is the will that must be respected in an appropriate way.”85 At the same time, they expressed their full loyalty to the state, emphasizing the state-wide dimension to the problem. The increasingly desperate voices of veterans, in particular compatriot legionnaires and invalids living in the United States and elsewhere in Europe, as well as military pensioners in Czechoslovakia, described their everyday destitution and poverty, and these reports were then brought to Prague by representative bodies, compatriot organizations, or association leaders. The significantly different evaluations of the good deeds that the legionnaires, invalids, and military pensioners had performed were reflected in the wording and messages in their mutual correspondence. All, however, pledged allegiance to Masaryk’s republic and expressed their loyalty to it. By submitting requests, memoranda, petitions, or resolutions, they sought to establish uniform rules for all war pensioners or a specific group of pensioners. In the United States, where social security mechanisms for soldiers were created during the war, legionnaire-compatriots were stunned by the obvious contrast in approach between the Czechoslovak government and the U.S. administration. For American-based legionnaires, this situation was all the more dramatic because they were the bearers of an exclusivist concept of Czechoslovakism. They emphasized the exceptionalism of the legionnaires and their boundless loyalty to Masaryk’s republic, on behalf of which they had voluntarily gone off to war.86 They were also irritated by any signs of Czechoslovakia’s 84 It was based on the following legal amendments: Act no. 142/1920 Coll. on welfare benefits for military invalids (20 February 1920) and Act no. 39/1922 Coll. (25 January 1922), which amended some of the regulations of the above mentioned law from 20 February 1920. 85 Collection of resolutions (Entschließung) by local groups of the Union of German War Invalids (Bund der Kriegsverletzten, Witwen und Waisen der ˇcsl. Replk.), PMR Coll., Carton 3094, NA. In German: “Dies ist unser Wille, der entsprechend respektiert werden muss”. 86 The aspect of “voluntariness” in the struggle for an independent Czechoslovakia constitutes a very interesting, albeit unverifiable, aspect of loyalty. Later, almost all legionnaires would employ this argument. In practice, the voluntary nature of enlistment was mostly fulfilled by Czechoslovak compatriots in the United States, who were at a considerable distance from the European battlefields and thus made a clear choice about their own destiny. By contrast, legionnaires on the Italian front, who were mostly recruited from POWs captured in frontline battles and became some of the most faithful participants in the new republic’s comme-

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monarchist past. For example, American legionnaires were scandalized when they found out that the Czechoslovak legation counsellor in Washington negotiating with their compatriots had during the war been the Austro-Hungarian consul in Shkod[r (Albania), the port in which an Austro-Hungarian submarine had sunk an American boat in January 1916.87 Socio-economic factors also played a role alongside these culturally symbolic signifiers. Comparing the salary of a consul and other diplomats with the legionnaires’ demands for social welfare benefits, which were almost negligible in contrast, created an explosive message about the seeming denial of the legionnaires’ full merits. Czechoslovak expatriates in Austria fared no better. Their individual wartime history was – from the perspective of the “liberation legend” – far more problematic than that of their American counterparts. Czechoslovak wartime invalids and military pensioners from Austria called on the help of the government in Prague, specifically asking for a guarantee of the same conditions the government was giving to new pensioners living in Czechoslovakia. They pointed to their existential difficulties and inability to move to Czechoslovakia, as well as to the fact that Austrians living in Czechoslovakia allegedly received full pensions from the Austrian state.88 The “spirit of justice” was not reflected in war invalids’ social welfare benefits, as a resolution passed by the Union of Czechoslovak War Invalids, Widows, and Orphans in Austria stated in March 1933.89 “The Czechoslovak state rose from the ruins of our lives, just like the foundation of our better future is built upon the ruins of our past,” the group wrote to the Ministry of National Defense in Prague, adding , “we are aware that it is necessary to make sacrifices for independent statehood. We only ask that they be fairly divided.”90 The argument about “fairness” was repeatedly emphasized, no matter who the recipient of the complaint happened to be. In the second half of the 1930s, the demands by the compatriots living in Austria became more specific, most likely

87 88 89 90

morative ceremonies after the war, were allegedly violently recruited into the legions from ˇ eskoslovensko, 23. POW camps. See Michl, Legion#rˇi a C Memorandum of the Auxiliary agenda of the union of Czechoslovak legionnaires in America – Cleveland – Ohio 1922, MNO Presidium Coll., Sign. 39, Carton 32, V5A-VHA. Resolution of the Czechoslovak military pensioners, their widows, and orphans living in Graz, 6 November 1926, PMR Coll., Carton 1860, NA. Resolution approved at the general meeting of the “Union of Czechoslovak war invalids, widows, and orphans in Austria” on 19 March 1933, MNO Presidium Coll., Carton 10565, V5A-VHA. Ibid. In Czech: “Na trosk#ch nasˇich zˇivotu˚ povstal cˇeskoslovensky´ st#t, tak jako na trosk#ch minulosti je postaven z#klad lepsˇ& budoucnosti, jsme si veˇdomi, zˇe nutno prˇin8sti obeˇti st#tn& samostatnosti. Zˇ#d#me jen, aby byly spravedliveˇ rozdeˇleny”.

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due to the worsening political situation and the devaluation of the Czechoslovak crown.91 Those who lobbied for the interests of the oldest military pensioners took a similar approach.92 Their arguments were entirely social in nature, maintaining that it was wrong not to take into account the length of military service. The point was returned to time and time again, especially whenever benefits were increased that these pensioners were not entitled to. Even here, however, veterans followed a democratic line: “all of these people stand loyally upon the soil of the state and its laws, and respect the peace agreements of Saint-Germain and Locarno.”93 Throught the 1920s, military pensioners showed unrelenting purpose in seeking to correct these wrongs, constantly proposing legislative reforms or commenting on forthcoming regulations. They finally elicited a more positive response from the Ministry of National Defense but insufficient support from other ministries thwarted an agreement on the adjustment of state retirement benefits, which would also have pertained to military employees.94 At the same time, it is necessary to include in the overall picture the vociferously negative reaction from Czechoslovak war invalids to plans to increase the pensions of “Austrian generals.” In the public discourse about the comparable value of “contributions” to the war effort and wartime injuries, invalids were universally favoured, since their physical suffering was more visible. Accordingly, the same scenario was repeated on several occasions in 1920, 1928, and 1930: recognition of service for the new state won out over the social neediness of the oldest military pensioners.95 The second main strategy followed by veterans, namely that of negotiation, normally went beyond simple correspondence. It mainly consisted of sending delegates to meet political representatives of the Czechoslovak state or pub91 Ministry of Social Affairs to the General consulate of the Czechoslovak Republic, Union of Czechoslovak War Invalids, Widows, and Orphans in Austria – petition against the consequences of devaluation, 7 May 1937, PMR Coll., Carton 3094, NA. 92 See the petition and memoranda of various groups and associations found in the National Archives Prague, here NA, f. PMR, Carton 1860. 93 Petition of the Imperial Association of Czechoslovak Non-Active Military Personnel and Their Family Members based in Prague-II, Prˇ&kopy 26 [1926], PMR Coll., Carton 1860, NA. In Czech: “Vesˇker8 tyto osoby stoj& loaj#lneˇ na pu˚deˇ st#tu a z#konu˚, jakozˇ i se zrˇetelem na m&rov8 smlouvy Saint-Germain a Locarno”. 94 Ministry of National Defense to the Presidium of the ministerial council, adjustment of pensions and welfare benefits for members of the military and their surviving dependents, 19 November 1924, PMR Coll., Carton 1860, NA. 95 In 1929, the National Assembly accepted a regulation that would ensure a pension in line with the upper ranks of the former Austro-Hungarian army (generals, majors, field undermarshal, etc.). The bill, however, was blocked in the senate and so was never adopted. See the Memorandum of the Old Generals of the Former V. and higher rank, widows, and orphans, October 1937.

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lishing open letters to a specific minister in the associations’ magazines. This was a convenient approach for the supposedly “apolitical” organizations, which the veterans’ associations adopted out of necessity. In September 1925, for example, the Minister of Social Affairs, Lev Winter, welcomed a delegation from the Czechoslovak War Invalids Club and the Club for Slovakia. The veterans spoke with the minister for two hours about the war invalids’ burning questions. Their goal was to acquaint the minister with their social and economic situation, to provide convincing arguments for the discussion of the veterans question at the plenary meeting of the legislative assembly, and to discover the intentions behind the legislation on veterans. Chief among the most pressing issues they presented to the minister were the lengthening of deadlines for applying for a pension, medical examinations of invalids, and the unemployment levels among invalids in small towns and the countryside.96 Naturally, these meetings did not have an immediate effect on the state’s veterans policy, but they were a useful tool for exerting pressure on the relevant political representatives. Open letters, in contrast, tended to become an inventory of material demands, and Czechoslovak veterans’ respresentatives readily employed emotional labels when doing so.97 In 1928, for example, they openly called the Minister of Social Affairs, the Christian conservative Jan Sˇr#mek, the “minister of poverty.”98 With regard to the third type of political activism, elected politicians with a direct channel to veterans’ associations provided special opportunities for the articulation of their concerns. In particular, the use of interpellation enabled veterans to have their demands heard on the floor of the Legislative Assembly, with these most often addressed to the Minister of Social Affairs, the Minister of Finance, and the Minister of Justice. In terms of the negotiations between politicians and veterans’ circles, this was probably the most effective way of opening the veterans question and meant that their arguments were raised at the highest political levels. Among the elected politicians who were particularly instrumental in this regard was Frantisˇek Neumeister, a representative of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers’ Party, who was also a secretary of the Czechoslovak War Invalids Club and the chairman of the Reich Union of War Invalids Organizations. Neumeister’s political actions at the National Assembly got him returned in two parliamentary elections, one in 1929 and the other in 1935. His role was especially important in cases where established practice di96 “Deputace Druzˇiny u pana ministra soci#ln& p8cˇe,” Novy´ zˇivot, 19 September, 1925, 1; “Deput#cia Druzˇiny cˇs. v#l. posˇkodencov u p#na prezidenta Republiky,” Nasˇa obrana No. 2, 15 January, 1923, 1. 97 “Der Bundesvorstand machte folgende Eingaben. An das Ministerium für soziale Fürsorge,” Kriegsverletzte. Organ des Bundes der Kriegsverletzten, Witwen und Waisen der tschechoslowakischen Republik, 10 August, 1922, 5. 98 “Pane ministrˇe Sˇr#mku,” Novy´ zˇivot, 12 May, 1928, 2.

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verged from the law. One such instance occurred at the beginning of the 1930s: the collection of over-payments to war invalids, despite the fact that a decision by the Supreme Administrative Court four years previously had explicitly ruled against it.99 Finally, the strategy of demonstration constituted the fourth means of expressing dissatisfaction with the state’s policy on veterans. The latter differed from its Austrian, French, or American counterparts in terms of its restraint. Czechoslovak veterans did not take up arms and try to occupy public spaces through mass demonstrations or acts of public violence, although there are hints that they were certainly impressed by the self-confident shows of defiance evident in neighbouring countries. Nevertheless, they only ascribed social motivations to the actions of Austrian veterans. “Poverty and hunger drives a man to desperation. If there is nothing to eat, no wages, then a man will not be assuaged by promises and a feeling of despair will overtake him,” they stated in reaction to the news that war invalids had disrupted the Austrian parliament in January 1924.100 Veterans in Czechoslovakia were not sufficiently united to demonstrate their power and determination, quite aside from the restrictions on their openly acting politically. Their compatriots in the United States enjoyed much better prospects and did not hesitate to voice from afar their “protest against the cynical capitalization of the sacrifices of Czechoslovak America and the poverty of legionnaires here and in the Czechoslovak Republic.”101 Such statements undoubtedly helped encourage their comrades living in Czechoslovakia. “Silent demonstrations” of dissatisfaction most often took place in the form of extended sessions of association meetings. When, in October 1928, German invalids in Czechoslovakia decided to combine the tenth anniversary of the republic with the jubilee of the invalids’ rights to social welfare benefits, they organized commemorative events among local associations. In the spirit of “ten years of waiting and hoping,” they came resolutely together to sign up for the struggle for welfare benefits.102 Alongside the regular sessions, special demonstration meetings took place in conference halls during the 1920s and 1930s, but 99 “Proti vym#h#n& prˇeplatku˚,” Novy´ zˇivot, 17 May, 1930, 1. 100 “Rakousˇt& invalid8 ve v&denˇsk8m parlamentu,” Novy´ zˇivot, 2 February, 1924, 2. In Czech: “B&da a hlad doh#n& cˇloveˇk k zoufalstv&. Nen&-li co j&st, nen&-li vy´deˇlku, pak cˇloveˇk ned# se ukojiti sliby a zoufalstv& zˇivelneˇ v neˇm propukne”. 101 Memorandum of the Auxiliary agenda of the union of Czechoslovak legionnaires in America – Cleveland – Ohio 1922, MNO Presidium Coll., Sign. 39, Carton 32, V5A-VHA. In Czech: “Protest proti cynick8mu kapitalizov#n& obeˇtavosti cˇeskoslovensk8 Ameriky a b&dy ˇ SR”. legion#rˇsk8, zde i v C 102 “Die stillen Demonstrationen in den Ortsgruppen,” Der Kriegsverletzte. Organ des Bundes der Kriegsverletzten, Witwen und Waisen der Tschechoslowakischen Republik, 10 November, 1928, 1; “Werte Kameradinnen und Kameraden!,” Der Kriegsverletzte, 10 November, 1928, 2. In German: “Zehn Jahre des Wartens und der Hoffnungen”.

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only occasionally did the situation provoke veterans into demonstrating in public, such as the march through Prague organized in May 1929.103 Despite the fact that they usually took place behind closed doors, the demonstrations had a strong political drive. In other words, they were not private events and the daily press reported on their occurrence, as well as conveying the content of closing resolutions to the reading public. Veterans also closely followed the public response to such sessions, which was their main purpose. By speaking in public, veterans demanded welfare on an appropriate scale and character, aiming to prove that Czechoslovak democracy was not just political, but also social in character.

V.

Conclusion

Czechoslovak veterans of the First World War had their own ideas about social justice and social welfare. Legionnaires based their demands on their own heroic feats and contribution towards founding the republic, while other veterans called for “democracy” and “equality,” which they conflated with the political freedom and justice established in the new state. However, in order to assert their political demands more effectively, they required a strong collective voice, which they were unable to realize in the highly heterogeneous social, political and ethnic context of Czechoslovakia. While social conflicts did not escalate, political conflicts steadily intensified and sharpened the ideological positions of individual parties and actors. These were mostly defined by their relationship to the “old” and “new” order, as shown both by the atmosphere in compatriot society abroad and in the heavy reaction by Czech nationalists against the improvement of the welfare situation for “Austrian generals.” At the same time, World War One veterans were important to the Czechoslovak state for political reasons. While some legitimized the genesis of the new state either through their achievements or sacrifices, they needed to be compensated for their deeds, but often received only insufficient or the bare minimum amounts. Invalids underwent repeated medical examinations, but the main goal of this programme was to document a decrease in the number of invalids in Czechoslovakia or to demonstrate their “complete recovery.” Lengthy, pointless negotiations and persistent medical bullying indicate that the state tried to acquire the maximum advantage at minimum cost. It seems that three separate 103 For example, on 19 May 1929, the war invalids held a demonstration in Prague, which took place in the great hall of the Pal#c Lucerna in the city centre. It was followed by a march from the Wilson (today Main) train station, through Wenceslas Square, Prˇ&kopy, and Celetn# Street to Old Town Square. “Manifestacˇn& sjezd,” Novy´ zˇivot, 11 May 1929, 1.

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priorities dominated the state’s agenda: firstly, political memory and the legitimacy of the new republic; secondly, the economy and modernization, and, thirdly, national security. Social welfare benefits were mostly distributed on the basis of economic and political priorities, rather than the veterans’ social needs. The main goal was to reduce the number of recipients of disability pensions and to save money. This strategy had an impact on all veterans, regardless of their ethnicity or war experience. Many veterans publicly appealed to politicians about their situation, with their primary aim being to try and improve the poor social and economic conditions in the country. It was particularly noteworthy how veterans communicated their demands by adopting the language of modern democracy. In other words, non-legionnaires tended to emphasize their loyalty to the state and shared the same values as their opponents. Both war invalids and former “Austrian generals” demanded an improvement in their economic situation. As with the post-1918 remembrance practices of Austro-Hungarian army veterans, who conformed to the victorious Czechoslovak narrative, here, too, one can find arguments made in support of democracy and not against it.104 When they negotiated with the state, veterans followed various strategies, which – as has been shown in this article – can be divided into four interconnected and sometimes overlapping types of political activism. However, in Czechoslovakia at least, there were clear limits placed on the extent to which they could make recourse to overt political engagement. In conclusion, we can make a fairly straightforward assessment of whether or not veterans succeeded in their persistent efforts: in practice, they were not able to make many significant gains, and it can even be posited that they were basically unsuccessful. The increase in pensions in 1930 was of some consolation to war invalids, but it did not make them financially self-sufficient, especially when inflation was still very high. Nevertheless, they did lobby successfully against raising benefits for “Austrian generals,” who they saw as their direct competitors for welfare benefits. Only the example of the legionnaires living in the United States of America shows that there was a possibility of achieving recognition in certain circumstances. Compatriot legionnaires, who comprised a much smaller group than that of war invalids living in Czechoslovakia, were able to exploit the initial political sensitivities of newly established Czechoslovakia in the sphere of international relations. Compatriot associations were an important mediator of Czechoslovak-American contacts and therefore occupied a politically much stronger position than invalids in Europe. Moreover, their voice had become much more unified since the First World War and these compatriots were di104 On remembrance of Austro-Hungarian Army veterans, see Hutecˇka, “Kamar#di frontovn&ci,” 231–65.

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rectly inspired by the lobbying activities of their American counterparts. They also benefitted from their status as legionnaires and, while not being limited by the regulations governing their associations’ political activity, as was the case in Czechoslovakia. Silencing or tempering any criticism of these veterans was thus much more complicated, and indeed, more or less impossible.

Abstracts

World War One Veterans in Austria and Czechoslovakia Rudolf Kucˇera/Hannes Leidinger Challenges for Science, Threats to the Nation: Austrian and Czech War Neurotics as Examples of a Transnational History of Trauma (1914–1938) The article deals with the scholarly and popular treatment of war-related mental disorders in interwar Austria and Czechoslovakia. It follows the psychiatric discourse on this issue, as well as broader discussions related to interwar social provisioning for the war disabled. It shows that, despite the different outcomes of the war for the two states, similarities prevailed. In both countries, medical experts observed neurotic soldiers with suspicion and did not view them through the prism of medicine, but in relation to the financial constraints pertaining in the period of post-war reconstruction. Hence, war-related neurotic disorders became the object of exclusionary welfare provisions rather than of psychiatric care. In both countries, the veterans were pushed to the margins of the respective welfare systems and they were often publicly stigmatized as unnecessarily complicating post-war reconstruction. Later in the interwar period, war-related neurotic disorders were placed within a nationalizing framework in both states, which regarded the neurotic ex-servicemen as endangering the nation or as a potential problem for future military mobilization. The discourse of degeneration enabled both countries to cast out those with neurotic disorders from the nation and thus to portray affected veterans as a “danger” to the national community. Keywords: World War One Veterans – Psychiatry – Austria and Czechoslovakia

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Verena Moritz Half-hearted Reconciliation: The “Federal Association of former Austrian POWs” and the Question of Veterans’ Internationalism in Interwar Austria The article addresses the internationalism of POW veterans in interwar Austria by analyzing the Bundesvereinigung ehemaliger österreichischer Kriegsgefangener (B.e.ö.K.) as Austria’s most important association for former prisoners-ofwar. The association did not see any contradiction between its self-proclaimed apolitical character and nationalistic positions in favour of the “Anschluss”. Yet, through its initiatives to promote an internationalism with predominantly pacifistic aims and the desire to build a bridge between veterans from victorious and vanquished states, the B.e.ö.K. demonstrated its vital concern for reconciliation. The article shows that the Be.ö.K.’s activities and its growing proximity to the Austrian government made it impossible to overcome the gaps between Europe’s World War One veterans. Although the B.e.ö.K. was easily integrated into the Austrian “Ständestaat” and its policies towards veterans after 1934, a significant part of the association’s leadership showed little hesitation in adopting the new principles for dealing with veterans after the “Anschluss” of 1938. Keywords: World War One – Prisoners of War – Austria V#clav Sˇmidrkal The Defeated in a Victorious State: Veterans of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the Bohemian Lands and Their (Re)mobilization in the 1930s This article focuses on organized veterans who had fought in the Habsburg army during World War One and their (re)mobilization in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. While the state enabled “defeated” veterans to set up various associations that mirrored different interpretations of their war experiences, it was not willing to include them in its policy towards veterans, which gave preference to exsoldiers who had volunteered for the victorious pro-Entente armies. In the late 1930s, the state additionally recognized volunteers from the post-1918 borderland wars as a new group of veterans with special status. It also brought together Czech veterans from the Austro-Hungarian Army into a central organization as “reservists and ex-soldiers” of the Czechoslovak Army. No matter how diversified German veterans in the Bohemian lands were in practice, they were mistrusted by both the state and most Czech veterans. Hence, German veterans were eventually left open to political instrumentalization by the Sudeten German Party, which used them to gain support for its irredentist policy in 1938. This internal problem of Czechoslovak veterans’ politics became internationalized by

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the fascist-dominated Comit8 International Permanent (CIP), which sought to overcome the unequal treatment of Czech and German veterans by using the fascist myth of the frontline soldier as a shorthand for criticising Czechoslovak statehood. Keywords: World War One Veterans – Associations – Czechoslovakia Radka Sˇustrov# The Struggle for Respect: The State, World War One Veterans, and Social Welfare Policy in Interwar Czechoslovakia The article focuses on Czechoslovakia’s social policies towards veterans, with regard to both the extent and the form of provision. Upon returning to their homeland, World War One veterans became one of the key subjects of social welfare policy in the post-war European order. Czechoslovakia started to develop its veterans’ social welfare legislation straight after the end of the conflict. From the Czechoslovak government’s point of view, only legionnaires, war invalids, and professional soldiers, together with their relatives and surviving family members, constituted worthy recipients of social welfare. The ideological basis for this policy became “politically desired heroism,” which helped to define what comprised a rightful entitlement to social provision. While the state strove to find a balance between veterans’ wartime achievements and social welfare benefits, the veterans formulated multiple criticisms of the existing welfare system and repeatedly expressed their dissatisfaction with it. The author outlines four basic types of political activism among World War One veterans in the Bohemian territories. The article raises the question as to what and how much, the state was willing to offer veterans, as well as examining who was entitled to get support and why. Keywords: World War One Veterans – Social welfare – Czechoslovakia

Julia Walleczek-Fritz Staying Mobilized: Veterans’ Associations in Austria’s Border Regions Carinthia and Styria during the Interwar Period The article focuses on the foundation and transformation of veterans’ associations in Carinthia and Styria, which were primarily located in a right-wing ideological context. It argues that those men who returned home and engaged in veterans’ associations for the most part did not experience a process of demobilization. Rather, there occurred a transition from military to political (re-)mobilization, which was caused by borderland conflicts and continuing

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social and political friction. However, prior to veterans’ associations coming under government control in the 1930s through their merger with organizations set up by the self-proclaimed “Ständestaat”, these groups cannot be characterized as paramilitary during the 1920s, despite the individual links between veterans and paramilitary formations. By means of their adherence to a rightwing programme and ideological claims, veterans’ associations clearly strengthened the burgeoning right-wing atmosphere in Austria’s southern regions during the interwar period. Keywords: World War One Veterans – Political mobilization – Austria

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Emmerich T#los, unter Mitarbeit von Florian Wenninger, Das austrofaschistische Österreich 1933–1938, Wien 2017, 189 Seiten. Wenn es um die Bezeichnung des österreichischen Regimes zwischen 1933 und 1938 geht, verdrehen viele die Augen. In den letzten Jahren haben sich neben „Austrofaschismus“ und „Ständestaat“ auch Bezeichnungen wie „Dollfuß/ Schuschnigg-Regime“ etabliert – vor allem unter jenen, die den Definitions- und Begriffsstreit neutral umschiffen wollen. Eine Ausstellungsinstallation zu dieser Diskussion im Haus der Geschichte Österreich aus dem Jahr 2018 trägt dazu passend den Titel „Diktatur der vielen Namen“, nennt dann aber „autoritärer Ständestaat“ und „Kanzlerdiktatur“ als „wissenschaftliche Konsensbegriffe“, während „Austrofaschismus“ als heute „in der Wissenschaft umstritten“ gelte. Wenig Zustimmung dürfte diese Einschätzung beim Politikwissenschafter Emmerich T#los finden, einem der prononciertesten und renommiertesten wissenschaftlichen VertreterInnen des Begriffs Austrofaschismus, der bereits 1984 mit Wolfgang Neugebauer (2005 überarbeitet) einen Sammelband unter diesem Titel vorlegte. 2013 folgte dann die mit 630 Seiten umfangreichste Studie zum Thema: „Das austrofaschistische Herrschaftssystem. Österreich 1933– 1938“. Auf Basis jahrzehntelanger Forschung argumentiert T#los, dass die österreichische Diktatur eine Variante faschistischer Herrschaft darstellte, die aufgrund ihrer Eigenständigkeiten, aber auch Gemeinsamkeiten mit anderen faschistischen Regimen als Austrofaschismus bezeichnet werden kann – ohne aber die Unterschiede zu verschweigen oder das Ausmaß gleichzusetzen. 2017 legte T#los gemeinsam mit dem Historiker Florian Wenninger im Lit–Verlag ein weiteres wissenschaftliches Buch zum Thema vor, diesmal aber sehr viel kürzer : „Das austrofaschistische Österreich 1933–1938“. Basierend auf T#los’ Opus magnum zeichnen die beiden Autoren auf rund 200 Seiten die Entwicklung des Regimes nach – beginnend bei dessen Voraussetzungen über die Etablierung und der Herrschaftspraxis bis zum „Anschluss“ 1938. Mit einer solchen Reduktion auf das Wesentliche für ein breiteres Publikum sind sie nicht alleine: In den vergangenen Jahren legten auch andere WissenschafterInnen gekürzte Fassungen ihrer Werke vor – oder präsentierten Monografien, die sich wie auch T#los/Wenninger sprachlich an einem breiten Publikum außerhalb der Fach-Communities orientierten, siehe etwa das von Josef Broukal und Manfried Rauchensteiner gekürzte Mammutwerk Rauchensteiners zum Ersten Weltkrieg oder die Studien von erinnern.at zum Nationalsozialismus in den einzelnen Bundesländern. Und Bände der Reihe C.H. Beck Wissen (früher : Beck’sche Reihe) schaffen es gar, nur auf 130 Seiten einen fundierten Überblick über ein Thema zu geben. Wie bereits die Langversion gibt das neue Buch Einblicke ins Innere der Vaterländischen Front (VF), konkret durch die 2009 überstellten Moskauer-VF-

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Akten, die ForscherInnen heute im Österreichischen Staatsarchiv (Archiv der Republik, BKA-Inneres, Moskauer Akten-Fond 514, Serie 1 und 4) zur Verfügung stehen. Gleichzeitig aktualisierten die Autoren den Forschungsstand und arbeiteten Forschungsergebnisse ein, die seit 2013 von KollegInnen vorgelegt wurden. T#los/Wenninger gliedern ihr Werk in sechs Hauptabschnitte. Sie beginnen mit (I) den Entwicklungen des austrofaschistischen Österreichs und einer Einteilung in drei Phasen (1933–1934/1934–1936/1936–1938) über eine (II) Darstellung der Konturen des Herrschaftssystems, in der sie die neue Verfassung zwischen Norm und Realität genauso diskutieren wie die Rolle der TrägerInnen und AkteurInnen des Regimes. Die interessensgeleitete Politikgestaltung (III) veranschaulichen sie an Bereichen wie den Repressionsmaßnahmen oder auch der Medienpolitik. Es folgen (IV) eine Einordnung der Stimmungslage und (V) die Schilderung des Verhältnisses zu den faschistischen Nachbarn, ehe ein Kapitel (VI) über Einbettung und Charakterisierung des Herrschaftssystems den Band abschließt und die oben angeführte Definition vertiefend ausführt. Mit Mut zu knappen Sätzen und Aussagen wird auf diese Weise ein komplexes Thema wie die austrofaschistische Schulpolitik auf den Punkt gebracht. Wesentlich war dabei die Rücknahme des Glöckel-Erlasses (Koedukation), die Einführung von Italienisch als erste Fremdsprache im Schulunterricht (1933) und die (versuchte) Trennung von Klassengemeinschaften entlang von Religionsbekenntnissen. All das wird schnörkellos und ohne Redundanz präsentiert. Der Einstieg ins Thema begibt sich sofort in medias res: „In der Ersten Republik waren Fragen des Verhältnisses zwischen Schule, Staat und Religion heftig umstritten. Der Austrofaschismus brachte diesbezüglich eine Klärung, die weitgehend im Sinne der Katholischen Kirche war.“ Danach folgen drei Seiten Skizzierung, wie Schule und Jugend zu Adressatinnen der austrofaschistischen Politik gemacht wurden (S. 107–110). Neben der versuchten Ideologisierung des Bereichs Erziehung zeigen die Autoren, dass die staatlichen Repressionsmaßnahmen unter Engelbert Dollfuß und Kurt Schuschnigg ein bis dato neues – eben diktatorisches – Niveau erreichten. „Ruhe und Ordnung“ war dabei ein wichtiges und gleichzeitig verharmlosendes Motto der stark verschärften Strafpraxis vor allem gegen Oppositionelle. Bereits im Dezember 1933 führte die austrofaschistische Regierung die Todesstrafe wieder ein; die mehrheitlich systemtreue Sicherheitsexekutive erhielt weitreichendere Kompetenzen; Doppelbestrafungen (z. B. Geld- und Haftstrafen) waren Maßnahmen, um oppositionelle parteipolitische Arbeit weiter zu unterdrücken, die längst für illegal erklärt worden war. Was die Anhebung des Strafausmaßes für die Einzelnen bedeuten konnte, wird durch konkrete Beispiele – die man an anderen Stellen etwas vermisst – vor Augen geführt: Mit einer Gegenüberstellung zwischen dem Strafmaß beim Verstoß

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gegen das Streikverbot (bis zu 2.000 Schilling, heute etwa 7.500 Euro) oder der Produktion von staatsfeindlichen Druckwerken (10.000 Schilling, heute rund 37.000 Euro) und der Höhe der damaligen Arbeitslosenunterstützung (wöchentlich 14 Schilling, rund 52 Euro) macht das Buch in nur einem Absatz einen wichtigen Aspekt des austrofaschistischen Alltags nachvollziehbar. T#los und seinem Ko-Autor Florian Wenninger, der das Projekt „Repression in Österreich 1933–1938“ leitet, gelingt neben einer inhaltlich dichten und gut lesbaren Auseinandersetzung mit den Jahren 1933 bis 1938 aber auch noch etwas Anderes: Sie stellen sich mutig der Herausforderung der Pointierung und flüchten sich nicht in typisch akademische Abwägungen und dass alles kompliziert sei. Es ist zu hoffen, dass PädagogInnen im Schulunterricht auf das Buch zurückgreifen werden, denn adäquate Unterrichtsmaterialien für die Diktatur fehlen bis dato. In Österreichs Schulbüchern fallen durchschnittlich nur ein bis zwei Seiten für sie ab. Was dem Werk gerade für diesen Zweck gutgetan hätte, wären mehr Abbildungen (zumal in besserer Qualität) und ein Personenverzeichnis gewesen. Auch gewisse sprachliche Vereinheitlichungen hätten dem Buch noch mehr Schliff gegeben. Die übersichtliche Strukturierung der Unterkapitel der sechs Hauptabschnitte in jeweils drei bis fünf Seiten, der nach hinten verschobene Fußnotenapparat und die Zeittafel (1929–1938) im Anhang helfen aber bei der Lektüre. Ein siebter Abschnitt, zum Nachleben der Diktatur und ihrer AkteurInnen nach dem „Anschluss“ 1938 und vor allem auch nach dem Mai 1945 wäre für die nächste Auflage wünschenswert. Denn der lange Schatten des Austrofaschismus reichte gerade im Bildungs- und Erziehungswesen dank Persönlichkeiten wie Heinrich Drimmel, Josef Klaus oder Simon Moser, die im Austrofaschismus zentrale Stellen in der staatlich gelenkten Hochschülerschaft Österreichs bzw. ihrer Erziehung innehatten, bis weit in die Zweite Republik hinein. Aber man bekommt auf 200 Seiten eben doch nicht alles zwischen zwei Buchdeckel. Linda Erker

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Sammelrezension Lisa Rettl, Jüdische Studierende und Absolventen der Wiener Tierärztlichen Hochschule 1930–1947. Wege – Spuren – Schicksale, Göttingen 2018, 360 Seiten. Lisa Rettl, Die Wiener Tierärztliche Hochschule und der Nationalsozialismus. Eine Universitätsgeschichte zwischen dynamischer Antizipation und willfähriger Anpassung, Göttingen 2019, 356 Seiten. Die Historikerin Lisa Rettl, die bislang vor allem zu Partisanen, Denkmälern und zur Erinnerungskultur publiziert hat, legt binnen eines halben Jahres zwei Monografien zur Tierärztlichen Hochschule Wien und dem Nationalsozialismus vor. Der erste Band setzt sich mit jüdischen Studierenden und Absolventen der Jahre 1930 bis 1947 auseinander, der zweite behandelt die Geschichte der Institution von 1938 bis 1945 im Allgemeinen, widmet sich aber auch ausführlich dem Zeitraum davor und danach. Um die ersten einschlägigen Arbeiten handelt es sich dabei nicht: In den Jahren 2011 und 2012 wurden an der Veterinärmedizinischen Universität Wien zwei Dissertationen fertiggestellt, die sich insbesondere mit dem Lehrpersonal der Jahre 1933 bis 1945 auseinandersetzen.1 Allerdings weisen diese eine Reihe methodischer Mängel und eine oftmals (quellen-)unkritische, ja etwas naive Herangehensweise auf – und unterstreichen damit, dass eine einschlägige Ausbildung eben doch Voraussetzung für eine gute geschichtswissenschaftliche Studie ist.2 Mit Lisa Rettl nimmt sich nun eine renommierte Historikerin der Aufgabe an, die NS-Vergangenheit dieser Institution aufzuarbeiten, wobei die finanziellen Mittel für die vierjährige Forschungsarbeit nicht von der Universität in WienFloridsdorf, sondern vom FWF bereitgestellt wurden. Die zwei Bücher fügen sich denn auch gut in die bisher erschienenen Studien zu Österreichs Hochschulen im Nationalsozialismus ein und fallen – auch aufgrund der geringen Zahl an Lehrenden und Studierenden – im direkten Vergleich sogar etwas ausführlicher und vollständiger aus. Die erste, 2018 erschienene Publikation ist vor allem als Gedenkbuch zu verstehen. Sie enthält 42 Biogramme und wurde – inklusive der „Vorbemerkungen über biografisches Schreiben und Lesen“ – um vier Artikel ergänzt, in denen am Beispiel von vier Studierenden die Aspekte antisemitische 1 Stephanie Fischer, „[…] grüßt die Tierärztliche Hochschule Wien ihre Brüder in deutscher Treue […]“. Die Tierärztliche Hochschule Wien im Schatten des Nationalsozialismus unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des klinischen Lehrkörpers“, vet. med. Diss., Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien 2011; Theresa Maria Kuen, Studien zu Geschichte und politischer Orientierung des Lehrkörpers der Tierärztlichen Hochschule Wiens während der Zeit des „Austrofaschismus“ (1933–1938), vet. med. Diss., Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien 2012. 2 Darauf weist auch Rettl einige Male hin, wobei die Autorin durchaus auch Betreuer und Gutachter in die Kritik miteinbeziehen hätte können.

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Verleumdung vor 1938, der Prozess von Vertreibung und Neuanfang, „jüdische Mischlinge“ und schließlich das Leben im Exil sowie der Lebenslauf nach dem Jahr 1945 behandelt werden. In der Studie sind alle von 1930 bis 1947 an der Tierärztlichen Hochschule Studierenden einbezogen, die auf dem Nationale, also dem Inskriptionsschein, „jüdisch“, „mosaisch“ oder „israelitisch“ eingetragen hatten. Im Buch enthalten sind aber auch sogenannte „Mischlinge“, auf die Rettl und ihre Projektmitarbeiterinnen und -mitarbeiter im Zuge der Recherchen „eher zufällig“ gestoßen waren. Das ist soweit plausibel, doch hätte es durchaus auch im Buchtitel seinen Niederschlag finden sollen, zumal die „eher zufällig“ entdeckten Studierenden und Absolventen – darunter übrigens auch solche, die ihr Studium vor 1930 beendet hatten – ein ganzes Drittel des Buches einnehmen. Die überaus gut strukturierten, auf akribischen Recherchen beruhenden Beiträge zeigen, dass die Lebensläufe nach dem März 1938 alles andere als homogen verliefen und einigen Vertriebenen nur Glück oder Zufall das Leben rettete. Dem Großteil der 42 Porträtierten gelang die Flucht ins Ausland, doch fanden auch ehemalige Studierende der Tierärztlichen Hochschule im Rahmen der nationalsozialistischen Vertreibungs- und Vernichtungspolitik den Tod. Die Erfahrungen der Geflüchteten reichten von überaus erfolgreichen Karrieren und privatem Glück bis hin zu psychischen Erkrankungen und Verarmung. Positiv hervorzuheben ist, dass die Beiträge neben einer akribischen Aufarbeitung der Biografien auch den zeit- und universitätshistorischen Kontext entsprechend einbeziehen. So erfährt der Leser bzw. die Leserin Wissenswertes über antisemitische Übergriffe an Österreichs Hochschulen vor 1938, die Konferenz von Pvian im Juli 1938, den Zuzug von Jüdinnen und Juden in den zweiten Wiener Gemeindebezirk, zu Arisierung und Restitution oder zur Geschichte der Struma, eines mit 800 jüdischen Flüchtlingen beladenes Schiffes (darunter mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit der ehemalige Tiermedizin-Student Ernst Kaniuk), das 1942 im Schwarzen Meer von einem sowjetischen U-Boot versenkt wurde. Diese Angaben fallen für das Fachpublikum mitunter etwas zu detailliert aus (wenn etwa auf Seite 18 in einer überlangen Fußnote die Nürnberger Rassengesetze erklärt werden), andererseits wird das Buch damit auch für ein breites Publikum interessant. Der recht sperrige Titel läuft dem allerdings zuwider. Ein Charakteristikum derartiger, stark auf Einzelbiografien gerichteter Bücher ist es, dass sich der Neuigkeitswert für die Geschichtswissenschaften – so mitreißend und gut aufgearbeitet die einzelnen Lebensgeschichten auch sein mögen – oftmals in Grenzen hält. Bemerkenswert sind jedenfalls die Erkenntnisse zu den „Mischlingen“, deren Studiengesuche ab 1940 von verschiedenen akademischen Funktionären beurteilt und schließlich vom Reichserziehungsministerium genehmigt bzw. abgelehnt wurden. Im Beitrag von Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider (sie steuerte ebenso wie Linda Erker einen Artikel in den zwei Publikationen bei, dazu einen weiteren in Kooperation mit Lisa Rettl) wird of-

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fenbar, wie sehr sich das Fach auf die Chancen zum (Weiter-)Studium auswirkte. So war die Praxis für Tiermediziner überaus streng, zumal „Mischlinge“ im Nationalsozialismus keine amtlichen Funktionen im Veterinärwesen ausüben durften, Absolventen und Absolventinnen keine Bestallung, also keine staatliche Zulassung, mehr erhielten. Die Abweisung an der Tierärztlichen Hochschule schloss aber nicht aus, dass die Abgewiesenen kurze Zeit später problemlos an einer anderen Universität (etwa an der Universität Wien) inskribieren konnten. Das zweite Buch beginnt Rettl mit einer ausführlichen Reflexion darüber, was unter Begriffen wie „Nationalsozialist“ oder „Täter“ zu verstehen ist, aber auch weshalb „normale“ Bürger und Bürgerinnen sich an den NS-Verbrechen beteiligten. Das ist insofern wertvoll, als solche Erörterungen in den meisten Publikationen zu Hochschulen und Nationalsozialismus ausbleiben und etwa NSDAPMitgliedschaften oft allzu unkritisch aufgezählt werden. Woran es diesen Studien aber nicht mangelt, ist eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Studierendenpolitik der 1920er- und 1930er-Jahre. Diese gerät auch bei Rettl etwas zu ausführlich und wäre in kompakterer Form wünschenswert gewesen, da sich die Situation dann doch nur unwesentlich von jener an anderen österreichischen Hochschulen unterschied. Zudem halten sich die Quellen zur Deutschen Studentenschaft (DSt) an der Tierärztlichen Hochschule, die spezifische Aussagen über diese Einrichtung erlauben würden, in Grenzen. In weiterer Folge stehen die Rektoren und Prorektoren Anfang/Mitte der 1930er-Jahre im Vordergrund, darunter David Wirth und Hermann Jansch. Dass die beiden Spitzenfunktionäre NS-Sympathisanten waren, ist ebenso eine Parallele zu anderen Universitäten in Österreich wie das verweigerte Farbenrecht für zionistische Verbindungen, der Sieg des NSDStB bei den Wahlen zur DSt 1931 (absolute Mehrheit bei einer relativ hohen Wahlbeteiligung von 83 Prozent), deren Anerkennung trotz des Ausscheidens der katholischen Fraktion (in diesem Fall durch Rektor David Wirth) oder der immer offener zu Tage tretende Terror der NS-Studenten Anfang der 1930er-Jahre. Um das politische Klima an der Hochschule und die Kooperation zwischen rechtsgerichteten Lehrenden und Studierenden zu illustrieren, greift Rettl ein Beispiel hervor : jenes des Studenten Franz Sigloch, Mitglied der katholischen Hochschulverbindung Pflug, welcher gegen zwei (höchstwahrscheinlich) für Rauchbomben verantwortliche NS-Studenten, Mitglieder von SS bzw. SA, aussagte. Dass schließlich Sigloch die Hochschule verließ, verdeutlicht die klar pronationalsozialistische Haltung vieler Hochschulangehöriger. Rettl arbeitet das Verfahren detailliert auf, etwa indem sie politische und persönliche Verbindungen der Beteiligten offenlegt. Der folgende Beitrag von Linda Erker zur Tierärztlichen Hochschule im Dollfuß/Schuschnigg-Regime läuft insbesondere auf einen Vergleich mit der Universität Wien hinaus. Der Beitrag zeugt von einem nur gelinden Vorgehen der Hochschulleitung gegen NS-Studenten auch in den Jahren 1933 bis 1936, also vor dem Juliabkommen. Erker zeigt

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insbesondere anhand der Disziplinarverfahren, wie sehr sich der „Anschluss“ anbahnte, zumal knapp die Hälfte der 60 Disziplinarangelegenheiten einen Bezug zum Nationalsozialismus aufwiesen, bei zehn weiteren war ein solcher wahrscheinlich ebenso gegeben. Mit vorauseilendem Gehorsam und Freudenbekundungen, wie sie von einer Vielzahl von Institutionen bekannt sind, reagierten auch viele Angehörige der Tierärztlichen Hochschule auf den „Anschluss“ im März 1938. Die Vertreibungen hielten sich aber insofern in Grenzen, als lediglich drei der etwas über 300 Studierenden jüdischen Glaubens waren (im Personalstand war es kein Einziger).3 Atypisch war das Handeln des NS-Dozentenbundführers, des Assistenten Anton Schotterer, der an Unterrichtsminister Oswald Menghin meldete, dass keine personellen Veränderungen notwendig seien. Das war trotz des verhältnismäßig kleinen Personalstands beachtlich und mitverantwortlich dafür, dass letztlich „nur“ die Privatdozenten Fritz Hauer und Alexander Sknorzil enthoben wurden. Über Handlungsspielraum, so zeigt das Beispiel, verfügten die maßgeblichen Akteure also durchaus. Im Nationalsozialismus schwebte trotz dieser geringen personellen Fluktuation das Damoklesschwert einer möglichen Schließung über der Hochschule – und zwar seit Beginn des Zweiten Weltkrieges, wobei dem Kriegseinsatz auch ein eigenes Kapitel gewidmet ist. Im Krieg kam den Veterinärmedizinern aufgrund der massenhaften Einfuhr von Schlachtvieh ins Deutsche Reich eine nicht unbedeutende Rolle zu. Doch sei gerade in diesem Feld noch einiges unerforscht, wie die Autorin festhält. Für die ersten Nachkriegsjahre zeigt sich schließlich ein allzu bekanntes Muster im Karriereverlauf ehemaliger Nationalsozialisten: Auf die Enthebung folgte – zum Teil allerdings nach mehrjähriger Berufsabstinenz – die schrittweise Rehabilitierung, die in den 1950er- und 1960er-Jahren oft in der Verleihung von Ehrendoktoraten und der (Wieder-)Aufnahme in renommierte Gelehrtengesellschaften mündete. Zusammengefasst decken sich die Forschungsergebnisse zur Tierärztlichen Hochschule Wien weitgehend mit jenen zu anderen österreichischen Universitäten, wenn auch ein paar Besonderheiten und Unterschiede hervorstechen (wie etwa das Vorgehen Schotterers). Bei diesen Vergleichen, wie sie auch in den zwei Büchern öfter vorkommen, ist aber zu bedenken, dass die Tierärztliche Hochschule 1937/38 gerade einmal zwei Prozent der in Österreich Lehrenden und Studierenden umfasste und die Unterschiede zwischen Fakultäten und Instituten anderer Einrichtungen, so etwa der Universität Wien, teilweise immens waren. In handwerklicher Hinsicht gibt es an den zwei Studien wenig auszu3 Der Anteil jüdischer Studierender war seit dem Ende der Habsburgermonarchie (sechs Prozent im Jahr 1914) stark zurückgegangen. Rettl analysiert die Gründe dafür sehr ausführlich, geht aber nicht näher darauf ein, warum der Anteil im Vergleich etwa zur Universität Wien immer sehr gering war.

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setzen,4 doch ist die Herangehensweise eine – wenn man so sagen darf – eher konservative, die sich an den bisher erschienenen Arbeiten zu Hochschulen im Nationalsozialismus orientiert. Als Impulsgeber für weitere, vertiefende Forschungen werden die zwei Bücher also nur bedingt dienen. Vermutlich war das aber auch nicht Ziel des Projekts. Grundsätzlich spiegeln die zwei Monografien auch ein Dilemma der Universitätsgeschichte wider : dass diese – von Jubiläen und der Auseinandersetzung mit der NS-Vergangenheit getragen – fast ausschließlich auf eine Institution gerichtet ist und dies aussagekräftige Vergleiche erschwert bis verunmöglicht, Zusammenhänge zwischen den Institutionen oft im Dunkeln bleiben. Immerhin wurde das ansatzweise versucht. Davon abgesehen sei die Frage gestellt, ob die zwei Bücher mit 700 Seiten Gesamtumfang nicht doch etwas überdimensioniert sind, da etwa die Causa um Sigloch ganze 50 Seiten einnimmt und sich im ersten Band auch einige Wiederholungen finden.5 Das ändert aber nichts daran, dass der Forschungsstand zur Tierärztlichen Hochschule in den 1930er- und 1940erJahren nun zumindest auf dem Niveau anderer österreichischer Hochschulen anzusiedeln ist – und hiermit (keineswegs selbstverständlich in diesem Feld) in gut lesbarer Form vorliegt. Zahlreiche hochwertige Abbildungen illustrieren das Geschriebene. Damit tendiert die Zahl österreichischer Universitäten, deren NSVergangenheit nicht zumindest in zentralen Aspekten aufgearbeitet wurde, allmählich gegen Null. Sollten die Verantwortlichen des letzten „gallischen Dorfs“ (Montanuniversität Leoben) irgendwann eine solche Studie in Auftrag geben wollen, wären sie mit einem Anruf bei Lisa Rettl gut beraten.6 Andreas Huber

4 Manche Behauptungen stehen allerdings auf wackligen Beinen, etwa wenn die Autorin einen AZ-Bericht als Quelle für die Beteiligung von Reichsdeutschen an den Ausschreitungen gegen jüdische Studierende anführt (S. 82). In diesem Zusammenhang wären auch die Thesen von Erich Witzmann zur Beteiligung von Burschenschaftern an den Hochschulkrawallen der Zwischenkriegszeit zumindest quellenkritisch zu hinterfragen (S. 74). Hinzu kommen vereinzelte Ungenauigkeiten bzw. unklare Formulierungen. Die Flucht Otto Kröllings aus Wien wird einmal auf den 2. bis 5. April datiert (S. 285), dann aber auf den 29. März (S. 298). David Wirth wiederum habe seine Funktion als Rektor am 10. April zurückgelegt, heißt es auf Seite 298. Dann ist aber von einer Rektoratsübergabe Wirths an Schwarz-Wendl am 16. April die Rede (S. 304). 5 Die Biogramme sind so konzipiert, dass alle relevanten Informationen in den jeweiligen Biografien enthalten sind. Das führt allerdings dazu, dass z. B. der vom Studenten Karl Sigloch initiierte antisemitische Übergriff gegen zwei im Buch behandelte Studenten (Julius Kahan und Marcel Platzmann) wortident auf den Seiten 227–228 und 267–268 zu finden ist. 6 Ein kleine Broschüre zur Montanuniversität Leoben in der NS-Zeit veröffentlichte die sozialistische Studierendengruppe infolge des 175-Jahr-Jubiläums: VSStÖ Leoben (Hg.), Die Montanuniversität im Dritten Reich. Eine Spurensuche, Leoben 2017.

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Johannes Hürter/Hermann Wentker (Hg.), Diktaturen. Perspektiven der zeithistorischen Forschung, Oldenbourg 219, 177 Seiten. Im Hinblick auf das weltweite Wiedererstarken autoritärer Ordnungsmodelle und angesichts der gegenwärtigen Fülle an Forschungsclustern, -schwerpunkten und Sonderforschungsbereichen könnte man eine Blüte der vergleichenden Diktaturforschung konstatieren. Dieser Blüte mangelt es jedoch an einer starken Wurzel, so die Schlussfolgerung des im April 2019 erschienenen Sammelbandes „Diktaturen. Perspektiven der zeitgenössischen Forschung“. Der schmale Band entstand im Rahmen des im November 2016 veranstalteten Workshops des Forschungsclusters „Diktaturen im 20. Jahrhundert“ (IfZ München/Berlin). Die Herausgeber Johannes Hürter und Hermann Wentker versammelten namhafte Autorinnen und Autoren, welche in ihren Beiträgen zumeist einen Forschungsüberblick, offene Forschungsfragen sowie praxisorientierte Vorschläge zum Umgang mit den Themenschwerpunkten der zeithistorischen Diktaturforschung – Gesellschaft, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Institutionengeschichte, Kulturgeschichte, Genderforschung, historische Komparatistik, Diktatur und Gewalt – bieten. In der Einleitung sowie im Beitrag von Andreas Wirsching werden bereits bekannte Forderungen der zeithistorischen Diktaturforschung genannt. So fordern die Autoren eine eindeutige und dennoch flexible Begrifflichkeit sowie eine vergleichende Diktaturforschung mit transfer- und verflechtungsgeschichtlichen Untersuchungsansätzen. Die Zeit der Großvergleiche und der idiografischen Konzentration auf den Nationalsozialismus, den Faschismus und den Kommunismus sei vorbei, stattdessen sei das Interesse der Geschichtswissenschaft an globalen, sektoralen und diachronen Vergleichen, an wechselseitiger Perzeption und an Transfers gewachsen. Gerade die globalen Vergleiche fehlen jedoch in dem Band. Im Fokus der Autoren bleiben die NS-Diktatur, die DDR und die Sowjetunion. Paradigmatisch für diese Diskrepanz ist der Beitrag von Alexander Nützenadel zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte, kommentiert von Albrecht Ritschl. Während Nützenadel die Möglichkeiten einer vergleichenden wirtschaftshistorischen Diktaturforschung aufzeigt und für eine transnationale Einbettung plädiert, betont Ritschl die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Wirtschaftspolitik. Die vielfachen Chancen und Stolperfallen der historischen Komparatistik zeigt Arnd Bauernkämper auf, der für eine mehrfache Perspektivenerweiterung plädiert und anhand der „Vision des ,neuen Menschen‘“ Möglichkeiten einer vergleichenden Untersuchung aufzeigt. Bauernkämper fordert beziehungs- und verflechtungsgeschichtliche Forschungen sowie die Untersuchung des Bezugsund Abgrenzungsrahmens zwischen kommunistischen Regimes und Demokratien. In seinem Kommentar plädiert Kiran Klaus Patel für längere Konti-

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nuitäten, ein Übertreten der traditionellen Phaseneinteilung europäischer Geschichte, ein Abgehen vom Eurozentrismus und ein stärkeres Miteinbeziehen linker und kommunistischer Regime. Längere Kontinuitäten über die chronologischen Grenzen der Diktaturen hinaus sind nach Frank Bajohr auch im Bereich der Gesellschaftsgeschichte von großer Relevanz. In der jüngeren Forschung seien antagonistische Ansätze wahrnehmungs- und erfahrungsgeschichtlichen Perspektiven gewichen, die einen hochgradig differenzierten Blick auf die vielfältigen Aktions- und Verhaltensformen in einer Gesellschaft ermöglichen. Mary Fulbrook ergänzt in ihrem Kommentar noch das Element der zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen um die Performanzrolle des Einzelnen und dessen Transformation. Dieses Herausbilden von Subjektpositionen hat nach Neil Gregor auch Forschungspotenzial für die Kulturgeschichte. Erst müsse man jedoch die Konstruktion einer fundamentalen Andersartigkeit („othering“) überwinden. Nach Malte Rolf könnten sich außerdem durch ein Wegkommen von einer teleologischen Geschichtsschreibung hin zu einer Reihe von Momentaufnahmen neue Forschungsmöglichkeiten ergeben. Spannende Momentaufnahmen sind auch die drei Forschungsperspektiven, die Gunilla Budde für die Geschlechterforschung vorschlägt. Sie beinhalten sowohl neue Quellen als auch konkrete Beispiele für vergleichende Forschungen zu Familien und zum diktatorischen Antifeminismus. In ihrem ergänzenden Kommentar erweitert Elisabeth Harvey den Forschungszusammenhang um den Gender-Begriff und stellt zusätzliche anregende Fragen zu Budde. Doch auch in den herkömmlichen Themen steckt für die Herausgeber noch ein innovatives Potenzial, was insbesondere für die Institutionengeschichte, für die Erforschung von Gewalt und Militär, für die Kommunikationsforschung, ja sogar für die Erforschung der Diktatoren und ihres Herrschaftszirkels gelte. Für die Institutionenforschung zeigt Rüdiger Hachtmann aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse für Institutionen im Nationalsozialismus auf. Diese werden in dem Kommentar von Dierk Hoffmann um Institutionen der DDR ergänzt. Die Bedeutung der Gewalt in Diktaturen wird im Beitrag von Jörg Baberowski besprochen. Im Unterschied zu den anderen Beiträgen ist Baberowskis weniger ein Forschungsüberblick als ein Artikel zu Fragen der politischen Gewalt in Russland, angelehnt an Carl Schmitt1. In seinem kritischen Kommentar nennt der erst kürzlich verstorbene Historiker Jürgen Zarusky mehrere Gründe, die gegen ein solches Modell sprechen. So sollte insbesondere die extreme Top-down-Perspektive von Gewalt inzwischen überholt sein. Zwar ist „Gewaltausübung kein Monopol von Diktaturen“ (Zarusky), doch ist die Gewalt eines der Kernmerk1 Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur. Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf, Berlin 82015 (erste Auflage 1921).

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male von Diktaturen – nicht nur des Stalinismus und des Nationalsozialismus. Ob eine hier fehlende vergleichende Perspektive in dem von Baberowski geplanten „Zentrum für vergleichende Diktaturforschung“ (HU Berlin) angestrebt waren, bleibt unbeantwortet. Die Pläne für das Zentrum wurden aktuell auf Eis gelegt. Resümierend zeigt der Sammelband allseits bekannte und wiederholt besprochene Vorzüge und Desiderata der Diktaturforschung. Untersuchungen über die chronologischen, geographischen und systemischen Grenzen der „Großen Diktaturen“ hinaus sind nach wie vor rar und werden hier nur am Rande erwähnt. Insbesondere vergleichende Forschungen setzen besondere Anforderungen voraus, darunter die Beherrschung mehrerer Sprachen und die Fähigkeit, eine Vielzahl von verschränkten Ebenen und Akteuren abzubilden. Zugleich muss der Widerspruch zwischen nationalen Diktaturen und einem idealtypischen Faschismus bewältigt werden, ohne dass man sich in Definitionsfragen verliert. Erst dann können die Forschungslücken und -potenziale ausgeschöpft werden. Der Band trägt dazu wenig bei, zeigt jedoch zukünftige Möglichkeiten auf. Nathalie Patricia Soursos

Authors

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Laurence Cole Professor of Austrian History, University of Salzburg, [email protected] Dr. Linda Erker Universitätsassistentin (post-doc), Institut für Zeitgeschichte der Universität Wien, [email protected] MMag. Andreas Huber Institut für Höhere Studien, Wien. Doc. Dr. Phil. Rudolf Kucˇera, PhD Deputy Director of Research at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, [email protected] Doc. Dr. Phil. Hannes Leidinger Lecturer at the Department of Contemporary History of the University of Vienna; Head of the Vienna Section of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on Consequences of War, [email protected] Mag. Dr. Verena Moritz Lecturer and University Assistant at the Department of East European History at the University of Vienna, [email protected] PhDr. V#clav Sˇmidrkal, Ph.D. Researcher in the Department for Modern Social and Cultural History at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, smidrkal @mua.cas.cz

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Dr. Nathalie Patricia Soursos Institut für Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik der Universität Wien, nathalie. [email protected] PhDr. Radka Sˇustrov#, PhD. Research fellow at Collegium Carolinum and lecturer at the Institute of Economic and Social History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University Prague. From 2014–2019, she was researcher in the Department for Modern Social and Cultural History at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, [email protected] Mag. Dr. Julia Walleczek-Fritz Post-Doctoral researcher at the Department of History, University of Salzburg, [email protected]

Zitierregeln Bei der Einreichung von Manuskripten, über deren Veröffentlichung im Laufe eines doppelt anonymisierten Peer Review Verfahrens entschieden wird, sind unbedingt die Zitierregeln einzuhalten. Unverbindliche Zusendungen von Manuskripten als word-Datei an: [email protected]

I.

Allgemeines

Abgabe: elektronisch in Microsoft Word DOC oder DOCX. Textlänge: 60.000 Zeichen (inklusive Leerzeichen und Fußnoten), Times New Roman, 12 Punkt, 1 12-zeilig. Zeichenzahl für Rezensionen 6.000–8.200 Zeichen (inklusive Leerzeichen). Rechtschreibung: Grundsätzlich gilt die Verwendung der neuen Rechtschreibung mit Ausnahme von Zitaten.

II.

Format und Gliederung

Kapitelüberschriften und – falls gewünscht – Unterkapiteltitel deutlich hervorheben mittels Nummerierung. Kapitel mit römischen Ziffern [I. Literatur], Unterkapitel mit arabischen Ziffern [1.1 Dissertationen] nummerieren, maximal bis in die dritte Ebene untergliedern [1.1.1 Philologische Dissertationen]. Keine Interpunktion am Ende der Gliederungstitel. Keine Silbentrennung, linksbündig, Flattersatz, keine Leerzeilen zwischen Absätzen, keine Einrückungen; direkte Zitate, die länger als vier Zeilen sind, in einem eigenen Absatz (ohne Einrückung, mit Gänsefüßchen am Beginn und Ende). Zahlen von null bis zwölf ausschreiben, ab 13 in Ziffern. Tausender mit Interpunktion: 1.000. Wenn runde Zahlen wie zwanzig, hundert oder dreitausend nicht in unmittelbarer Nähe zu anderen Zahlenangaben in einer Textpassage aufscheinen, können diese ausgeschrieben werden. Daten ausschreiben: „1930er“ oder „1960er-Jahre“ statt „30er“ oder „60er Jahre“. Datumsangaben: In den Fußnoten: 4. 3. 2011 [keine Leerzeichen nach den Punkten, auch nicht 04. 03. 2011 oder 4. März 2011]; im Text das Monat ausschreiben [4. März 2011]. Personennamen im Fließtext bei der Erstnennung immer mit Vor- und Nachnamen. Namen von Organisationen im Fließtext: Wenn eindeutig erkennbar ist, dass eine Organisation, Vereinigung o. Ä. vorliegt, können die Anführungszeichen weggelassen werden: „Die Gründung des Öesterreichischen Alpenvereins erfolgte 1862.“ „Als Mitglied im

Womens Alpine Club war ihr die Teilnahme gestattet.“ Namen von Zeitungen/Zeitschriften etc. siehe unter „Anführungszeichen“. Anführungszeichen im Fall von Zitaten, Hervorhebungen und bei Erwähnung von Zeitungen/Zeitschriften, Werken und Veranstaltungstiteln im Fließtext immer doppelt: „“ Einfache Anführungszeichen nur im Fall eines Zitats im Zitat: „Er sagte zu mir : ,….‘“ Klammern: Gebrauchen Sie bitte generell runde Klammern, außer in Zitaten für Auslassungen: […] und Anmerkungen: [Anm. d. A.]. Formulieren Sie bitte geschlechtsneutral bzw. geschlechtergerecht. Verwenden Sie im ersteren Fall bei Substantiven das Binnen-I („ZeitzeugInnen“), nicht jedoch in Komposita („Bürgerversammlung“ statt „BürgerInnenversammlung“). Darstellungen und Fotos als eigene Datei im jpg-Format (mind. 300 dpi) einsenden. Bilder werden schwarz-weiß abgedruckt; die Rechte an den abgedruckten Bildern sind vom Autor/von der Autorin einzuholen. Bildunterschriften bitte kenntlich machen: Abb.: Spanische Reiter auf der Ringstraße (Quelle: Bildarchiv, ÖNB). Abkürzungen: Bitte Leerzeichen einfügen: vor % oder E/zum Beispiel z. B./unter anderem u. a. Im Text sind möglichst wenige allgemeine Abkürzungen zu verwenden.

III.

Zitation

Generell keine Zitation im Fließtext, auch keine Kurzverweise. Fußnoten immer mit einem Punkt abschließen. Die nachfolgenden Hinweise beziehen sich auf das Erstzitat von Publikationen. Bei weiteren Erwähnungen sind Kurzzitate zu verwenden. – Wird hintereinander aus demselben Werk zitiert, bitte den Verweis Ebd./ebd. bzw. mit anderer Seitenangabe Ebd., 12./ebd., 12. gebrauchen (kein Ders./Dies.), analog: Vgl. ebd.; vgl. ebd., 12. – Zwei Belege in einer Fußnote mit einem Strichpunkt; trennen: Gehmacher, Jugend, 311; Dreidemy, Kanzlerschaft, 29. – Bei Übernahme von direkten Zitaten aus der Fachliteratur Zit. n./zit. n. verwenden. – Indirekte Zitate werden durch Vgl./vgl. gekennzeichnet. Monografien: Vorname und Nachname, Titel, Ort und Jahr, Seitenangabe [ohne „S.“]. Beispiel Erstzitat: Johanna Gehmacher, Jugend ohne Zukunft. Hitler-Jugend und Bund Deutscher Mädel in Österreich vor 1938, Wien 1994, 311. Beispiel Kurzzitat: Gehmacher, Jugend, 311. Bei mehreren AutorInnen/HerausgeberInnen: Dachs/Gerlich/Müller (Hg.), Politiker, 14. Reihentitel: Claudia Hoerschelmann, Exilland Schweiz. Lebensbedingungen und Schicksale österreichischer Flüchtlinge 1938 bis 1945 (Veröffentlichungen des Ludwig-

Boltzmann-Institutes für Geschichte und Gesellschaft 27), Innsbruck/Wien [bei mehreren Ortsangaben Schrägstrich ohne Leerzeichen] 1997, 45. Dissertation: Thomas Angerer, Frankreich und die Österreichfrage. Historische Grundlagen und Leitlinien 1945–1955, phil. Diss., Universität Wien 1996, 18–21 [keine ff. und f. für Seitenangaben, von–bis mit Gedankenstich ohne Leerzeichen]. Diplomarbeit: Lucile Dreidemy, Die Kanzlerschaft Engelbert Dollfuß’ 1932–1934, Dipl. Arb., Universit8 de Strasbourg 2007, 29. Ohne AutorIn, nur HerausgeberIn: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Vorgeschichte der Julirevolte, hg. im Selbstverlag des Bundeskommissariates für Heimatdienst, Wien 1934, 13. Unveröffentlichtes Manuskript: Günter Bischof, Lost Momentum. The Militarization of the Cold War and the Demise of Austrian Treaty Negotiations, 1950–1952 (unveröffentlichtes Manuskript), 54–55. Kopie im Besitz des Verfassers. Quellenbände: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941, vol. II, hg. v. United States Department of States, Washington 1958. [nach Erstzitation mit der gängigen Abkürzung: FRUS fortfahren]. Sammelwerke: Herbert Dachs/Peter Gerlich/Wolfgang C. Müller (Hg.), Die Politiker. Karrieren und Wirken bedeutender Repräsentanten der Zweiten Republik, Wien 1995. Beitrag in Sammelwerken: Michael Gehler, Die österreichische Außenpolitik unter der Alleinregierung Josef Klaus 1966–1970, in: Robert Kriechbaumer/Franz Schausberger/ Hubert Weinberger (Hg.), Die Transformation der österreichischen Gesellschaft und die Alleinregierung Klaus (Veröffentlichung der Dr.-Wilfried Haslauer-Bibliothek, Forschungsinstitut für politisch-historische Studien 1), Salzburg 1995, 251–271, 255–257. [bei Beiträgen grundsätzlich immer die Gesamtseitenangabe zuerst, dann die spezifisch zitierten Seiten]. Beiträge in Zeitschriften: Florian Weiß, Die schwierige Balance. Österreich und die Anfänge der westeuropäischen Integration 1947–1957, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 42 (1994) 1, 71–94. [Zeitschrift Jahrgang/Bandangabe ohne Beistrichtrennung und die Angabe der Heftnummer oder der Folge hinter die Klammer ohne Komma]. Presseartikel: Titel des Artikels, Zeitung, Datum, Seite. Der Ständestaat in Diskussion, Wiener Zeitung, 5. 9. 1946, 2. Archivalien: Bericht der Österr. Delegation bei der Hohen Behörde der EGKS, Zl. 2/pol/57, Fritz Kolb an Leopold Figl, 19. 2. 1957. Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖStA), Archiv der Republik (AdR), Bundeskanzleramt (BKA)/AA, II-pol, International 2 c, Zl. 217.301-pol/ 57 (GZl. 215.155-pol/57); Major General Coleman an Kirkpatrick, 27. 6. 1953. The National Archives (TNA), Public Record Office (PRO), Foreign Office (FO) 371/103845, CS 1016/205 [prinzipiell zuerst das Dokument mit möglichst genauer Bezeichnung, dann das Archiv, mit Unterarchiven, -verzeichnissen und Beständen; bei weiterer Nennung der Archive bzw. Unterarchive können die Abkürzungen verwendet werden].

Internetquellen: Autor so vorhanden, Titel des Beitrags, Institution, URL: (abgerufen Datum). Bitte mit rechter Maustaste den Hyperlink entfernen, so dass der Link nicht mehr blau unterstrichen ist. Yehuda Bauer, How vast was the crime, Yad Vashem, URL: http://www1.yadvashem.org/ yv/en/holocaust/about/index.asp (abgerufen 28. 2. 2011). Film: Vorname und Nachname des Regisseurs, Vollständiger Titel, Format [z. B. 8 mm, VHS, DVD], Spieldauer [Film ohne Extras in Minuten], Produktionsort/-land Jahr, Zeit [Minutenangabe der zitierten Passage]. Luis BuÇuel, Belle de jour, DVD, 96 min., Barcelona 2001, 26:00–26:10 min. Interview: InterviewpartnerIn, InterviewerIn, Datum des Interviews, Provenienz der Aufzeichnung. Interview mit Paul Broda, geführt von Maria Wirth, 26. 10. 2014, Aufnahme bei der Autorin. Die englischsprachigen Zitierregeln sind online verfügbar unter : https://www.verein-zeit geschichte.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_verein_zeitgeschichte/zg_Zitierregeln_ engl_2018.pdf Es können nur jene eingesandten Aufsätze Berücksichtigung finden, die sich an die Zitierregeln halten!