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Austria Two World Wars: 1914-18 and 1939-45
Although Austria-Hungary's aim in 1914 was to fight a limited
war to punish Serbia after the assassination of the heir to the
Habsburg crown, Franz Ferdinand, the crisis quickly flared out of
control as European powers mobilized their mass armies in
accordance with their treaty commitments. Although poorly
prepared for conflict and lacking essential weapons and unit
cohesiveness, the Austro-Hungarians were immediately faced with a
two-front war against Serbia and Russia. Their fifty-nine
divisions (which included hastily raised reserve units) had to
secure a front running from the Adriatic Sea to central Poland.
The superior Russian army drove the Austro-Hungarians back with
immense losses in Polish Galicia. The Russian front was
stabilized only after German officers assumed command. Although
Austria-Hungary had expected to conquer Serbia quickly, Serbia
was not defeated until late 1915 after terrible fighting in the
Carpathian Mountains and in Bosnia. The campaigns against Italy,
which had entered on the side of the Allies in May 1915, were
somewhat more successful, the Habsburg armies fighting with
stubbornness and at times with great skill. In spite of
rebellious secession movements among some non-Germans, the bulk
of the army remained loyal, holding together until the last
months of the war. Only among Czech soldiers affected by Slavic
nationalism were there serious defections to the Russians. At the
last, however, front-line troops in Italy abandoned their guns,
and the revolt spread as even German-speaking troops refused to
obey orders. Austro-Hungarian military casualties of 1.4 million
killed or died in captivity and 3.6 million wounded were greater
than those of Germany on a proportional basis.
Truncated Austria, reduced to some 6.5 million primarily
German speakers after the war, was to some degree divided even
against itself between a conservative population in the rural
western areas of the nation and the urban socialists of Vienna
and other industrial centers of the east. A regular Austrian army
of 30,000 men was established in 1922, and, although free from
political involvement, it had conservative leanings in the
imperial tradition. Both police and army were weak; they could
not prevent the formation of paramilitary groups by rival
political blocs. The Social Democratic Workers' Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei--SDAP) formed the Republikanischer
Schutzbund (Republican Defense League), and the right-wing
Christian Social Party (Christlichsoziale Partei--CSP) had links
with the various rightist militias that sprang up after the war.
Both groups had impressive arsenals. In 1934, reacting to
pressures by the CSP chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, and to
provocations by rightist militias, the SDAP called a general
strike and the Republikanischer Schutzbund rose in a number of
cities. The uprising was put down in four days after the army
used artillery against workers' apartment blocks in Vienna where
the socialist revolt was centered. Although the army's actions
were approved by Dollfuss, the episode seemed to attest to the
army's alignment with rightist elements and its antagonism to the
interests of the urban industrial workers.
Germany's annexation (Anschluss) of Austria in 1938 was
accomplished without resistance under orders of the government.
The armed forces suffered from low morale and were infused with
pro-Nazi sentiment. Austrian troops in Salzburg and Innsbruck
reportedly put themselves immediately under German command and
participated in joint victory parades. The troops were dispersed
throughout the army, the German Wehrmacht; no purely Austrian
units were retained. Most of the generals and many field-grade
officers were purged or were shifted to administrative posts. The
thirty-five divisions raised on Austrian territory following the
outbreak of World War II were composed mainly of Austrians. For
the most part, they were assigned to the Russian front.
Austria suffered tremendous losses in the war, yet its
247,000 military deaths were fewer proportionately than German
losses. A further 750,000 were made prisoners of war, the last of
these returning from the Soviet Union as late as 1955.
During the postwar occupation (1945-55) by the Four Powers
(Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, and the United States),
the three Western occupying powers permitted the Austrian
government to equip a mobile regiment of the Gendarmerie,
organized into "shock battalions." Their primary mission was to
control communist-inspired disturbances. Headquartered in Linz,
the First Battalion was responsible for the provinces of Salzburg
and Upper Austria--south of the Danube (the American Zone), the
Second Battalion for Styria (the British Zone), and the Third
Battalion for Tirol and Vorarlberg (the French Zone). (The
Russian Zone consisted of Lower Austria, Burgenland, and Upper
Austria north of the Danube. Vienna was occupied by the Four
Powers.) Surplus equipment and vehicles were transferred to the
Austrian battalions by the Western powers. In 1956 when the
Austria army, the Bundesheer (Federal Army) was reconstituted,
6,500 officers and enlisted men of these special units formed its
nucleus.
Data as of December 1993
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