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Austria Nazi Economic and Social Policies
Between 1938 and mid-1940, the Nazi administration in Austria
focused on stimulating the economy and relieving social distress
in order to win popular support, woo the working class away from
socialism, and enable Austria to contribute to the German war
machine. By early 1939, the Austrian economy was recovering, and
unemployment was falling rapidly.
Policies designed to speed economic efficiency and
integration with Germany led to the rise of large firms and to
the relocation of industry from the east to the Austria-Germany
border in the west. Although these changes brought much of the
Austrian economy under the control of the Third Reich, the
economy was modernized and diversified. Thus, in spite of the
wartime damage done to the Austrian economy and economic
infrastructure, the Anschluss years helped overcome the belief
that Austria was economically inviable and laid the foundation
for the mixed economy of the postwar years.
These economic advances, however, came hand-in-hand with the
Nazis' political repression and barbaric racial policies, of
which the Jews were the principal victims. Unification with Nazi
Germany legitimized the full venting of Austria's anti-Semitic
political heritage in which the pronounced Jewish presence in key
areas of economic, political, and cultural life--especially in
Vienna--had associated Jews with many developments in Austrian
society that were opposed by the country's conservative, rural,
and Catholic population.
The Jewish population of Austria--almost all of whom lived in
Vienna--numbered around 220,000 in 1938. In general, Nazi antiSemitic legislation and policies were imposed more quickly and
more comprehensively in Austria than in Germany, and Austria
became the testing ground for the political acceptability of
policies later adopted in Germany. After allowing a wave of
violent popular anti-Semitism in the weeks immediately after the
Anschluss, the Nazis systematized anti-Semitic harassment. Laws
and regulations were implemented to drive Jews from the economic
sector, and out of Austria in general, in an orderly manner to
ensure that the transition did not disrupt the economy or cause
the loss of economically valuable assets. Initially, Jews were
encouraged to emigrate--after they had been stripped of money and
assets--and the Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralamt
jüdischer Auswanderung--ZjA) was set up in Vienna to streamline
the emigration process. In 1938 about 80,000 Jews left Austria,
legally and illegally, and ultimately some 150,000 fled. In
October 1941, however, Germany's policy of encouraging
emigration, already made difficult by the war, was replaced with
policies to exterminate the Jews. The ZjA, which had been
expanded to the occupied countries, organized the registration
and transportation of Jews to death camps to implement the socalled Final Solution. About one-third of Austria's Jewish
population is estimated to have died in the Holocaust. In
addition to the Jews, there were other victims of murderous
German nationalism. Austrian Slavic minorities, such as the
Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Croats, for example, were targeted
for assimilation, deportation, or extermination
(see Social Minorities
, ch. 2).
Data as of December 1993
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