Two Plaques in the Karlskirche

The Karlskirche is Vienna's great Baroque monument. The guide-books will tell you that an Emperor's vow made in the plague year of 1713 led to the construction of the church; that it stands in the southeast corner of the park across the Ring from the Opera; and that it is the architect Fischer von Erlach's masterpiece. The guide-books will probably not mention the two plaques that I discovered on August 26, 1997.

I was revisiting the church after some 32 years. In a side-chapel on the right-hand side I encountered a war memorial of a familiar kind: a wall-plaque dedicated to the memory of comrades who "fell on the field of honor...for God, Kaiser, and Fatherland." The plaque honored those fallen in the First World War. I might have seen that plaque before. But confronting it on the opposite wall was a far different sort of war memorial. I surely had not seen it before.

At the top were the dates "1938-1945" -- the years of the Anschlussⁱ, the German occupation of Austria. The plaque celebrated Widerstand -- Resistance! The text spoke of "the brothers who did not go along" -- brothers who were thrown into concentration camps or forced into exile but who fought wherever they were "for a free Austria." It called for prayers for the murdered, and for the murderers too. A date at the bottom indicated that the plaque was installed in 1988 -- the 50th anniversary year of the Anschluss. I reproduce the texts of the two plaques with translations:

Unserem Allerdurchlauchtigsten Regimentsinhaver
Und Allen Auf Dem Felde Der Ehre
Fur Gott Kaiser Und Vaterland
Gefallenen Und Verstorbenen
Des K.u.K. Ulanenregimentes
Erzh. Ferdinand No. 7
In Treuestem Gedenken
Gewidmet Vom Verbande
Ehemaliger 7er Ulanen
To Our Most Illustrious
Regimental Commander
And All Those of the K.u.K.
Lance-Regiment
Archduke Ferdinand No. 7
Who Fell on the Field of Honor
And Died for God, Kaiser, and Fatherland.
(This Plaque Is) Dedicated
With the Utmost Devotion
By the Association
of Former 7^th Lancers

1938-1945
Unrecht Erfordert Widerstand
Recht Erfordert Beistand
Bundesbruder Sind Nicht Mitgelaufen
Bundesbruder Wurden Ins Straflager
Geschleppt
Sie Kampften Dort
Sie Kampften Im Ausland
Sie Kampften In Der Heimat
Fur Das Freie Osterreich
Wer Verbrechen Erkennt,
Hat Handelnd Dagegen Aufzutreten
Fur Die Ermordenten Und Die Morder
Betet, Bruder!
Akademischer Bund Osterreichischer
Landsmannschaften
MCMLXXXVIII
1938-1945
Injustice Demands Resistance
Justice Demands Support
Brothers of Ourds Did Not Go Along
Brothers of Ours Were Thrown
into Concentration Camps
They Fought in the Camps
They Fought in Foreign Lands
They Fought in the Homeland
For a Free Austria
He Who Sees Crime
Must Act Firmly Against It
Pray, Brothers, for the Murdered,
and for the Murderers!
Academic Association of
Austrian Fraternal Orders
MCMLXXXVIII

Resistance! I saw the plaque through the stereotypes that post-World War II American culture provided: the German uniform as enmity and threat, the swastika as evil incarnate, the underground movement in German-occupied France as the model of anti-Nazi resistance. Did that association have its source in American culture, or to something unique in my personal experience? I cannot be sure. I have a vivid recollection of Professor Ramon Guthrie, at Dartmouth, reading the poetry of Louis Aragon and speaking from personal knowledge of him and his role in the resistance. Guthrie had served in France with the O.S.S. during the war. A pair of lines celebrating the shared struggle and martyrdom of a priest and a Communist have reverberated in my mind ever since:

And no doubt in my case the stereotypes were reinforced by the perception of myself as one who also, in a small way, "had not gone along" -- had not, in particular, "gone along with" all of my own country's wars, though I served in the Navy in World War II.ⁱⁱⁱ (But I should not let my personal life-history intrude into the present narrative.)

It is understandable, I trust, that here, in a side-chapel of the Karlskirche, I took myself to be viewing two radically opposed conceptions of duty, patriotism, and national honor, in almost physical confrontation. As I saw it -- thinking philosophically -- to celebrate acts of resistance in time of war is precisely to challenge the necessary presumptions of war: "the battlefield is a field of honor," "God is on our side," "when the nation calls, one must serve."

Surely, I thought, the celebration of resistance in one of Austria's holiest places must have been attended by controversy. In America it would have aroused controversy!

(Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. -- as one not atypical American voice -- found it highly offensive to raise doubts about the worthiness of the purpose as the soldiers are marching off to war. He was quite willing to, and did, send people to jail for it.^iv)

So then and there I felt I had a research topic. Who were the people who installed that plaque on a wall of the Karlskirche in 1988? What had led them to take that action? What kind of opposition did it arouse, and how was it handled? How had attitudes toward the resistance changed over time?

The research turned out to be a marvelous learning experience, and a humbling one. My key assumptions turned out to be quite mistaken. The purpose of this essay is to tell the story of this learning experience.

Begin with the name of the organization sponsoring the plaque. "Academic Federation of Austrian Landsmannschaften. My dictionaries told me that "Landsmann" means "fellow-countryman," and that the noun "Landsmannschaft" is either (1) an abstract noun denoting the relationship of being fellow-countrymen, or (2) a common noun meaning "student organization." I failed to get the point (aren't all Austrians fellow-countrymen?) and the connection (how does a meaning shift from "fellow-countrymen" to "student organization"?)

I learned that history supplies the connection. The second usage of "Landsmannschaft" goes back to the middle ages. Each of the great universities -- at Bologna, Paris, Prague, Krakow -- attracted students from all over Europe. It was natural that students from particular regions should recognize each other as fellow-countrymen and organize fraternal associations around that bond. Hence my choice of "fraternal associations" to translate "Landsmannschaften."5 More recent history explains the point. That will come out in what follows.

Following the usage of the organization itself, I shall henceforth use the abbreviation "K…L"(for "Katholisch …sterreichische Landsmannschaften") to designate the Academic Federation of Catholic Austrian Fraternal Associations.

My impression that controversy must have attended the installation of the 1988 plaque was not relieved at dinner that evening. An old school-friend of my wife's was treating us to a meal at a Heuriger restaurant.^v I enthusiastically described the two plaques I had discovered that morning and asked our host what she might know about the 1988 plaque.

She became quite distraught. "Those people!" she said. "They knew nothing of how we suffered in 1918!" And she went into a tirade about the inflation, the unemployment, the economy gone to ruin, etc. It was clearly not the occasion to press my questions.

The next day was my last day in Vienna and I had no further chance to pursue inquiries there. Back home in Milwaukee, I did not know where to turn. It was the pacifist scholar and writer Gordon Zahn, now retired and living in Milwaukee, who suggested that I write the Archbishop of Vienna. He was aware that Archbishop Christoph Sch?nborn (now Cardinal Sch?nborn) had recently taken part in ceremonies at the Votivkirche, in Vienna, dedicating a window to the martyr Franz J?gerst?tter, about whom he (Zahn) had written a book.^vi

I did write the Archbishop. His Excellency forwarded my inquiry to the Karlskirche parish office, which delivered it to the headquarters of the K…L, in the same building. Thus did my letter reach the organization that sponsored the plaque. I am now in correspondence with a knowledgeable and most helpful authority.

Heinrich Schuschnigg, in Vienna, is an architect by profession. By avocation, he is the official archivist for the K…L. And he is not only historian and record-keeper for the organization: it was he who wrote the words appearing on the plaque! I could hardly have a source closer to the story.

It turns out that I was wrong in my assumptions.

First of all, no controversy surrounded the installation of the plaque.

Within the K…L, the idea of a public memorial to the victims of National Socialism was first advanced in March, 1988, in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Anschluss. The votes that followed were all unanimous: on the basic idea of honoring the brothers who resisted (but without an extensive listing of names); on the form and location of the memorial (a marble tablet, in the Karlskirche); on the assignment of responsibility for drafting the text (to a small committee including Herr Schuschnigg); on the fund-raising effort to cover the costs (25,000 Austrian shillings, something over two thousand dollars).^vii

Apparently public notice of the intended plaque did not extend much beyond K…L and church circles. Herr Schuschnigg has no newspaper clippings to share with me that might have suggested a stirring in the general public. He is quite emphatic about the absence of controversy:

[I]t is to be noted that there was no controversy of any kind in connection with the installation of this memorial. Neither within the K…L (because of the text), nor in connection with the Parish or the Diocese (with respect to the placement [of the tablet]), nor with the federal government's Office of Monuments or any other governmental or churchly agency.^viii

The plaque was installed on December 2, 1988, and formally unveiled the next day. The ceremonies included a blessing and a mass celebrated by the Bishop of Eisenstadt, a K…L brother. The widow of Austria's last emperor, Kaiser Karl -- Kaiserin Zita, at the age of 96 -- was scheduled to take part in the ceremonies but was ill on the appointed day. Her daughter-in-law Regina, the wife of Archduke Otto von Habsburg,^ix did the unveiling of the plaque.

The location of the plaque in the side-chapel was not in any way intended to suggest disrespect for older plaque or the traditional ideals that it expressed. According to Herr Schuschnigg, the K…L decided for a site in the Karlskirche, in part (1) because its headquarters were located on the grounds, in part (2) because the just-retired Rector of the Karlskirche was a K…L brother, but especially (3) because of "the known fact" (as Herr Schuschnigg expressed it)

that the Karlskirche -- built (at the time of Karl VI) through means supplied by all the Habsburg crown-lands -- is a symbol of the community of the peoples of old Austria. (The Karlskirche was called "Austria's St. Peter's.")^x

Given the choice of the Karlskirche as the site, the specific location (in the so-called "Lukas" side-alter, opposite the World War I plaque) was determined. For that was the most suitable space for the sort of memorial that the K…L had in mind.^xi

But more significant than the immediate history behind the installation of the 1988 plaque is the larger history of Austria between the two world wars. When that history is viewed from a conservative perspective that fondly recalls the Habsburg past, the two plaques reveal a significant continuity of theme. If the one plaque honors Austria in honoring those who fell in battle for the Empire, the other does no less in honoring those who resisted, at a terrible cost, the pressures that would have destroyed Austria's national identity. National Socialism, on this conservative view, was but one of those pressures, though the most terrible, and the most demanding in the price it put upon resistance.

That history is the larger story I should be telling. But I must tell it in a limited, halting way because of my perspective as an outsider and my lack of professional training as a historian.

My wife's friend was not wrong, in that brief scene in the Heuriger restaurant, when she described the abysmal situation Austrians found themselves in at the end of World War I. (She was wrong about others' not knowing or caring.)

An empire embracing some 50 million people speaking many tongues had ceased to exist. Its head-of-state^xiiwas forced out of government and into exile. Czech- and Slovak- and Croat- and Italian- and Hungarian-speaking parts were cut off. A sizeable German-speaking part was also cut off and given to Italy as war booty.^xiii The name "Austria" was restricted to the German-speaking provinces that remained. No will within those provinces had ever formed the wish to create a national state out of them. There were few grounds for patriotic feelings.^xiv

The region had its historical associations: with the Danube of the Nibelungenlied, with the "Eastern Reich" of Charlemagne, with the family holdings of Babenbergs and Habsburgs. But if the historical associations gave some sense to the idea of making a nation of the region, the economics and the politics of the situation did not.

Vienna, which contained almost a third of the population of this new shrunken Austria, was now the capital of little more than farmland mixed with gorgeous mountain scenery. Roads which once streamed out of Vienna carrying commerce for hundreds of miles were now interrupted by national borders and tariff walls. The business classes looked longingly at the great market that Germany represented, and wished that Austria was a German province.

The Socialists, too, had reasons for wishing that Austria was a German province. Politically, Vienna was an island of working-class socialism in a sea of conservative countryside. Austrian Social Democrats had long looked upon the German Social Democratic Party as their model. That party now held the reins of power in Germany. The Austrian Social Democrats' political problems would be greatly eased if they were a part of it.^xv

Academics and intellectuals also looked fondly upon the idea of union with Germany. Weimar, not Vienna, was their spiritual home.^xvi The German university system, with its graduate schools and its research centers, had long provided the model for higher education and research in Austria, as in the United States and other parts of the world.^xvii

The new republican government in Austria was fully geared up for union with Germany. Karl Renner, its first Chancellor, about to depart for the peace talks in Paris, in May of 1919, promised his followers on the railroad platform in the Westbahnhof that he would return with union with Germany in hand. The idea of Anschluss goes that far back.^xviii

What prevented it from happening in 1919 was the will of the Allies. They gave the idea of Anschluss a firm Negative.^xix

One strong Austrian voice did vigorously and repeatedly speak out for a free and independent Austria. It was the voice of the deposed Kaiser Karl, in exile.

His supporters within Austria echoed that call for independence. They called themselves "Legitimists," on the theory that the republican government lacked legitimacy. It had, after all, been forced upon Austria without the action or the consent of the people.

"The Legitimists were the only Austrians in the first years of the Republic without a Nationality- or Identity-Problem," writes my informant Herr Schuschnigg.^xx They wanted an independent Austria above all, and they sought to preserve the idea of a state that was "above nationality" ("?bernational"). But they had "to swim against the stream with all their strength" to do so. Germanomania -- "Deutscht?melei," a jingoistic passion for all things German -- had become entrenched in the universities by the end of the nineteenth century and now extended even to liberal and Catholic circles. "Austrian patriotism was looked upon as anachronistic and not worthy of an intellectual."^xxi

But the untimely death of Kaiser Karl in 1922 blew away all hope of restoring the monarchy. For the Legitimists the political situation was unbearable. One response, in that very year, was the founding of a politically-oriented student association -- the house "Maximiliana" -- in a working-class district of Vienna. Legitimists used the label "…sterreichische Landsmannschaft" to represent its corporate structure. They deliberately chose a term out of the past: it embraced persons who belonged to the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs, but typically had been used only in foreign lands.^xxii

In the following year (1923) a second house -- "in spite of all the hostility," Schuschnigg tells us -- was established in Vienna. "They [the founders] unambiguously declared their faith in the Austrian idea (of being above nationality, ?bernational), and in the House of Austria. As a logical consequence they wanted the Austrian monarchy."

"Admittedly it sounds paradoxical," Schuschnigg goes on to say, "but this is not a denial of [dies ist kein Gegensatz zur] the Austrian Republic. Because one loved Austria, one wanted -- for its protection, and for the protection of one's own freedom -- a monarch. From the House of Austria, to be sure."

(To an American weaned on ideas of representative democracy and the consent of the governed, it does indeed sound paradoxical to cling to an ideal of monarchy while living in a republic. But the civil libertarian part of him may recall the wisdom of the constitutional provision for an independent judiciary. In a number of contexts it is precisely "the will of the people" that we need protection from. So the American should be able to see some sense in the monarchist idea.)

These first two Landsmannschaften subsequently merged into one house, which thrived and founded daughter Landsmannschaften in Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck, and Graz, each with its distinctive name, colors, and motto. The current umbrella organization -- the K…L -- was created in 1933.^xxiii

Under the heading "Mitglieder" ("Membership"), a K…L brochure tells us that the size of the K…L varies between 600 and 1000 members, that just about every profession is represented, that members may be found throughout Europe and overseas too.

They may be recognized [the brochure continues] by their love of Austria and for the Republic. They have Christianity in common with conservatives. They have social commitment in common with socialists. Even with Communists they have something in common, namely the rejection of National Socialism. Only with the National Socialists do they have nothing in common, indeed absolutely nothing.^xxiv

So the point of that label "Landsmannschaften" now appears. The Legitimists looked upon each other as fellow-countrymen in an alien world. They clung to "an anachronistic patriotism" while everyone around them was calling for union with Germany!^xxv

The Social Democrats held power for the first two years of the new Republic's existence.^xxviAfter 1920, between-the-wars politics in Austria can be described most simply in terms of right-wing factions ganging up on the socialists while quarreling fiercely among themselves. The historian Karl Stadler sums it up as follows:

Instead of recognizing that it was the divisions in the bourgeois camp which made the business of governing the country so difficult -- especially with the onset of the world economic crisis [in 1929] -- and instead of seeking an agreement with the Social Democrats, the conservatives allowed themselves to be pushed by their extremist wings into ever greater hostility towards the Left, which finally led to the suspension of Parliament in 1933 and the armed clash with the Socialists in 1934.^xxvii

Ignaz Seipel was a dominant figure during that interval, leading the Christian Social Party and twice serving as Chancellor (1922-1924 and 1926-1929). Priest and theologian as well as political figure, an authority on questions of nationality within the Habsburg empire, he was unquestionably a person of great talent. His diplomatic skills secured a loan of $100 million from the League of Nations that enabled Austria to repair its financial situation. Two chancellors who followed him (Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt von Schuschnigg) had been his disciples.

In the course of learning more about Seipel, I also learn something about two American encyclopedias.

The Encyclopedia Britannica article on Seipel introduces him -- in the very first sentence -- as the person "whose use of the Fascist paramilitary Heimwehr in his struggle against Austria's Social Democrats led to a strengthening of Fascism in his country." The article goes on to connect Seipel with events that occurred two years after his death:

His use of the paramilitary Heimwehr against Austria's Socialists (1927) foreshadowed the events of 1934, when his disciple Engelbert Dollfuss destroyed Austrian democracy and established a clerical-Fascist dictatorship.^xxviii

Collier's Encyclopedia writes of Seipel without using any of the terms "Fascist," "Fascism," "Heimwehr," or "dictatorship." Seipel is described as "the intellectual leader of the Christian Socialists" and his book Nation und Staat is said to be "a remarkable study on the problem of the multi-national Austro-Hungarian state." But Collier's allows that Seipel was "an implacable enemy of Social Democracy" and that "his opponents accused him of unmercifulness in his attitude over the Socialist riots and general strike of July 15, 1927."^xxix

What happened on July 15, 1927? As Stadler describes it, Viennese workers clashed with the police in the course of a demonstration; street fighting followed, and over a hundred demonstrators were killed. And as a further consequence, the Social Democratic Party was outlawed.^xxx Stadler sees something more than a "foreshadowing" of 1934 here:

The crisis of 1927 marked the turning point when the Christian Social Party 'adopted' the Heimwehr, a decision which led inexorably to civil war in February 1934 and the extinction of parliamentary democracy.^xxxi

What was this "Heimwehr"? The name means "Home Defense." In the aftermath of World War I, volunteer defense units were set up in the countryside and in the cities, and supplied with weaponry from the now disbanded imperial army. The units in the countryside were brought together under provincial structures in the years that followed, and they came to adopt an ideology with all the hallmarks of what we call fascism: anti-Semitism, the rejection of parliamentary democracy in favor of "the corporate state," the perception of democratic socialism as well as communism as enemies to be destroyed.^xxxii

There was a significant Italian connection. Mussolini had his reasons for subsidizing the Heimwehr movement: it gave him political leverage within Austria, it facilitated his foreign policy goals.^xxxiii But the Heimwehr movement fragmented in the early 1930s. The 1930 elections exposed the shallowness of its popular support.^xxxiv Some sections (notably in Styria) moved in with the Nazis. Two of its nationally-known leaders joined the government of Engelbert Dollfus.^xxxv

The National Socialist ("Nazi") party in Austria differed from the Heimwehr in openly looking upon Hitler as its leader and making Anschluss with Germany its priority. But Stadler cautions us against seeing too much in this difference:

At various times, and on various issues, these two strands of Austrian Fascism met, intermingled, borrowed from each other, combined or fought each other. Both showed certain national, i.e. Austrian, characteristics, which makes it difficult to be certain of the degree of 'patriotism' in each.^xxxvi

The Nazis and the Heimwehr both sensed, for example, that the Dollfus regime was "soft on the socialists" -- not doing enough to destroy the Social Democratic Party. Each faction secretly planned a coup d'etat to overthrow the regime.^xxxvii But the Heimwehr plan depended on assistance from Mussolini, which never came. The Nazis went through with their plan on July 25, 1934. They succeeded in killing Dollfuss but security forces intervened and the government was not overthrown.^xxxviii Kurt von Schuschnigg succeeded Dollfuss as Chancellor.^xxxix

When the Putsch occurred, Dollfuss had been governing without Parliament for over a year, and Schuschnigg would continue to govern without Parliament. The "civil war" of February, 1934, that the historian Stadler alleged to be the consequence of decisions made by Ignaz Seipel in 1927, was six months in the past. Four days of fighting^xl had cost the socialists several hundred lives, the loss of their leadership (through imprisonment or exile), the confiscation of their resources (which were considerable^xli), and the destruction (by artillery shells) of much of the public housing they had built over the years. Otto Bauer had cautioned local Party leaders against using force to resist the provocations of the Heimwehr, but some insisted that lines had to be drawn.^xlii

Schuschnigg continued to rule without Parliament and with a sizeable portion of the population now bitter, alienated, and lacking any means of expressing their concerns politically. A show of force was essential to the regime's ability to rule, but the Heimwehr was now divided by the rival ambitions of its leaders and became an unsuitable instrument. Schuschnigg put its leaders out of his government and merged the remaining Heimwehr units into the regular army.^xliii And he turned to the now very pressing German question.

Events had pushed Mussolini into Hitler's arms.^xliv "From now on it was Germany who would determine the orientation of European affairs," writes Stadler.^xlv Schuschnigg was advised from all sides to seek an accommodation with the Germans. The result was the so-called "Gentlemen's Agreement" of July 11, 1936, negotiated with the German ambassador in Vienna, Franz von Papen. On the one hand, Germany would recognize Austria's independence; on the other hand, Austria would follow Germany's lead in foreign affairs, ease up on the Nazis in Austria, and accept several Nazi sympathizers into the government.

From now on Schuschnigg's political strength in Austria would depend on his ability to balance the accommodations made with Hitler against the need to retain the support of his Christian Social followers.^xlvi

The balance he struck^xlvii seems to have made everyone unhappy: Hitler, the Christian Socials, and the Austrian Nazis (who had been left on the side-lines). When, in December 1937, von Papen proposed a personal meeting between Schuschnigg and Hitler to smooth out the situation, Schuschnigg was hesitant; but when told that Hitler himself favored the idea, he felt he could not refuse. The meeting ultimately took place at Hitler's mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden on February 12, 1938.

In preparation for that meeting Schuschnigg worked out a fall-back position through negotiations with a Nazi sympathizer he felt he could trust -- Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a Vienna lawyer whom Schuschnigg had chosen to represent the pro-German opposition in his cabinet. Schuschnigg left Vienna for Berchtesgaden on February 11 not suspecting that Hitler would shortly have in his hands all the specifics of that fall-back position.

Hitler met with Schuschnigg for two hours during the morning of February 12 and delivered a steady stream of threats. Hitler then left Schuschnigg to cool his heels. In the middle of the afternoon Schuschnigg was presented with a set of German demands, neatly typed up. They were precisely what Schuschnigg, in Vienna, had already agreed to concede. He was now stuck with his concessions.^xlviii

And back home in Vienna, he was in a no-win situation. If he claimed that he had been browbeaten into making those concessions at Berchtesgaden, it would appear to the world that his government could survive only with Hitler's consent. If he claimed that the concessions were minimal and happily resolved the differences between Germany and Austria, others could not protest on Austria's behalf.^xlix

France, Italy, and Great Britain had agreed on the need to preserve Austria's independence at the Stresa conference, April 1935. But at this point in time neither nation was motivated to intervene: each was content to await action from the other two.^l Schuschnigg could well feel that all friendly nations had abandoned Austria.

At this point Schuschnigg decided on "one last gesture of defiance."^li He would hold a plebescite on the question whether Austrians wished to remain independent or to join the Reich.

On March 3 Schuschnigg met with a committee of workers' representatives and won their promise of cooperation in return for his promise to ease the constraints on their political party. He initiated plans for a plebescite within the government on March 4 and had the necessary signatures within two days. The date of the plebescite was set for March 13. The voters were to be presented not with a straight Yes-or-No question, but with these ringing words: "For a free and independent, German and Christian Austria."^lii

When Hitler was told of the plans for a plebescite he could not believe it: how could that Schuschnigg be so audacious! But the report was confirmed. Hitler would not put up with it. He met with his generals and was informed that operational plans for invading Austria already existed. He told his generals to proceed with them. He issued two further orders: (1) the Nazis in Austria were to have complete freedom of action; and (2) Seyss-Inquart was to demand that Schuschnigg postpone the plebescite, and to request German intervention if Schuschnigg did not comply.

Schuschnigg complied. Nazis within Austria had made the same demand of him. On March 11 he canceled plans for the plebescite.

Hitler responded imnmediately by demanding that Schuschnigg resign. G?ring sent the ultimatum.

That afternoon the Austrian government made last-minute appeals to Britain, France, and Italy, but neither useful advice nor promises of assistance were forthcoming. Schuschnigg resigned -- his last act as Chancellor being to order Austrian forces not to resist any incursion by German forces.^liii But Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas refused to appoint Seyss-Inquart Chancellor as G?ring's ultimatum demanded.

On the evening of that day, in the Reichskanzlei in Berlin, there were delays, mixed signals, causes for hesitation. Hitler changed his mind about going ahead with the invasion several times. One concern was Mussolini's possible reaction: it had long been a priority with Mussolini to prevent Germany's extending herself southwards to the very borders of Italy. And also, at that stage in Hitler's thinking, a preference for doing things "legally" loomed large in his mind: he would rather avoid the use of brute force where possible. But the information coming to the Reichskanzlei seemed to undercut the reasons for holding back. Then the decision was made. An eyewitness reports seeing Hitler conclude a conversation with G?ring, slap his thigh, throw his head back and say: "Now for it!"^liv

So on the morning of March 12 German tanks rolled down the road to Vienna without opposition. Enthusiastic cheering crowds greeted Hitler in Linz that afternoon and in Vienna the following day.

The Gestapo moved in swiftly to arrest the identifiable opponents of the new regime: Jews, Communists, Monarchists.

According to Stadler, "at least 20,000 Austrians" were arrested -- without warrant, and without subsequent trial on any charge -- "immediately after the Anschluss."^lv He does not define the precise time-span he has in mind. But Fritz Molden tells us that roughly 75,000 Austrians were arrested during the first six weeks following the Anschluss,^lvi so Stadler might have had something like a mere two weeks in mind.

Stadler goes on to explain why these arrests would be "legal" under the terms of the Anschluss.

A special law on the "Reunification of Austria with the German Reich" was enacted on March 13. It purported to assimilate existing Austrian law into German law, but its effect was to make the legal machinery of repression developed in Germany since 1933 applicable to Austrians. The Reich Minister of the Interior decreed that by virtue of Article III of the Reunification Law, "The Reichsf?hrer-SS and Chief of the German Police can take any measures required for the maintenance of law and order even outside the appropriate legal limits."^lii "This," says Stadler, "of course covered the activities of the Gestapo and the SS."

Dr. Hans Karl Zessner-Spitzenberg, a Professor at Vienna's College of Agriculture and active as a K…L brother, was one of the Monarchists swept up shortly after the Anschluss. Seipel's biographer identifies him as "one of the leaders of the pro-Habsburg legitimists" back in 1918.^lviii His friend and K…L brother Alfred Missong gives us this account of his arrest:

In the first days after the upheaval, when his closest colleagues [Mitarbeiter] were -- almost all of them -- landing in jail, Baron Zessner reported himself to the police without being asked and declared that he bore the responsibility for whatever his colleagues had done, and therefore wanted to take the prison sentences imposed on them upon himself. At first they took no notice of his statement, and sent him home instead. Then a few days later the brutal arm of the Gestapo reached out for him. In his parish church "Maria's Suffering" ...in Vienna's 19th District, he was arrested right at the communion bench. With that his fate was sealed.^lix

The Gestapo sent Zessner to Dachau and there he was either killed (as one account has it) or allowed to die in the arms of a K…L brother (as another account has it), on August 1, 1938.^lx He left behind a set of notes for a biography of Kaiser Karl.^lxi

The K…L resolution on the plaque had said that if any one person's name was to be included in the text on the plaque, it should be that of Baron Zessner-Spitzenberg.

His K…L brothers knew him and would not be moved to ask the question, but we who have only this sketchy bit of information about him but are very much engaged with the concept of Resistance are obliged to ask it: Was Baron Zessner-Spitzenberg actually a resister, or was he just an innocent victim of Nazi brutality?

One part of the answer is to suggest that in the situation of a brutal dictatorship enjoying a good deal of popular support, there can be no sharp line between the "resister" and the "innocent victim." Fritz Molden takes this line on the very first page of his account of the resistance movement in Austria:^lxii

It is only natural that the question "What is Resistance?" should arise. Could a critical conversation among friends and acquaintances or -- involving greater risks -- among strangers be regarded as resistance, or was some action necessary? Was it sufficient to listen to enemy broadcasts, an activity that the Nazi authorities during World War II punished by years in prison, or was it necessary to share with third parties what had just been heard over the British Broadcasting Corporation or on some other enemy broadcast? (After the beginning of the war the latter activity carried the death penalty.) Was not the mere telling of political jokes an act of resistance? After all, anyone who was caught telling such a joke or who was subsequently denounced by someone risked going to jail or being sent to a concentration camp. Was a kindly word spoken to a Jewish neighbor or some aid given to "persons of non-Aryan descent" already an act of resistance? ...In other words, were all utterances or activities that contravened the laws of the Third Reich -- that is, political infractions rather than blackmarketeering or looting during a blackout -- already acts of resistance?

"These matters are open to debate," Molden concludes.^lxiii He does not find it necessary to draw a sharp line distinguishing the "resister" from the "innocent victim."

A second part of the answer is to observe that it turns not on our concept of resistance, but on the K…L's. Here Schuschnigg (1997) must be our primary source, and it is clear that the K…L's concept of resistance is broad and inclusive.

H. Schuschnigg (1997) mentions five K…L brothers in connection with a group called …sterreichische Aktion [Austrian Action], for instance: its leader, Ernst Karl Winter; Hans Karl Zessner-Spitzenberg and Alfred Missong, whose names the reader has already encountered; and Wilhelm Schmid and August Maria Knoll.^lxiv

Die …sterreichische Aktion was formed in the 1920s to sponsor lectures, conferences, and publications promoting Austrian self-consciousness. Its leader, Ernst Karl Winter, was a Left-leaning Catholic who conceived his role to be that of mediator between the Church and the Social Democrats.^lxv Winter was appointed Deputy Mayor of Vienna in 1934, an action that Stadler calls "one of the few conciliatory gestures of the [Dollfuss-Schuschnigg] regime towards the Left."^lxvi

What is interesting is that four of those five K…L names (including Zessner-Spitzenberg's) do not occur at all in the indexes of three important studies of the Resistance in Austria: F. Molden (1989), O. Molden (1958), and Luza (1984).

August Maria Knoll is mentioned in O. Molden (1958) and Luza (1984). Professor Knoll had allowed a radio transmitter to be installed in his Vienna apartment in April, 1945.

It is clear that the K…L's concept of Widerstand, Resistance, does not confine it to the time-frame 1938-1945 and does not link it necessarily to such activities as guerilla warfare or sabotage. The K…L is telling us that its members were resisting National Socialism and the Anschluss idea already in the 1920s, and doing so by intellectual means. That's not so bad.

I cannot here go into great detail about the various Resistance movements (one has to use the plural) that arose in Austria during the Anschluss years. Generalizing, one can note (1) that there were many distinct resistance efforts; there never was a single unified movement. (2) They often failed (typically because an informer was in their midst) and their failure invariably had disastrous consequences for the participants. (3) They sometimes accomplished things that hastened the end of the Nazi occupation (typically through cooperation with Soviet or American military forces). (4) They sometimes involved members of the K…L. According to my informant Heinrich Schuschnigg, the resisters mentioned in Luza (1984) include 21 members of the K…L, and the most prominent resistance group in the last two years of the war -- Dr. Hans Sidonius von Becker's "05" ("Null F?nf") -- included 7 K…L members.^lxvii

I can add some generalizations about three groups that Fritz Molden singles out for attention.

(a) The initial wave of resistance, in the spring and summer of 1938, was fed primarily by "Communists, Legitimists, devout Catholics from all walks of life, students and liberal intellectuals in the major cities." But their efforts were often amateurish and the Gestapo had little difficulty in ferreting them out.^lxviii

(b) Between 1938 and 1943 something like 10,000 Communists were arrested in Vienna and all the provinces together, and about a third of them were killed. In 1943 the German Security Service smashed the Communists altogether. From these figures, and from an estimate of party membership in the spring of 1938 as 15,000, Molden deduces a "casualty rate" of about two-thirds.^lxix Luza's statistics indicate that almost half (44%) of the activists involved in resistance were members of the Austrian Communist Party.^lxx

(c) Legimists were more numerous than Communists and they stood their ground until the end of the war, Molden writes. He adds that in the big resistance movements that were finally developed and that transcended merely local limits, the Legitimists always had "an above-average share."^lxxi

But I must add this little story so that we can remember the true proportion of things.

When I told an elderly Milwaukee acquaintance about the two plaques in the Karlskirche, her eyes opened wide in astonishment. She is Jewish and Austrian-born, and she was living in Vienna with her parents in 1938.

"Do you mean to say that there was a resistance movement in Austria?," she asked. "Why weren't they there to help us when we needed help?"

She spoke of her experience in the days that followed the Anschluss. Some friends of the family simply "disappeared." Frantic appeals to neighbors, and to the police, met with blank stares or cold shrugs. "No one, no one offered any help."

Obviously, she survived. She and her parents got out of Austria as fast as they could.

I must also say that I cannot here trace out the process by which World War II did bring about a sense of national identity and consequent feelings of patriotism in Austria. I note merely that statements by Roosevelt and Churchill implying that Austria was one of the first victims of Nazi aggression^lxxii -- confirmed by the Moscow Declaration of November, 1943, in which the Allies officially announced their intention of preserving "a free and independent Austria"^lxxiii -- played no small role in developing that sense of national identity.

But the historian Stadler argues that it was the experience of the German occupation, 1938-1945, that did the most to bring about a distinct sense of Austrian identity. He devotes a full chapter to the topic.^lxxiv

I content myself with attaching a short bibliography. The works listed should answer most questions about the Resistance and recent Austrian history.

For the next several centuries (and one hopes, for many centuries after that) worshippers and tourists will wander into the Karlskirche and stumble upon the two plaques, the one remembering comrades who "fell on the field of honor ...for God, Kaiser, and Fatherland," the other insisting that "injustice demands resistance" and remembering brothers who resisted. They will have to think about the meaning of those words, and their deeper implications, knowing no more of the history behind them than I did on August 26, 1997. And if they see the later plaque as an imperative overriding the intentions of the earlier, as I did -- that might not be so bad. But it's no reason to neglect the history.

David Luce retired in 1997 after 40 years of teaching philosophy at the University of Arkansas, the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has served on the Boards of Directors of both the Milwaukee chapter and the Wisconsin affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. He served as Vice Chairperson and Secretary of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation. He extends his gratitude to His Excellency Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, Archbishop of Vienna; to Dipl. Ing. Heinrich Schuschnigg, also in Vienna; and in Milwaukee, to Professor Emeritus Gordon Zahn and Dr. Ernst Edlhauser for services without which this article could not have been written.