Pan-Gemanism and the Austrofascist State, 1933–38

Abstract

This book is about the ideas and policies that characterized the rightward trajectory of Austrofascism in the 1930s, providing a fresh perspective on the debate over whether Austria was an authoritarian or fascist state. It is designed to introduce a range of issues confronting Austrian policy and opinion makers in the years prior to the Anschluss with Nazi Germany. The author argues that Austrofascism (not National Socialism) was the political heir of pan-Germanism in the Habsburg Monarchy. The book contributes to studies of inter-war Austria by introducing several case studies, including press and propaganda, minority politics, regionalism, immigration and refugees, as the issues that shaped Austria's political culture in the 1930s. Case studies of the German-nationalist press reveal the relationship between ideas and policy in the Austrofascist period. The book argues for a transnational approach to fascism in Austria, and situates the case studies within a broader context of Italian and German fascism. Placing the Austrian case against this backdrop of nationalism and fascism in Europe, it makes the discovery that Austrofascism was the product of larger European processes and events in the inter-war period.