Prison Elite: How Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg Survived Nazi Captivity by Erika Rummel

Abstract

Reviewed by: Prison Elite: How Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg Survived Nazi Captivity by Erika Rummel Laura A. Detre Erika Rummel, Prison Elite: How Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg Survived Nazi Captivity. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2021. 215 pp. It is undeniably true that both academics and the general public have a thirst for stories of resistance to the Nazi machine and that consequently a tremendous amount of media on the topic is produced every year. Historians increasingly endeavor to look at the ways in which Nazism impacted Europe through diverse lenses, continuing to examine stories of Jewish victimization in death camps but also analyzing the lives of non-Jewish people who were oppressed [End Page 128] by German fascism. Erika Rummel's book Prison Elite does just that by looking at the writings of the Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, who was imprisoned by the Nazis after the 1938 Anschluss. This book largely focuses on how Schuschnigg dealt with the conditions of his incarceration and the coping mechanisms he used to survive the experience. The author dives deep into the details of how he found comfort in religion, music, and books. She details how Schuschnigg was initially held in solitary confinement, although she also notes that he was allowed to marry and then receive visits from his new wife in this period. It is undeniable that Rummel has spent a great deal of time with Schuschnigg's writings, which form the core materials consulted for this text. The question this leaves us with is: what will we learn from this material? As she acknowledges, Kurt von Schuschnigg was not a typical prisoner and his treatment at the hands of his Nazi jailers was indeed exceptional. It does, in fact, make the reader wonder if his experiences were so unusual as to be unhelpful in understanding the functioning of the Nazi political machine. Most camp internees lived lives of terror and life-threatening deprivation, whereas Schuschnigg, by the time of his transfer to Sachsenhausen, lived in relative comfort with his family and many privileges. His experiences are somewhat comparable to those of French politician Leon Blum, who was also a VIP political prisoner of the Nazis, but Blum, as a Jewish Socialist, had the specter of the Holocaust hanging over his imprisonment. Is there value in a detailed examination of the imprisonment of a figure who had himself led a dictatorial, illiberal regime and who by all admissions fared well under Nazi incarceration? Additionally, because this text hangs so thoroughly on Schuschnigg's own writings we do not learn why his experiences were so singular. Why is it that the Nazis chose to imprison him rather than execute him? Why did they transfer him first from Vienna to Munich and then on to Sachsenhausen? Why was his family allowed to accompany him on that final move? These are just a few of the questions raised by this account but not answered in any meaningful way. One of the challenges inherent in any examination of this period in Central European history is that Nazism's singular fixation on genocide colors our view of all other contemporary political movements. It is tempting to look at Austrofascism, the clerico-fascism of Slovakia, the nominal regency under Hungarian dictator Miklós Horthy, or any of the other radical right-wing governments to be found in this region in the 1930s and see them as benign compared with the incomparable evil taking power in Germany. As historians [End Page 129] we must resist this urge, however. It is undeniably true that the genocide perpetrated against Europe's Jews by the Nazi regime was unique in its cruelty as well as its pervasiveness, but when we look at the Austrofascist government in isolation rather than in comparison, we see that it was a murderous movement it its own right. Anyone who is interested in the interwar history of Austria must acknowledge the 1934 Civil War as a violent turning point, after which the country was undoubtedly no longer a liberal democracy. Additionally, we need to increase our awareness of the state-sanctioned murders of political opponents, particularly Communists and Social Democrats, under the governments of both Engelbert...