The Victim Myth: The Reinvention of Austria in the Postwar Years

Abstract

The Second Republic of Austria was founded on the assertion that Austria was the first victim of Nazi Germany. Although false, the myth of common Austrian resistance to an external German aggressor was a useful political tool aiding the building of a new postwar democratic identity for Austria. Drawing on the substantial literature on the topic, this article indicates the full extent of the support provided by the victim myth for the building of the new republic by securing a rapprochement between the center parties of the left and right, avoiding, in the short term, the crushing burden of reparations to victims of the Nazis, providing a coherent narrative for foreign policy, and reintegrating hundreds of thousands of Austrian former members of the Wehrmacht and Austrian Nazis into the body politic. The article concludes that the victim myth, in which Austria sees itself as a “victim” of Germany, has been thoroughly discredited. Nevertheless, the victim myth is capable of surviving as an appeal to a sense of national “sacrifice” and may well endure as an imagined narrative of the Austrian far right.