1945: Victim Thesis

The reestablishment of the Republic of Austria on 27 April 1945 also marked the birth of Austria’s conception of itself as the “first victim” of National Socialism. The provisional government labelled the “Anschluss” (“annexation”) in March 1938 as a military occupation by a foreign power and Austria as the “first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression”. This portrayal is based on a unilateral interpretation of the Moscow Declaration made by the Allied foreign ministers in 1943. This declaration stated the reestablishment of a free and independent Austria as an Allied war aim. However, the declaration contained a clause that was disregarded in Austria after 1945: responsibility for “participation in the war at the side of Hitlerite Germany”, meaning that the country must make a contribution to its own liberation. With this, the Allies hoped to encourage resistance against the Nazi regime in Austria. This was the actual intention of the Moscow Declaration, yet its impact was marginal.

The portrayal of Austria as the “first victim” was in glaring contrast to the actual situation in the years 1938 to 1945. Since the “Anschluss”, Austria had been part of the National Socialist German Reich, Austrians had fought against the Allies as German citizens in the Wehrmacht, over 500,000 Austrians were members of the Nazi Party, and there were several Austrians among those chiefly responsible for the Holocaust. The result of this contradiction was that soon, the victim thesis was limited to how Austria presented itself on an international stage while within the country, it was not the resistance to whom memorials were erected, but the fallen soldiers of the Wehrmacht.

Since the Waldheim affair in 1986, the victim thesis has been considered a “historical lie” (Robert Menasse) that made it possible after 1945 to successfully ignore Austrian society’s involvement in National Socialism. In 1991 the federal chancellor Vranitzky acknowledged the “share of responsibility for the suffering imposed on other people and peoples, not by Austria as a state, but nonetheless by citizens of this country”. This marked the official end of the victim thesis.