An Historic Act of Political Courage

Fifty-three years after Adolf Hitler rode into Vienna in triumph, a leading Austrian political figure has for the first time formally acknowledged that many Austrians were enthusiastic supporters of their country’s annexation by the Third Reich and that a large number willingly participated in Nazi crimes against humanity.

Chancellor Franz Vranitzky’s statement to Parliament, though many would see it as coming decades late, was nonetheless an act of political courage in a country whose textbooks still generally portray Austria as a victim of Nazi aggression, while ignoring that Austria had a larger percentage of Nazi party members than Germany.

The myth of Austria as victim of Naziism ironically originated with the wartime Allied powers--the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union--in their 1943 Moscow declaration. In fact, 97% of Austrians voted in 1938 for Anschluss (union) with Germany, and the list of Austrians who were intimately associated with the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes is a long one. It includes Adolph Eichmann, head of the Gestapo’s Jewish section, kidnaped by Israel from his haven in Argentina in 1960 and tried and executed for his crimes; his aide Alois Brunner, believed still to be living in Syria, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Reich commissioner of Holland during the Nazi occupation who was convicted of war crimes and hanged at Nuremberg. A disproportionate number of Austrians served as commandants and guards at Nazi extermination camps.

Vranitzky made it clear--and so gave historic emphasis to his remarks--that he was speaking for the government. “We acknowledge all of our history and the deeds of all parts of our people, the good as well as the evil,” he said. “As we lay claim to the good, so must we apologize to the survivors and descendants of the dead for the evil. . . . We cannot brush aside a moral responsibility for the deeds of our citizens. Austrian politicians have always put off making this confession. I would like to do this explicitly . . . a measure of the relationship we today must have to our history, as a standard for the political culture of our country.”

Will this acceptance of partial moral responsibility for the crimes of the Hitler era encourage Austrians overall to more candidly scrutinize their past? Vranitzky made the important point that unless Austrians honestly evaluate their own history, they cannot hope to have moral standing when they participate in contemporary discussions about pressing international issues. A new Europe is emerging. The need to face the hard and sometimes terrible truths of the old Europe’s past has not lessened.