After the Reich

by Giles MacDonogh

  German Assets

  The restitution of stolen property was part of the work of the Control Council. The various Allies pursued property claims pertaining to their own people. The French, for example, were anxious to trace the library of the former prime minister Léon Blum, which had gone missing in Austria. It was last seen in Carinthia, but was never found. As regards stolen Jewish property, restitution was effected only in certain cases and in others the awards were only partial.80

  Restitution was complicated by several factors. One was that the Soviet authorities were patently uninterested in the fate of the Jews, and were determined to mop up as much property and money as they could. On 27 June 1946 the Russians seized all ‘German’ assets in their zone in contravention of the Potsdam Accord. It followed on from similar measures taken in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Finland. When the West protested, the Russians contradicted the spirit of the Moscow Declaration and said that the Austrians had ‘fought with Germany’.

  ‘German’ assets accounted for around a fifth of Austrian industry: more than 62 per cent of Germany’s capital abroad. The total sums for other countries - Finland, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia - totalled 188 million dollars, while for Austria the figure was a staggering 1.5 milliard.81 Some of these assets had no connections with the Germans whatsoever. Others were businesses legitimately built up and developed by Germans. The Russians interpreted these matters very freely. Of 120 industries taken over in their zone, only 47 were actually ‘German’; and of the seventy-six agricultural properties they took over, only one had previously been in German hands. They expressed their intention of taking over the 27,000-hectare Esterházy estate based in Burgenland, for example, which could hardly be described as German and which would have fed (according to the Americans) between 80,000 and 100,000 people. They had 72 per cent of Austria’s oilwells and half the country’s refinery capacity.82

  Soviet Russia’s determination to grab all German property included businesses that had been filched by Germans from Austrian Jews, who had been either driven into exile or murdered in the camps. The Russians also swiped a lot of things the Germans had stolen from the Austrian government and foreign nationals. The demands for compensation by certain very rich Jewish families such as the Rothschilds were used by the Russians as a justification for their actions, as they claimed that the Americans would beggar the Austrians were such claims to go through. They were much fairer in their approach in that they shared their spoils with the people of their zone. They sequestered the oilwells, although the equity had been mostly held by Britons and Americans before the war. Their argument was that the foreign interests had been legitimately sold to the Germans in 1938 and that the Anglo-Americans had no right to claim them back.83

  They took what ships they found on the Danube. Some of the companies seized were simply stripped of anything of value that could be sent home to Russia. Others were run at a profit. USIA (Upravleinje Sovetskogo Imuščestva v Avstrii - Administration of Soviet Property in Eastern Austria) was the company the Russians created to administer their spoils. In 1949 USIA was running 250 factories with 50,000 workers and controlled a third of industrial production within the Soviet Zone. These factories made all Austrian locomotives and turbines, half of the nation’s glass, fuel and pharmaceuticals and around 40 per cent of its iron. They also had 157,000 hectares of land. The Russians continued to exploit Austria though USIA for a decade and their profits over that period are estimated at over a milliard dollars. The Western Allies protested, but, as no one wanted war, their protests remained hot air.

  Russia was anxious to snatch ‘German’ assets in the west too, but that came to nothing. Not all the industry was in the east. VOEST was originally the Hermann-Göring-Werke in Linz. After Potsdam’s ruling on former German property the huge steelworks, one of the most modern in Europe, fell to the Austrian state. In the light of Soviet behaviour in the east, the Western Allies demonstratively waived their right to reparations - in the French case, somewhat reluctantly.84

  The confiscation of the Zistersdorf oilfields gave rise to an act of resistance by Renner, who refused to sign the agreement.85 The Russians threatened to report him to Koniev, but he must have known he had the backing of the Western Allies, Clark in particular, who - like Clay north of the Inn - could see the propaganda value in exposing Soviet knavery in this and other instances. Clark also claims to have foiled a Soviet attempt to take over the building of the Ministry of the Interior.

  January 1945. The inhabitants of East Prussia have finally been allowed to flee, but the Red Army has cut them off from the Reich at Elbing. In desperation hundreds of thousands make their way across the frozen inland sea or Haff. Russian warships open fire on the ice

  The ‘treks’ began that winter. These Silesians are making their way west in any transport they can find. Note the elegant carriage among the carts and traps

  Over sixteen million Germans left their homes, few of their own free will. These Sudetenländer are being shipped out in cattle trucks. The manner of their going was a relief, however, after what many had suffered in the camps

  Conditions on the trains were at best primitive. Everything had to be done in the carriages. If they were lucky the Czechs or Poles allowed them to take off the waste

  Miserable Sudeten expellees wait to board the train to Germany

  Pious Sudeten Catholics hear an open-air Mass on their way to their new lives

  Silesians assemble in the streets of their town prior to their expulsion. This was only the beginning of their Calvary: they would often spend weeks in a transit camp where they would face the most abominable treatment. Many died

  The Oder at Frankfurt. This was to be the new Polish-German border after the Western Allies gave in to Stalin’s demands at Potsdam

  For the Jews life in the new Poland and the new Czechoslovakia had few temptations: the ruins of the White Stork synagogue in Wrocław (Breslau) in 1991

  Sudetenländer rounded up in Bergreichenstein (Kasperské Hory) push their goods to the assembly camp. They are wearing white armbands to mark them out as Germans

  Germans were allowed to take only the basic minimum with them. Here in Bergreichenstein in eastern Bohemia Czech officials inspect suitcases and clothing for anything of value

  Note that the guard is wearing a recycled German helmet while his colleague is trampling on the German’s possessions

  A rare of the Little Fortress in Theresienstald with German prisonners. During the war the Kleine Festung had provided accommodation for the SS and was used for occasional executions of Crechs and Jews. Now the boot was on the other foot

  Josef Schöner’s pictures of the ruins of Vienna. The State Opera House with the Jockey Club behind. The Jockey Club had taken a direct hit in the last weeks of the war. Hundreds of bodies lay in the cellars

  The Cathedral or ‘Steffl’ denuded of its high-pitched roof. No one could say precisely who had started the fires: the Russians, the Germans or the Viennese themselves

  The Graben shopping street. Life was returning to normal. Note the woman in her traditional Dirndl: Austrian dress proved you were not German. (inset) The Austrians had been liberated as the first victims of Hitler, but the Allies were not entirely convinced

  The Allies had a duty to feed the vanquished Germans. This notice of 13 May 1945 sets out the rations for Berlin. Four ration cards were issued according to the recipient’s usefulness to society. Workers received twice as much as children. Later two more categories were invented including the sixth, hunger card. Needless to say, very little of this largesse was really available

  Silesian children arriving in the British Zone in Germany after their ordeals. Many could not believe the benevolent treatment they received at the hands of the Western Allies

  These Silesian children could look forward to a new life in West Germany

  For others the misery was not yet over. The Allied rations did little to allay malnutrition. Here Victor Gollancz present
s a powerful indictment of the British treatment of the Germans

  Gollancz was particularly interested in the state of German children’s shoes

  One of the more positive elements of the Occupation: Sir Robert Birley (here as headmaster of Eton). He felt that what the Germans needed was re-education, not denazification

  The Allies leave a positive legacy. It was the British who revived production of Hitler’s ‘Kraft-durch-Freude’ car. The ‘Beetle’ was to be the ‘wheels of the Occupation’

  Lord Pakenham, later Earl of Longford, the second British Minister for Germany and Austria, gets to grips with the problem

  A rare moment of Anglo-Soviet cooperation:Marshal Koniev and General Sir Dick McCreery award the cups at a race meeting at the Freudenau in Vienna

  Airlift: British Pilot Officer W. K. Sewell crashes his aircraft

  And there was plenty of fun to be had at the expense of the conquered: a drunken American officer sleeps through a striptease in his Darmstadt mess in April 1948

  Culture

  When Carl Zuckmayer revisited Austria, he was aware of the difficulty of distinguishing between the ‘liberated’ and the ‘occupied’ country. Despite control by four powers, Austria had its own administration, and licensing plays for performance was a mere formality. Despite that, the American authorities imposed a number of their own plays on Ernst Lothar, who was the author of the immensely successful novel Der Engel mit der Posaune which charted the rise of Nazism in Austria. Lothar (né Müller), who had spent the war years across the Atlantic with his wife, the actress Adrienne Gessner, was an excellent choice as American theatre chief in Vienna and he was given the job of denazifying the Viennese theatre. Naturally he felt bitter. He had told Zuckmayer that the Germans should not feel ‘pride’ for fifteen years. Zuckmayer commented to his wife Alice, ‘How good that he is only going to Austria, and to what is clearly a secondary position!’86

  Zuckmayer concluded that the Austrian film industry was in a state of ‘hopeless confusion’. The Americans had seized control of the studios in Sievering, in the suburbs of Vienna. Some of the old talent was still around, like the singer and actor Willy Forst, who had made Wiener Madeln (Viennese Girls) under the Nazis but never released it, because, so he said, he had wanted to save it for a non-Nazi Austria.87 The composer Egon Wellesz did not return before 1948, and then only for a visit. When he was asked why he had taken so long, he replied no one had asked him. As Wellesz’s biographer Franz Edler has said, he was ‘The pupil and confidant of Guido Adler and would have made an exemplary successor to him at Vienna University, where he had taught before the war, but after 1945 no one even mentioned the idea.’88 Pace the new mayor of Vienna, Theodor Körner, many people believed that their race was still a disadvantage in Austria. Even as late as April 1948, Alfred Rosenzweig could write to Ernst Krenek in the United States that the Jewish conductor Otto Klemperer had told him he was unable to procure work in Vienna or Salzburg, adding that ‘Nazis like Herr Böhm and the Oberstandartenführer Karajan and the like, have got the lot . . .’ This was despite Allied meddling in cultural matters, with the Soviets controlling the musical scene in Vienna and the Anglo-Americans making Salzburg their flagship.89

  Richard McCreery earned a place in the hearts of the old-fashioned Viennese by bringing back flat racing at the Freudenau track in the Prater, even though it lay in the Russian Sector. His action allowed the elite Jockey Club to revive its functions, although its clubhouse opposite the Albertina had been destroyed by a direct hit in the last weeks of the war. The British had begun by organising racing in the park at Schönbrunn, which lay within their own sector. It was not long before they asked the Soviets if they could use the old course in the Prater. McCreery gave the job of organising it to his chief veterinary officer Colonel Glynn Lloyd. On 27 October 1945 six events were planned. In March the following year funds were found to award prizes. The racing began on 14 April 1946.90

  As the Russians had had the run of Vienna for months before the Western Allies arrived, they had had the pick of the buildings. The French wanted a palace for their Institut Français. The building on offer was the Palais Coburg, the magnificent residence of the dukes of Coburg overlooking the Stadtpark from its bastion on the old city wall. For some reason the French thought it too remote and coveted the Palais Lobkowitz instead. This had once been the French embassy, and it was across the way from the Albertina in a much more central position. Béthouart succeeded in wresting it from the Soviets in the course of a reception for the twenty-eighth anniversary of the Red Army. The Russians received - and trashed - the Palais Coburg instead.

  Once the French were in possession of their cultural turf they could lay on concerts and exhibitions. Musicians like Jacques Thibaud and Ginette Neveu performed in its salons and lectures were delivered by the architect Le Corbusier and the artist Jean Lurçat. The Paris opera company performed Pelléas et Mélisande at the Theater an der Wien, the Staatsoper being bombed out. On 24 March 1947 the Comédie Française performed Tartuffe and Louis Jouvet’s company staged L’Ecole des femmes. The Viennese were also treated to French mannerists, fashions from Hermès, the Nabis, Cubism and more, while the treasures of Vienna’s museums were exposed at the Petit Palais in Paris.

  Soviet Zone

  The Soviet Union had always been in favour of occupying the more industrialised east of Austria. On 29 March 1945, as its troops began to cross the border from Hungary, however, it considered the southern regions of Styria and Carinthia as well. A good deal of German industry had been transferred there during the Anglo-American aerial bombardment and there was promise of rich plunder. Taking that portion too would weaken the British and strengthen the Soviet influence over Yugoslavia. As it was the Russians were able to take most of Styria before the British arrived, and help themselves to what they wanted in Graz. Not only was their arrival the signal for Tito’s partisans to enter Carinthia, the First Bulgarian Army moved up into positions in the wine region of South Styria around the small towns of Leibnitz, Radkersburg and Wildon.91

  With Styria temporarily in the Soviet Zone, virtually all Austria’s vineyards had fallen into Russian hands. Grape farmers saved what they could at their approach. In Gols in Burgenland the Stiegelmar family put the bottles in the well; the Osbergers in Strass in the Strassertal in Lower Austria resorted to the popular ruse of building a false wall to save their rarest wines. At Kloster Und near Krems, the Salomons put examples of the best vintages into the empty tuns, hoping that the Russians would be deterred by the hollow reverberations when they tapped the casks.92

  The Russian forces of occupation continued to be wild and uncontained. On Victory in Europe Day the Red Army celebrated by a new burst of looting in the course of which forty-four people lost their lives. Rape was part of daily life until 1947 and many women were riddled with VD and had no means of curing it. Burgenland suffered more than any other region of eastern Austria from the ravages of Russian solders. In Mattersburg the peasants posted guards to warn women when the Russians were about to come among them. And yet there were moments when the people had cause to thank them. For example, it was Soviet troops who built the pontoon bridge at Mautern on the Danube after the other crossings had been blown up, allowing communication to be restored between Mautern and the twin towns of Krems and Stein. It is still there, and locals call it ‘the Russian gift’.

  The Allied Zones were self-contained units and it was not easy to move from one to the other, and well nigh impossible to get from the Western Allies to the Soviet Zone. Schärf maintained that it was easier to go from the Marchfeld, north-east of Vienna, to Brno in Czechoslovakia than it was to reach Salzburg in the American Zone. From Salzburg it was a simple business travelling to Munich, but much harder to make it to Vienna. To some extent this was intentional: Stalin desired a buffer zone to his satellite states in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and wanted to keep the Western Allies away.93 The Russians kept a huge army in eastern Austria, based in their HQ in Bade
n. The command extended all the way to Romania, taking in Hungary.

  The camp at Mauthausen lay near Linz in the Soviet Zone. Many French deportees had perished there and Béthouart accompanied several pilgrimages made up of bereaved families. On 20 June 1947 he went with Figl and the education minister Hurdes, both of whom had been incarcerated in Mauthausen. The Russians were notoriously half-hearted in their pursuit of Nazis, and officially left it up to the Austrian civil authorities to hunt war criminals, although they were always keen to accuse the other Allies of sheltering them. In March 1947 they claimed that the British were protecting Nazis in Carinthia. They were still supporting Yugoslav claims to territory in the southern province.94 The Americans were keeping a record of Soviet anti-Nazi activity: in Krems the Russians rounded up 440 Nazis and put former Nazis to work clearing rubble in Gmünd and Wiener Neustadt.cs Half of Wiener Neustadt had been destroyed and there were outbreaks of spotted typhus.95