AUSTRIA THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE IDEA

That the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy led not only to calls forAnschlusswith Germany, but to a persistent discussion about Austria’s separate course, has frequently been overshadowed by two factors: the jubilation that greeted Hitler’s entry to Vienna in 1938; and the sharp, sustained ideological division within Austria itself. The second factor, symbolized by the short Civil War of 1934, and the subsequent imposition of authoritarian rule along fascist-inspired lines until 1938, resoundingly informs historiography on the First Austrian Republic. It rightly stresses political division between Left and Right, and a weakly rooted sense of Austria possessing a