Austrian independence movement

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The Austrian Independence Movement (ÖUB), from November 1943 also the Austrian Freedom Front (ÖFF), was the name of a partisan group in Styria that offered armed resistance against the rule of the National Socialists in the Leoben - Donawitz - Eisenerz area . It originally emerged from the workers in the Upper Styrian industrial area, but later saw itself as a non-partisan group, which was mainly joined by Austrian armed forces deserters . There was also contact with the Yugoslav partisans through Slovenian foreign workers . In the literature it is also referred to as the Leoben-Donawitz group.

Emergence

The group started out around the Leoben communists Sepp Filz, Anton Wagner, Simon Trevisani, Ferdinand Andrejowitsch and Max Muchitsch. They undertook clandestine resistance activities and established contacts, for example through Slovenian foreign workers in Leoben and Yugoslav partisans. From the end of 1942, when the population began to have doubts about a victory for the German Reich as a result of the Battle of Stalingrad , they began to circulate leaflets in which they called for resistance to National Socialism.

At the beginning of 1943 partisans with whom the group had had contact were arrested in Slovenia. Fearing that they would now be discovered, the members of the group went underground, left Leoben in April 1943 and joined the Osvobodilna Fronta in Slovenia . When the Moscow Declaration was published at the beginning of November , in which the Allies supported a new independent Austria, but at the same time demanded active participation by the Austrian population, Sepp Filz and Anton Wagner went back to Leoben. There they established contacts with farmers and workers in order to form a network for the armed struggle. Muchitsch and Andrejowitsch were also able to establish connections with individuals in offices and authorities in the region. In the meantime, his fellow campaigner Silvester Heider took care of the prisoner of war aid and was able to free three Slovenes from the Trofaiach forced labor camp , who then joined the partisans.

Armed fight

In the spring of 1944 the group, now called the Austrian Freedom Front, took up armed struggle, carried out attacks on railway lines and thus interrupted ammunition deliveries, for example in April near Diemlach , in Auwald at the Jassing pass near St. Michael and in Großreifling . At the same time, further leaflet campaigns were carried out. Max Muchitsch, who feared arrest by the Gestapo , now went underground and actively joined the partisans in April 1944. In the summer of 1944, however, there were setbacks. The partisan group's first deaths occurred in skirmishes with the National Socialist security authorities. In addition, some members were carelessly arrested by the Gestapo in the city, which uncovered other supporters and sympathizers. More than a hundred people were arrested, over 40 of whom later died in concentration camps . The group then withdrew to the mountains in a woodcutter's hut on the Archnerthörl on the Thalerkogel. Contacting partisans from Kapfenberg failed due to the strict closure of the area. The group was then tracked down by a Gestapo patrol, and Silvester Heider and two other resistance fighters were killed in the subsequent firefight. The rest could withdraw. After another attack on the southern runway near the Mallinger mill in Leoben, the armed struggle was given up for the time being and the partisans who went into hiding had to spend the winter of 1944/45 in the open air.

The group was only able to become active again in spring, when the 3rd Ukrainian Front of the Red Army under Marshal Tolbuchin was already approaching Styria via Hungary. The partisans began again with leaflet campaigns in which they called on the population to stop supporting the Nazi rulers. Literally they demanded:

  • 1. Fight with all means available to us, including the use of weapons, against the fascist occupiers and their Austrian accomplices, who deprived us of all rights and made us slaves of a fascist masterclique through deceit, lies and exploitation of our good nature as well as through the use of the most brutal terror.
  • 2. Establishment of a free, independent, democratic Austria that is willing to live in friendship with all peoples, combats all racial and national hatred and ensures freedom of religion and expression.
  • 3. Expropriation of heavy industry, large estates and fascist institutions, their nationalization or division.

Only in the last days of the war before the Allied advance did the group take action again. Max Muchitsch and Sepp Filz were involved in the occupation of the Donawitz steelworks on May 8, 1945. The NS factory security was disarmed, preventing the facilities from being blown up. On the same day a tripartite committee of Communists, Socialists and Christian Socialists was formed, which took over provisional power in Leoben. The partisan Sepp Filz was the delegate of the KPÖ.

A few weeks later, on July 24, 1945, Styria came under British administration under the Allied Agreement. The members of the partisan movement were then ousted from political life and returned to their civil professions. Max Muchitsch published his memories of this time in 1966 in the text “ Die Partisanengruppe Leoben-Donawitz ”.

meaning

In addition to numerous resistance groups such as those around Gustav Pfeiler in Eastern Styria, there were active partisan movements in only four regions in Austria. These were the group around Sepp Plieseis in the Salzkammergut and those around Wolfgang Pfaundler in the Tyrolean Ötztal , as well as the Carinthian partisans and the Upper Styrian group around Leoben. All of these partisan groups played a major role in the seizure of power in their regions during the last days of the war. The Leoben group was already active before that through armed acts of sabotage. Nevertheless, it is the least documented in literature to this day, since in the immediate post-war period and in the early Cold War, it was above all the communist partisans that fell into political sideline.

literature

  • Heinz Kühnrich, Franz-Karl Wärme: Germans with Tito's partisans 1941-1945. GNN-Verlag, Schkeuditz 1997, ISBN 3929994836 . review
  • Holzer Willibald: The Austrian battalions in the association of the NOV i POJ. the combat group Avantgarde / Styria; the partisan group Leoben-Donawitz; the Communist Party of Austria in militant political resistance, Volume I, Vienna 1971.

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