Hirtenberger arms affair

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A large-scale arms smuggling from Italy via Austria to Hungary in 1933, which indirectly led to the fall of the First Republic , is referred to as the Hirtenberg arms affair .

Offense

On January 8, 1933, the Arbeiter-Zeitung published that around 40 railway wagons with large quantities of rifles and machine guns had arrived at the Hirtenberg cartridge factory . There the weapons - former stocks of the Austro-Hungarian army that the Italians had taken from the Austrians in 1918 - were to be modernized. Most of the weapons were to be transported on to Hungary, while a small part of the weapons were intended for the Heimwehr ("Wiener Heimatschutz"). In total, there were 84,000 rifles and 980 machine guns.

background

After Hitler came to power in 1933, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini strove to create a counterweight to Germany. This policy included the support of the authoritarian-ruled Hungary by Miklos Horthy and the strengthening of the fascist forces in Austria. The weapons smuggling that was blown up would have served to rearm both Hungary and the Home Guard.

In June 1932, Heimwehr leader Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg asked Mussolini to deliver weapons. Fritz Mandl , the owner of the Hirtenberger weapons factory, was a close friend and generous financier of Starhemberg.

Foreign policy consequences

Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia , which were allied by the Little Entente , were particularly threatened by a possible rearmament in Hungary . France - which supported the Little Entente - and Great Britain protested sharply after the affair became known. The two victorious powers of the First World War saw in the arms smuggling a serious violation of the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon . The federal government under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss rejected these allegations in a reply note. The result was an even greater alienation between Austria and the democratic western powers and an increasingly stronger bond between Austria and Italy.

Domestic consequences

The Hirtenberg arms affair hardened the fronts between the left and right political camps in Austria and indirectly led to the so-called self - elimination of parliament .

On February 22, 1933 it became known that the general director of the Austrian Federal Railways Egon Seefehlner had offered the chairman of the railway workers' union Berthold König 150,000 schillings as a bribe . This sum was supposed to induce the union chief to persuade his railway workers to transport the weapons to Hungary after all. The Social Democrats informed Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss of the attempted bribe, whereupon he was forced to dismiss Seefehlner.

On February 16, the General Directorate of the Federal Railways announced that it would be paying the wages of the railway workers in three installments in March. As a result, on March 1, the railway workers went on a two-hour demonstration strike. On March 4th, a meeting of the Austrian National Council took place in which the railway strike was debated. Dollfuss used the failure of the rules of procedure that occurred during this meeting to shut down parliament. This was the starting shot for the establishment of the Austro-Fascist dictatorship based on the corporate state model.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Francis Ludwig Carsten : Fascism in Austria. From Schönerer to Hitler. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-7705-1408-4 , p. 197 [1]
  2. ↑ Gun repairs in Hirtenberg. In:  Wiener Zeitung , January 10, 1933, p. 1 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz
  3. ^ Article  in:  Wiener Zeitung , January 12, 1933, p. 2, column 3, third from last paragraph (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz
  4. Walter Kleindel (ed.): The Chronicle of Austria. (Illustr.) Chronik Verlag, Dortmund 1984 [2]
  5. Otto Leichter : Between two dictatorships. Austria's revolutionary socialists 1934 - 1938. Europa Verlag, Vienna-Frankfurt-Zurich 1968, p. 67 [3]
  6. Die kleine Entente .. In:  Wiener Zeitung , March 3, 1933, p. 4 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz
  7. ^ The leave of absence of General Director Dr. Seefehlner .. In:  Wiener Zeitung , February 25, 1933, p. 1 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz
  8. To Austria's people! In:  Wiener Zeitung , March 8, 1933, p. 1 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz

literature

  • Dieter A. Binder: The scandal at the “right” time. The Hirtenberg arms affair in 1933 at the interface between domestic and foreign policy. In: Michael Gehler , Hubert Sickinger (ed.): Political affairs and scandals in Austria. From Mayerling to Waldheim. Kulturverlag, Thaur et al. 1995, ISBN 3-85400-005-7 , pp. 278-294.