AUSTRIANS, NAZIS, AND THE SOUND OF MUSIC

By Todd Buell

It may surprise Americans to learn that the classic film and musical The Sound of Music is not well known in Austria, the country the story portrays. That is until recently. In February, the smaller of Vienna’s two opera houses, the Volksoper, premiered a version in German of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic. It is too early to know whether this showing of The Sound of Music will alter the country’s attitude toward the film, which today rests somewhere between indifference and hostility. It is also not clear yet whether interest in the musical will move beyond the confines of Vienna.

An American, thoroughly used to charming “happy endings” and the satisfaction of knowing that Julie Andrews will make it safely to Switzerland with the seven children (singing every step of the way), may find it odd that Austria does not embrace the musical that is the source of much of its foreign recognition. (The Austrian tourism board reports that three out of four Americans and Britons visit Austria just because they have seen the musical.) However, thinking about the story’s plot helps explain this oddity. Simply put, the storyline profiles the von Trapp family’s escape from the Nazis. To appreciate the musical’s relationship to Austria, one must understand the relationship between Nazism and Austria.
The country’s relationship to the genocidal movement that led Europe to war is not as straightforward as Germany’s. Though Hitler was born in Austria, he was obviously the leader of Germany and based his “Thousand Year Reich” there.

Austria may have had little choice in being overtaken by Hitler, but in hindsight its government has slowly accepted some responsibility for the infamous Anschluss that allowed Hitler to enter Vienna triumphantly on March 15, 1938. Judging merely from history, one could conclude that Austria indeed suffered from severe misfortune then but is not nearly as responsible for the Holocaust as Germany. However, to judge by what some professors and media have said or written over the last few years, one would think that Austria was the center of today’s neo-Nazi movement. Though this belief may, in fact, have been true at one point, my experience here and the consensus that I receive from Austrians is that this condition is no longer true.

I recall a professor of mine saying five years ago that he was boycotting Austria because the right-wing Freedom Party had been allowed to join the ruling coalition following elections in October of 1999. At the time, his were not the only condemnations. Resulting from then party chief Jörg Haider’s 1991 comments claiming sympathy with Hitler’s “employment policies,” the EU placed sanctions on Austria that lasted for nine months following the government’s installation. In an effort to appease the EU, Haider agreed to step down as party head. Following recent regional electoral defeats, Haider led other prominent politicians out of the Freedom Party to form a more moderate party known as the Alliance for Austria’s Future.

Anger at perceived residual Nazi sympathy did not begin with Haider’s election. In 1986, after allegations of Nazi collaboration were made against former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, Austrians voted him as their federal president (a mostly symbolic position, but a job whose primary role is to represent the country at official ceremonies). He went on to serve a full six-year term.

Waldheim was accused of taking part in mass atrocities in Eastern Europe in the 1940s. In 1988, one of Austria’s leading newspapers, Die Presse (The Press), did a thorough investigation of his activities during the Second World War. They concluded that though he did not commit war crimes per se, he was aware of war crimes being committed and did nothing to stop their happening. In an interview with the newspaper following the report’s release, Waldheim argued that his and his family’s survival depended upon his following orders. Waldheim essentially said that though he lauded those who resisted, he also wanted Austrians and the world to understand that some people did not have a choice to resist because of the pressure that they or their families were under, and he asked for forgiveness for his actions during that period.

The consensus inside my part of Austria is that Waldheim was unfairly made the victim of domestic political mudslinging. He had no choice but be a member of the Nazi army, and as I have heard asked here often, “Could he have been the head of the UN for so long if he had really been a war criminal?”

In Maine, I recall a member of my church in Southwest Harbor, upon hearing that I would be working in Austria, informing my mother that Austria is a “conservative” country. Though he may not have meant it in this way, “conservative” could be construed to mean holding extreme right-wing beliefs or being sympathetic to Nazis. The country is “conservative” in some ways. It is proud of its imperial past and, as a result, supports art and music generously. There is also more formality in daily interactions than there is in the States; however, the country is not home to a large neo-Nazi population.

Unfortunately, the media only focuses on the extreme statements, such as Haider’s aforementioned comment and a more recent comment from the rising speaker of the upper house of parliament. This politician, Siegfried Kampfl, also of the Freedom Party, called those who deserted the Nazi Army in the Second World War “comrade murderers” and described the removal of Nazis from power after the war a “persecution of Nazis.” I have seen no evidence to suggest that there is even a sizable minority of Austrians who share his opinions. Even though by Austrian constitutional law, Kampfl cannot be forced out of his position, it is likely that he will be “forced,” as Trent Lott was in 2002 following his infamous prosegregation comments at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party, to resign his leadership position.

The rise of both Waldheim and the Freedom Party to power in Austria likely spawned a belief in the Western media that Austria is a cauldron of Nazi sympathizers. One can see this belief implied in a report describing the premier of The Sound of Music in Vienna. The AP reporter, George Jahn, notes, “Last year, a poll showed that more than a third of Austrians believe the Nazi era was in some ways positive.” The poll numbers are given as indisputable fact. There is no discussion of breakdown under age group or socioeconomic status. It is worth noting that nearly everybody whom I asked about this survey believes that the poll numbers, though perhaps true at one time, are not true anymore, and if true, are only true among older people.

Today’s Austria is a country in which Jörg Haider no longer makes comments that can be construed as pro-Nazi. Haider comes across as an aggressive and stubborn man, but he is also a savvy politician who knows what voters want to hear. From what I have seen of Haider, in his role as governor of this province, he occasionally says outrageous things, but nothing hateful.

For example, he infamously said in December of 2003, after the arrest of Saddam Hussein, that George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon were war criminals on par with Iraq’s former tyrant. He also opposes the implementation of an Austrian Supreme Court ruling requiring that road signs be posted in Slovenian, in addition to German, near Austria’s border with Slovenia (a part of the former Yugoslavia that lies on Austria’s south-eastern border). Finally, he supports the tightening of immigration laws, thus making it harder for people to earn political asylum in Austria.

However, to extrapolate from these examples that Haider is an extremist or a neo-Nazi would be an exaggeration. Rather he is a keen populist, or perhaps demagogue, who senses the desires and wants of the people and attempts to provide for them. To paraphrase a Haider campaign rally last year, the people want jobs, therefore he brings international technology companies to Carinthia. He also attracted discount airlines, Ryanair and HLX, to the Klagenfurt airport, thus connecting Carinthia with destinations in England, Ireland, and Germany.

If Haider still does hold any admiration for der Führer, he is too adept a politician to show it. Just as people want jobs and limits on immigration, they also do not want to hear statements expressing pride in one of Austria’s darkest eras. Evidence of this distancing from a shameful history, and perhaps the leftward moving of the body politic, can be found in recent regional elections in the provinces of Styria (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s home) and lower Austria. In each election, voters clobbered the Freedom Party so mercilessly that it held an emergency summit to assess its purpose and future, which resulted in the previously discussed splitting of the party.

It is perhaps Austria’s confused history during the Second World War that prompts some in the United States to believe mistakenly that it is a center of neo-Nazi activities. Unlike Germany, whose guilt and obligation to pay reparations has always been clear, Austria was able for years to ignore its role in the development of the Nazis. Though its history is more clouded than Germany’s, for one to refer to Austria wholly as a victim of the Third Reich, as America did in 1943, would not be accurate.

Rather there was a concerted fascist movement in Austria that first assassinated an elected chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, in July of 1934, and then forced out his successor in 1938, paving the way for Hitler’s march into Vienna. As Austrian journalist Robert Menasse states in his book, Erklär mir Österreich (Explain Austria to Me), Austria is the only country in Europe to have had two bona fide fascist dictators in its history.

It is, of course, this history that is the background to The Sound of Music. The musical is based on the true story of a decorated admiral, Baron von Trapp, who fought for the Kaiser yet would not serve under Hitler. According to his daughter, he wept when Hitler entered Austria, proclaiming the Anschluss to be the death of his beloved homeland.

The von Trapps, however, in real life and in the cinema, were courageous, fleeing first to Switzerland and then to America. They did not pliantly submit to intimidation with right arms extended in salute. It is likely that their story has never resonated in Austria the way it has in America because many Austrians wince at seeing an example of courage that they, or more realistically their parents or grandparents, did not show in resisting Hitler. Though it is wrong to blame those who caved in to the Nazis when under unimaginable pressure, it is also proper to praise and acknowledge those who took grave risks and refused to take part in the looming atrocities.

If The Sound of Music continues to sell out in Vienna and the Freedom Party’s most virulent right-wingers continue to drift into irrelevance, it will be clear that Austria will have completely removed its regrettable legacy of Anschluss, Waldheim, and condoning comments sympathetic to Hitler. Then, it is to be hoped that Austria’s undeserved reputation as a country of unreformed hinterland (originally a German word that literally means, “behind land”) hillbillies will change. That would be a great occasion for Austrians to sing through the hills.  

 

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