The End of the Dream: the Failure of Bauer’s Foreign Policy

In order to receive deliveries of aid from the West, Bauer oriented his foreign policy towards the ideas of the Entente, although in this connection the insistence on union with Germany was not very helpful. Bauer argued that without food aid German-Austria would run the danger of slipping into Bolshevism. On the domestic front he gave similar warnings that without food deliveries rule by soviets was imminent. Unrest in April and June 1919 led the British food commissioner to state ‘that unrest in Vienna will be punished by the Entente with death by starvation’.

The core of Bauer’s foreign policy remained union with Germany. Like many other leading representatives of the republic he worked on the basis of the assessment that the new state of German-Austria was not economically viable. ‘If union does not come about then Austria will become an impoverished peasant state, in which it will not be worth making politics.’ Otto Bauer was convinced that a socialist society could be realised only within the framework of a Pan-German republic with a strong industry and a strong working class: ‘That is why the fight for socialism must be fought as a fight for union with Germany.’ Thinking back to the Germany of Marx and Engels and dreaming of a powerful working class in a united Greater Germany appeared more attractive that ‘a life of smallness and pettiness’.

The positions of the dominant actors and states in post-war politics meant that the realisation of this project would turn out to be completely unrealistic. The victorious Entente powers, especially the French government, were not prepared to accept the territorial and politico-economic strengthening of a defeated Germany. Nor did the new German government show any interest in a union with German-Austria for tactical reasons, because to do so would have weakened its position in connection with the peace negotiations. In addition the leading representatives of the Christian Socialists showed increasingly fierce opposition to Bauer’s policy of union with Germany. As a consequence Bauer initially sought economic union with Germany in the form of a currency union, but this was likewise a failure.

Deeply disappointed, Bauer resigned from his post in July 1919. At the negotiations in Saint-Germain in July 1919 his role had to be taken over by Chancellor Renner. What stuck to Bauer was the accusation that his policy had prepared the ground for union with Germany in the form of the Anschluss in 1938.

Translation: Leigh Bailey