Chronicles the lives of Kurt von Schuschnigg, son of the former Austrian Chancellor, and his family during the time of the Anschluss and how their faith helped them survive these difficult times.

Using evidence gathered in Europe and the United States, Evan Bukey crafts a nuanced portrait of popular opinion in Austria, Hitler's homeland, after the country was annexed by Germany in 1938. He demonstrates that despite widespread dissent, discontent,

“A detailed and moving picture of how the Habsburgs suffered under the Nazi regime…scrupulously sourced, well-written, and accessible.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) It was during five youthful years in Vienna that Adolf Hitler's obsession with the Habsburg Imperial family became the catalyst for his vendetta against a vanished empire, a dead archduke, and his royal orphans. That hatred drove Hitler's rise to power and led directly to the tragedy of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The royal orphans of Archduke Franz Ferdinand—offspring of an upstairs-downstairs marriage that scandalized the tradition-bound Habsburg Empire—came to personify to Adolf Hitler, and others, all that was wrong about modernity, the twentieth century, and the Habsburgs’ multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were outsiders in the greatest family of royal insiders in Europe, which put them on a collision course with Adolf Hitler. As he rose to power Hitler's hatred toward the Habsburgs and their diverse empire fixated on Franz Ferdinand's sons, who became outspoken critics and opponents of the Nazi party and its racist ideology. When Germany seized Austria in 1938, they were the first two Austrians arrested by the Gestapo, deported to Germany, and sent to Dachau. Within hours they went from palace to prison. The women in the family, including the Archduke's only daughter, Princess Sophie Hohenberg, declared their own war on Hitler. Their tenacity and personal courage in the face of betrayal, treachery, torture, and starvation sustained the family during the war and in the traumatic years that followed. Through a decade of research and interviews with the descendants of the Habsburgs, scholar James Longo explores the roots of Hitler's determination to destroy the family of the dead Archduke—and uncovers the family members' courageous fight against the Führer.

When Hitler marched into Austria in March 1938, the country's Jewish population numbered nearly 200,000. Those Jews who were able to find refuge in neutral countries were safe; those who fled to countries subsequently overrun by the Nazis were eventually hunted down. Between 1938 and 1945, more than 50,000 Austrian Jews were deported; no more than 2,000 returned. The estimate of Jews caught by the Nazis in neighboring countries is 17,000. Therefore, more than one-third of Austria's Jewish population were killed during this period. After extensive research of the records at the various documentation centers and using primary as well as secondary sources, Schneider relates how Jews lived in Austria until either flight or deportation; she follows the transports to their destination and, using the fate of family and friends as examples, describes the experiences in the camps, as well as the homecoming of the survivors. In the process, Schneider provides the most detailed account available on the fate of exiles and victims from Austria. She concludes with a complete list of all camp survivors. A gripping historical record for all students of the Holocaust and modern European history.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1948.

The years of Chancellors Dollfuss and Schuschnigg's authoritarian governments (1933/34-1938) have been denounced as "Austrofascism" from the left, or defended as a Christian corporate state ("Stndestaat") from the right. During this period, Austria was in a desperate struggle to maintain its national independence vis--vis Hitler's Germany, a struggle that ultimately failed. In the end, the Nazis invaded and annexed Austria (Anschluss"). Volume 11 of the Contemporary Austrian Studies series stays away from these heated historiographical debates and looks at economic, domestic, and international politics sine ira et studio. Timothy Kirk opens with an assessment of "Austrofascism" in light of recent discourse on interwar European fascism. Three scholars from the Economics University of Vienna analyze the macroeconomic climate of the 1930s: Hansjrg Klausinger the "Vienna School's" theoretical contributions to end the "Great Depression"; Gerhard Senft the economic policies of the Stndestaat; and Peter Berger the financial aid from the League of Nations. Jens Wessels delves into the microeconomic arena and presents case studies of leading Austrian businesses and their performance during the depression. Jim Miller looks at Dollfuss, the agrarian reformer. Alexander Lassner and Erwin Schmidl deal with the context of the international arena and Austria's desperate search for protection against Nazi Anschluss-pressure and military preparedness against foreign aggression. In a comparativist essay Megan Greene compares the policies of Austria's Haider and Italy's Berlusconi and recent EU responses to threats from the Right. The "FORUM" looks at various recent historical commissions in Austria dealing with Holocaust-era assets and their efforts to provide restitution to victims of Nazism. Two review essays, by Evan Burr Bukey and Hermann Freudenberger, survey recent scholarly literature on Austria(ns) during World War II. This addition to the Contemporary Austrian Studies series will be welcomed by political scientists, historians and scholars with a strong interest in European affairs. Gnter Bischof is professor of history and executive director of Center Austria at the University of New Orleans. Anton Pelinka is professor of political science at the University of Innsbruck and a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan in 2001/02. Alexander Lassner completed his Ph.D. at Ohio State University with his dissertation, "Peace at Hitler's Price," on Austria's international position before the "Anschluss."

Evan Burr Bukey explores the experience of intermarried couples - marriages with Jewish and non-Jewish partners - and their children in Vienna after Germany's seizure of Austria in 1938. These families coped with changing regulations that disrupted family life, pitted relatives against each other, and raised profound questions about religious, ethnic, and national identity. Bukey finds that although intermarried couples lived in a state of fear and anxiety, many managed to mitigate, delay, or even escape Nazi sanctions. Drawing on extensive archival research, his study reveals how hundreds of them pursued ingenious strategies to preserve their assets, to improve their 'racial' status, and above all to safeguard the position of their children. It also analyzes cases of intermarried partners who chose divorce as well as persons involved in illicit liaisons with non-Jews. Jews and Intermarriage in Nazi Austria concludes that although most of Vienna's intermarried Jews survived the Holocaust, several hundred Jewish partners were deported to their deaths and children of such couples were frequently subjected to Gestapo harassment.

Alone Against Hitler tells the lesser-known but pivotal story of former Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg. As one of the first leaders to defy Adolf Hitler during the buildup to WWII, his story is of lasting importance. Though young and untested upon entering office, von Schuschnigg courageously rejected the rising tide of Austrian Nazism, insisting on equal rights and respect for the Jewish minority. Jack Bray surveys the geopolitical conditions in Austria during the march to war, highlighting von Schuschnigg’s valiant four-year struggle to prevent his nearly defenseless small nation from being taken over from within by unrelenting, violent Austrian Nazis. Von Schuschnigg’s encounters with Hitler and other central characters of 1930s Germany (Himmler, Hess, Ribbentrop, Hindenburg, Goring, and Papen, as well as their ally, Mussolini) are recounted in scenes of high drama and vivid detail. For his daring defiance, and his refusal of offers to flee the Nazi invasion, von Schuschnigg paid a dear price—seven years in Nazi captivity and abuse to the point of breakdown. In one of Hitler’s final acts from the bunker where he would ultimately take his own life, the trembling fuhrer ordered von Schuschnigg to be killed. Just as von Schuschnigg was set to be executed, with the war at its eleventh hour, he received a near-miraculous deliverance. Although Kurt von Schuschnigg’s name may be unfamiliar now, he was for a brief moment at the center of world history, even gracing the cover of Time magazine in 1938. Alone Against Hitler profiles an oft-forgotten but crucially important figure in WWII history, celebrating the legacy of a man who bravely fought against evil.