Page 514 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1154 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Chancellor Schuschnigg, facing the overwhelming German superiority, decided to
avoid any military action against the invasion, so Austria disappeared without de-
fending its country. The Austrian Defense Forces were quickly integrated into the
German forces and participated in the following campaigns.
4) The Second World War destroyed Europe and killed millions of people who were
shot in combat or murdered in concentration camps. After the conquest of huge parts
of Europe until 1943 German forces fought, in spite of massive losses of personnel
and material, until May 1945. Unlike in the previous wars, the civilian population
was directly involved in combat. Bombings hit the main cities, women produced
shells and other armament and even the youth, organized in pre-military formations,
was dispatched into combat. In 1945 admiral Karl Dönitz finally surrendered and
ended the Second World War in Europe. Austria was completely destroyed and near-
ly everyone had been more or less involved in the “total war”.
In the first years after 1955 Austrian society did not associate the armed forces with
security and reliance but – thinking of the experienced lost wars – with destruction and
insecurity. Until the 1970s even veterans of the Second World War lost confidence in the
armed forces, because the defense mechanism was well known by them and connected
with the lost Second World War: The Austrian army was equipped like other European
armies but continued the Second-World-War strategy – just with lower proportions. It
was a general agreement that a small country like Austria was not able to put as much
money and efforts to its defense as bigger countries. The restrictions of the neutral-
ity even forbid to share some work with other western states. The continued usage of
“Wehrmacht”-strategies is mostly explained by the personal experience of most of the
high-ranking officers in the 1960s and 1970s. They had earned combat experience dur-
ing 1939 and 1945 in the German forces and just continued the previous leaned and
experienced strategy.
The late 1960s marked the lowest point of Austria’s aim to maintain strong defense
forces. The youth uprisings around 1968 caused a decline of motivation of draftees and
cadets. In 1969 the Austrian armed forces held a maneuver called “Bärentatze”. During
this role play, tank troops attacked the defending infantry. The tank troops were told to
attack sowjet-style and the infantry should stop or at least slow down the attack. Sur-
prisingly, contrary to most expectations, the attack turned out to be a complete success.
The tank troops literally overran the infantry, which should have defended the territory.
Since the maneuver was public, the population saw the bad performance or read about it
in newspapers. Even generals admitted after the maneuver, that the defense doctrine was
not up to date. The whole situation seemed nearly hopeless. The society did not believe
in the success of their defense forces. The armed forces knew about the handicap of the
defense doctrine and the youth was not eager to join the armed forces. Even the military
academy had real problems of recruiting new cadets for the officers training courses.
A group among the already popular general Emil Spannocchi finally reformed the
Austrian defense doctrine during the 1970s. Because of the complete lack of positive
th
memories they did not refer to the 20 century at all. Instead they used Asian examples,
mostly Mao and Giap, to point out that the resistance against superior aggressor was