Page 280 - Il 1919. Un’Italia vittoriosa e provata in un’Europa in trasformazione. Problematiche e prospettive - Atti 11-12 novembre 2019

278 Il 1919. Un’Italia vittoriosa e provata in un’Europa in trasformazione

During the short time of its existence, the Volkswehr had managed to get
through the difficult political conditions at the beginning of the First Republic –
the young republic was more or less spared from coups and insurgencies of the
extreme right and left which might have threatened its existence. Due to signifi-
cant interference by the Social Democratic Julius Deutsch as well as the strong
position of the soldiers’ councils, however, the Volkswehr did not correspond to
the characteristic of a strictly-led army but to that of a factor of internal political
power. By taking in a large number of unemployed and poor returnees from the
war, it definitely fulfilled a stabilizing function for a potentially revolutionary pre-
cariat (such as the integration of the radically revolutionary so-called “Red
Guards” as a formation of the Volkswehr). At the same time, the Social Demo-
cratic alignment of the Volkswehr made it an important instrument of power in
the hands of the government against a feared bourgeois “reaction” or Habsburg
restoration. In retrospect, it, therefore, seems all the more remarkable that the
Volkswehr was used as a part of the state’s array of forces against “hunger demon-
strations,” labour strikes and Communist riots. Besides, assistance services for
police and gendarmerie in the seizing of foodstuffs from farmers unwilling to
hand them overturned the Volkswehr into a hated symbol of the central state’s
claim to power outside of the cities. These operations ultimately encouraged the
raising of local self-defence units which subsequently developed into the con-
servative/rightist paramilitary formations of the Heimwehr.
As an outward state instrument of power, the Volkswehr was more than un-
suited, due to lack of material as well as the political interventions of Deutsch.
Even the future president Colonel Theodor Körner found words of criticism:
«Militarily the Volkswehr is equal to zero, immobile and only suited for military
police service, insofar as it complies with political and class interest. It already is
taking over the most unpleasant character of an armed class struggle». 22
While the occupation of parts of German Western Hungary by Freikorps failed
because of Deutsch’s refusal and was reserved for the Bundesheer in 1921, the
Volkswehr units in Southern Austria managed to scotch the territorial aspirations
of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia), although the bulk
of the fighting formations had been raised locally and the combat operations
had been directly led by the provincial commanders without a possibility of in-
tervention from Vienna. Securing the German-speaking territories of Bohemia,

22 ÖSTA/AdR NPA Karton Nr. 263 (Volkswehr) Letter from Colonel Körner to Colonel
Schneller on 23 May 1919