Page 288 - Il 1919. Un’Italia vittoriosa e provata in un’Europa in trasformazione. Problematiche e prospettive - Atti 11-12 novembre 2019

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

form of braids and rosettes on the shoulder straps; junior NCOs wore upper
arm chevrons as rank insignia. In doing so, the uniform was more or less mod-
elled after the Reichswehr. To keep some form of Austrian distinctiveness, the
tunic was tailored not after the German but after the Austrian cut, with dark
green collars and cuffs. 41

Summary and assessment
Examining the historical development of Austria’s “armed forces” during the
phase from November 1918 until the National Defence Act of 1920, one can al-
ready recognise those distinctive elements which would not only characterise the
years before 1938 but would also be important for the Bundesheer of the Second
Republic in the future. The main purpose of the new army can be identified with-
out a doubt as keeping up orders in the interior by so-called “assistance opera-
tions.” This focus, consciously taken over from the Volkswehr by Deutsch, was
supposed to set a republican-democratic potential for violence against the po-
tential threats of either attempted Communist coups or a possible restoration by
monarchist forces. The problem of traditional border protection or rather a mil-
itary occupation of territories proclaimed to be a part of national territory was
less of a military but rather a foreign-political focus of the government. That the
armed forces eventually became foreign-political instruments of power during
the fighting for the southern border and definitely in the course of the “land
grab” of Burgenland has to be viewed as a special case. During the fighting
against the armed forces of the new southern Slavic state in Carinthia and Styria
this became a constitutional problem, as encountering Serbian troops in battle
meant fighting a member of the Entente. The subsequently long hesitation of
the government in Vienna to order an all-out deployment of the Volkswehr
thereby becomes understandable – ultimately the bulk of the units were locally
raised volunteer formations. The proposal by the Volkswehr’s commander-in-chief,
Adolf von Boog, to circumvent the constitutional problem by the deployment
of Freikorps (for the occupation of German Western Hungary), would have
meant splitting up and the possible creation of a “reactionary” component within

41 Steinböck Erwin, Die Uniformen des Bundesheeres. In: Das Bundesheer der Ersten Republik
1918 – 1938. Materialien zum Vortragszyklus 1990 HGM/Gesellschaft für österreichische
Heereskunde, Vienna 1990, p. 149f.