ABSTRACT
National socialism, given the experience of Germany during the period 1933-1945, has been so fused with the history of the Third Reich that it means, in contemporary parlance, Hitler, thereby encompassing all the baleful baggage carried by this abhorrent name. The fact that the term "national socialism" was embraced by diverse groups even before the First World War, endeavoring to strengthen progress toward socialism by linking it to rising popular political perspectives such as nationalism, has gone by the boards because, understandably, today no group wants to share a podium with the likes of Adolf Hitler. Nevertheless, the strength of both nationalism and socialism prior to the great war was such that it was only natural that these two currents find one another and link together across a broad spectrum of political consciousness. It is understandable too that Austria's Marxist socialists also allied themselves, either implicitly or explicitly, with nationalism. Therefore it is both appropriate and necessary in any discussion of political culture in old Austria to examine the links forged between socialism, social democracy, and nationalism in AustriaHungary and the ramifications of those links.
