ABSTRACT
The Habsburg emperors successfully centralized and disciplined the Austrian nobility after 1718. A standing army and a central bureaucracy assumed the nobility's military and administrative functions. Mercantilist policies had to be adopted to create the surplus needed to pay the new bureaucracies. The separation of Lower Austria and Vienna in 1921 was a consequence of the western länders' apprehensions that they would be majorized by the eastern superprovince. The conservatives hoped that they could domesticate the Social Democratic Party more easily if it was locked into the Vienna cage. Under the Nazi regime, the city government hoped to turn Vienna into the largest urban center in the world. This project, however, never materialized, partly because of Hitler's bitter hatred for the town that had betrayed his hopes for a career as a painter. Hitler's writings are full of outrage and vilification against Vienna's "Jewish" and "Slav" character.
