ABSTRACT
The events of 12 February 1934 were a sudden and violent response to an immediate situation in Linz, but the outcome was determined by factors which had been slowly developing. The Social Democrats, forced into action by their comrades in Linz, were singularly ill prepared. They had long been paralysed by the fatalism of Austro-Marxist ideology, by a principled rejection of violence, and by a belief in the policy of the ‘lesser evil’. The official policy of the party was acceptable to many, for the social consequences of the depression, particularly in a country with an economy as weak as Austria’s, were such that few were willing to risk a radical policy. The radikalinskis were either men with nothing to lose, those who had suffered months of unemployment and saw no hope of any improvement, or those who were convinced that Austria was going the same way as Germany and that it was madness to support Dollfuss as the only barrier against National Socialism.
