The Army and the Police

The creation of a new Austrian army to replace the old imperial army was the work of the Social Democratic Party and Julius Deutsch, who was Secretary of State for Defence in the first two years of the republic. ¹ Deutsch argued that the army should be demobilised and replaced by a new volunteer republican army. Soldiers’ councils were encouraged in order to stop the formation of Red Guards under Communist influence who might well have spearheaded a serious attempt to instigate a revolution in Austria. Like Noske in Germany, Deutsch wanted to steer a middle path between left and right and at all costs preserve law and order. In the interests of preserving domestic peace and preventing a revolution both were prepared to co-operate closely with the old elites; Noske with the army high command, Deutsch with the police chief of Vienna, Dr Schober. Unlike Noske, Deutsch was determined that the officer corps of the republican army should be quite different from that of the old army, for he realised that a sympathetic army was essential to the success of a Social Democratic ‘revolution’ in Austria. The Red Guards were incorporated into the new Volkswehr (people’s army), much to the alarm of the bourgeoisie, and the new army was thus a strange mixture of revolutionaries, adventurers and even criminals, almost impossible to discipline and of dubious military value. Deutsch skilfully kept the Red Guards under control and jokingly remarked that they brought a little ‘change and life’ to the Austrian ‘revolution’. ² Unlike his colleague in Germany, Deutsch realised that the danger from reaction was far greater than the danger of bolshevism, and he was certainly not prepared to be the ‘Bluthund’ of the left as Noske was pleased to call himself. He was prepared to allow the formation of local defence units in the provinces, hoping that they would be in accordance with Social Democratic ideas of a militia; but in fact they were to form the nucleus of the paramilitary organisations such as the Heimwehr that were to plague the Social Democrats throughout the life of the republic.