AUSTRIA NOW

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6543, 23 July 1948, Page 6

AUSTRIA NOW

FOREIGNERS ALWAYS WELCOME ADDRESS BY NEW ZEALANDER The following is the script of a broadcast address given by Mr J. W. G. Duncan M.B.E. who is a New l Zealander. Mr Duncan was Controller of Exit and Entry British element Allied Commission on Austria. Mr Duncan said I have just returned from spending three years in Vienna with the British element of the. Allied Commission for Austria and I thought you might be interested to hear something of conditions there, particularly in view of the close parallel with conditions in Berlin, where we seem to be having a crisis' at the moment.

Both Germany and Austria were divided by agreement between Governments into British, American, French and Russian Zones of Occupation. This is probably well known to you, but what some of you may not realise is that Berlin and Vienna are inside the Russian Zohes, something in the region of 100' miles from the border of the Western Zone. No agreement was made laying down a neutral corridor to these capitals and it was simply arranged that the Western Powers should have right of transit over certain roads and railway lines leading to the capitals and also the use of certain air corridors.

You may like to hear something of the conditions under which members of the commissions work. In Vienna the offices of the British element have, until recently, been in Schonbrun, the wonderful summer palace of the Emperor of Austria. This palace has been described as a masterpiece of renaissance architecture. What that means I wouldn’t know. But it’s a series of lofty rooms with wonderful plaster mouldings, with the ceilings and walls painted in a way that I hitherto had thought existed only in Italy, and with attractive and valuable furniture. I worked in the room in which Napoleon’s only son died. They now work in a very modern barracks built for the S.S. and therefore, as the house agents say, “replete with every modern convenience.” Most of us had our wives and families out with us and lived in a very pleasant suburb. Altogether we had no reason to complain, but life was not the orgy of luxury which I have sometimes seen painted by the press. In particular, the British were very careful not to eat any local food since, as I shall tell you later, Austria for most of the time has been on the verge of starvation. We therefore had army rations, largely preserved, but supplemented by a certain amount of} fresh produce, brought in from Italy and having a tendency to go bad on the way. We only had the Naafi to shop at so couldn’t buy much to add variety to our diet. As for quantity, we had about the same to eat as the British population. Moreover, everything Was pretty expensive and one couldn’t afford to make use of the very fine facilities that were available to us. I myself think the whole thing was rather ingenious. I was receiving a LieutenantColotfel’s pay, which is pretty generous. But I had to pay a pretty large rent, even for England; for my house, and the use of clubs, cinemas and so on, had to be paid for through the nose. All this was stopped out of my pay and there wasn’t much paid into the bank at Home at the end of the month. But the renlt of my house and of the club, and the wages and heating of the club, and the price of railway tickets for my family, and so on and so forth, were all paid for by the Austrian Government as an occupation cost, hence the British taxpayer practically got my services free, except for the cost of my food and few items like that. I have visited Berlin and conditions there are very similar. Both in Germany and in Austria there are pleasant holiday places in the British Zone to which one can go for leave. Altogether my family and I had a very pleasant time there, but, as you see, not a more pleasant time than we could have hoped to have at Home.

I think our sympathy should go out to the hard worked staff of the British element in Berlin in the extremely worrying time that they must be going through at present. Now I should like to tell you some more about Austria: because in the three years I was there I conceived a warm affection for it and for its people. It’s a small country, and it was the fashion between the wars to say that since Austria had received its new frontiers at the Treaty of Versailles it was too small to support Vienna, (which holds 1J million out of the 4i million of the population) and that it was bound to fail. This is not so, Austria has very great natural wealth in the form of coal and iron deposits and oil; moreover, like New Zealand, it has almost unlimited potentialities for hydro electric power. I say “Like New Zealand,” and I found the country very like New Zealand in every way. As I drove from Vienna down to the British Zone, through the deep valleys with rushing rivers full of sizeable trout, and tree clad slopes, and over passes with hair-pin bends, I kept thinking “how strongly this reminds me of the drive from Auckland to Wellington.” Now what about the people? Before I went to Vienna my ideas of it were a mixture of the gay Vienna of “Congress Dances;” and the stories of starving countesses W’alking the streets' between the wars.

While I was there my ideas of them must have been coloured by the fact that for the whole three years they were semi-starved. Many of you must have fought against them in the war and, while not finding them particularly good soldiers, must be saying to yourselves that they are Germans and that the only good German is a dead German. Well, in the sense you mean it they are not Germans. They are, as it were, cousins of the Germans, and at a time When Hitler whs . the rising jidwer in Eiirdpe and when n<s one

e]'se was willing to lift a finger to help them, they were only to glad to make play with that relationship, but they certainly have paid for their error and as far as I can see the majority of them won’t make it again.

It is noticeable in Vienna that the foreigners are always welcome and Viennese put themselves out to be nice to them. This has always happened in Vienna as it, is the most Cosmopolitan capital in the world, but it’s most noticeable that if anybody speaks with a German accent, particularly a Prussian one, they go out of their way to’ be rude to them; and that’s not just to impress the Occupying Powers, most of whom can’t tell one accent from another. The Viennese are a charming attractive race, musical and full of gaiety, but I must say that like many people with those qualities they are rather unreliable. They are all out to please whoever they are with at the moment —I expect that’s why they said “yes” to Hitler. I always used to get some fun out of taking my Viennese friends aside and asking them if they didn’t think my Wife’s latest hat or dress was hideous. They always replied heartily In the affirmative. When I led them into her and asked them, to tell her what they thought of it they always then thought it was the nicest thing they’d ever seen . . . I say that they are musical—it’s most impressive the way they’ve got down to it and brought their opera and their orchestra to the high pitch of efficiency traditional to Austria. The Vienna Philharmonic orchestra and the State Opera Company are absolutely magnificent. I am sure they are the finest in Europe. They’ve recently had a season in London which was received with the greatest enthusiasm. By contrast, Vienna was very badly knocked about at the end of the war; about one third of it was destroyed, and the Allies made the mistake of setting about cleaning up theit sectors when they arrived. The Viennese sat back and watched this with great satisfaction, and when we woke up to our mistake and said “here are the tools, you get on with the job,” it took them about a year of reluctant scraping about among the bricks to realise that we really weren’t going to do it for them. Then they buckled to, and are now tidying up their city very quickly. Of course, this arouses a certain amount of scorn in people like me, who come from London and are used to seeing the clearing-up going on even while the blitz was continuing. I expect you would like to know to what extent Austria is riddled with Nazism. A very large proportion of the population were members of the Nationalist Socialist .Party in Hitler’s time. Particularly was this so with the Civil Service and the teaching and other professions. This was mainly because people thought they would lose their jobs if they did not join the Party and I have formed the opinion that the majority of them sincerely loathed the excesses of the party and had entirely seen through its philosophy as the war went on. Towards the end of the war the Germans had to have a reign of terror to keep the Austrians toeing the .line. Very many people were executed and sent to concentration camps and the tempo of this campaign was increasing towards the end. Of course, this was largely explained by the fact that the Austrians had realised that the war was lost, but I honestly believe, that the majority of them had long detested the Nazi Regime. They were kept in order by fear, and it was when the fear of defeat began to act as a counter to the fear of the concentration camp that they began to resist. Even so, one must admit that nothing of the nature of a resistance movement, such as there was in France and the Low countries, developed in Austria. The most important difference between Germany and Austria is that Austria has a freely elected (and I mean freely elected) government. The Austrians are keenlyinterested in politics and they voted in the election of 1946 approximately half each in favour of the People’s Party (which is Conservative) and the Socialists. The Communists obtained only a negligible vote. It might he thought by some to show 'the perversity of the Austrian nature that the only small section which sent in a Communist majority was one which had not been liberated by the Red Army! A Coalition Government was formed—with the People’s Party and the Socialists in approximately equal strength, and with one Communist Minister who’s since resigned. (Those of you who have so far not been wise enough to switch off have probably been waiting to hear some “inside dope” about the Russians I’m sorry to. disappoint you, but discretion is imposed upon me by the fact that during my time in Austria I was under the Official secrets Act). Before the war the Socialist Party of Austria was revolutionary, in the sense that it aimed to seize power by Democratic means and keep it—full stop! lam satisfied that they in turn learnt their lesson (since it was this policy which made it possible for Nazism to gain such strength) and that they are now as good Democrats as any of us. The Trade Unions, which under Hitler were the means of issuing orders to the workers, have been established on Democratic lines, under constant pressure from the British Government, and they now show healthy life. They work in well with the Government, which is half Socialist, and a State programme of controlled increase of wages and prices is combined with a very enviable lack of industrial dispute. In fact it’s a very good feature of the Austrian character —the way the workers get down to it. The production per man hour and per shift of the coal miners, for example, is the highest in Europe—including the United Kingdom. Another very valuable asset in making Austria' economically selfsupporting, if only the political situation be stable, is the tourist trade. I think that it’s fair to say that Switzerland has nothing to offer that Austria can’t equal (and that’s saying a lot) and also Austria has delights of its own to offer in the wonderful fishing and the peculiar charm of its people. So perhaps I should finish by saying that if you find yourself in Europe why not go and sptnd a very cheap holiday in Austria and thus to do a bit to help a very unfortunate people?