Austrian Social Democratic leader who signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain and founded the Second Republic in 1945
Born to an ethnic German farming family in Moravia, he studied law in Vienna, joined the Social Democrats and entered the Imperial Council in 1907. An Austromarxist theorist of “personal autonomy” on the national question, he was criticised by Lenin and Stalin. In 1918 he became the first chancellor of German-Austria, leading a grand coalition that introduced the eight-hour day among other reforms, and had to accept the ban on union with Germany and the territorial losses of Saint-Germain. He supported the Anschluss in 1938. In April 1945, at Soviet direction, he formed a provisional government, and that year became president. He died in Vienna in 1950.
Career timeline
- 1896Joined the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria
- 1907–1918Member of the Reichsrat
- 1918–1920Chancellor and foreign minister of German-Austria (Austria)
- 1919Head of the delegation at Saint-Germain
- 1931–1933President of the National Council
- 1945Head of the provisional government; declared independence
- 1945–1950President of Austria
Last Habsburg monarch, Emperor Charles I of Austria and King Charles IV of Hungary, who twice tried to regain the Hungarian throne in 1921
In November 1916 he succeeded his grand-uncle Franz Joseph as Emperor of Austria (as Charles I) and King of Hungary (as Charles IV). His secret peace negotiations with the Allies failed, and in the autumn of 1918 the empire fell apart. On 11 November in Austria and on 13 November in Hungary he renounced participation in affairs of state, carefully avoiding the word abdication. After going into exile in Switzerland in 1919, he twice tried to regain the Hungarian throne, in March and October 1921, but failed in the face of opposition from Regent Horthy. Arrested after the second attempt, he was exiled to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died of respiratory failure in 1922. The Catholic Church beatified him in 2004.
Career timeline
- 1916Becomes Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary
- 1918Renounces participation in affairs of state
- 1919Exile in Switzerland
- 1921Two attempts to regain the Hungarian throne
- 1921–1922Exile on Madeira; dies
- 2004Beatified
Austrian chancellor who shut down parliament, built the Fatherland Front dictatorship and was assassinated in a Nazi coup in 1934
Born to a poor peasant family in Lower Austria, he studied law at the University of Vienna and served for 37 months on the Italian front in the First World War. Working for the Lower Austrian Peasants’ Union he became known as an agrarian expert, and he was appointed minister of agriculture and forestry in 1931 and federal chancellor in May 1932. In March 1933 he shut out parliament and ruled by emergency decree, banned the Communists, the Nazis and then the Social Democrats, and built a one-party dictatorship under the Fatherland Front modelled largely on Italian Fascism. He crushed the socialist movement in the civil war of February 1934 and in March signed the Rome Protocols with Mussolini and Gömbös. On 25 July 1934 he was shot dead in the Chancellery during an attempted Nazi coup.
Career timeline
- 1914–1918Serves on the Italian front
- 1931Minister of agriculture and forestry
- 1932–1934Federal chancellor
- 1933Shuts down parliament; Fatherland Front
- 1934Austrian Civil War; Rome Protocols
- 1934Assassinated in a Nazi coup
A Nazi commando leader magnified by propaganda
Standing before Mussolini at Gran Sasso, Skorzeny became the face of a victory whose command credit belonged elsewhere.
Born in Vienna, Skorzeny became a Waffen-SS officer who directed sabotage and commando operations for Nazi Germany. In the 1943 Gran Sasso raid, he helped locate Benito Mussolini and led an SS detachment at the landing site, but the operation as a whole was planned and commanded by the airborne officers Harald Mors and Kurt Student. Nazi propaganda presented him as Mussolini's liberator, while he also took part in the overthrow of Hungary's government and the Ardennes deception operation. Acquitted at a postwar war-crimes trial, he later lived in Spain amid far-right networks.
Career timeline
- 1932Joined the Austrian Nazi organisation
- 1938Served with the SS during the Anschluss
- 1943Led the RSHA sabotage and commando section
- 1943Led an SS detachment in the Gran Sasso raid
- 1944Took part in Operation Panzerfaust in Hungary
- 1944Commanded Operation Greif in the Ardennes
- 1947Acquitted at the Dachau military trial
- 1953Military adviser to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser
