AEIOU: A Podcast about Austria

Kurt Schuschnigg, successor to the assassinated Engelbert Dollfuss, was given a thankless job in trying to maintain Austrian independence, and he ultimately failed. Could it have been avoided? And just how fascist was Austrofascism really? We'll explore these issues in this episode.

We saw in the last episode how Engelbert Dollfuss began the transformation of Austria into an authoritarian dictatorship. In this episode, we'll learn about the heavy price he paid for doing so. Austria's Nazis will attempt a coup and fail, but Dollfuss will die as a consequence.

If the last episode saw Austrian democracy, then this episode has Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss pulling the plug. However, threats persist, particularly from history's most famous German. Thanks to the Presidencies of the United States podcast for the recent plug; here's one in return: https://www.presidenciespodcast.com/

In the late '20s and early '30s, democracy in the Austrian First Republic was increasingly anemic and the politics increasingly extreme. In this episode, we'll try to understand why democracy had such a rough go of it during this period, leading to the emergence of a figure many believed would save the country, if not its democracy. No, not that guy.

Our title for this episode is German for "the roaring twenties," which is what we call the decade following the Great War in the United States. We call it that because of all the partying and wealth that proliferated in that decade for Americans. For Austrians, however, things were slightly different.

The war is over, but we still have some things to talk about, including how the Austrians occupied Serbia (badly), how the Austrian army lent itself to generating Habsburg loyalty (pretty well), and how the last Habsburg emperor abdicated (incompletely). It's the final episode of the year, so what better way to celebrate than with the abolition of the Habsburg monarchy.

We’ve finally made it to the Great War. In this episode, we consider how Austria fared in World War I. Spoiler alert: They lost. That said, the campaigns led by Austria-Hungary are among the least discussed in a war that included the Battle of the Somme and Gallipoli. Here, Vittorio Veneto gets its (his?) due.

Shots fired in the Balkans! Shots fired in the Reichsrat!! Shots fired in Sarajevo!!! It's an action-packed episode this time around as we cover the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the outbreak of World War One. Plus, we consider the question of why Franz Ferdinand was the crown prince to begin with.

In this episode, we work our way into the 20th century, with new election laws, new political parties, new leaders of the government, but the same old emperor. He's lost some steam over his more than fifty years in power, to say nothing of territory and political power, but he still has some tricks up his sleeve. Can you say "Jus exclusivae"? Franz Joseph sure can.

We saw how Austria was a neoabsolutist hellscape before the Compromise of 1867. But with Franz Joseph losing wars and territory, he quickly transformed his remaining dominions into a democracy, although not necessarily a functioning one. In this episode, we take a quick overview of Austrian politics between 1867 and 1890, when new parties arose to challenge the liberal consensus.