The Figl-Schärf Coalition and the Occupying Powers

Abstract

Political stability in the post-war years was based on an entirely new element in the Austrian situation: the determination of the two big parties, the People’s Party and the Socialists, to work closely together, inside the government. This was not easy. The Socialists neither forgot nor forgave the wrongs of the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg period during which their leading members had suffered some months of imprisonment, loss of jobs or pensions, and petty persecution. Nor did they intend to let the People’s Party forget these things, and they insisted on full compensation and restitution. On the other side, some members of the People’s Party still saw the Socialists as dangerously far to the Left, if not fellow-travellers with the Communists. The relationship between the two was never smooth, each party watching the other closely in case it gained an unfair advantage, and ready to retaliate quickly if it did; each was equally ready to exploit the other’s mistakes.