WWI Veterans in Austria and Czechoslovakia 1918-38

The Austrian-Czech project team led by Prof. Laurence Cole, University of Salzburg - aims to analyze from a comparative perspective the hitherto neglected history of WWI veterans movements in Austria and Czechoslovakia. While there has been much recent research on war veterans in Germany and other European countries, including on the Legionaries in Czechoslovakia, this transnational investigation of the history of the mass of ex-soldiers in Austria and Czechoslovakia will break new ground from a number of perspectives. In looking at the role of cultures of victory or defeat in the political, social, and cultural reintegration of former soldiers in the Czechoslovak and Austrian Republics, the project focuses on three main issues: 1) the different social and discursive environments formed by a prima facie hegemonic culture of victory (Czechoslovakia) and a culture of defeat (Austria); to date, there has been no systematic, monograph- length comparison of this kind for inter-war Europe. At the same time, the project questions the validity of this usual split between victory and defeat cultures, given that most of the successor states to the Habsburg Monarchy contained a mix of both cultures. For example, Czechoslovakia was marked by a hegemonic victory culture at the state level, but the perspective from below - of veterans themselves was potentially one of a hidden or supressed defeat culture; in Austria, sections of the Socialist movement saw the overthrow of the old regime as a political victory. 2) The project investigates these issues transnationally and regionally, across different spatial environments. The regional perspective makes an innovative contribution by: examining local disparities in relation to the state-wide level; investigating transnational contacts to divided or lost territories (e.g. Silesia, South Tyrol, Lower Styria); and looking at how cultures of defeat or victory crystalized in the gained territories (e.g. Slovakia, Burgenland). 3) The project addresses more fully than previous research the continuities across the usual dividing line of 1914-1918, given that in both areas under investigation large-scale veterans movements existed under Habsburg rule. A key aim of the project is to explore these continuities, relating them further to veterans activities on a European level, whether as part of internationalist-pacifist movements, or transnational ideological movements from left (communist, socialist) or right (fascist, national socialist). Using a range of printed and archival sources at the regional and state level, the project employs a political, social and cultural historical approach to the history of WWI veterans in Austria and Czechoslovakia in the interwar period.