This study investigates the impact of National Socialist ideology on residential and housing settlement projects in Greater Vienna following the Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich in 1938. In this regard, both planned and realized building projects are instructive. The research is focused on archival documents of the city of Vienna and contemporaneous primary sources. Chapter I addresses solutions to the housing problem in Vienna during the period between the world wars as the point of departure fpr the National Socialists` assumption of power. Red Vienna`s construction of communal housing is presented in a political-historical context and from an aesthetic, urban planning point of view. The Austrofascist Ständestaat`s solution with suburban housing schemes and tenements was a a precursor of the National Socialist housing concept in both ideological and aesthetic terms. Chapter II provides an overview of the trends in Germany from 1919 1938. During that period, the elitist housing concepts of Neues Bauen were replaced by the Brüning smallholding scheme with its samall dwelling units. Followeing the National Socialists` "seizure of power" in 1933, priorities shifting sochial measures were replaced by rearmament -, as did paradigms: the four-year plan, starting in 1938, promoted public housing in multi-floor residences rather than small housing complexes and homes. Chaper III takes a closer look at the National Socialists` apartment and housing construction policies in Vienna from 1938 1945. After untangling the complicated mesh of the new local goverments` responsibilities, the stages of communal residential and housing settlement construction are surveyed from their euphoric beginnings until they came to a complete standstill. Chapter IV is explicitly devoted to defining National Socialist ideology concerning regional and housing settlement planning as it was promoted troughout the Reich and adapted for Greater Vienna and Austria. The replacement of garden city, Heimatschutz and back-to-nature models by the well-organized Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle with its increasing standardization and rationalization is also reflected in the designs of Georg Laub and Hanns Dustmann, who were active in the planning of housing complexes in Vienna. Chapter V examines the projects realized in the Vienna area in terms of their typological aspects and objectives set along party lines. The housing settlements in Leopoldau, Floridsdorf, Wienerfeld, Guntramsdorf and in Vienna`s district XIII are examined in more detail using pictures and construction plans form the archives of the city of Vienna. Site plans, house types, choice of aesthetic elements and their ideological interpretation were an expression of National Socialist Bauschaffen. The fact that ideological indoctrination was not limited to the construction of housing complexes but extended to the entire private and social spheres is confirmed by research into the settlement residents` gardens, their daily and domestic lives and how they spent their leisure time. Residential construction as a "political weapon" is in the end an important instrument for persuading the Volksgenossen of the importance of the so-called Volksgemeinschaft, which is set in clear opposition to the Marxist class struggle. The plans and partial realization of communal facilities evidenced in Viennese housing settlements also illustrate this intention. Although housing settlement construction was promoted as a social obligation, source materials, also for Vienna, shows that it was in fact championed as the best means for ensuring racially-pure population growth and for the appropriation of puchasing power from what was in the end a move to consolidate power.