Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 52. (2007)
FRIED, Marvin Benjamin: Feldmarschall Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf: A Memoir Analysis
Marvin Fried because he did not believe it and more because the term was not in common use at the time. In order to ‘protect’ the western European ‘high culture,’ Conrad felt that the defense and the unification of the German peoples was essential. The unification of all Germans, Conrad states, is the “great idea of the near future.”171 He resents Bismarck for annexing the 1.9 million non-Germans in Alsace-Lorraine instead of the 12 million Germans of Austria.172 He felt it is necessary to fight for the south- Tyroleans who were annexed to Italy and to defend the Germans of Bohemia from “extermination.”173 He implores that the German peoples set German “national unity above all else [über alles andere].”174 Setting himself resolutely in the German camp by stating that in all Austrians’ “breasts beat German hearts,”175 Conrad, alluding to Wilson’s proposed right of self-determination, demands that “what is German, must go to Germany.”176 Conrad declares on several occasions that he believes he is a German and belongs with Germany. But he warns that “if Germany wants to prosper, it requires [...] unity of its tribes,”177 such that the German Austrians should not be treated as “Germans of a lesser sort.”178 Having established himself and rump Austria as unequivocally German, the final and most alarming theme is that of essentially National Socialism, for his views can be described in no other way. Conrad turns from not “allowing the surrender of the German nation to Czechs, Poles, Magyars, Rumanians, Serbo-Croatians and Slovenes,”179 in itself a defensive and paranoid attitude, to the “purification”180 of Austria from “the foreign national intruders (trash)181”182 in order to maintain the “German sense, German psyche and German customs.”183 The latter is, clearly, an aggressive and highly dangerous racist ideology, one which presupposes ‘the enemy within’ and was central to Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. He accuses “the monarch, the statesmen, the generals [of which he was one!], the diplomats, the chauvinists, the Marxists, the social-democrats, the communists and anarchists”184 171 Conrad von Hötzendorf, Franz: Private Aufzeichnungen, Pg. 181. 172 Ibid, Pg. 171. 173 Ibid, Pg. 133 and 149. 174 Ibid, Pg. 182. 175 Ibid, Pg. 174. 176 Ibid, Pg. 184. 177 Ibid, Pg. 196. 178 Ibid, Pg. 151. 179 Ibid, Pg. 58. 180 Ibid, Pg. 198. 181 Conrad’s parentheses. 182 Conrad von Hötzendorf, Franz: Private Aufzeichnungen, Pg. 198. 183 Ibid, Pg. 198. 184 Ibid, Pg. 218. 242
