Interrupted Acceleration: Austria?s Natural Resources between Productivist Mobilization and Conservationist Protest in the German Wartime Economy, 1938?1945
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
Standing on a Cliff: War and Peace in Environmental History
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
The paper examines Austria's wartime economy between the annexation of the country by Nazi Germany in 1938 and its liberation by the Allied forces in 1945 from a socio-ecological perspective that combines materialist and culturalist approaches. Revising the caesura of the ?reboot? of Austria?s economy in 1945 the and its ?take-off? not before the 1950s in conventional historiography, available evidence suggests a comparatively strong economic boost already during the wartime period in the framework of the German autarky and armament policy. This state-induced boost of economic growth is exemplified by key resources such as mineral fertilizer, crude oil, aluminium and rayon. The mobilization of Austria?s economy concentrated in the province of Oberdonau and its capital Linz, where several large-scale plants for war-oriented manufacturing as well as pilot projects for agricultural optimization were implemented. The productivist mobilization of natural resources pursued by state authorities and German corporations met with fierce but rather ineffective opposition from conservationist activists. In these controversies, the ?protectors of nature? used their room for maneuver according to the 1935 Reich Conservation Act for defending the image of the ?German landscape? as a ?garden? against the racialized notion of the ?steppe? as a typical ?Jewish? or ?Slavic landscape?. Despite the conservationist protest, the productivist mobilization in the Nazi period fueled Austria?s petro-industrial transition from the 1930s to the 1950s. The wartime acceleration of the appropriation of natural resources was the forerunner (?Little Acceleration?) or even the onset of the ?Great Acceleration? of material and energy flows in the postwar decades, only interrupted by the economic shock of the change of the political regime in 1945.
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