Austrian Association of Hiking, Sports and Society
The Austrian Association of Hiking, Sports and Society (OeWSGV, also: ÖWSGV) was the camouflage name of a paramilitary secret army in Austria in the 1950s and 1960s. Originally, it was founded by the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB) to combat communist attempts to take over the power in the country. Later it was further upgraded and financed by the CIA, as part of Operation Gladio a secret network of stay-behind organisations during Cold War in Europe.
History
After the end of World War II, Austria was divided into four Allied occupation zones. Shortly after the end of the war, rivalry increased between the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom and France) and the Soviet Union over the future of the newly founded Republic of Austria. After the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) had received only 5.5% of the votes in the Austrian parliament elections in November 1945, the fear that Austria might become democratically a dominated country seemed to be weakened. Due to the tense economic situation, however, there was still the risk of strikes and demonstrations that could lead to a communist coup.
Under these circumstances, in 1947, a secret agreement between the President of the ÖGB, Johann Böhm, and the politician Franz Olah, came to form a group of reliably anti-Communist trade unions. This measure was tacitly accepted after Olah's later statements by the leadership of the SPÖ and the US High Commissioner and Head of the United States Armed Forces in Germany, General Lieutenant Geoffrey Keyes.
In 1947, the cold war had not yet broken open, and the Allies were still driven by the fear that former national socialists might exploit the displeasure of the population about poor food supplies and the large number of refugees in the country for their purposes. Thus, in November 1947, a werewolf organization of former National Socialists, who had founded an anti-Communist partisan movement, was tried by the Austrian judiciary in November 1947 and sentenced the executives to draconian punishments in May 1948. None of the convicts were detained for more than four years, and the convicts were released from custody in 1952.
In 1949, Franz Olah became the first secretary of the Building and Woodworkers Union, whose members were known as the most influential part of the ÖGB. When, in October 1950, a wave of strikes broke out against the Fourth Wage Price Agreement, this became a serious danger to the Government led by the Austrian Chancellor Leopold Figl. It was this union under Olah and not the police, who fought the strike violently in Vienna. It was only a few years later that the Soviet occupation power under Vladimir Petrovich Swiridov, a high commissary, had been largely denied support to the strikers by geopolitical interest.
In the eyes of the US, however, the socialist Olah had been regarded as the most reliable anti-Communist in Austria, who was able to beat a demonstration with his trade unions, while the police remained largely inactive under the SPÖ Minister of the Interior, Oskar Helmer, for fear and political consideration of Soviet occupation.
Expansion to the secret army
The secret army was established in 1951 in order to maintain a force of troops in preparation against possible communist coup attempts. As a camouflage, the Austrian Hiking, Sports and Social Society was established, whose members were mainly recruited from young cadres of the workforce. The members were trained in camps by senior military personnel in shooting, blasting and close combat. Medals were bought from weapons from former armed forces and the organization was equipped with rare cars in Vienna and in the federal states. In Golling near Salzburg, at that time in the area of the American occupation zone, land was bought on which a 200-man strong special group for mountain and winter use was trained. In total, the OeWSGV had some 2700 employees in its largest expansion phase.
The extent to which the formation of this secret army took place on the initiative or under the toleration of the US occupation authorities remains unclear to this day. However, the OeWSGV was provided funding and material from the CIA, including 8 to 10 million schillings and modern radio equipment. The resident of the CIA in Vienna was the John H. Richardson stationed there from 1948 to 1952, later known as the station chief in Saigon in the Kennedy era. In 1952 two camouflage companies were founded for the "Sonderprojekt Olah", the trading company Atlanta and Omnia Warenhandels AG. These became the financial support of the OeWSGV. In addition, the organization was able to make use of the radio infrastructure of the American occupation authorities in an emergency, such as the red-and-white radio stations in Vienna, Linz and Salzburg.
In 1953, the Austrian Secret Service (Staatspolizei, StaPo), under the supervision of Peter Schuller, first drew their attention to these activities, when secret police stations were secured by the police in the small town of Trofaiach in the British occupation zone. A found letter showed that they are owned by the Bau- und Holz trade union. Peterlunger then contacted Franz Olah, whom he had appreciated since the October strike in 1950 and with whom he was friendly. After a discussion, the detainees were released and the transmitters returned without any information to the public.
In 1955, the Austrian State Treaty was concluded, in consequence of which the four occupying powers withdrew, and the Republic of Austria attained its full sovereignty under the imposition of permanent neutrality. By withdrawal of the troops of the Soviet army, the direct danger of a Communist takeover of power in Austria was thus largely banished. However, the CIA did not want to abandon the secret structures that had been created. In the previous years, similar secret paramilitary associations had been formed in the Western European NATO countries, which, in addition to combating internal communist currents, were to function as stay-behind organizations in the event of a Soviet attack. Although Austria was neutral and not a NATO member, the OeWSGV was loosely integrated into the structure of the organization, which later became known under the name Gladio network.
In the case of a Soviet attack, disregarding Austrian neutrality, the task of the secret army would have been to set up anti-communist partisan organizations to carry out sabotage operations behind the front. This should slow down the advance of the Warsaw Pact countries as far as possible until the NATO forces could take effective counter-measures.
In the eyes of NATO, this decision was confirmed by the Hungarian uprising that broke out in November 1956 by an invasion of Soviet troops. More than 200,000 refugees flocked to Austria, and it was assumed by the NATO secret services that they could also be under communist agents. One of the camps built for these refugees was in Trofaiach in Styria.
Resolution of the OeWSGV
In 1959, Franz Olah succeeded in replacing Johann Böhm as President of the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions which continued to expand in Austria's official power structure. In 1963 he became Minister of the Interior in the government of Austrian PPP Chancellor Alfons Gorbach. As a result, 25,000 executives of the police and gendarmerie, as well as the domestic secret service of the Ministry of Interior, were under the control of StaPo. After the 1962 Cuban crisis a relaxation policy between the two power blocks in the Cold War came about. The Austrian democratic system was considered to be so far established that a communist takeover of power was no longer regarded as a realistic scenario. The secretary of the OeWSGV had thus become more or less obsolete. Olah gradually phased out the organization and had all the documents and the entire bookkeeping destroyed.
Discovery of the Secret Army
When in 1964 it became known that Franz Olah had appropriated the funds of the trade union of the FPÖ, he fell into disgrace in his own party and had to resign as Interior Minister on 21 September 1964. His successor in the Cabinet Klaus I became his party colleague Hans Czettel. Olah was then expelled from the SPÖ and joined the Democratic Progressive Party (DFP) in the 1966 National Council elections. Due to his popularity among the members of the workforce, he achieved a little more than 3% of the votes, which were mainly at the expense of the SPÖ, so that the ÖVP for the first time gained a narrow absolute majority of seats and thus could form a sole government under Josef Klaus.
In the face of the hostility of his former party friends, another scandal from Olah's time as ÖGB President came to the public. In 1959, he had illegally used funds from the trade union as a financial start-up aid for the newly founded Kronen Zeitung. In a court case he was charged in 1969 for the unauthorized use of trade union funds. In the course of this process, details of the secretary of the OeWSGV were published for the first time. Olah defended his "special project" as a patriotic measure in the struggle against communism, which was to be assessed in the context of the circumstances at the time. In order to reject the accusation that he had built up his own private army, he named prominent conscripts, but only those who had already died in 1969, including former German President Adolf Schärf, former Minister of the Interior Oskar Helmer, and former President of the ÖGB, Johann Böhm. However, further names were connected with the project, including the trade unionist Karl Flottl, the Viennese SPÖ municipal council Hans Bock and the then head of the Chamber of Labor Franz Horr. Thus, Heinrich Daurer was supposed to have been responsible for weapons training and Walter Jeschko was responsible for radio training. The American trade union functionary Wesley Cook was the agent for the financing.
At the end of the trial, Franz Olah was sentenced to one year's imprisonment. He then withdrew completely from Austrian politics. However, the accusations surrounding the secret army were in the background in this affair, while the accusations for the unauthorized use of trade union funds both within Austria and internationally were much more concerned with the public. It was not until many years later, after the end of the Cold War, that for the first time in 1990, the international scope of these circumstances was to appear in a new light.
Detection of Gladio
It was only after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall that the international connections of the OeWSGV were revealed. According to Italian judge Felice Casson, the then Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, publicly admitted the existence of a secret army in Italy under the name "Gladio". As a result, similar organizations existed in all Western European NATO countries. The unmasking of comparable stay-behind organizations in the neutral countries of Europe was particularly explosive. Thus, it became public that a secret paramilitary organization with the name P-26 also existed in Switzerland, on whose political model the Republic of Austria has been strongly oriented since 1955.
In 1991, Green MP Peter Pilz presented a parliamentary question about "activities of the Gladio secret service, or any other NATO-related news service, on Austrian territory". Both the then Minister of Defense Werner Fasslabend and Minister of the Interior Franz Löschnak denied the existence of a secret army in Austria, or did not mean to have any knowledge about whether one had ever existed. In 1995, the aged Franz Olah published his memoirs, aptly titled "The Memoirs", in which, for the first time since the 1960s, he published further details.
In the United States, under the Freedom of Information Act, old intelligence documents were published in the United States in 1996, which were handed over by the US Ambassador in Austria, Swanee Hunt, the Austrian authorities, and later also to the media. [8] It became known that during the occupation in Austria, the USA had created over 100 secret weapon depots, which had remained undetected for decades. These were partly found in impassable or mountainous terrain. These weapons were subsequently tracked and held in custody by Austrian authorities according to the US documents. However, it could not be ascertained from the documents published whether these weapons were intended for American agents or for the arming of an anti-communist partisan army. The Austrian federal government commissioned the historian Oliver Rathkolb from the University of Vienna to apply for the publication of further documents in the USA. However, the relevant authorities and the CIA replied that, in addition to the files on the arms depots in the archives, there were no further documents.
It was recalled that in 1965, Austrian gendarmes had discovered a gun depot in a mine near Windisch Bleiberg in Carinthia, which compelled the British authorities to pull out a list of 33 additional weapons stores. This confirmed the fact that the CIA or its predecessor organization, the OSS, and also the British MI6 or its predecessor organization, the Special Operations Executive, had created weapons stores in Austria.
In 2005, Swiss historian Daniele Ganser published for the first time a comprehensive scientific review of the Gladio network, which is mentioned on the margins of the OeWSGV.
By combining more information, the channels of the money flows were reconstructed. In addition to the then station chief John (Jack) H. Richardson, these contacts were mainly conducted by American trade unionists. Oley had direct contact with Wesley Cook, who had served as a representative of the American Federation of Labor in the Marshall Plan for three years for the Economic Cooperation Administration in Vienna. During this time, a friendship between Olah and Cook began, which also continued after his return to the USA. [11] [12] From the US to Austria, these funds were donated by Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown, also high-ranking US trade union officials working through the Secret Office of Policy Coordination, which was submitted to the CIA in 1952.
The son of John H. Richardson also published in 2005 a book about the agent's activity of his father, with further details. However, this has not yet been evaluated by Austrian historians.
Special features of the OeWSGV
The anti-communist secret army, set up with the help of US secret services in Austria, was one of the first organizations of its kind in Europe. The initiative was begun by anti-communist trade unions and the project was supported by the USA after the October strike in 1950 in order to build up a power base against Soviet influence. However, in the OeWSGV almost exclusively socialists and trade unionists were represented. The stay-behind organizations of the Gladio network in other European states were mainly based on bourgeois-conservative, nationalist, and right-wing extremists. This is very remarkable, as some of the middle-class citizens of the Austrian People's Party had good contacts with the CIA in the post-war period, such as Fritz Molden.