Developer Diary | Austria

Guten Tag!

Nattmaran here to kick off the Dev Diaries for Götterdämmerung! This will be the first Dev Diary I write, and you can bet that I am excited to finally show you what I have been working on! We are going to start out with a country that many of you have been requesting, Austria! Let’s get right into it with a little bit of context shall we?

The country select screen for Austria, a TL:DR for the historical context

A zoomed out overview of the Austrian Focus Tree

Interwar Austria

I won’t go into what happened during the Great War, but it was a bad time to be Austrian. Unfortunately for the Austrians, this did not let up much during the interwar years, it simply took another form. With next to no army due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-En-Laye, half of the country unemployed, an economy in shambles, not being allowed to gang up with their old buddies in Hungary or Germany and violence between political paramilitary groups, it is safe to say that the country was in a really bad state.

The National Spirits at startup for Austria

Just after the Great War Austria operated as a republic, with decently functional elections and a parliamentary system. However, paramilitary groups still clashed frequently and these clashes led to numerous conflicts. Perhaps the most notable was the July Revolt of 1927 when the Ministry of Justice was burned to the ground by the Social Democratic paramilitary group Republikanischer Schutzbund. Conservative sentiments grew much stronger following this uprising.

The Austria you will come to know was formed in 1932 as Engelbert Dollfuss was elected chancellor. Dolfuss had great plans, and they started with removing the parliament. Said and done, via the so-called Self-Elimination of the Parliament, Democracy was abolished in one fell swoop. Under the ideology of Austrofascism, a combined right-wing party Vaterländische Front was formed from various conservative parties and agrarian leagues. All other parties were banned, making Dolfuss more of a dictator than a chancellor. Ideologically Austrofascism was more like the Fascism found in Italy, than the German counterpart. Ironic as it sounds, the rather Fascist VF banned the Austrian wing of Hitler’s NSDAP, DNSAP, from operating in the country. The bans were largely ineffective, and in 1934 Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated in a coup attempt by DNSAP.

But, let’s get into the actual content of the game! In 1934 Kurt Schuschnigg took over as chancellor, and in -36 he also assumed leadership of Austria, which was now in an almost even more precarious situation. Still no army, the economy only slowly recovering, unemployment rates still high, political violence still rampant and now the Germans seem to be on the prowl as well. What a great time to come to power!

TL:DR; The interwar period was a very bad time to be Austrian!

This is how things will look as you load up the game. As you can see, VF is listed as Non-aligned, this is to attribute their past, and the fact that they are a hodgepodge of different political groups

"Historical" Branch

This needs a rather obvious disclaimer. We all know what happens with Austria in the Second World War, they get Anschluss’ed and die early on. As a player you will have to stave off this threat, and I have faith that you will, but it will mean that should you survive, a historical playthrough of Austria won’t be that… well historical. Not only regarding Austria, but regarding