Background: August Eigruber was Gauleiter of Oberdonau (Upper Danube), a region of Austria, from 1939-1945. He was tried after World War II for crimes against humanity, convicted, and hanged on 28 May 1947. The article was printed by a Vienna newspaper that had asked him to discuss his political goals.
The source: “The Most Loyal Son of the People,” Wiener neueste Nachrichten, 29 May 1939, pp. 1-3. This is taken from a newspaper article available on ANNO, an Austrian project to digitize a wide range of newspapers.
First, I would like to speak to a widely held but erroneous view some have that our Gau was particularly prosperous and well-administered in the past. We inherited a bad legacy in Upper Austria. There was great poverty among the farmers in the Alpine foothills and in the Mühl district on the one hand, and miserable conditions in the bankrupt industrial areas on the other hand. The province’s economy was almost ruined. Besides that, those areas dependent on tourism and commerce suffered from the artificial separation from the Old Reich [Germany], which means that our first task today is to apply all our resources to make up as much as possible for the crimes of the past. Various commissions have established the terrible conditions in the tenements housing the unemployed and those impoverished by taxation, which are heavy charges against former governments, regardless of whether they were led by so-called Christian Socialists, Patriotic parties, or Social Democrats.
I myself was a worker at the Steyr factory and the Reithoffer rubber plant. I know that alleviating social problems resulting from political and economic causes is our most pressing task. Economically, getting money into the hands of workers immediately puts it into rapid and fruitful circulation within the economy. Politically, National Socialism cannot do without the most loyal and sacrificial sons of its people, those who were the most active battlers and preachers of its idea, who proved themselves during their years of illegal struggle under difficult circumstances.
Security for the Worker
Conscious of the idea of the people’s community that obligates us all, the National Socialist state will totally abolish all unnatural ideas of class or social difference, along with the policy of playing the various classes off against each other. One could almost call this a spiritual renewal, a return to natural life, which now more than ever will open our homeland to recovery and reconstruction, leading to vast economic opportunities for Gau Oberdonau. Our Gau’s industrial and economic prospects are extraordinarily promising since the unique foundation of the Hermann Goering Factory in Linz. It will benefit not only factory workers, but will also open up a whole new field of endeavor for the province. A worker will no longer have to fear losing his job after a few weeks or months. He can spend his entire income, since National Socialist leadership of the economy, state, and party will watch over developments to guarantee that his job is secure. The myths eagerly spread by Jewish newspapers abroad that the workers are rooted in Marxism have been proven completely false, as anyone with the ability and courage to see things as they are can easily realize.
True, workers were misled by foreign agitation, but they never lost the internal connection to the strengths of their ethnicity, which is proven by the fact that they eagerly and in unison affirmed National Socialism the moment the Schussnigg dictatorship collapsed.
Now that the people is actually united we can turn to real growth, undistracted by earlier conflicts about ideology, organization, and power. We are particularly pleased now that the Gau system has been implemented, and all the barriers of unnatural bureaucracy have fallen away. They were mostly in remote offices in Vienna, which did not know the real conditions in the Gaue, and perhaps did not even want to understand them. Old Austria, the federal state, suffered from this, as did the entire population of the Ostmark. Now that we have simplified administration, we have the opportunity to lead the Gaue in a healthy way, directed toward the good of the whole German people, which is at the same time the good of the homeland. We can thus control was directly affects us, and what therefore falls within our ancient rights.
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