Small Nazis: The Hidden History of Fascism in Liechtenstein
How Nazism nearly destroyed the little Principality — and how it survived
Friday, 24 March 1939 — Spring had just begun in the Principality of Liechtenstein, a tiny pocket of sovereign land nestled between Austria and Switzerland. The First Austrian Republic, a shadow of a once sprawling Austrian empire, had been absorbed by Adolf Hitler’s Germany just one year prior.
The fall of Austria brought soldiers of the Third Reich to the borders of the defenceless and officially neutral micro-state of Liechtenstein. While fear gripped most Liechtensteiners, die-hard Nazi sympathisers welcomed the potential Anschluss (unification) with Germany. True to Nazi form, they plotted a putsch — a violent takeover of power — on Wednesday, 22 March. It was delayed by two days to take advantage of the absence of both the sovereign prince and prime minister. Their aim was to install a pro-Nazi government that would pursue economic and political integration with Germany. The crown on the Liechtenstein flag would be replaced with a swastika.¹
Around 100 plotters awaited an opportunity to strike that Friday evening. Over the Austrian border in Nazi-occupied Feldkirch, 600 men of the National Socialist Motor Corps stood ready to sweep down into Liechtenstein. For all intents and purposes, this should have been the end for one of the world’s smallest nations. Its unarmed population of 11,000 could offer no meaningful resistance.
In the end, armed resistance was unnecessary. The attempted coup ultimately petered out after the Liechtenstein government uncovered the plot. In Berlin, Nazi leadership (possibly Hitler himself) called off the Motor Corps invasion, and in the late hours of the night, the collaborationist ring-leaders were arrested.² Liechtenstein’s independence was rescued with just hours to spare.
Few people outside of Liechtenstein are aware of this remarkable history. It may seem insignificant. Indeed, the Anschluss of Liechtenstein would have been one of the smallest territorial additions to the Third Reich (just 160 square kilometres). But this story is a microcosm of the wider fascist miasma that advanced across Europe in the 1930s. It shows that even a small, integrated community where ‘everyone knows everyone’ can sleepwalk to the brink of oblivion at the hands of an extreme minority.
This article tells the story of micro-fascism in a micro-state. It begins in April 1933, mere months after Hitler assumed the office of Chancellor of Germany. Four hundred miles south of Hitler’s seat of power in Berlin, Liechtenstein’s home-grown Nazism was about to show its ugly face to the world.
Wednesday, 5 April 1933 — Alfred and Fritz Schaie, who went by the surname Rotter for business purposes, had once been high-flying theatre owners in Berlin. As Hitler’s anti-Semitic campaign gathered pace, however, the Jewish brothers fled to Liechtenstein. The Nazi press in Germany was outraged that the principality did not immediately send them back, and on 5 April, four Nazi-sympathising Liechtensteiners and five Germans took matters into their own hands.
The band of nine attempted to kidnap the Rotter brothers and forcibly return them to Germany. Alfred and his wife fell to their deaths while trying to escape. The four Liechtensteiners were arrested and given short jail sentences.³
The do-it-yourself repatriation attempt failed, but 1933 turned out to be a pivotal moment in the Liechtenstein Nazi movement’s history. Aside from the Rotter Abduction, the year also saw the founding of two fascist groups — the Liechtenstein Homeland Service, which gained 300 members and held a ‘noisy’ demonstration outside the Government Building in Vaduz in December 1934, and a local Nazi Party group for German and Austrian residents, which attracted around 40 members.⁴ These groups aimed to end multi-party democracy in Liechtenstein and unite the racially, linguistically, and religiously homogeneous population under a single hegemonic ideology.
In 1936, the Liechtenstein Homeland Service merged with the more moderate Christian Social People’s Party to form the Fatherland Union (Vaterländische Union, VU), bringing pro-Nazi views into the political mainstream.⁵ The VU’s party paper, Liechtensteiner Vaterland, joined with German newspapers to publish personal attacks on Jewish individuals living in Liechtenstein.⁶ Despite this disreputable activity, its leader, Alois Vogt, later became Deputy Head of Government in a coalition of national unity with the Progressive Citizen’s Party in 1938.
Another important Nazi organisation was founded in March 1938 — the National German Movement in Liechtenstein (Volksdeutsche Bewegung in Liechtenstein, VDBL).⁷ Membership of this group peaked at just below 500. Under the leadership of a local composer and carpenter, Rudolf Schädler,⁸ the party passed sensitive information about Liechtenstein to the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, a Nazi body responsible for promoting National Socialism to ‘ethnic Germans’ outside the Reich. The newspaper of the VDBL, Der Umbruch (The Upheaval) published overtly pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic messages in support of its primary objective — union with Germany.⁹ Some VDBL members even joined the Nazi SS.¹⁰
The pressure was mounting. As winter turned to spring in early 1939, both the VDBL and foreign diplomats thought the dream (or nightmare) of Anschluss was about to become reality.
Thursday, 2 March 1939 — Just weeks before the pro-Nazi putsch, Liechtenstein’s reigning Prince, Franz Josef II, performed a two-day State Visit to Berlin. He arrived on Thursday, 2 March, and met with Hitler and several other senior Nazi officials to discuss his country’s relationship with the Third Reich.¹¹
Nazi policy on Liechtenstein was ambiguous. There were, to be sure, some compelling political and strategic reasons to destroy it. Hitler despised the micro-state’s ruling family because of its history of loyal service to the Holy Roman and Austro-Hungarian Empires — symbols of the German people’s pre-Nazi weakness. Worse still, Franz I (reigned 1929–1938) had a Jewish wife, and the Nazi press suspected Franz Josef II, his successor, of being a Jewish sympathiser.¹² Nazi ideologues naturally wished to wipe away this 'impurity'.
The Reich also considered German-speaking Liechtenstein to be a ‘borderland of the German people’.¹³ Union would be consistent with the pan-German vision of the Reich.
None of this, however, persuaded the Nazis to make a serious effort to conquer Liechtenstein. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle made some contingency plans for an Austria-style Anschluss, and lower-level officials in the bordering Austrian towns conspired with Liechtenstein Nazis to plan the 1939 coup, but the Nazi leadership, including Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and Hitler himself, saw no real benefit in gobbling up their tiny neighbour.¹⁴ What’s more, many Nazi business leaders based in Liechtenstein actively opposed Anschluss because they enjoyed the country’s low tax rates and its usefulness as a neutral business hub.¹⁵
With no diplomatic pretense or widespread popular support to justify annexation, Hitler contented himself with the hope that Liechtenstein would one day willingly apply to join his empire.
Some believed it was only a matter of time. When Franz Josef traveled to Berlin, both foreign diplomats and pro-Nazi Liechtensteiners felt that Anschluss was the inevitable outcome. As the precise purpose and content of the prince’s conversation with Hitler were not announced, anticipatory observers filled in the gaps. A British diplomat in Prague informed London of a rumour that the prince ‘would be quite willing at any time to make [a] voluntary application’ to join the Reich. The British Foreign Office concluded that ‘the prince is effectively under Hitler’s thumb.’¹⁶
Nazi sympathisers in Liechtenstein shared Britain’s feeling that an agreement for some form of closer union between Liechtenstein and Germany ‘must’ have been reached in Berlin.¹⁷ This belief ultimately motivated the VDBL’s attempted putsch, but the party’s faith was almost certainly misplaced. There is no evidence to suggest that the Prince genuinely considered giving up his sovereign independence.
Franz Josef certainly had the support of most of his people. No more than 4–5% of Liechtenstein’s population belonged to pro-Nazi organisations at any one time. Historian David Beattie explains that the principality never really warmed to Hitler because the ‘pagan, urban and populist creed [of the Nazis] did not appeal morally to the devout, agrarian and conservative mentality of the people of Liechtenstein.’¹⁸ The Prince similarly insisted that there was ‘almost no Nazism in Liechtenstein’ because the people were ‘content to live in a small independent state.’¹⁹
Liechtenstein gave Germany the unmistakable impression of ideological autonomy. Hitler himself believed that ‘the people there hate me,’ while Dr Voigt, the German Consul-General in Zurich, lamented that ‘[i]n this pure German little land, all-German thought is so stunted that it is still alive to some extent only in a small circle.’²⁰ The day after the failed putsch in March 1939, a petition pledging loyalty to the prince gathered signatures from 95.4% of the electorate (employed men).²¹
Even in these unfavourable circumstances, the putsch could very well have succeeded. The existing regime held on by only the thinnest of margins.
Both the government and the people caught wind of the coup before it happened. Deputy Head of Government Alois Vogt, despite his own pro-Nazi tendencies, traveled to Feldkirch to implore the Nazi officials there to stop the Motor Corps invasion, while furious anti-Nazi Liechtensteiners took to the streets. The ring-leaders realised all hope was lost and called off their cronies before wide-scale violence could break out.²² The VDBL was intermittently banned during the war and a number of its leaders were tried and imprisoned after Germany surrendered in 1945.
Had the Motor Corps unit mobilised, Liechtenstein as we know it would have ceased to exist. It would have required little effort. Sometimes, as one historian notes, nations survive only because ‘no one takes the trouble to finish them off.’²³ Such was the case with lucky little Liechtenstein.
Nonetheless, despite the failure of the VDBL’s primary objective, the micro-fascist movement still managed to imprint its anti-Semitic views on certain areas of national policy, including Liechtenstein’s attitude to refugees.
Wednesday, 2 May 1945 — As the Nazi state collapsed between the rapidly converging Eastern and Western fronts, 462 soldiers of the First Russian National Army, a collaborationist unit of the German Wehrmacht, forced their way through a closed border post and into Liechtenstein. Their objective was not conquest, but shelter. Rather than being compelled to return to the Soviet Union, where they would certainly be punished, they were granted asylum in Liechtenstein by the ‘staunchly anti-communist’ Prince Franz Josef II.²⁴
Liechtenstein’s sudden outburst of munificence on behalf of these soldiers of the Reich contrasts sharply with its reluctance to shelter Jewish refugees fleeing from the Holocaust. Only 230 Jewish refugees were allowed to settle in Liechtenstein in the twelve years from 1933 to 1945.²⁵ The barrier to entry was gradually ratcheted up amid fears that the presence of too many Jews would bring down the ire of the Third Reich and stoke anti-Semitic discontent among the people (i.e., outbursts of Nazi violence).
In addition to its reticent approach to Jewish refugees, Liechtenstein actually partook in some Nazi German atrocities. An international commission of historians formed in 2001 found that forced labour had been used on the Liechtenstein royal family’s estates in Nazi Austria and that the family had made purchases of stolen Jewish land and property.²⁶ Liechtensteiner companies, meanwhile, sold important automotive components and anti-air shells to the Wehrmacht.²⁷
The principality has struggled to come to terms with this history, causing it to stumble into a number of anti-Semitism controversies since the war. In 2008, for instance, Prince Hans-Adam II raised eyebrows by calling modern Germany the ‘Fourth Reich,’ leading the Berlin Jewish Museum to accuse him of ‘trivializing the severity of National Socialism in a most irresponsible way.’²⁸
He caused another uproar the following year when he commented that bank secrecy in Liechtenstein during the war had ‘saved the lives of many people, especially Jews.’ The German Central Council of Jews said he was making a ‘mockery’ of the Holocaust, arguing that ‘[p]ortraying Liechtenstein as a merciful helper of the Jews does not chime with the historical facts.’²⁹
There is no significant Jewish presence in Liechtenstein, and therefore no sense of urgency for a national reckoning with this unsavoury past. In 2019, the United States Department of State found only 30 Jewish people among Liechtenstein’s population of 37,000.³⁰ Most Jewish families that were allowed to settle during the war have long since left or died out.
In a sense, then, the aborted putsch of 1939 left a more profound and lasting impression on Liechtenstein than anyone could have predicted at the time. The unique brand of micro-fascism espoused by the Homeland Service, VDBL, and sections of the Fatherland Union may be long dead, but the ripples it created are still — ever so faintly — being felt to this day.
Notes
- David Beattie, Liechtenstein: A Modern History, (Vaduz: van Eck Publishers, [2004] 2012), p. 95.
- Ibid, pp. 105–6.
- Peter Geiger in Historisches Lexikon des Fürstentums Liechtenstein, ‘Rotter-Entführung,’ 31 December 2011. [https://historisches-lexikon.li/Rotter-Entf%C3%BChrung].
- Beattie, A Modern History, pp. 88–9.
- Wilfried Marxer in Historisches Lexikon des Fürstentums Liechtenstein, ‘Vaterländische Union (VU),’ 31 December 2011. [https://historisches-lexikon.li/Vaterl%C3%A4ndische_Union_(VU)].
- Wilfried Marxer in Historisches Lexikon des Fürstentums Liechtenstein, ‘Liechtensteiner Vaterland,’ 31 December 2011. [https://historisches-lexikon.li/Liechtensteiner_Vaterland].
- Wilfried Marxer in Historisches Lexikon des Fürstentums Liechtenstein, ‘Volksdeutsche Bewegung in Liechtenstein (VDBL),’ 31 December 2011. [https://historisches-lexikon.li/Volksdeutsche_Bewegung_in_Liechtenstein_(VDBL)].
- Peter Geiger in Historisches Lexikon des Fürstentums Liechtenstein, ‘Schädler, Rudolf (1903–1990),’ 31 December 2011. [https://historisches-lexikon.li/Sch%C3%A4dler,_Rudolf_(1903%E2%80%931990)].
- Wilfried Marxer in Historisches Lexikon des Fürstentums Liechtenstein, ‘Umbruch, Der,’ 31 December 2011. [https://historisches-lexikon.li/Umbruch,_Der].
- Pierre Raton, Liechtenstein: History and Institutions of the Principality, (Vaduz: Liechtenstein-Verlag, 1970), p. 143.
- David Beattie, Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein: A Biography, (Vaduz: van Eck Publishing, 2020), p. 87.
- Ibid, pp. 1–33.
- Quoted by Peter Geiger on the Liechtenstein-Institut website, ‘History of Liechtenstein during the Second World War.’ [https://www.liechtenstein-institut.li/en/research-projects/geschichte-liechtensteins-im-zweiten-weltkrieg].
- Beattie, A Modern History, pp. 94–6.
- The Argus [Melbourne, Victoria], ‘Why the Nazis Left the State of Liechtenstein Alone,’ 18 December 1943. [https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11789009].
- Quoted in Beattie, A Modern History, p. 103.
- Ibid, p. 104.
- Ibid, p. 92.
- Quoted in Time, ‘Liechtenstein: Nazi Pressure?’ 11 April 1938. [http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,759431,00.html].
- Quoted in Beattie, A Modern History, p. 96 and 99.
- Ibid, p. 107.
- Ibid, p. 105.
- Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, (London: Allen Lane, 2011), p. 735.
- Associated Press, ‘Exiled Russian General Whose Troops Fought With Germans Is Dead,’ 12 September 1988. [https://apnews.com/article/016155df72ba7ebd6c224aa86ac34a21].
- Beattie, A Modern History, p. 131.
- DW, ‘Nazi Camp Labor Used in Liechtenstein,’ 14 April 2005. [https://www.dw.com/en/nazi-camp-labor-used-in-liechtenstein/a-1552304].
- Beattie, A Modern History, pp. 328 and 334.
- Quoted by Reuters, ‘Liechtenstein prince calls Germany a “Fourth Reich,”’ 11 September 2008. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-liechtenstein-germany-idUSLB16606820080911].
- Quoted by Reuters, ‘Liechtenstein prince criticised for Jewish comments,’ 17 August 2009. [https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-liechtenstein-jews-idUKTRE57G1VW20090817].
- United States Department of State — Office of International Religious Freedom, ‘Liechtenstein 2019 International Religious Freedom Report’. [https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1287096/download].
