The Austrian Association of Hiking, Sports and Society (German: Österreichischer Wander-, Sport- und Geselligkeitsverein, abbreviated OeWSGV or ÖWSGV) was a name used to camouflage a secret paramilitary army in Austria which operated from 1951 to 1964.
It was founded by the head of the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB), Franz Olah, to combat communism in Austria.
[2] In 1947, Johann Böhm, president of the ÖGB and the politician, Franz Olah (1910–2009) secretly formed a group of reliably anti-Communist trade unions leaders.
The leadership of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the US High Commissioner and Head of the United States Armed Forces in Germany, General Lieutenant Geoffrey Keyes (1888–1967) tacitly accepted the arrangement.
[3] However, in Austria, the Allies feared that the people, unhappy with food shortages and a large number of refugees in the country, might support a resurgence of National Socialism.
[7] This is remarkable because while the OeWSGV under Olah would employ socialists and trade unionists, similar entities in other European states were formed by conservatives and nationalists and indeed, some of the middle-class citizens of the Austrian People's Party had good contacts with the CIA in the post-war period.
In 1951, a secret army was raised in order to maintain a fighting force with which the Austrian government could counter any attempt at a Communist coup d'état.
[citation needed] In Golling an der Salzach near Salzburg, (at that time in the American occupation zone), land was purchased for the mountain and winter training of a 200-man special group.
The CIA provided funding[9] and material support to the OeWSGV, including 8 to 10 million Austrian schillings and modern radio equipment.
In 1953, the Staatspolizei ("StaPo"), the Austrian secret service, under the supervision of Peter Schuller, discovered an OeWSGV station in Trofaiach in the British occupation zone.
In 1955, at the completion of the Austrian State Treaty, the four occupying powers withdrew and by its own law, Austria became a neutral country.
They were designed to combat internal communist currents, and to function as "stay-behind" organizations to protect the countries in the event of Soviet attack.
In 1963, Olah became Minister of the Interior in the government of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) Chancellor Alfons Gorbach (1898–1972).
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.
In 1964, Olah was found to have misappropriated trade union funds to support the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).
Olah defended the OeWSGV as a patriotic measure in the struggle against communism to be judged in the context of the Cold War.
Other men connected with the OeWSGV included the trade unionist Karl Flottl, the Viennese SPÖ municipal councillor, Hans Bock and the head of the Chamber of Labor, Franz Horr.
In 1996, Swanee Hunt, US ambassador to Austria, made public US intelligence documents from the time of the Cold War.
The Austrian federal government commissioned the historian, Oliver Rathkolb of the University of Vienna, to apply for the publication of further US documents.
For example, Olah knew Wesley Cook, who served as a representative of the American Federation of Labor in the Marshall Plan for three years for the Economic Cooperation Administration in Vienna.