Markus Benesch should know the terrain of Austrian politics well. Today he is a member of the administration in the political cabinet of the Austrian minister of foreign affairs, as well as an award-winning historian of the political history of Vienna in the first decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, he is familiar with the problems and processes of conservative politics in the past and present. In his study of the Christian Social Party in Vienna 1910–1934, which was submitted as a master's thesis in 2010 and published in 2014 by Böhlau, Benesch describes the glory and the decline of the formerly powerful “Christlichsoziale Partei.” Created and led by Karl Lueger, the legendary mayor of the Reichs-, Haupt- und Residenzstadt, in 1910—the year of Lueger's death—the movement had split into different wings and was unable to find answers to the problems of the time. World War I smashed the traditional social structure and resulted in 1918—especially in Vienna—in a general disaster without any illusions. More than the Social Democrats, the Christian Socials were struggling to define their political aims and their own role in the hugely diminished new state in 1918.

Benesch is able to reconstruct the problems of the party together with the problems of the whole state. Most of the subjects of Austria had lost illusions after World War I and found sympathies in extremist positions in politics. In 1917, during the war, the party had gathered around the flag of the emperor, but just a short time before the surrender of the Habsburg throne and the imperial administration, the Christian Socials voted for the establishment of a democratic republic. Step by step the party took over responsibility again, and finally it was under the leadership of Ignaz Seipel that the economic and ideological positions of Austria and the party were reinforced. Benesch presents a lot of figures and statistics that illustrate the rebuilding and reconstruction of society and politics, and he tries to explain the special character of Vienna, which had always been different from other provinces of the state. At the beginning of the republic, the Christian Socials were constrained by the majority of the Social Democrats, who tried to establish Socialist objectives in reality. The so-called “Rotes Wien” was dominated by Social Democrats, and they had real power. The opposition party in Vienna was forced to negotiate with the majority or to articulate more radical positions than its ideological opponent. They did not have a real chance to implement their policies in Vienna, but did so in federal politics. In the 1920s, the conflicts between the left-wing representatives in Vienna and the conservative federal government steadily increased. The paralyzed Christian Socials in Vienna were split moreover into several groups and corporative interests. During the entire period studied in the present work, no leading character could unify all of the diverse interests. The Christian Socials defined themselves as a party of employees, workers, agrarians (who were not considered so important in Vienna, of course), retired persons, civil servants, teachers, and businessmen. Where was the common link? It was a difficult job to negotiate the big differences among these groups, and it was almost impossible to present a unified profile.

Benesch clearly shows the party's shift from resignation to radicalization. The paramilitary formations of the parties (Wehrverbände) gained ever more influence and real power. Significantly, he makes clear the increasing social clash in the description of the “Schattendorf” episode in 1927. The Christian Socials expressed rhetorical aggression, but they could not seriously defend on the ideological battlefield against the Socialist majority. With the dissolution of the party in 1934, however, the civil war was inevitable, and the Christian Socials had to recognize their own responsibility and guilt for a failing country. Benesch's study is not dedicated to the classical “red-white” confrontation, but it takes a closer look into a peer-group of a party and the internal structure of a Christian conservative community on the eve of Fascism. Despite some bibliographical deficits, the book may be a suitable source for all persons who would like to understand the collapse of a formerly relevant and established party during the interwar decades.