Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis (11 page)

labeled the HB a “fascist organization,”
⁵⁷
a damning comparison with the hated Italians. To emphasize their separate identity, the Schulz Nazis exchanged their brown shirts for grey ones in 1927.    /

With the
approach
of parliamentary elections in April JJ927 the feud temporarily cooled. Hitler invited Schulz to Munich on 11-12 March to discuss the possibility of reunifying the two factions. Unable to reach any agreement on reunion, however, a
Burgfriede
(truce) was concluded just in time for the elections. When resumed several months later the negotiations failed, apparently because the Austrians still insisted on retaining their own organization and policies so far as purely Austrian affairs were concerned. Local HB leaders also feared losing their positions after a merger. As usual, Hitler^ own conditions were simple: “either subordination or a fight in which
the
stronger would decide. He hoped to be the stronger.”
⁵⁸

Although 1928 witnessed some actual violence between the Nazi followers of Schulz and those of Hitler,
⁵⁹
reunification efforts resumed in 1929. On 5 October 1929 the
Deutsche Arbeiter-Presse
suddenly announced that the two Nazi factions had been reunited on 30 September. As their common platform they demanded an Austro-German Anschluss, a fight against the Jewish domination of the country’s economy, culture, and public life, a fundamental constitutional reform changing voting rights, and an important role for nationalist trade unions.
⁶⁰
Significantly, nothing was said about party structure or the future status of the South Tyrol.

The
DAP
’s rejoicing was premature. The
Gauleiter
of the Hitler Bewegung vehemently denounced the merger in a meeting held in Vienna on 5 January 1930. In letters to Gregor Strasser at the Munich Reichsleitung and to the new Landesleitung in Linz, they objected to the selection of Leo Haubenberger, a railway official and Schulz’s deputy, as the Landesleiter of the united party. The letter writers claimed that the Schulz group was now insignificant and would soon die out.
⁶¹
What really upset the Gau leaders, of course, was the horrifying prospect of losing their jobs to Schulz men.

Like Georg von Schonerer, the Hitler Nazis regarded conflicts as irreconcilable and negotiations as little better than surrender. Thus Alfred Proksch later indignantly denied the accusation made by one of his party enemies, that he had led the negotiations for reunification. It was a matter of pride that he was influential in persuading Hitler to end the talks.
⁶²

Hitler played a surprisingly minor role in these negotiations. When Hans Krebs, the HB Landesleiter, and Alfred Proksch spoke with the Fiihrer in Munich, Hitler merely stated that he did not believe in the possibility of a reunification. Without firm leadership on the side of the Hitler Bewegung, however, a reconciliation between the two Austrian factions proved impos-

!    sible. Negotiations broke down on 2 March 1930, with each side blaming the

other for the failure. It is impossible to say for certain which side was more
responsible
for the fiasco; but the attempts of Hans Krebs, to organize an opposition to Schulz within Schulz’s own membership, did not go unnoticed
and did
little to improve mutual trust and good will.
⁶³
The unification efforts I    were not a total failure, however, as    Walter Riehl and his tiny Deutschsozialer

1    Verein (which he founded in 1924    after resigning from the party) rejoined

the Hitler movement in September 1930.
⁸⁴

Last Years of the “Schulz Party”

The “Schulz party,” as it was contemptuously called by its Hitlerian opponents, lingered on for more than five years after the failure of the last reunification efforts in 1930. Although they did not then have the facts to prove it, the
Gauleiter
's prophecy that the Schulz faction would die a natural death was basically correct. Karl Schulz simply did not have the ability to build a mass party. But more importantly, Adolf Hitler’s local electoral victories in Germany in 1929 and his much more impressive national victory in September 1930, when the Reich Nazis won over 6.4 million votes and became the Reichstag’s second largest party, gave the Austrian NSDAP (HB) a badly needed boost. Although still hampered by the popularity of other right-wing groups, the Hitler Nazis nevertheless gained 111,000 votes in the November 1930 parliamentary elections, thus quadrupling their vote of 1927.
⁶⁵
Thereafter the Schulz Nazis became a politically insignificant splinter group, although they still refused to disband.

Nonetheless, the Schulz faction in its final years has a certain interest for historians of fascism if only because of its impotence. Although it possessed much of the ideology of Nazism and fascism in general, it lacked the ruthless fanaticism, imperialistic program, hierarchical structure, and especially the charismatic leadership of successful fascist movements. The Schulz Nazis preferred ideological purity to political success. Typical of its attitude was an editorial of 1931 in the
DAP,
which stated that “to fight for the purity of an idea is certainly a more difficult task than to grow in a movement in which national socialist ideas are watered down and interspersed with the most different borrowings.”
⁶⁶
In general, the last years of the Schulz group were devoted to dissociating itself from embarrassingly similar movements. Mussolini’s Italy was condemned for being anti worker, for censoring the press, for dissolving political

parties, and for establishing a permanent, rather than simply a temporary, dictatorship. Likewise, the Fascist state was criticized for not recognizing racial distinctions; it was no better than bolshevism with reversed value signs
(Vorzeichen).
⁶⁷
   /

The
DAP's
greatest ire, however, was reserved for the Hitlerian Nazis. Their election tactics in September 1930 were comparable to those of the Communist party. The Nazis and Communists were trying to outbid each other in their radicalism. Both parties hoped to build a new Germany on the ruins of the old one. The German Nazis, in fact, were not really true national socialists at all, but reactionary fascists using national Bolshevik methods.
⁶⁸
In 1931 the swastika, which had been part of the
DAP’s
masthead since 1922, quietly disappeared. And when Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss dissolved the Hitler Bewegung in June 1933 following a wave of Nazi terror, the
DAP
applauded, hoping in vain to pick up some new members.
⁶⁹

The
Deutsche Arbeiter-Presse
did not even object to the dissolution of all Austrian political parties in 1934, including the DAP, because it had always regarded the movement “as an association of like-minded people and especially after the appearance of Hitlerism in Austria ... as the founders and protectors of true national socialism.”
⁷⁰
The newspaper itself disappeared without a whimper in July 1935 after twenty-seven years of publication.

That the Schulz group survived as long as it did was in part a tribute to the strength of Austrian patriotism. When the north German left-wing Nazi Otto Strasser (brother of Gregor) broke away (or was expelled) from the Nazi party in 1930, he carried almost no one with him. But Schulz, who believed in many of the same ideas as Strasser, could count on Austrian separatism to maintain his political independence for nine years. However strong the yearning was for an Anschluss with Germany, Austrian Nazis, and not just the followers of Schulz, were still primarily Austrians. In effect, Hitler forced Schulz and his followers to choose between Hitler's brand of Nazism and their Austrian loyalties. They chose Austria. Ironically, even the Hitlerian Nazis would one day be faced with that same painful choice.

To some extent the survival was also a matter of institutional loyalty. Walter Gattermayer expressed this sentiment very well several years later when attempting to explain why he had not joined the Hitler movement until 1932. “It is difficult,” he wrote, “to give up an enterprise which one has helped to create.”
⁷¹

The decade of the 1920s, which had begun so promisingly for the Austrian Nazis, thus ended on a decidedly sour note. The progress achieved between 1920 and 1925 could not be sustained into the more prosperous second half of the decade. The split in 1925-26 proved to be permanent and had a debilitating effect on the party’s success for the next five years. After the resignation of Walter Riehl in 1923, the party never again found an entirely satisfactory leader. Karl Schulz was acceptable to the older and more conservative members, but not to the young radicals, who turned to Adolf Hitler. But Hitler, even though providing his followers with ideological guidance, was prohibited from entering Austrian territory and in any case was too preoccupied with
German
affairs to provide the Austrian Nazis with practical day-to-day leadership. Therefore, the late twenties proved to be a time of frustration and stagnation for both wings of the Austrian Nazi party.

CHAPTER IV FASCISTS WITHOUT A FUHRER

The German-speaking people have an old proverb,
Man braucht Feinde
(one needs enemies). The Nazis of both Germany and Austria were fervent believers and practitioners of this philosophy. Even before the rivalry between the Schulz and Hitlerian Nazis ended for all practical purposes in 1929-30, new foes appeared on the horizon. One of these was the paramilitary Austrian Heimwehr; the other, amazingly enough, consisted of the party’s
¹
own leaders.

Germany and the Leadership Principle

It was one of the major ironies of the Hitlerian Nazis (and also of the fascists in the Heimwehr movement) that however much they prattled about the glories of the Fiihrerprinzip, when it came to following a leader unconditionally, they often acted more like anarchists than disciplined followers of the German Messiah.

Of course, Hitler remained the supreme leader, a remote “umpire” who was able to prevent the outbreak of the kinds of ideological disputes that plagued the Heimwehr. But the Fiihrer’s strategy was to concentrate on gaining power in Germany first, before shifting his money and attention to the struggle in Austria.
²
Being forbidden by the Austrian government from entering the country no doubt made it difficult for Hitler to intervene in day-to-day party quarrels there.
³
But a more fundamental problem was Hitler’s unwillingness to bother with the mundane aspects of running a party (or, later on, a government). Hitler’s only real interests were art and war. Thus he contented himself with laying down only a few broad outlines of policies for the party and seldom even issued written orders. His underlings were left to
carry
out his programs as best they could interpret them, with whatever means they chose. Hitler intervened in everyday party affairs in both Austria and Germany only if they seriously threatened to disrupt the party or to interfere with his overall international objectives. Gregor Strasser, as head of the party directorship (Reichsleitung) in Munich between 1928 and 1930, also made administrative decisions concerning Austria, but was often too busy to handle

the incessant feuds.
⁴

Most historians have firmly believed that after 1926 the Austrian Nazi party was “a mere appendage of Hitler’s movement [which] must
be
ruled out as
representative
of Austrian fascism.”
⁵
Although the Austrian
Landesleiter
were appointed (if at all) in Munich, local Nazi functionaries felt little control from Germany. For the Austrian Nazis, the problem was a lack of Reich German interference rather than too much, especially between 1926
and
1931
.
(In later years, however, they frequently made the opposite complaint.) So jealous were the Austrian
Gauleiter
of each other that they never could agree to
give
unconditional allegiance to one of their colleagues
as
Landesleiter of the whole Austrian party.
⁶
Their mistrust and envy were to remain chronic problems for the party, not only in the late twenties, but also even up to the Anschluss in 1938.

Munich’s laissez faire policy was more than simply the product of Hitler’s natural inclinations toward laziness and indecisiveness. If the Austrian party were kept in a
fuhrerlos
condition, there would be little likelihood of Hitler’s authority being challenged again by a powerful native leader the way it had been between 1923 and 1926 by Riehl and Schulz. Such a policy of “benign neglect” had been successfully employed by Hitler in Germany to prevent the emergence of a successor while he was imprisoned in 1924.

*

The Fuhrerlos Party

At any rate, there simply was no
strong
centralized Nazi leadership for Austria between 1926 and 1931, and sometimes no centralized leadership at all. Following the schism in 1926, Hitler appointed a fifty -five-year-old retired colonel from Styria, with the very un-Nordic name of Friedrich Jankovic, to be his first Landesleiter of Austria. Although a member of the party since 1921 and a hard worker, Jankovic had at best only limited success in bringing order to the movement, despite his claims. According to one of his successors, Alfred Proksch, the party’s pathetic showing in the 1927 parliamentary elections (when it tallied only twenty-seven thousand
54 • Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis