Read Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis Online
Authors: Bruce F. Pauley
Tags: #Europe, #Presidents & Heads of State, #Hitler; Adolf; 1889-1945, #General, #United States, #Austria, #Austria & Hungary, #Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei in Österreich, #Biography & Autobiography, #History
Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis (14 page)
source
:
Friedrich Hertz,
The Economic Problems of The Danubian States
, p. 147.
The Nazis profited very little from
industrial
unemployment, as the proletariat generally remained faithful to its Marxist parties,
5
* at least until 1938. On the other hand, there is abundant evidence to prove that the unemployed Austrian intelligentsia were solid supporters of the Nazi party from an early date and for primarily economic, not ideological, reasons
.
55
The relationship between the unemployment rate and the Nazis’ popularity was not so immediate or direct as it was in Germany. If they were able to pick up 1
1
1,000 votes in the parliamentary elections of 9 November 1930, that can only be regarded as pathetic compared to the 6,409,600 votes captured by the Reich Nazis two months earlier. Moreover, it is probable that the Austrian Nazi vote would have been even lower had it not been for the “coattail effect” created by the Nazi victory in Germany
.
56
In Styria, where Nazi membership had increased by a comparatively modest 11.5 percent, 30 percent, and 31 percent in the first three quarters of 1930, the growth rate suddenly shot up to 67 percent in the last quarter of the year
.
57
The Nazis’ relatively poor showing in the Austrian elections resulted in large measure because of the continued absence of a strong central leadership.
ill But the pan-German vote was also divided by the failure of the Nazis to
!
‘ '
conclude
an electoral coalition with the Heimwehr. The failure, however, did
j||;'|["'not result
from a lack of interest on either side. The pan-German, anticlerical I^Ving of the Austrian Heimwehr, which was strongest in Styria, Carinthia, and i|!?l''Salzburg, was very much in favor of such an alliance. The clerical wing of the ^-4 Heimwehr, on the other hand, which drew its support mainly from the eastern li' :
provinces
of Lower Austria, Burgenland, and Vienna, wanted nothing to do | \ the anticlerical Nazis, and, in fact, objected to any kind of Heimwehr
c
am
paign,
as it would inevitably draw votes away from the pro-Catholic Christian Social party
.
58
On the Nazi side, Gregor Strasser met with the Heimwehr chief of staff, Hanns Rauter, to discuss an electoral coalition in early October 1930. The :’ij[more serious discussions were conducted between Strasser and the recently L (and controversially) elected Heimwehr leader Prince Ernst Rudiger Starhem-:|;;i berg. During their three meetings (one of which included Adolf Hitler) no fundamental obstacles to an election alliance arose, except the problem of how to divide the presumed spoils of victory: the parliamentary mandates. The Nazis, still euphoric over their sensational victory in Germany the previous month, confidently expected a repetition in Austria. Consequently, they asked for an equal share of the mandates. After some quibbling, Starhemberg agreed, but only on the condition that he be made the head of the joint parliamentary delegation
.
58
Strasser saw the election as an opportunity for long-term cooperation between the NSDAP and the Heimwehr and was willing to pay a high price for it. He therefore offered to place the Nazis’ paramilitary and sporting organizations in Austria under Starhemberg’s command. The Prince turned down the tempting offer, however, because Strasser indignantly refused Starhemberg’s demand for leadership over the joint parliamentary delegation. The promising negotiations thus ended in failure
.
60
The two fascist groups therefore campaigned independently. Typical of Nazi propaganda in general, the Austrian NSDAP tried to please everyone. The universally detested Treaty of Saint-Germain was blamed for the Great Depression. The hard-pressed middle class was told that its predicament was due not only to the inflation of 1921-22, but also to the restoration of the currency by Seipel at an artificially high rate, as well as by money speculation that had allegedly caused the collapse of several banks. To the peasants, struggling against the competition of more efficient Czech and Hungarian farms, the Nazis promised high agricultural tariffs. For the unemployed or underemployed industrial worker, the Nazis demanded the expulsion of tens of thousands of foreign workers and Jews. But the Nazis spread their propa-
ganda
effort too indiscriminately across the length and breadth of the country for these messages to have much effect
.®
1
f
The Nazis’ anemic showing at the polls was difficult-even for their own superoptimistic press to disguise. Although the couRt was four times the
27.000 votes registered in 1927, the total of 111,000 was less than half the
228.000 amassed by the Heimwehr
.®
2
And while the Heimwehr was garnering
eight parliamentary mandates, the Nazis won none. Alfred Proksch’s mouthpiece,
Die Volksstimme,
denounced Austria’s complicated voting system, which had prevented the Nazis from winning any representation. Yet the paper also admitted that the party had been hurt by the charge that it was antireligious
.
63
<
In a report sent to the Munich Reichsleitung, Walter Riehl, who had just rejoined the party in September 1930, made a more detached analysis of the disappointing showing. He agreed that the Nazis, and also the Heimwehr, had lost votes because many people believed they would be throwing away their votes if either party failed to win the indispensable
Grundmandat
(basic mandate, which required an absolute majority vote). The Social Democrats had retained their popularity because of their great building program in Vienna. The Anschluss program, which was still advocated by both the SDP and the CSP, had also stolen much of the Nazis’ thunder, as had the Heimwehr s antiparliamentarianism. Finally, the Nazis needed to put forward prominent men with distinguished names, even if they were not party members, rather than professional politicians who were unknown to the general public.
6
'* Riehl might have also mentioned that the Austrian Nazis received almost no assistance in the campaign from Germany. Except for one speech by Strasser in the small Carinthian town of Volkermarkt, no major German speakers came to Austria for the election. Two German diplomats in Austria thought this might have been the result of an understanding between Hitler and Starhemberg
.
85
*
The Party at the End of 1930
The German envoy to Austria, Count Hugo Lerchenfeld, summarized the Austrian political scene in a year’s-end report to his home office. He noted that he had dealt with the Austrian Nazis only incidentally in his previous reports, because they had had no special significance as long as the Heimwehr was united. The Heimwehr, with its antiparliamentarianism, had been a kind of Nazi substitute. National Socialism had failed in Austria because the necessary preconditions were lacking. The Nazis in Germany had
poster of A Nazi worker
slaying a Socialist dragon with the head of a Jew. DOW.
donesowell because of the
reparations issue and the government s policy of j
falfillment (that is,
complying with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles). !
These arguments made no
impression in Austria. The Nazis had also sue- I
■
ceededin those parts of
Germany which had been occupied by the Allies. But
no such territories existed in
Austria. The economic status of the Austrian
peasants was also
better and more stable than that of their counterparts in i northern and eastern Germany. Moreover, the Weltanschauung of the Christian Social party was to some extent immune to the teachings of Nazism. But above all, the Austrian Nazis had failed to achieve a breakthrough because they lacked a strong and popular (
volkstumlich
) leader
.
66
The year 1930 thus ended with mixed results for the Austrian party. Ofi the one hand, it was undeniably growing, attracting four times its vote of three years earlier. The feud with the Schulz faction no longer drained the party’s energies, because the November 1930 elections had left the Schulz group far behind the Hitler Bewegung. The party’s stupendous success in Germany was, of course, also a source of pride and optimism. On the other hand, the party still had no representatives in Parliament, was overshadowed by the Heimwehr, and, worst of all, was without any centralized leadership. If the party hoped to become a major force in Austrian politics, it would have to have a strong leader and destroy, or at least disrupt, the Heimwehr movement.
CHAPTER V THE NAZI RENAISSANCE, 1931-1933
.. The two perennial problems that had been plaguing the Hit-
'^J lerian Nazis since their founding in 1926 were at least ameliorated, between | 1931 and 1933: the lack of an effective centralized leadership and the competition of other volkisch groups, especially the Austrian Heimwehr.
Theo Habicht as “State Inspector”
U
The man who brought about these changes was a German
?
citizen named Theo Habicht. Bom in Wiesbaden in 1898 (coincidentally the ; same year as both Frauenfeld and Reschny), Habicht had been a member of that town’s city council, an Ortsgruppenleiter, and a Kreisleiter before becoming the de facto leader of the Austrian Nazi party on 11 July 1931. In September of the same year he became a member of the German Reichstag. According to his enemy Prince Starhemberg, he was also a “former window dresser and an ex-Communist agitator
.”
1
Habicht (which appropriately enough means “hawk” in German), was anything but a prototype of the Nazis’ Nordic hero. According to Starhemberg (whose views are largely verified by photographs), the Nazi leader “was a small, embryonic character who was slender and insignificant, with a disproportionately large head and who wore large homed-rim glasses. ... He actually incorporated that which in Nazi theory was regarded as an inferior race to be fought
.”
2
His physical appearance proved to be no insurmountable handicap, however, perhaps because all but one of the Austrian
Gauleiter
, not to mention the top German Nazi leaders, were equally un-Nordic.
More damaging was Habicht’s limited acquaintance with Austria. According to another rival, the former German chancellor and later special
i IN
70 • Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis
envoy to Austria, Franz von Papen, Habicht was unencumbered by any his-torical knowledge of Austria or insight into its complex pojitical problems. I
n
short, he was a “revolutionary Impressario
.”
3
Habicht’s'impulsiveness and either ignorance of, or indifference to, diplomatic dangers did lead to near disaster in July 1934. These characteristics may have also aroused a certain amount of resentment from his Austrian subordinates
.
4
Nonetheless, in his three years of leadership between 1931 and 1934 Habicht succeeded in gal-vanizing the Austrian Nazi party into a large and effective weapon, possibly because he was courageous, energetic, influential, and an excellent speaker.
Habicht’s official position in 1931 was merely that of
Landesgesch'afts-fuhrer
(state business leader). As such he stood above the
Gauleiter,
biif was technically subordinate to Alfred Proksch, who now realized his longtime dream of becoming the full-fledged Landesleiter of Austria. This position reaffirmed his financial control over the
Gaue.
Evidently in response to the antagonism felt toward Proksch by many of the
Gauleiter,
the new federal leader was placed under the “supervision” of Habicht. From the outset, however, Habicht, with full authority to consolidate and expand the movement and its auxiliary organizations into a united force, took over as the real leader of the Austrian party, including the signing of membership cards. Nevertheless, there remained a dualism at the top of the Austrian party that typified Hitler’s reluctance to create the rational kind of party organization desired by Gregor Strasser. Only Hitler could hold the fragmented offices and interests together with his charismatic leadership.
In 1932 Habicht’s official status was elevated to that of
Landesinspekteur
(state inspector). This post made him one of ten inspectors assigned to the party in Germany and Austria. Although entirely dependent on Hitler, of course, his powers included the right to supersede the authority of individual
Gauleiter
if need be
.
5
Although far from universally liked, Habicht gave the Austrian Nazis the strong leadership and direction they had so desperately needed. He did not hesitate to use his new office to suppress long-simmering party feuds. For example, in the Westgau of the Tyrol, Salzburg, and Vorarlberg, which had long been tom apart by “mutual accusations, suspicion, and unproven assertions,” he managed to restore order by expelling the former Gauleiter, Heinrich Suske, and by threatening to expel anyone who “made war on his own or who broke party rules
.”
8
The new unity and leadership was purchased at the price of local autonomy. No longer could the Austrian
Gaue
communicate directly with the Nazi headquarters or Reichsleitung in Munich. Instead, all business had to be referred to the Landesleitung in Linz, which meant in practice Habicht. The Landes-