Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis (38 page)

Keppler told Martin Bormann (now the second man after Rudolf Hess in the party’s headquarters) about this letter. Bormann, who on 30 September had advised Keppler to demand unconditional discipline from Leopold, reported back to Keppler that Hitler now considered the Austrian Nazi Political Organization to be less important than before. Any further violations of discipline might cause Leopold’s recall
.
⁸⁴

Keppler went so far as to prevent Leopold from meeting either Hitler or Foreign Minister Neurath. The official explanation for Hitler’s not even having enough time to shake the Landesleiter’s hand was Mussolini’s state visit to Germany. The Reich chancellor was naturally not eager to emphasize his ties to the Austrian Nazi party at the very time he was courting the former defender of Austria’s independence.

The best Leopold could do in Berlin was to gain an interview with Hermann Goring. But even that meeting took place in the presence of Wilhelm Keppler. After a lengthy discussion, the prime minister agreed to leave the leadership of the illegal party in Leopold’s hands. However, the latter was not to interfere in the activities of Seyss-Inquart and his colleagues; on the contrary, they were to be supported. Those working for Seyss were to be given a leave of absence from the party. Furthermore, Leopold had to promise to maintain “strict discipline
.”
⁸⁵
Far from strengthening Leopold’s position, the trip was still another triumph for Keppler and Seyss-Inquart. The Landesleiter had been snubbed and chastised. When ordered to go to Berlin in late November, he refused rather than subject himself to another such humiliation
.
⁸⁹

Control of the party was rapidly slipping out of Leopold’s hands. If he and his followers were ever to capture power and head off their SS rivals, they

would have to do something drastic—and soon. The noose was tightening not only around Schuschnigg’s neck, but around Leopold’s as welL

The year and a half between July 1936 and January 1938' witnessed a sharp increase in the self-confidence
of
Austrian Nazis as well as in a renewed
effort
to work out some kind of accommodation with the government that would restore at least a disguised legality to the party. These efforts, however, attained only a very limited success.

The total numerical strength of the Nazis may have been equal to that of the government and its supporters, but the Nazis were simply too divided among themselves to achieve power on their own. The rivalry between the Austria^ SA and SS, which had been vividly apparent during the July Putsch, resumed and even intensified after the July Agreement. And the Political Organization was split between Josef Leopold and his supporters in eastern Austria, and Klausner, Rainer, and Globocnik in the west.

These divisions were welcome, not only to the Schuschnigg government, but strangely enough to Adolf Hitler as well. By playing one faction off against the others Schuschnigg was able to seriously weaken his enemies and prop up his unpopular regime. The same divisions within the Austrian Nazi party, which Hitler never attempted to resolve, made it unlikely that the party would do anything rash before the Fiihrer thought the time had come to complete the Gleichschaltung and ultimately the annexation of Austria.

CHAPTER XII THE EXECUTION: BERCHTESGADEN AND THE ANSCHLUSS

So much has been written about the final weeks and days of the first Austrian Republic that the historian hesitates to embark on still another account. The story of Chancellor Schuschnigg’s humiliating trip to Berchtesgaden, his ill-fated plebiscite, Goring’s ultimata, and the German invasion on 12 March has been told in great, sometimes hour-by-hour detail. Yet in all accounts the Austrian Nazi party has never been treated as more than an incidental adjunct of German foreign policy. And little or no attempt has been made to demonstrate that the Austrian party sometimes followed independent goals contrary to those desired by German leaders, just as it had in earlier years.

In the four months between November 1937 and March 1938 most Austrian Nazis were no more willing to follow Hitler meekly than they had been in the days of Walter Riehl and Karl Schulz. On the contrary, just as in the diplo-matic crisis preceding the First World War so too in 1938 it was frequently Austrians (in the latter case both Nazis and non-Nazis) who were forcing the pace of events with the Germans reacting to them.

*

Hitler, Leopold, and the Hossbach Conference

Adolf Hitler had largely ignored Austria since the July Agreement in 1936; domestic concerns and the Spanish Civil War absorbed his attention. But by November 1937 German rearmament was fairly well advanced and Hitler could now consider abandoning his restraint in foreign affairs. Anxiety about his health and fear of a premature death may have also induced him to speed up the realization of his foreign-policy objectives
.
¹

On the fifth of November Hitler met with his top military advisers as well

as his foreign minister, Neurath, in what has subsequently been called the Hossbach Conference. The prosecution at Nuremberg and mosj historians up to 1960 regarded this meeting at the Reich chancellery as Hitler*s “blueprint” for a world war. The Anschluss of Austria “was part of a program declared to his own circle, and was the first step in the well-conceived and carefully planned campaign of aggression: Austria first, Czechoslovakia second, and Poland third
.”
²
Then in 1961 the British historian A. J. P Taylor, in his
Origins of the Second World War,
dismissed Hitler’s exposition at the conference as “in large part day-dreaming, unrelated to what followed in real life
.”
³

Few historians have accepted Taylor’s thesis uncritically. Although admit^ ting that the conference was no blueprint or accurate prophecy, most recent interpretations view the meeting as marking a definite turning point in Hitler’s foreign-policy strategy
.
⁴
The Fiihrer had, on countless earlier occasions, spoken of the need for Lebensraum in the East. But now for the first time he got down to specific cases: Czechoslovakia and Austria would be his first conquests between 1943 and 1945 at the latest, but possibly much sooner.

Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, who recorded the minutes of the meeting, noted no surprise or objections from Goring or Admiral Erich Rader, the commander in chief of the navy. But Neurath, General Wemer von Fritsch, commander in chief of the army, and Minister of War Wemer von Blomberg were all thoroughly alarmed. Blomberg was especially upset, arguing that Germany’s defenses in the west were of “very small value” in the event of a general war.

Blomberg’s reaction to the Hossbach conference was by no means shortlived. Sometime toward the end of 1937, probably during a visit by Leopold to Berlin in late November, the German war minister met with the Landesleiter to discuss the Austrian situation. They soon discovered that they both resented Hitler’s interference in “their” affairs (Austria and the Wehrmacht). And both wanted to prevent a German invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia, which they feared would result in a hopeless multifront war for Germany.

When Blomberg told Leopold about the Hossbach conference and Hitler’s deadline for war, Leopold was at once (perhaps conveniently) convinced that Hitler would not wait another four to six years before launching an attack. To avoid the catastrophic consequences of a new world war, the Austrian Nazis would have to settle the Austrian “question” through a fait accompli before Hitler had a chance to do it from the outside
.
⁵
Judged against the backdrop of Leopold’s later plans and activities, however, it is hard to believe that he was that worried about a world war. His primary concern was not how he could ij ;, prevent a German invasion of Austria—however desirable a goal that might ji | be—but how he could obtain power for himself.

;|! r To Blomberg’s query of whether a peaceful takeover in Austria was pos-sible, Leopold replied in the negative. Schuschnigg, he said, was convinced [1 that he (Leopold) would soon be replaced by a “Catholic activist”* And the

i I chancellor believed that if worse came to worst and Leopold was replaced ij by a Reich German, he (Schuschnigg) could still obtain better terms from a German than from Leopold.

The Landesleiter therefore insisted that his (Leopold’s) only option was to proclaim a countergovemment in Linz, which would immediately reaffirm Austrian independence. No direct German intervention would be needed, because Leopold had already secured the allegiance of the Alpine commanders of the Austrian army. The real irony behind Leopold’s plan, as he himself admitted to Blomberg, was this: its success depended on Hitler’s covering Leopold’s flank in case his countergovemment provoked an invasion by Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or possibly even Italy
.
⁷

Sometime in January or early February, Franz von Papen obtained a copy of a circular order from Leopold to his colleagues, asking them to be prepared to renew the fight (against the Austrian government) at any moment. But Leopold’s hopes of disrupting the efforts of Papen and Seyss-Inquart toward , an “evolutionary” settlement of the Austrian “problem” were soon to be shattered.

With Austria’s former protector, Italy, heavily committed, first in Ethiopia and then in the Spanish Civil War, Vienna’s international situation continued to deteriorate in the second half of 1936 and throughout 1937. During a grandiose state visit to Germany in September 1937, Mussolini formally recognized “Germany’s special interests in Austria
.”
⁸
France, politically divided and in the worst phase of the Great Depression, was in no mood to aid even its eastern allies let alone neutral Austria. Great Britain was barely beginning to rearm in 1937—38 and regarded Germany’s revisionist aims as largely justified.

Therefore when on 27 January 1938 Papen issued Schuschnigg an invitation authorized by Hitler himself to visit the Fiihrer in Germany, the Austrian chancellor felt in no position to refuse. But before venturing to Germany Schuschnigg apparently wanted to strengthen his bargaining position by exposing the illegal activities of the Austrian Nazi party.

A good excuse for action arose with the publication of an interview which the Gauleiter of Vienna, Leopold Tavs, gave to a newspaper in Prague. Republished in Vienna’s
Reichspost
on 25 January, it was an open challenge

to the Austrian government. Tavs declared that Schuschnigg’s police
would
not dare to prosecute the Austrian Nazis in the face of German retaliation. When the police raided the Nazis’ office on the Teinfaltstrasse,' what they found shocked even them.    '

Among various plans of action was a memorandum by Tavs asserting that the Nazis could not expect any further progress with Schuschnigg. The only solution, therefore, was the threat of an invasion by Germany followed by a Nazi government under Leopold
.
⁹
One plan, reminiscent of an incident staged by the Germans at the outset of the Polish campaign in 1939, called for an attack on the German embassy and the murder of Papen by Austrian Nazis disguised as members of the Fatherland Front
.
¹⁰

Whether the so-called Tavs Plan was approved by German authorities has long been disputed. Tavs himself has claimed that “the people in Munich and Berlin didn’t know anything about the . . . Plan
.”
¹¹
In view of the growing disfavor in which illegal Austrian Nazis found themselves by the early part of

1938 it is unlikely that Hitler or his lieutenants even knew about the Plan let alone approved it. In any event, the Tavs papers revealed the desperate and reckless character of the Austrian Nazi movement at this juncture. Their discovery set in motion a chain reaction, which soon led to the demise of not only Tavs, but also Leopold and the rest of their cohorts.

Meanwhile Leopold’s fate was rapidly being sealed by unrelated developments in Germany. On 26 January Leopold’s co-conspirator Blomberg was dismissed as war minister following the revelation that his recent bride was a former prostitute. The news of Blomberg's dismissal was published in the German press on 4 February along with the announced resignation of Fritsch and Neurath, both of whom, like Blomberg, were opponents of Hitler’s expansionist plans.

Blomberg’s downfall wrecked Leopold’s hopes for a countergovemment. In late January or very early February, Leopold told Persche to have “the SA ready to march in no less than two days and no more than fourteen,” to protect the prospective Nazi government in Linz
.
¹²
Shortly thereafter the Landesleiter announced his intentions to the Austrian
Gauleiter
at a two-day meeting on a Danube island near Vienna. By this time three or four Austrian generals of Alpine units as well as the Austrian SA were in a high state of readiness. The
Gauleiter
gave their enthusiastic approval to Leopold’s plan. Then came the shocking news from Berlin
.
¹³

frii-
I
f|

As Leopold had feared, Schuschnigg began negotiating with 1:, Seyss-Inquart in early February. The chancellor hoped to reach an under-standing with the National Opposition before meeting with Hitler. This tactic