Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis (8 page)

At a party meeting held in Linz in the same year, Jung attempted to strike out that section of the Nazi program which repudiated the concept of class struggle. He again called for a declaration that the National Socialists were a “class party of productive work ” Once more, however, Riehl refused to accept this proposal.
⁵³

The party’s anti-Semitism was more extreme after the World War than it had been before 1914. A headline in the
DAP
in October 1920 put
Juden-herrschaft
(Jewish domination) at the top of a list of those things the Nazis opposed. Further down the catalogue were laziness, luxury, and gluttony.
⁵⁴

Walter Riehl also continued to stress the need for a temporary dictatorship. A strong leader, who did not have to worry about criticism or popularity, was needed to lead Austria out of its present malaise. But the masses should not be denied their rights indefinitely.
⁵⁵

32
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Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis

*

Propaganda and Progress

/

These ideological tenets formed the basis of much of the Nazis’ propaganda in the early years of the Austrian Republic. Current events, of course, were another source of propaganda material. The Treaty of Saint-Germain was denounced, quite understandably, because it left even more Germans under alien rule than did the Treaty of Versailles. German Austria was an impossible creation consisting of a huge world city and a few Alpine valleys. Its existence would lead to a catastrophe in the long run. Mustafa ttemal of Turkey was viewed as a nationalist hero whose exploits in throwing out foreign invaders and tearing up the Treaty of Sevres ought to be emulated in Austria and Germany. All that was needed was a strong national will. Such determination had been displayed in the Soviet Union and Italy, both of which had defied the West.

Newspaper articles were by no means the only method of Nazi propaganda in the early years of the new Republic. The Nazis held their first large rally in Vienna in February 1922. Special groups were organized to put up posters advertising the demonstration; another group, the Ordnertruppen (the predecessor of the SA) was used to protect the meeting. The rally was climaxed with a speech by Hitler. Communists (or alleged Communists) tried to storm the rostrum while Hitler was speaking, but were stopped by the Ordnertruppen.
⁵
® Such clashes between Marxists and Nazis soon became commonplace in both Austria and Germany and were always given ample headlines in the Nazi press, especially when some of the Nazi participants were killed or wounded.

Austria’s dire circumstances in the early postwar years should have aided an extremist and militant party like the Nazis. Nevertheless, the growth of the DNSAP was disappointing, though on a per capita basis it was far better than that of the German Nazis. Much of the problem can be attributed to the existence of various other extremist groups: paramilitary formations like the Heimwehr (Home Guard), Frontkampfervereinigung (Front Fighters’ Association), and numerous other movements and secret organizations.
⁵⁷
The Nazis’ anti-Semitism and demand for an Anschluss were far from unique even among the more moderate Austrian parties.

In the first postwar elections held in February 1919 the Nazis could muster only 0.78 percent of the almost 3 million votes cast.
⁵⁸
Most of the Nazis’ 27,690 votes came in urban areas. In October the Nazi vote increased to just

|    Nazis and Proto-Nazis
• 33

I
•

1    
under
34,000 with the biggest increases coming in Vienna and Lower Austria.

I    But the
party still had no parliamentary mandates.
⁵⁹
And the “victory” merely

I    
caused a
rift to grow between the party’s relatively moderate leaders and

![    
some
of
its
more radical rank-and-file members who demanded an accelerated

|;    propaganda drive.
⁶⁰

i    
The
party’s growth in 1922 and 1923 was a little more encouraging. The

|;    number of registered members tripled between August 1922 and August 1923

I    
when
it stood at 34,000. During the same period the number of Ortsgruppen

|    doubled to 118. In municipal elections held in Linz in June 1923 the Nazis

jl    won a surprising 7.85 percent of the vote and four seats on the city council.
⁶¹

!;    The circulation of the
Deutsche Arbeiter-Presse
rose from 4,000 to 22,000 in

1922 and 1923. The paramilitary Ordnertruppen, founded in 1922, had 9,800 members a year later.
⁶²

While this modest progress was being made, the Austrian Nazis succeeded in establishing contact with kindred groups in other countries. Ties with the parent Sudeten Nazis had never been broken. As early as December 1919 the Sudetens attended a joint meeting in Vienna along with some Nazis from Polish Silesia. The relative strength of the Sudeten Nazis was revealed in the fact that they were accorded four voting representatives at the conference compared to just two for Austria, and one for the German-Poles. The meeting set up the Interstate National Socialist Bureau of the German Language Territory, with Walter Riehl as its chairman.

In September 1919 Riehl sent copies of the Austrian Nazi program to the chairman of the German Workers’ party, Anton Drexler. Riehl also tried to persuade Drexler to change the name of his party to coincide with that of the Austrian Nazis. In 1920 the German Nazis did change their title to one nearly identical to that used by the Austrians (except the word
German
came in the middle of the name instead of at the beginning, thus NSDAP instead of DNSAP). We do not know whether the Austrians were responsible for this change. But Drexler was prepared to collaborate with the Austrians because he shared their desire to strengthen the working-class element of the parties.
⁶³

Riehl was especially anxious to coordinate the program and insignia of the Austrian and German Nazis. In February 1920 he designed a flag using a swastika on a white field; the flag was first flown in public on 1 May. In the meantime Hitler had been designing his own swastika flag (apparently independently) in Munich.

It was Walter Riehl, once again, who was responsible for organizing a second conference of the federated Nazi party. This meeting took place in Salzburg and was, as far as we know, the first to be attended by Adolf Hitler

34 - Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis

and Anton Drexler. Already at this point the Munich Nazis who now joined the Interstate Bureau began to influence the Austrians.
⁶⁴
However, the relationship was still far from one-sided. Riehl made a reciprocal arrangement for speakers between Germany and Austria. As a result, Hitler spoke in Innsbruck, Salzburg, Hallein, Saint-Poiten, and Vienna in 1920 and again in Vienna in December 1921 and June 1922.
⁸⁵
Meanwhile Riehl, Jung, Gattermayer, and other Austrian and Sudeten Nazis spoke in Nuremberg, Munich, Rosenheim, Bayreuth, and Augsburg, always stressing the prolabor aspects of National Socialism. Riehl also wrote a number of articles in the German Nazis’ official newspaper, the
Volkischer Beobachter,
and Hitler published an article in the
Deutsche Arbeiter-Presse
in February 1923. Riehl and Hitlfl
^-
also exchanged letters between 1920 and 1923 in which both men used the informal “Du” in their salutations.
⁶⁶

These developments meant that by the summer of 1923 the Austrian Nazis had some reason for optimism. Their party was still very small, but was grow-

Nazis and Proto-Nazis • 35

ing at a respectable rate. Ties with the Sudeten Nazis were close; and new and
I:    apparently
warm relations with the German Nazis had been established. In

Dr.
Wiilter Riehl they had an admired and popular leader, not only of their own party, but of the international Nazi federation as well. As late as August

1923 few Austrian Nazis could have foreseen the disasters that lay just ahead.

CHAPTER III THE NAZI CIVIL WAR, 1923-1930

The year 1923 was critical for both the German and Austrian Nazi parties. For the Germans the year was climaxed by the disastrous Beer Hall Putsch in November. The uprising failed miserably; Hitler was arrested and imprisoned, and the German NSDAP had to start virtually anew fifteen months later. For the Austrian Nazis, 1923 marked the beginning of an endless series of leadership disputes and factional strife. The quarrels amounted to a veritable civil war.

The year also witnessed the efforts by older and more moderate Austrian Nazis to preserve their party’s autonomy against Hitler’s drive for dictatorial power, not only over the Nazis of Germany, but those of Austria and the Sudetenland as well. The attack on Austrian Nazi independence in 1923 and again in 1926 proved only a prelude to the whole national dilemma in 1938.

*

The Resignation of Walter Riehl

In the early postwar years the Austrian Nazis, who assumed that the German Nazi party, though younger, had the same goals as themselves, took pleasure in the Germans’ success. Only years later would the more moderate Austrian Nazis deny that the two groups had anything more in common than their name.
¹

Although Riehl and his compatriots were proud of their association with the German Nazis, the feeling was by no means mutual. The Germans contributed nothing to the operation of the Interstate Bureau in Vienna, and Hitler did not even bother to answer many of Riehl’s letters.
²
By the middle of 1922 the German Nazis had grown far larger than their Austrian and Sudeten cousins; and Hitler no longer had any need for his poor relations.

The Nazi Civil War, 1923-1930 • 37

Hitler’s
attitude toward the Austrians became arrogant at the fifth and, as it turned out, last interstate National Socialist convention held in Salzburg in
August
1923. By that time, as Riehl himself admitted, “The name of the
powerful
speaker and leader Adolf Hitler [had] grown far beyond the importance of
other
party leaders.”
³
Having already established his
dictatorial control
over the German Nazis, Hitler was in no mood to see his policies
contradicted
by the smaller Austrian and Sudeten parties.

The main issue at the Salzburg gathering revolved around the party’s policy
toward
future elections. The bourgeois Greater German People’s party (GVP) had offered to form a coalition with the Austrian Nazis, an offer that Dr. Riehl was eager to accept. Riehl, who was reelected chairman of the Austrian party at the start of the convention, saw a coalition as the only hope of the Austrian Nazis’ winning representation in the federal Parliament. With a voice in that assembly, the party would have a new and far more effective forum for its propaganda.
⁴
Hitler, who would himself adopt a similar philosophy in later years, rejected it in 1923 in favor
of
armed revolution. But Riehl believed that
without
a Nazi-GVP partnership, every anti-Marxist would have to vote for the Christian Social party of the Catholic prelate, Ignaz Seipel. On the other hand,
a
right-wing coalition could induce the Seipel government to protect the forthcoming Munich Putsch.
⁵

Dr. Riehl was outvoted by the delegates at the conference and also by the Leaders’ Council chaired by Hitler. Rudolf Jung, the representative of the Sudeten DNSAP, favored Riehl’s proposal before the meeting, but only briefly. More solid support came from the leader of the Austro-Nazi Trade Union, Walter Gattermayer (who, however, was noton the Leaders’ Council). Karl Schulz, on the other hand, even though he was Riehl’s deputy (and the Gauleiter of Vienna), voted against the proposed coalition. He did so not as a matter of principle, however, but because he felt the party was too poor to campaign. Its meager resources could be more usefully spent on the paramilitary Ordnertruppen
⁶
and the party’s press.
⁷
Riehl thus found himself in an embarrassing seven-to-one minority.
⁸

Although Karl Schulz, who now rcplaccd Walter Richl as chairman of the Austrian Nazi Party, lined up with Hitler at the Salzburg convention, he would one day discover what Riehl had already learned, and what the future Austrian chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, would discover years later: that Hitler was opposed not to this or that Austrian policy, but to the very principle of independence for his former homeland.