Terror in the Balkans (12 page)

The Austrian Nazis, banned as an organization in May 1933, murdered

Dollfuss in July 1934. But already Dollfuss had inadvertently hastened

the day when the German Nazis would achieve a smooth takeover of the

Austrian state. For, by provoking confrontation with the Social Dem-

ocrats and the trade unions and then crushing them in bloody urban

battles—a civil war–type situation for which, arguably, neither side was

entirely blameless—he removed what might have been a major bulwark

against a Nazi takeover.16

During the civil war the Bundesheer stood by the government unwav-

eringly, suppressing both the Austrian left and the Austrian Nazis with

merciless force. Many offi cers, reeling from the swinging defense budget

cuts previous governments had enacted in the wake of the economic cri-

sis, hoped the new regime would expand and improve the army.17 The

majority of senior offi cers, old-school conservative in outlook and deeply

ambivalent towards National Socialism, were concerned above all with

safeguarding Austria’s national integrity. Even so, there were limits to

their patriotism; many senior offi cers were prepared to contemplate

eventual union (
Anschluß
) with National Socialist Germany if it meant

keeping “Italy and the Jews” out.18 Meanwhile sympathy with National

Socialism gathered strength, not only among rank-and-fi le troops but

also, in time, among junior offi cers.19

North of the border, meanwhile, the Reichswehr offi cer corps’ sympathy

for the Nazi regime already in place was gathering strength also. Many

younger offi cers, in particular, were highly supportive. Some had been

hardened and radicalized by their experience of the Great War. Others,

too young for wartime service, were anxious to prove their technocratic

profi ciency in the business of mass destruction.20 All were aware of the

many war veterans—Hitler himself being the most high-profi le exam-

ple—among the Nazis’ leadership and rank and fi le, the enthusiasm the

Nazis exuded for all things military, and their clear intention of tearing

up the treaty that had so diminished Germany’s military capability.21

Many younger offi cers, war veterans and otherwise, thus perceived the

62
terror in the balk ans

greatly expanded, technologically enhanced army now in prospect as a

means of fulfi lling the aspirations not just of the offi cer corps as a whole,

but of their own careers also.22 They also believed that the Nazi concept

of a “national community,” embracing all Germans—or at least all Ger-

mans of the desired racial and social material—would be a sure means of

rallying and unifying the German people, in both civilian and military

spheres, for the waging of future wars.23

Older, more conservative offi cers were reassured by Hitler’s show of

moderation when, in the words of the historian Joachim Fest, he invoked

“nationalism, tradition, the Prussian spirit, Western values, or the spirit

of the front-line soldier . . . and (stressed) decency, morality, order,

Christianity, and all those concepts which went with a conservative idea

of the state.”24 They were reassured even more when he eliminated the

leaders of the Reichswehr’s bitter rival, the Nazis’ paramilitary wing, the

SA. This murderous act, albeit one committed against a coterie of thugs,

became known as the Night of the Long Knives. The Reichswehr leader-

ship not only supported it, but readily facilitated it, by providing weap-

ons to the SS killing squads who did the deed.25

Moreover, that majority of offi cers who as yet remained less enthusi-

astic than some of their fellows did not yet pay serious heed to Hitler’s

wilder pronunciations, such as his call for “living space” in the East.26

When eventually they did take notice, most would do so approvingly.

Finally, if most offi cers did not share the Nazis’ anti-Semitism to the

same rabid extent, few allowed it to trouble them actively. Indeed the

broad thrust of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic campaign—with its stress, at this

stage, on discrimination and disenfranchisement rather than extermi-

nation—found widespread approval among many offi cers. Army chief

General von Fritsch, who regarded himself as a conservative nationalist

rather than a Nazi, wrote:

Soon after (the Great War), I came to the conclusion that three bat-

tles would have to be fought and won if Germany was to become

powerful again. 1. The fi ght against the working class, in which Hit-

ler has been victorious; 2. Against the Catholic Church, or to put it

better, against ultramontanism; and 3. Against the Jews. We are still

in the midst of the last two battles. And the struggle against the Jews

Bridging Two Hells
63

is the hardest. I hope it is clear to people everywhere what a battle

it will be.27

By now, moreover, the already widespread anti-Semitism within the

German offi cer corps was being hardened by the connections offi cers

drew between Jews and Bolshevism.28

The murder of the SA leaders, which took place in June 1934, was

followed on Hindenburg’s death two months later by Hitler’s merging

of the offi ces of president and chancellor in his new position as leader—

Führer—and by the army’s swearing of a new oath, dedicated not to the

state, but to Hitler personally. Most senior offi cers did not yet antici-

pate the catastrophic consequences the taking of the oath would even-

tually have.29 The oath’s introduction was followed in 1935 by Hitler’s

announcement that Germany would no longer adhere to the disarma-

ment terms of the Versailles Treaty, but would instead embark upon

a massive expansion of its armed forces. The years from 1935 onward

brought both an enormous, socially diverse intake of new offi cers, and

the reentry into the army of many former offi cers who had left the service

on the inception of the Reichswehr.

The expansion of the offi cer corps brought large numbers of men from

those predominantly middle-class circles—such as small businessmen,

small farmers and landowners, and white-collar workers and profes-

sionals—who had provided the Nazis with particularly strong electoral

support.30 From that point on the leadership of the new German armed

forces, the Wehrmacht, implemented an extensive program of National

Socialist indoctrination among conscripts. It also implemented Nazi-

style regulations to purge the new force of all “undesirable” social, racial,

and political elements.

Over the next three years, Hitler also set about abolishing more of the

hated provisions of Versailles—the territorial clauses that had emascu-

lated Germany’s borders. But he aimed to go further—by unifying the

German-speaking peoples beyond the Reich’s borders. These were to be

the fi rst stages in a foreign policy plan Hitler had detailed in his writings

of the 1920s, aimed ultimately at the total domination of Europe, perhaps

64
terror in the balk ans

even at global power.31 As a fi rst step, in defi ance of Versailles but with no

practical opposition from France or Britain when it was taken, German

troops reoccupied the demilitarized Rhineland in March 1936. That

same year, the Pact of Steel was signed with fascist Italy. This particular

development brought Austria’s eventual absorption into the Reich sig-

nifi cantly closer.

Before the Pact of Steel, the Italian dictator Mussolini had strongly

opposed what he saw as an unacceptable extension of German infl u-

ence into his own backyard. But he was reassured by the new stance on

the
Anschluß
question Hitler now adopted; out went misconceived sup-

port for botched and bloody coup attempts, in came an “evolutionary”

approach intended to integrate Austria gradually and peacefully into the

Reich. Dollfuss’s successor as Austrian chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg,

reluctantly played along to an extent. He recognized that the absence

of effective support against Hitler from Britain, France, and now Italy

left him no alternative.32 At the same time, an unsuccessful attempt by

Schuschnigg to crack down further on the Austrian Nazis gave Hitler the

leverage to compel Schuschnigg to lift the ban on the party and appoint

several of its number to key government positions. Hitler also compelled

Schuschnigg to remove the head of the Bundesheer, General Jansa,

who had intended military resistance to any future German invasion.33

Schuschnigg regarded all these developments with mounting anxiety.

So too did many Catholic, old-school conservative, senior Bundesheer

offi cers.34 But many of their younger colleagues increasingly did not.

There are many indications that the Bundesheer would have resisted

German invasion had it been ordered to do so.35 Nevertheless, con-

tact between the Bundesheer and the German army grew increasingly

close and cooperative during the years following 1935.36 Among other

things, this caused Bundesheer offi cers to grow increasingly disgrun-

tled at the two armies’ contrasting standards of equipment. From 1936,

moreover, National Socialist sympathy was fi rmly on the rise among the

Bundesheer’s lower ranks after the Bundesheer aped its northern coun-

terpart by introducing conscription.37 The debilitating effect of bur-

geoning National Socialist support upon relations among Bundesheer

offi cers was commented on by a German observer:

Bridging Two Hells
65

One group, up to lieutenant-colonel or thereabouts, thinks National

Socialist and pro-Anschluß. Second group thoroughly pro-government.

Because of the differences between these political opinions and atti-

tudes, any sense of unity and comradeship within the offi cer corps is

entirely absent. What has taken its place is mutual distrust, spying, and

denunciation.38

Hitler fi nally annexed Austria directly, and bloodlessly, in March

1938. He was spurred among other things by Schuschnigg’s pledge to

hold a national plebiscite in an attempt to settle the question of Austria’s

independence for good. Across many parts of Austria pro-Nazi offi -

cers, under the aegis of the pro-Nazi soldiers’ organization, the Circle of

National Socialist Soldiers, moved swiftly to neutralize their anti-Nazi

colleagues and ensure that the Bundesheer would not intervene against

advancing German forces.39 Schuschnigg was forced to resign and make

way for the Austrian Nazi Artur Seyss-Inquart.

Over the months that followed, the Bundesheer was absorbed into the

German army as smoothly as Austria, or the Eastern March as it was now

renamed, was absorbed into the Reich. Most divisional commanders and

many regimental ones—non-Nazi, old-school, and often monarchical in

outlook—were removed. The submerging into the German army of the

rest of the Bundesheer offi cer corps, and their troops, then proceeded

swiftly. Apart from anything else, this was a comment on the Republic

of Austria’s failure to cultivate a proper sense of national identity during

its nineteen-year existence.40 From March 1938, then, the German army

contained offi cers from both Germany and Austria, and the story of two

offi cer corps becomes the story of one.

The Anschluß was only the fi rst of Hitler’s foreign policy triumphs in

1938. The second came that autumn. After months of international ten-

sion, a negotiated settlement at Munich granted the Reich the German-

speaking Sudetenland region of neighboring Czechoslovakia. Offi cers

throughout the Wehrmacht, like the population as a whole, were dazzled

by Hitler’s purported diplomatic brilliance. But though the resolution of

66
terror in the balk ans

the crisis had been peaceful, the consequences for Hitler’s relations with

the army leadership were anything but.

At the outset of the crisis, Hitler had sought to use the “violation” of

the rights of Sudeten Germans by the Czech government as an excuse to

smash Czechoslovakia through military action. But then, faced with the

prospect of war with Britain and France over the issue, he had been per-

suaded by his more cautious generals that Germany was not yet ready for

such a war, and that it would therefore be prudent to negotiate a way out

of the crisis. Now, having acquired the Sudetenland by negotiation, Hit-

ler rued his ever having been swayed by such “timid” counsel. Instead,

he concluded that his generals’ advice had been wrong, that Britain and

France would not have gone to war after all, and that his future foreign

policy must always employ the radical brinkmanship that had enabled

him to bring the Rhineland and Austria into the German fold. Thus, in

a process inaugurated earlier in 1938, those senior offi cers who were con-

cerned at the destabilizing pace of Hitler’s foreign and rearmament poli-

cies were replaced or sidelined. That or they simply resigned themselves

to the impossibility of challenging a leader whose popularity among the

German people was now greater than ever.

Hitler’s new measure of control over the armed forces was refl ected in